Sportswomen’s Apparel Around the World: Uniformly Discussed [1 ed.] 9783030468422, 9783030468439

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NEW FEMININITIES IN DIGITAL, PHYSICAL AND SPORTING CULTURES

Sportswomen’s Apparel Around the World Uniformly Discussed

Edited by Linda K. Fuller

New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures

Series Editors Kim Toffoletti School of Humanities and Social Sciences Deakin University Melbourne, VIC, Australia Jessica Francombe-Webb Department for Health University of Bath Bath, UK Holly Thorpe School of Health University of Waikato Hamilton, New Zealand

Palgrave’s New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures series is dedicated to exploring emerging forms and expressions of femininity, feminist activism and politics in an increasingly global, consumer and digital world. Books in this series focus on the latest conceptual, methodological and theoretical developments in feminist thinking about bodies, movement, physicality, leisure and technology to understand and problematize new framings of feminine embodiment. Globally inclusive, and featuring established and emerging scholars from multi-disciplinary fields, the series is characterized by an interest in advancing research and scholarship concerning women’s experiences of physical culture in a variety of cultural contexts. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15874

Linda K. Fuller Editor

Sportswomen’s Apparel Around the World Uniformly Discussed

Editor Linda K. Fuller Communications Department Worcester State University Worcester, MA, USA

ISSN 2522-0330     ISSN 2522-0349 (electronic) New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures ISBN 978-3-030-46842-2    ISBN 978-3-030-46843-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46843-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and ­transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Jacob Lund / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

This volume is dedicated to the following international female sportswear owners: Brazilian-born model/designer Sônia Bogner (with Olympic skier-husband), the Munich-based skiwear/sportswear company Willy Bogner GmbH & Co.; Australian fitness instructor Lorna Clarkson (Lorna Jane); British “Support Women” pilates performer Tamara Hill-Norton (Sweaty Betty); Swiss tennis player Martina Hingis (Tonic); Russian gymnast Nastia Luikin, who has partnered with American Athletic, Inc. to produce her own product line (balance beams, folding mat, hand stand bar, and cartwheel/beam mat); Australian model Jodhi Meares (The Upside); Canadian swimmer Evelyn Trempe (Lole); Dutch footballer Leonne Stentler (Liona); Dutch designer of sports hijabs Cindy van den Bremen (Capsters); Thai sports enthusiast Saliltip Watsuksanti (UNIZEP); and Danish tennis player Caroline Wozniacki (JBSUnderwear).

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Uniformly Uniform (noun): A special set of clothes worn by people belonging to an organization to show others that they are members of it. Cambridge Dictionary Uniform (adjective): Consistent in conduct or opinion. Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Uniformly, and globally, we find that both sporting and non-sporting publics are determinants of what girls and women wear while engaging in athletic forays, both private and professional. Sometimes those “outfits” might be righteous or ridiculous, sexy or scary, detailed or downright simple. Oftentimes female athletes have no choice in what they wear, whether due to religious or rule-based reasons, but on their own they tend to choose “uniforms” that suit their own styles. While we realize that women make up 40% of athletes, they only receive about 4% of coverage; it is therefore imperative that we analyze those perceptions. Nationalism and sports, of course, have long been intertwined (Maguire 1999; Tännsjö and Tamburrini 2000; Bainer 2001; Miller et al. 2001; Rowe et al. 2002; Smith and Porter 2004; Tomlinson and Young 2005; Giulianotti and Robertson 2007; Seippel 2017). “Sport is a global vii

