Marina Izidro: Decision in favor of Norwegian athletes is a milestone in the fight against sexualization

At the European beach handball championship in July, the Norwegian women’s team refused to compete in a bikini.

The athletes thought that the uniform left them exposed, since they are all the time running and jumping. They played in shorts and were fined R$ 9,500 for wearing “inappropriate clothing”. After being accused of sexism, the International Handball Federation recently changed the rules.

Now, the code says athletes can wear long tops and “short, tight” shorts. It is not entirely egalitarian, as the term “fitted to the body” is not in the men’s rule, who compete in T-shirts and shorts. At least it’s a start.

The episode created discomfort. The Norwegian federation said it would fight for players to wear what they found most comfortable. Ministers from Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Iceland called for the change to reflect gender equality. It was not the first and will not be the last case.

In some sports, women wear more revealing clothes than men, such as artistic gymnastics, athletics and beach volleyball. There is no competitive advantage – if there were, they would certainly be in swim trunks. And that doesn’t even happen in swimming anymore.

At the London Olympics, I got tired of reading British tabloids with catchy headlines about beach volleyball. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, then mayor of London, wrote in a newspaper that the sport was attractive because “it had half-naked women glowing like wet otters.”

At the Tokyo Olympics there was progress. The official broadcast ended up with closed takes that show the athletes’ buttocks as they combine moves, or any image with details or body parts that might sexualize them. The German women’s artistic gymnastics team wore, instead of a bathing suit, a longer uniform down to the ankles, according to them, to combat sexualization in the sport and show that any woman should decide what to wear.

Beach volleyball seems to have found a balance. A decade ago, it changed the rules and allowed for a variety of women’s uniforms. The vast majority still prefer to wear a bikini because it is more comfortable, practical and easy to remove the sand from your body. The bottom line is: they use it because they want to, not because they have to. The change made the modality more inclusive. In 2016, Egypt competed for the first time in the Olympics and the women’s duo chose to play in pants, a long-sleeved shirt and, one of them, in a hijab.

Olympic champion Sandra Pires told me that when she won gold in Atlanta-1996, she was told to climb the podium in a bikini, when the rule was to wear a sweater, because she heard from the wife of the then president of the International Federation that it would be “sexier”. It was the debut of beach volleyball and, while athletes were concerned about performance, authorities wanted a spotlight. It was another time in terms of equality discussions. Sandra says she is happy with the evolution of her sport today.

Not every woman is comfortable wearing a bikini or wearing a short, tight outfit and this can make a girl not even start playing sports. Apart from sexist comments or, in a world where women are verbally and sexually abused, something worse. The Norwegian team brought back the discussion: if the sport really wants to be egalitarian, it needs to think about these issues. Include athletes in the process and give them the choice.