This year, Nike unveiled the track and field runner uniforms for Team USA for the Paris Olympics. One female outfit has been criticised for being ‘skimpy and revealing’, and tagged as ‘sexist’ on social media. The unitard, a red, white, and blue-striped garment with a high bikini line, is being called out to be inappropriate for the sporting event.
Female professional athletes have also mocked the unitard. Former US track and field athlete Lauren Fleshman wrote in an Instagram post. “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.”
But unlike the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, when only briefs were offered, Nike has this time provided athletes with unitard options featuring both briefs and shorts. The American track and field sprinter, Sha’Carri Richardson has even modelled a unitard in compression shorts with fuller coverage at the brand’s launch event last month. However, Nike’s chief innovation officer, John Hoke, clarified in The New York Times that designers created ‘nearly 50 unique pieces’ for the US teams, including “a dozen competition styles fine-tuned for specific events”.
Not just Olympics but across sports, women athletes and their uniforms have faced unexpected backlash, and questioned on how much body they display. For instance, tennis star Serena Williams. Everything she wore on the court, a unitard at the French Open and a tutu at Flushing Meadows, was criticised. But wearing it made her “feel like a superhero”, she once said.
Williams’ catsuit was banned after the 2018 French Open. Bernard Giudicelli, the president of the French Tennis Federation, said, “I believe we have sometimes gone too far. Serena’s outfit this year, for example, would no longer be accepted. You have to respect the game and the place,” while Williams won her first match post-pregnancy when she wore the suit not for comfort but for medical reasons.
Tennis star Sania Mirza’s short skirts and badminton player Jwala Gutta’s on-court dressing has been trolled for inappropriate outfits.
Time and again, sports uniforms have been questioned for their design and style. LVMH and Berluti unveiled uniforms for team France’s 2024 Olympic opening ceremonies. The navy blue tuxedos with silk tie-dyed lapels reflecting the colours of the country are ensembles for both male and female athletes. But women tuxedos were sleeveless, and criticised for “rewriting the rules of athlete outfits”, and compared to the uniforms worn by flight attendants.
Ralph Lauren made uniforms for the opening ceremony of the 2012 US Olympic team, and the committee came under public fire for manufacturing uniforms in China, which Ralph Lauren later announced that for the next games — the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia — the uniforms will be made in the United States.
Contrastingly, Haitian-Italian designer Stella Jean, a champion of diversity and inclusivity in fashion, has made uniforms for team Haiti at the Paris Olympics this year. Jean’s uniform will be worn by the 15-athlete team at the opening ceremony, highlighting Haitian painter Philippe Dodard, whose artwork titled ‘Passage’ will be incorporated in the uniforms. The women’s version features a full skirt bearing Dodard’s artworks paired with a chambray shirt, woven in Haiti as part of the country’s tradition in spinning the so-called blue cotton, a heritage that is progressively dying out. Layered on top is a sleeveless blazer crafted from recycled fabric to which the Haitian Olympic emblem is pinned.
In fact, France has decided to allow the women participants of other countries to wear a hijab if they wish, but has banned its own women athletes from wearing the hijab. Athletes from other nations will be free to wear religious symbols in the Paris 2024 athletes’ village as they wish.
This stance has been criticised by some international bodies like the United Nation Human Rights. Amnesty International released a statement saying that prohibiting a Muslim woman from wearing a headscarf in public places violated her rights.