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phenomenon whose impact goes far beyond mere entertainment,” Durbin and Deschamps (2017) remind us, adding that, “It expresses and, in performance, embodies moral and cultural values, and it can be a force for change as well as an instrument to control the masses.” At the intersection of sports and nationalism, we argue, is gender, which has traditionally been dominated by patriarchal notions. “The global fashion industry,” Schwartz tells us, “adds up to $2.4 trillion, some 20% of which is simply thrown away.” As in my other volume of sportswomen’s apparel in the United States, this one will include a brief history, the economics of the industry, and some socio-cultural implications. As I have written elsewhere that, “The standard mantra about female athletes claims that they have been trivialized, marginalized, hypersexualized, hierarchically devalued, made invisible, inferior, and infantilized” (Fuller 2016, p. 2), we are seeing challenges in recent studies and realities. Yet, far too many cases of gender inequality still exist in the sporting world generally (see Hanson 2012; Cooky and Messner 2018) as well as in specific worlds such as baseball/softball (Shattuck 2107), cycling (Nordland 2016), horse riding (Thompson 2016), golf (Pemberton and de Verona 2002), ice hockey (Avery and Stevens 1997), soccer (Grainey 2012), and tennis (King 2008), among others. Since some contributors here (e.g., Julie Brice and Holly Thorpe on Athleisure-wear, Linda K. Fuller on Olympics outfits, and Ryan Rogers on uniforms for female eSports athletes) deal with historical perspectives on sportswomen’s clothing, we realize we have come a long way from early iterations of hoop skirts and petticoats, crinolines and corsets as sportswear, developed in the 1930s. Think back to Annie Londonderry’s “Women on Wheels” bicycle images and/or the long skirts and restrictive clothing our foremother tennis players and golfers wore, and it is evident we have come a long way in civil/social reform and comfort in clothing. Consider Chanel’s new bike shorts, offered according to their “Snakeskin print” design, that were introduced in 2019. “It was sports that brought women out-of-doors into new activities that took them away from their housebound roles,” Patricia Campbell Warner’s (2006, p. 5) has written, adding, “It was sports that encouraged their latent competitive instincts. It was sports and exercise that changed their way of thinking about themselves.”

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While it has been argued that sportswear was an American invention (Martin 1985; Lockwood 2012), it clearly continues to span across the globe. Further, “From baseball skirts to hydrodynamic swimsuits,” Adena Andrews of espnW (2015) has written—providing pictorial contrasts in softball, basketball, skiing, track, tennis, swimming, skating, racing, gymnastics, golf, and soccer, uniforms continue to reflect various nationalities. And leave it to Denmark to hold a recent fashion summit emphasizing sustainability. “When did leggings make the leap from garment to cultural lightning rod?” asks fashion editor Vanessa Friedman (2019), citing how United Airlines would not allow two teens in leggings on a flight and how that rebuke went viral. She continues: “Leggings began their rise to wardrobe domination with the advent of comfort culture: the post-casual Friday turn-of-the-millennium move away from formality that picked up steam with the rise of fleece-wearing hedge funders, the fall of old Wall Street and the fetishization of Silicon Valley’s hoodies- and Teva-clad geniuses, and became even more pronounced under the influence of the Wellness movement.” Today, the trend known as “Athleisure-wear” (see Brice and Thorpe, Chap. 2), a comfort outgrowth of our propensity to wear exercise clothing as fashion such that lines are blurring between gym-wear and office-­ wear, has become a major market—estimated at $83 billion in 2016. Starting at the bottom, take the sports sneaker (or trainer), which has gone from being simply a rubber-soled shoe to becoming part of a designer culture whereby special models can cost upward of $1000 (Milnes 2016). Consider: According to Grand View Research, the global athletic footwear market in 2017 was valued at $64.30 billion. Recognizing that fashion has forever been political, we note that sustainability concerns continue to grow globally. Adidas, headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Germany, is the leader, having joined the UN Climate Neutral Now initiative in 2015, since then working to “minimize its environmental impact all along the value chain” (Badloe 2019). Anticipating the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the Japanese firm Asics has held a mass clothing drive for apparel that might be recycled into elite sportswear using scientific methods for issues such as solution dyeing. As we are experiencing the “fast fashion” movement, encouraging frequent

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purchase of inexpensive, easily disposable clothing, we see many examples of why we scholars see sporting apparel as worthy of investigation. While e-commerce platforms for fashion sportswear continue to increase, Morgan Stanley has predicted it to have global sales of $350 billion by 2020—but then again, Trump’s tariffs are already noticeably scaring many clothing manufacturers who depend on items outside the United States. The lingerie leader Victoria’s Secret lists New York, London, and Shanghai, but its international store directory includes at least 100 more locations, and the latest statistics for its most recent rollout included 1.6 billion viewers, 70% of them women. “Beyoncercise” (named for the singer/performer Beyoncé) has been enhanced globally by the star’s Ivy Park line; produced in Sri Lanka in collaboration with the British fashion firm Topshop, the activewear brand ran a campaign starring actress Laverne Cox, international model Grace Bol, dancer Karen McDonald, and male model Ralph Souffrant to celebrate beauty and strength. While sports-related websites such as The Chic Fashionista, Stiletto Sports, and Sweaty Betty might appeal to American audiences, young female activists around the world are responding to the #Never Again and #MeToo movements, LGBTQ groups, those speaking out against body-shaming, advocating for “body positivity,” and other “sheroes” in our midst (see Toffoletti et  al. 2018). Decrying the lack of (positive) media representation of sportswomen, Toni Bruce (2015, p. 382) figured out that, “The imbalance persists despite exponential increases in women’s sports participation and achievements in the past 60 years and exists independently of commercial considerations.”

