In 2012, the International Boxing Association proposed a motion for mandatory skirts for female competitors, citing that women and men looked too similar in the sport. In 2019, Serena Williams was reprimanded for wearing a catsuit for increased blood flow after a challenging pregnancy instead of the standard tennis skirt. The French Tennis Federation then banned Williams from wearing the outfit in any future matches. In July of 2021, the women’s Norwegian handball team protested the required bikini uniform outlined by their league — only to be fined nearly $2,000 USD. 

I could go on.

In nearly every sport, there exists a distressing pattern in uniform differences between the male and female divisions. Women enter the court scantily clad while men enter in full coverage. So I pose the question: why is a woman on the court only shown respect when her ass is out?

Modern sports have evolved to be a socially acceptable dick-measuring contest – men square off on the court to prove their masculinity to fellow barbarians. In this primal mindset, the implication of femininity in athletics is viewed as a threat to the masculine credibility of male athletes. Men (both as athletes and spectators) attempt to rebalance the scales of manliness by engaging in the other pillar of testosterone: their gross non-consensual hyper-sexualization of women.

Fundamentally, female athletes are not respected in their field, only tolerated; women are tolerable in sport so long as they entertain the male audience with their bodies and sexuality. 

Men are uninterested in women’s sports unless there is something to eroticize. Sports that tend to have more masculine presenting women, particularly sports with uniforms that veer more androgynous, are near-shunned by even the biggest of so-called “sports fans.” On the other hand,  sports with more feminine presenting women are sexualized incessantly. It’s as if their femininity is an invitation; one men and the media gladly accept. Indeed, they’re given more attention, but at what cost? 

While it’s true that female athletes often use their platforms to celebrate female excellence, focus on a woman’s body over performance or skill subsequently over-powers any potential feel-good messages about “girl-power.” It’s clear that the priority of media is their ability to commodify female athletes, and equally clear that sexualizing them is the most effective advertisement. This intense policement of their bodies creates and normalizes the idea that a woman’s body is not her own; terrifying in an era that claims to be “progressive.”

There is a current shared belief that the feminist movement is gaining ground and, consequently, that women’s equality is in reach — this is fallacious. On the contrary, it seems as though we are living through a slow erosion of what little progress has been made. The grand movements of this new feminist wave are too often ineffectual and/or fragile  to make permanent progress (see: the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States). Rayne Fisher-Quann says it best in her essay Who’s Afraid of Amber Heard?: “the mainstream MeToo movement offered temporary catharsis in place of systemic change.”

The policement of female athletes is a direct copy of this recurring phenomenon that is defining the current feminist situation at large; i.e., temporary fixes in place of permanent change. Female athletes are offered a #GIRLBOSS bandaid to plaster the wound left by the loss of their autonomy. 

The endless cycle of sexualization and commodification that female athletes experience is an echo of what it means to exist as a woman in a world with men. It’s painful, it’s tiring, and it’s nothing new.