Who Decides What a Champion Should Wear?

Policing women’s bodies via dress code is nothing new in sports. The difference is now women are doing something about it.

In the end, the mid-sleeved, long-legged unitard didn’t make it to the gymnastics team final at the Olympics. The German women who wore it to combat the “sexualization” of their sport were eliminated during the qualifying rounds. Instead, the usual crystal-strewn leotards cut high on the thigh were worn by the medaling teams. The earlier shock over the Norwegian female beach handball players being fined for daring to declare that they felt better in tiny spandex shorts rather than tinier bikini bottoms (and act on their own desires) was not revisited because handball is only a Olympics Youth sport, and none of the beach volleyball players lodged a similar protest. Yet, in many way these Olympic Games have been shaped as much by what is not there as by what is.