Discussed No matter the sport, when it’s a team event we’re talking about, uniforms and equipment are a key part of the conversation. For starters, we want to look good…So we all have to think about what it takes to protect our bodies from whatever hazards are unique to our sports—all while looking good…When you dress well, you play well. Uncategorized, WomenTalkSports.com (May 4, 2018)

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Whether via print, electronically, or one-to-one, the subject of sports is ubiquitous. Sportstalk might take place literally at the water cooler—or its more recent manifestation of social media, 24/7 on radio and television stations; as a daily reminder of gendered language, it begs examination. Poststructuralist analysis argues that, despite heightened sensitivities to the dangers of sexist language, the language of sports still contains rhetorical variations that are neither random nor indiscriminate but are, in fact, structured and discriminatory—direct consequences of the structured social variations found in gender relations in general and, as such, contributory factors to the perpetuation of gender inequality itself. Research on the “battle of the sexes in the unequal language of sport” from the UK’s Cambridge University Press (Young 2016) found a continuance on notions where male athletes are described as “strong, big, real, great or fastest” and women more likely to be “aged, pregnant or unmarried”; based on an analysis of 160 million words from academic papers, newspapers, blogs and tweets, it found that men were three times more likely to be mentioned in sporting contexts than women, and when the latter are cited, it usually is in reference to their appearance, age, or marital status. Michael L.  Butterworth (2017) has suggested four primary themes that emerge in rhetorical studies of sports: (1) publish address, especially through instances of image repair; (2) sports as metaphor and the use of metaphor as sports; (3) rhetorical approaches to mediated representations in sports; and (4) rhetorical interpretations of the myths communicated by sports. Recognizing clothing as a marker of social differentiation, I might add the importance of recognizing LGBTQ and disability studies in our work. Across the board, we recognize a number of sports idioms that cross worldwide borders—expressions such as “going back to Square 1” (which has origins in British soccer), the Shakespearian notion of going on a “wild-goose chase,” the baseball notion that something is “out of left field,” throwing one’s “hat in the ring” (a boxing term that first appeared in the London Times in 1804), horse racing’s “hands down,” or the cricket term “hat trick,” when three consecutive wickets signifies an amazing sporting achievement. What follows here is a review of the literature on sportstalk relative to the single aspect of sportswomen’s apparel, followed by a discussion on theoretical frameworks by which to better understand that phenomenon.

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Literature Review Many autobiographies and biographies have been written about what women athletes wear, overflowing in magazines and articles about those outfits. Here are some examples of sports-specific uniform requirements: • To play at the “elite level,” the Badminton World Federation has decreed that women must wear dresses or skirts—a dictum that has drawn criticisms of sexism (Longman 2011); Pakistani female players, for example, must abide by their religious dictates. • “The manly art” of boxing, despite having women participants dating to the eighteenth century, was long associated with the scantily clad “ring-card girl” who carried placards announcing numbers of upcoming rounds (Gat 2010). • Safety is paramount in fencing, as Nick Evangelista (2000, pp. 299–300) points out, with women’s jackets having “interior pockets in the chest area into which metallic breast protectors are placed.” • As a rugby player in the United Kingdom, Jessica Hudson (2010) has described peoples’ reactions to her as “deviant” and “un-girly.” • How about nurse Jessica Anderson breaking a Guiness World Record and winning the 2019 London marathon but not being recognized for it because she wore a baggy scrubs uniform rather than a dress with pinafore apron and white cap (Magra 2019). • Women’s snowboarding, Holly Thorpe (2008) reveals, is covered differently by mass media, niche media, and micro media. • Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Studies (2016), detailing her efforts during Olympic trials, introduces “technical suits, track blocks, false-­ start rules.” • “By presenting a dichotomized image of female and male tennis players, sports journalists help construct female tennis players as m ­ arketable commodities… reinforcing a patriarchal ideology where they are presented as inferior,” John Vincent (2010) has written. Note also that the All England Club has recently decided to eliminate “courtesy titles”— i.e, dropping marital status designations.

