I am a shameless fan of the Olympics. Every two years — whether it’s for the Summer or Winter Games — I gleefully tune in to watch the unimaginable, often gravity- and physics-defying prowess of the best athletes in the world.
From the parade of nations at the opening ceremonies to the competitive medal counts, from historic moments of political advocacy by athletes to actor Leslie Jones’ hilarious online commentary, I love it all. Even the over-the-top nationalism moves me — a tall order for someone who was stripped of a long-established constitutional right by her government not too long ago and who just this month paid taxes to that same government.
So, like any avid Olympics viewer, I was looking forward to the reveal of Team USA’s 2024 Paris Summer Olympics uniform, only to receive a proverbial slap in the face.
In an email response to the online criticism, reported by NPR, Nike said “female runners are not limited to” the revealing leotard.
“We showcased some of the new Olympic uniforms at the Nike On Air experience in Paris — but, as we are a few months from the games and working with limited samples in a limited format presentation, not all looks and styles were featured.”
“April fools was 10 days ago,” Katelyn Hutchison, a three-time NCAA All-American track and field competitor at the University of Kentucky, wrote in the Citius Mag comment section.
“This mannequin is standing still and everything’s showing… imagine MID FLIGHT,” Jaleen Roberts, a two-time Paralympic silver medalist in the long jump and 100 meters, commented.
“Professional athletes should be able to compete without dedicating brain space to constant pube vigilance or the mental gymnastics of having every vulnerable piece of your body on display,” Lauren Fleshman, a former professional track and field athlete, wrote on Instagram. “Women’s kits should be in service to performance, mentally and physically. If this outfit was truly beneficial to physical performance, men would wear it. This is not an elite athletic kit for track and field. This is a costume born of patriarchal forces that are no longer welcome or needed to get eyes on women’s sports.”
To the surprise of no one who would rather live in the year 2024 and not 1864, Fleshman is right. Just look at what Caitlin Clark, Dawn Staley and this year’s women collegiate basketball players did for the NCAA. For the first time ever, more people tuned in to watch the NCAA women’s championship game than they did the men’s — a record-breaking average number of nearly 19 million people, to be exact.
In 2022, the World-Cup winning US women’s soccer team settled their pay gap lawsuit against the US Soccer, securing a $24 million payout and a guarantee that the organization would equalize pay between the men’s and women’s national squads. For the uninitiated, prior to the settlement the women were earning as little as 40% of what the men were paid, despite winning four World Cup championships. The men have never been world champions. Not once.
A woman, Simone Biles, is the most decorated gymnast of all time, winning an astounding 37 World and Olympic medals… and she’s not done competing.
And still, and despite all the excellence of women’s sports, Team USA decided to send a resounding message to their athletes, our country and the world: You are viewed as a woman expected to perform for the male gaze, not a medal, way before you are viewed as an athlete. You must be sexy before you can be powerful. You must appear feminine before you can appear athletic.
I was an athlete in high school and college — not a very good one, to be frank, but one who competed nonetheless. Admittedly superstitious, I refused to wash my basketball jerseys unless my team lost — I didn’t want to “wash off” a win. My non-athletic friends would turn their noses up — literally and figuratively — at my irrationality, not just because the smell was far from pleasant after back-to-back-to-back wins, but because I wasn’t being very “lady-like.”
“I’m not a lady, I’m an athlete,” was often my go-to response — a somewhat laughable declaration at an age when women are told we can “have it all.”
But that’s a lie, isn’t it? We can’t have it all. We can’t decide if, when and how we have children in this country, unless we’re privileged enough to live in a certain state or have access to a certain amount of money. We can’t have mandated maternity leave after giving birth, or secure equal pay for equal work.
And even if we dominate our respective sport and manage to become the best of the best athletes in our country, we cannot escape the pervasive sexism and misogyny that continues to permeate society. Instead, while male athletes are simply referred to as “athletes,” we are “women athletes” who must shave and trim, wax and pluck our way into the hearts and minds of… men.
Go Team USA… I guess.
