What’s Going On With the Leotards in Women’s Gymnastics?

The leotards in women’s sporting activities are playing a risky match. As female athletes carry on to split down obstacles and rake in file-significant scores, their outfits seem to improve smaller sized and smaller sized. It is a development that seems to have an effect on numerous branches of women’s sports activities — from swimming to track-and-area — but it really is sparking the most dialogue in women’s university gymnastics.

“Why do the college or university gymnastics ladies not have to use leotards that in good shape, and why will not they have to have on GK briefs underneath their leo?” requested information creator and former gymnastics mentor BayouBrandi on TikTok, referring to the high-reduce briefs normally worn below leotards. Commenters said they’d also observed this progressive sexualization in women’s sporting activities, noting that there’s a change between an outfit you pick out yourself (like a bikini at the beach), and an outfit intended for you. “I’ve actually opted out of sure sporting activities [because] of how exposing the uniform is,” 1 commenter wrote. In actuality, a analyze released in the journal Activity, Instruction and Society uncovered that 75 percent of the females surveyed had found ladies fall out of faculty sporting activities due to problems about uniforms or physique picture.

Although we assist women of all ages in what ever they experience most snug sporting, private autonomy is a component that appears to be lacking here. In the NCAA, leotards are principally intended by the person coaches and their leotard reps, according to College or university Health and fitness center News. Assistant coaches retain an eye on developments and dig up inspiration on social media, perhaps chatting to the athletes about their tastes. But normally, NCAA leotard restrictions are rather obscure, expressing that “a pupil-athlete will have to put on a a single-piece leotard and is permitted to wear any undergarments that are the similar colour of the leotard or are pores and skin tone in coloration.”

When you consider that these young females athletes absence any significant agency more than what they have on (beyond a everyday discussion with their assistant coach), the discourse around their leotards feels specifically one particular-sided. And as previous higher education gymnast Natalie Wojcik pointed out in a new TikTok, the leotards usually are not the only issue. Her online video highlighted a slew of comments she experienced been given on social media, all of which talked over the skimpiness of her leotard fairly than her athletic prowess. “Getting a girl in sporting activities is difficult sometimes,” she captioned the post. “I am a 23 yr previous lady. My human body is diverse than when I was a child,” she replied to a different comment, remarking that not all leotards have modified, but the bodies sporting them have.

On an Olympic amount, women’s leotards have also been made use of as a political assertion. In 2021, German gymnasts wore entire-duration unitards to the Tokyo Online games in purchase to press from the rampant sexualization in women’s gymnastics. “We want to make sure every person feels at ease and we [want to] display every person that they can use whatsoever they want and glance awesome, come to feel astounding,” explained German gymnast Sarah Voss. This drive for empowerment was specially highly effective given gymnastics’s record of sexual abuse, environment the tone for extra female athletes to put on what they really feel most effective in.

Outside of gymnastics, in 2021, the Norwegian women’s beach front handball staff was fined for refusing to engage in in bikinis, ultimately triggering the rule to modify. And more recently, the US monitor-and-subject globe experienced a polarizing leotard minute soon after some of the kits for the 2024 Paris Olympics went viral. When the male uniform incorporated a tank and briefs, the highlighted selection for the women’s uniform was in essence a leotard with tiny-to-no coverage close to the gusset. “Wait around my hoo haa is gonna be out,” commented Olympian Tara Davis-Woodhall. The lengthy jumper has considering that mentioned at the Group United states of america Media Summit that the leotards don’t looks as drastic in human being, in addition there are other possibilities for women of all ages athletes to wear, which include shorts — but that won’t get absent from the larger discussion.

“I’ve by no means been consulted in the design and style,” Davis-Woodhall mentioned throughout a roundtable interview including PS at the media summit in April. “For the next Olympics, let’s go ask the athletes. How do you truly feel when you compete in our uniforms?” Davis-Woodhall included. “All women’s bodies are diverse and I say the very same thing for adult men. Let’s make the uniforms for the people instead of for the sights of ‘Oh, this is gonna look cool on Television.’ Perfectly, that may well not look amazing on my overall body. So let us just adapt to the athletes alternatively of a display,” she instructed the team.

Regardless of whether or not you imagine the outfits in women’s sports activities are acquiring smaller, athletes are there to compete, and their uniforms ought to provide as an asset, not a position of pain. We can start off by such as athletes in the style method in a extra significant way, listening to their choices (be it tinier leos or comprehensive-on unitards), so that they can conduct to the ideal of their capacity. All women of all ages in sports activities should have to be dressed like champions, but that can’t happen until eventually the athletes truly really feel cozy in the outfits they’re competing in. And certainly, for some athletes that could indicate introducing a small more protection.

Chandler Plante is an assistant editor for POPSUGAR Wellbeing & Physical fitness. Formerly, she labored as an editorial assistant for Men and women magazine and contributed to Ladygunn, Millie, and Bustle Digital Team. In her totally free time, she overshares on the online, developing written content about persistent disease, beauty, and disability.