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• Following FIVB rules of compulsory adherence to uniform specifications (basically, bikinis), Michael Cantelon (2010, p. 15) has said that the volleyball uniform issue “is a graphic example of the patriarchal nature of much of international sport, also demonstrating the relentless drive to ‘sell’ particular images of female sport to the media.” To date, however, only the above-cited 2006 Warner book When the girls came out to play offers a historical perspective—discussing such topics as public/private spheres, how women’s clothing was for “courting” purposes, and the amazing adoption of trousers as a turning point for female athletes. This volume aims to fill that gap.

Gendered Critical Discourse Analysis Key is the theory of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which examines linguistic qualities of texts and their discursive social context, linking language and power across disciplines. Its central tenets, which are concerned with social power, dominance, and inequality, include notions of discourse shaped and constrained by social structures and culture. Linda K. Fuller, Female Olympian and Paralympian events (2018)

This section and its companion 14-chapter volume, Sportswomen’s apparel in the United States: Uniformly discussed (Palgrave Macmillan 2020), aim to outline my developing theory of Gendered Critical Discourse Analysis (GCDA). Feminist sports studies (Markula 2005) encourage the researcher’s personal experience and voice to be involved, and while there are any number of theoretical ways of analyzing the social power of gender/ sport, mine is through language. Specifically, it involves extending basic notions of critical discourse analysis, an interdisciplinary means of studying language as a social practice. “Motivated by goals of social emancipation and transformation, the critique of grossly unequal social orders characterizes much feminist scholarship and, in regard to discursive dimensions of social (in)justice, research in critical discourse analysis (CDA),” Michelle M.  Lazar (2007, p.  141) has written, bringing feminist studies into the discussion. My notion is to add the term “gender” to the language of sportstalk, drawing on Eckert and McConnell-­Ginet (2013, p. 6), where the

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dynamic performance of gender is a “social construction—as the means by which society jointly accomplishes the differentiation that constitutes the gender order.” Beyond biology, the psycho-social determination of gendered thoughts and actions is often witnessed in our everyday speech, as well as in our conscious and sub-conscious writings. Relative to sport, GCDA might analyze the amount of airtime for male vs. female athletes by sports announcers and gender markings such as “defensemen,” “workmanlike orientation,” Ladies Final, and other delineators of sexist sports language (Segrave et al. 2006; Fuller 2009). It also has application in reportage on appearance through both live-action descriptions and on various social media. Facilitated by fourth-wave feminism, which focuses on (in)justices, the hope is that reportage and representations of sportswomen by groups such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube will move beyond being self-identifying merely as platforms to realizing that they also have socio-legal responsibilities. Darija Omrčen (2017, p. 143) has introduced the notion that “Gender-­ sensitive language, gender-neutral language, gender-inclusive language, gender-free language and gender-fair language are terms used in English to refer to the usage of a tactful and respectful selection of vocabulary devoid of unfounded, unfair and discriminatory reference to women in contrast with men.” ExcelleSports.com (Linehan 2016) cites tennis player Serena Williams: “We are constantly reminded we are not men, as if it is a flaw…People call me one of the ‘world’s greatest female athletes.’ Do they say LeBron is one of the world’s best male athletes? Is Tiger? Federer? What not?” More recently, returning to the game to her first French Open match since 2016 after having a baby, Williams wore a form-fitting black bodysuit that she said, “represents all the women that have been through a lot mentally, physically with their body to come back.” Interestingly, tennis star Roger Federer has recently scored a $300 million endorsement deal with clothing magnate Uniqlo. The Japanese have the ZOZOSUIT meant to flip the paradigm such that the clothing will fit the wearer rather than the other way around; stretchy and covered in white dots that perform 3-D body scans so consumers can use companion mobile apps to personalize them, the suits have been declared part of a “new era” by founder/CEO Yusaku Maezawa.

