I can’t take it anymore. The non-stop “REEEEEEEing” online about the Olympics “forcing” female athletes to wear skimpy bikinis needs to stop. No, Karen. The Olympics did not fine a women’s handball team from Norway for wearing shorts instead of butt-baring bikini bottoms. The European Handball Federation did. The sporting event where the fine occurred was the European Beach Handball Championship, which has nothing to do with the Olympics. There is no beach handball for adults in the Olympics.
The Norwegian team says they’re happy to pay it because they don’t want to be forced to wear skimpy clothes that are not ideal gear for their sport. The federation says it will be reviewing the rules.
The federations noted that Norway filed a motion to discuss allowing women to wear shorts in April. Since then, they said, the country’s federation has not brought a separate motion forward.
Female athletes’ uniforms will be a central topic for the newly established Beach Handball Commission, which will hold its first meeting next month, the European and international federations said.
The Olympics, on the other hand, has no such rules for women in the games. The UK Guardian reported that Olympians have a choice when it comes to uniforms, which includes more modest shorts, but most athletes choose the tiniest options.
The confusion—which can be seen everywhere on social media as women and activists get really mad at the Olympics for no reason—seems to have stemmed from a viral post on Facebook conflating what happened in the European sports contest to the Olympics. Sean Codger wrote a hilarious commentary on women’s gear at the Olympics. (I have no idea why he uses * for the letter “e” in “men” and “women.” Draw your own conclusions on that one.) This commentary was then shared over 40k times linking it to the fines on the Norwegian women’s team, spreading confusion.
I need someone to explain human physiology to me. Why is it that wom*n can only perform their best athletic feats damned near nekkid while m*n can break world records practically dressed in a suit of armor?
Because from the layperson’s perspective, it would seem to me that all athletes would do better with MOST of their a** cheeks INSIDE the designated uniform. I don’t know about y’all, but pulling my shorts ALL the way out of the crack of my a** every three steps tends to reduce my best time doing ANYTHING.
Hell, just for the sake of costs, it would seem cheaper to supply wom*n volleyball players with adult-sized shorts rather than refill the sand pit each morning, because we all know where most of that sand ends up by match end. And needless to say, if a grown a** m*n can do the splits while wearing footie pajamas, we can put some shorts on the G*RLS competing in gymnastics.Of course, I suspect that these wardrobe decisions are made with an eye towards enticing men into watching women’s sports, but now that we have the Innanet, how is this supposed to work? A man is going to watch three HOURS of a wom*n’s volleyball match just to see the occasional cheek-slip when he can visit allthebooty-dot-com and still have 2 hours and 57 minutes to watch the US m*n’s basketball game against Angola? That’s not good marketing (or time management)!
Seriously, how is a wom*n running faster than you can ride a bike or skate not interesting enough on its own? How is a wom*n using a flimsy ass pole to vault herself a height equal to the roof of your house not worth a “peek,” even if you don’t get to see her Fallopian tubes in the process?
And is this what we are going to do to shrink the educational gap in this country? Are we now going to have our school teachers dressed like they are in a Van Halen video to get the b*y students to start paying attention? And if so, is it permissible to go back to night school for your GED even if you already have a college degree?
Seriously, it should be possible for wom*n to be able to display their TALENTS … and just their talents … for three weeks every four years. After all, it’s not like we have to start listening to their IDEAS or anything.
While most of the sentiment is hilariously true, it was used to disparage the Olympics and conflate the two unrelated stories. The Olympics does not force any woman to bare her butt cheeks. That is a choice that most of our women athletes are making all on their own. If anyone has a problem with it, take it up with them. Personally, I don’t understand why they want sand up in their nether regions or why they want to run with a wedgie, but I’m not the one competing. Maybe one day we’ll go back to competing in the nude like they did at the original Greek games. Until then, get used to the teeny-tiny uniforms. The chicks dig ’em and the ones who don’t— don’t have to wear them. Ah! Freedom. (And the European Handball Federation needs to get on board with that freedom. No one should be forced to wear anything they aren’t comfortable in.)