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It is encouraging that discourse analysis is being used in sports research. The work of the late philosopher/social theorist Michael Foucault, which focuses on societal power relationships expressed through language, has stimulated case studies on many different topics relevant here: feminist sexuality (McNay 1992); women’s body images (Duncan 1994); sociology of sport (Harvey and Rail 1995); the fitness publishing industry (Maguire 2002); hegemonic masculinity (Pringle 2005, Pringle and Markula 2005); exercise (Markula and Pringle 2006); snowboarding (Thorpe 2008), and more. Cross-cultural communication is also at play. Consider the case of Kim Kardashian West’s Kimono: When the celebrity businesswoman announced it as the name of her new shapewear line, there was pushback from some Japanese officials. Much as she must have enjoyed the media attention to the notion of cultural appropriation, in the end, a compromise was reached and the product was relaunched and renamed Skims.

Introduction to Sportswomen’s Apparel Globally Analyzing gender norms and gender binaries in terms of uniforms, it turns out, provides a valuable means for understanding societal attitudes toward sporting females. Linda K. Fuller, Female Olympians (2016, p. 71)

As we continue to challenge traditional sexist barriers about female athletes’ appearances, these chapters loosely fall into categories of historical, socio-political, socio-cultural, and sport-specific perspectives. Specifically, you will be enlightened here by chapters in these divisions:

Historical Perspectives Julie Brice and Holly Thorpe begin this book by introducing us to the athleisure phenomenon, Linda K. Fuller outlines various outfits female Olympians wear, and Ryan Rogers discusses uniforms available for women eSports athletes.

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Socio-Political Perspectives Najat Al Saied and Pam Creedon introduce us to today’s female athletes in Middle Eastern Islamic culture, while Adrianne Grubic discusses media coverage of the Nike Pro Hijab, and Kulveen Trehan analyzes the significance of the saree for Indian women.

Socio-Cultural Perspectives Melissa deJonge, Amy Nesbitt, and Catherine M. Sabiston turn to social media to see how the hashtags #sportwear and #fitnesswear influence women’s sports and fitness; Yuya Kiuchi fascinates with the fetishization of athletic wear in Japan; Katie Lebel and Danica Vidotto highlight limitations relative to the youth sportswear market through the lens of the Toronto Girls Baseball League; and Sarah M.  Wolter uses critical discourse analysis relative to ForPlay’s sexy sports costumes.

Sports-Specific Perspectives Katerina Tovia-Dufoo takes a sociological look into the social reflections of “front row” female rugby players, who are often plus size, battling their tight uniforms; Anne C. Osborne and Danielle Sarver Coombs consider the historical evolution of women’s tennis attire; Matilda Elfgaard and Anna Hafsteinsson Östenberg report on female throwers’ views of their bodies; Gertrud Pfister focuses on the history of cycling and female bike riders’ challenges; Shannon Scovel takes on women’s wrestling shoes and uniforms; and M.C. Whitlock takes on women’s flat track roller derby uniforms and Third Wave feminism in terms of over-sexualization.

Reflections Inspired by a recent panel on “The problem of appearance for women journalists and athletes” at a Women, Sports and Media conference at the University of Maryland, this project just kept growing organically. After

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an initial call elicited such an enormous response, reinforcing my initial reaction that sports uniforms were hardly uniformly appreciated, it became clear that an international volume was worthy of its own celebration. Channeling Leni Riefenstahl decision to make her opus on the 1936 Berlin Olympics into two films—based partly on logistics and partly on intuition—I am especially happy to include international perspectives. Having lived in Europe, Asia, and Africa, I just knew that women’s stories from continents other than the United States needed to be told; hence, it has been my pleasure to include such varied contributions. A word about the Dedication. While I am so enamored by Coco Channel that we named a fancy, favorite Siamese cat after her, it nevertheless struck me that I should honor the many female athletes around the world who have their own sportswear lines. Several contributors helped me add to an initial list, and names of other such entrepreneurs are welcome. Sport has consequences, we continue to realize—cultural, socio-­political, economic, spiritual, and/or personal. For many personal products, women pay a “pink tax” of some 7% more than men’s comparable ones, and often, those products actually are pink. Clearly, it behooves us to monitor women’s sportswear—whether bloomers, sports bras (think about Reebok’s “Puremove” that uses motion-sensing technology to adapt in real time to the wearer’s movements), thongs, tennis “whites,” wetsuits, studio socks, unitards, hijabs, plus-size pants, cashmere loungewear, and/or athleisurewear. “We must use the power of sport as an agent of social change,” the late Kofi Anan, former United Nations Secretary General, famously asserted. Those of us committed to peace and development need look no further than that statement to affirm our dedication to researching and reporting on the many varying aspects of sports—especially its gendered language.

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Milnes, H. (2016, March 22). Designer sneakers and $200 leggings: How luxury stepped into the rise of athleisure. Digiday. Nordland, R. (2016, April 27). Afghan women, eager to play, are kept on sidelines. The New York Times, p. A8. Omrčen, D. (2017). Analysis of gender-fair language in sport and exercise Rasprave, 43(1), 143–161. Pemberton, C. L. A., & de Verona, D. (2002). More than a game: One woman’s fight for gender equity in sport. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Pringle, R. (2005). Masculinities, sport and power: A critical comparison of Gramscian and Foucauldian inspired theoretical tools. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 29(3), 256–278. Pringle, R., & Markula, P. (2005). No pain is sane after all: A Foucauldian analysis of masculinities and men’s rugby experiences of fear, pain, and pleasure. Sociology of Sport Journal, 22(4), 472–497. Rowe, D., McKay, J., & Miller, T. (2002). Come together: Sport, nationalism and the media image. In L.  A. Wenner (Ed.), MediaSport. New  York: Routledge. Ryan, J. (2000). Little girls in pretty boxes: The making and breaking of elite gymnasts and figure skaters. Grand Central Publishing. Schwartz, A. (2018, October 22). Costume change: Rent the Runway wants to lend you your look. The New Yorker, pp. 44–49. Segrave, J. O., McDowell, K. L., & King III, J. G. (2006). Language, gender, and sport: A review of the research. In L. K. Fuller (Ed.), Sport, rhetoric, and gender: Historical perspectives and media representations (pp. 31–52). Palgrave Macmillan. Seippel, O. (2017). Sports and nationalism in a globalized world. International Journal of Sociology, 47(1), 43–61. Shapton, L. (2016). Swimming studies. Blue Rider Press. Shattuck, D.  A. (2017). Bloomer girls: Women baseball pioneers. University of Illinois Press. Smith, A., & Porter, D. (2004). Sport and national identity in the post-war world. London: Routledge. Tännsjö, T., & Tamburrini, C. (Eds.). (2000). Values in sport: Elitism, nationalism, gender equality and the scientific manufacture of winners. London: E & FN Spon. Thompson, K. (2016, August 18). Equal but not the same: Equestrian sports’ unisex approach hides inequity. The Conversation.

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Thorpe, H. (2008). Foucault, technologies of self, and the media: Discourses of femininity in snowboarding. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 32(2), 199–229. Toffoletti, K., Francombe-Webb, J., & Thorpe, H. (Eds.) (2018). New sporting femininities: Embodied politics in postfeminist times. Palgrave Macmillan. Tomlinson, A., & Young, C. (2005). National identity and global sports events: Culture, politics, and spectacle in the Olympics and Football World Cup. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Vincent, J. (2010). Sporting Lolitas, amazons, and freaks: British newspaper portrayal of female tennis players at Wimbledon. In L. K. Fuller (Ed.), Sexual sports rhetoric: Global and universal contexts (pp.  173–184). New  York: Peter Lang. Warner, P.  C. (2006). When the girls came out to play: The birth of American sportswear. University of Massachusetts Press. Willard, F. E. (1895). How I learned to ride the bicycle. Fair Oaks Publishing. Woodward, K. (2012). Sex power and the games. Palgrave Macmillan. Young, H. (2016, August 3). Olympics 2016: Battle of the sexes in the unequal language of sport. CNN. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/03/ sport/sexism-sport-rio-olympic-games/index.html

Praise for Sportswomen’s Apparel Around the World “These ground-breaking intersectional volumes highlight the nature of sports and sports attire, the multi-faceted interpretations of ‘appropriateness,’ and the hegemonic agenda of dressing female athletes, past and present. They are a must read for anyone interested in issues associated with sports, identity, gender, race, and clothing and a must have for scholars of sociology, sport, gender and media studies, and psychology.” —Debra Merskin, Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon, USA “This riveting anthology judges two gendered industries—sports and fashion— to redress the embarrassing lack of coverage regarding women and globalization in sports communication studies. Employing intersectional and transnational standpoints, contributors reveal double standards requiring women’s sportswear to communicate style plus function. Athletic uniforms also expose the double bind of mandated feminine modesty and postfeminist hyper-sexualization regulating sportswomen differently worldwide.” —Kim Golombisky, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, University of South Florida, USA “This book is a welcome addition to research of sportswomen. Offering a holistic perspective on apparel, this work places emphasis on the gendered power embedded in these artifacts. The impressive work of these authors details the past, present, and future of sportswomen’s apparel. This book will become a cornerstone of sports apparel research moving forward.” —Katie Sveinson, Assistant Professor in the School of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management, Temple University, USA “With this aptly named examination of sportswomen’s apparel both in the U.S. and globally, Linda K. Fuller has expertly assembled an all-star cast of feminist sports scholars to explore the intersection of female athleticism, gendered sport performance, power, and culture as reflected in the sport uniform. This two-­volume work makes a unique and exciting contribution to the field of sports studies.” —Marie Hardin, Professor of Journalism, Bellisario College, Penn State University, USA

Contents

I ntroduction to Sportswomen’s Apparel Globally  1 Linda K. Fuller Part I Historical Perspectives  17  Chapter 1: Activewear: The Uniform of the Neoliberal Female Citizen 19 Julie Brice and Holly Thorpe  Chapter 2: Olympics Outfits for Women: From “Feminine Only” to Burqas and Bikinis 37 Linda K. Fuller  Chapter 3: Uniforms for Female eSports Athletes 51 Ryan Rogers

Part II Socio-Political Perspectives  67  Chapter 4: Women’s Sports and Fashion in Arab Gulf Countries 69 Najat Al Saied and Pam Creedon xxv

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 Chapter 5: Just Wear It: Media Coverage of the Nike Pro Hijab 83 Adrianne Grubic  Chapter 6: Saree as an Official Indian Dress at International Sports Events: A Critique 95 Kulveen Trehan Part III Socio-Cultural Perspectives 111  Chapter 7: The Portrayal of Women’s Sport and Fitness Attire on Instagram: A Thematic Content Analysis of #sportwear and #fitnesswear113 Melissa deJonge, Amy Nesbitt, and Catherine M. Sabiston  Chapter 8: Fetishization of Women’s Athletic Wear: Japanese Obsessions with Bloomers131 Yuya Kiuchi Chapter 9: Stepping Up to the Plate: Why an Investment in Girls’ Athletic Apparel Is Good for the Game151 Katie Lebel and Danica Vidotto  Chapter 10: An Ideological Analysis of FORPLAY’s Sexy Sports Costumes: “Seductive Speed” as Embodiment of Hegemonic Masculinity165 Sarah M. Wolter Part IV Sport-Specific Perspectives 187  Chapter 11: Women Rugby Players; Unflattering Uniformed Tales from the Front Row189 Katerina Tovia-Dufoo

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 Chapter 12: Tennis Whites, Catsuits, and Fringe; Women’s Tennis Apparel207 Anne C. Osborne and Danielle Sarver Coombs  Chapter 13: Thankful for Stretch Jeans; A Study on Female Throwers’ Views on Body Ideal223 Matilda Elfgaard and Anna Hafsteinsson Östenberg  Chapter 14: Females, Fashion, Freedom; The Emergence of Cycling Sportswear241 Gertrud Pfister and Gerald R. Gems  Chapter 15: One Step Forward; Equality in Women’s Wrestling Shoes and Uniforms?257 Shannon Scovel  Chapter 16: Threads of Third Wave; Desiring Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby Uniforms273 M. C. Whitlock Index287

Notes on Contributors

Najat Al Saied  (PhD, University of Westminster), an assistant professor at Zayed University’s College of Communication and Media Sciences, has more than 18 years of experience in development organizations and digital media in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and Washington DC.  She has experience in women’s empowerment issues through working in the Saudi Research and Publishing Company (SRPC) in Dubai Media City as an Editor-in-Chief for a women’s e-magazine. Her latest book, Screens of influence: Arab satellite television & social development (2015) has case studies in poverty, literacy, and violence of underprivileged Saudi women and is currently being translated into Arabic. Julie Brice  received her master’s in Kinesiology from the University of Maryland with a concentration in Physical Cultural Studies. There she researched the pervasive empowerment rhetoric present in US Women’s Soccer discourse in relation to the post-feminist, neoliberal moment. She is pursuing her PhD at the University of Waikato, focusing on new materialism theories and conceptual practices regarding women’s embodied experiences of fitness. In her spare time, she enjoys teaching fitness classes and exploring the New Zealand wilderness. Danielle Sarver Coombs  is Associate Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at Kent State University; studies politics, sports, and the politics of sport. Her work has appeared in a wide range of journals. She xxix

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is the co-author of Female fans of the NFL (2016) and has edited anthologies on advertising, sport, and issues in the digital age. She has been invited to speak about her work in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East and has appeared in sports- and fandom-related stories for the BBC, Associated Press, and Christian Science Monitor, among others. Pam Creedon  is Professor Emerita at the University of Iowa, a former dean of the Zayed University College of Communication and Media Sciences, UAE, director of the Kent State University (Ohio), and director of University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Her scholarship focuses on gender, media, and sports, and her books include Women, media and sport: Challenging gender values and three editions of Women in mass communication. Melissa  deJonge  (BSc, Psychology, Queen’s University) is a first-year MSc student at the University of Toronto in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education. Her research broadly focuses on understanding the role of body image and mental health in sport and exercise settings; additionally, she is actively engaged in an on-campus initiative geared toward improving physical activity and mental health among students. Matilda Elfgaard  (BA, Sport Science, Linnaeus University, Sweden) is a former student of Coaching and Sport management in Växjö, Sweden, where she wrote her thesis about body and body ideal among women throwers in Sweden—for which she was awarded the European Athletics Innovation Award in the Open Category 2016. A javelin thrower at the national level, she also has a passion for sport photography. Linda K. Fuller  (PhD, University of Massachusetts) is Professor Emerita of Communications at Worcester State University and the author/(co-) editor of more than 30 books—including Sport, rhetoric, and gender (2006), Sportscasters/sportscasting (2008), the two-volume Sexual sports rhetoric (2009), The power of global community media (2012), Female Olympians: A mediated socio-cultural/political-economic timeline (2016), and Female Olympian and Paralympian events (2018). She was awarded Fulbrights to teach in Singapore and to do HIV/AIDS research in Senegal. Check out her website at www.LKFullerSport.com.

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Gerald R. Gems  is a former president of the North American Society for Sport History, VP of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport, a Fulbright Scholar, and the author of more than 250 publications and 20 books. He has presented his work in 29 countries. In 2016, he received the Routledge Award for scholarship. Adrianne Grubic  is a teaching assistant and PhD student at the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a JM from the Emory University School of Law, an MMC from the University of South Carolina, and a BA from Auburn University. She previously worked in sports broadcasting at CNN Sports, ESPN, and FOX Sports. Her research interests include the intersection of sports, gender, and race along with journalism credibility. Yuya Kiuchi  is the Graduate Director for Michigan State University’s GPIDEA’s graduate programs in Youth Development and Family and Community Services. He has authored, co-authored, and edited over ten books both in English and Japanese, including Struggles for equal voice: The history of African American media democracy (2012) and Race still matters: The reality of African American lives and the myth of post-racial society (2016). He has translated over seven books from English to Japanese, including Barack Obama’s Dreams from my father: A story of race and inheritance. Katie  Lebel (PhD, Kinesiology, University of Western Ontario) is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Ted Rogers School of Business Management at Ryerson University in Toronto. She specializes in sport marketing and focuses her research around the intersection of sport, social media, and gender. A former NCAA Division I athlete, she cannot wait to pass on her love for sport to her new baby girl, Palmer Jane. Amy Nesbitt  (BK, Kinesiology, University of Toronto) is a second-year MSc student in Exercise Sciences at the University of Toronto. Her research draws on psychosocial frameworks of body image and emotions to better understand the connections between self-conscious emotions, physical activity behavior, and mental health. Her previous work has also explored body representation and social comparison among young girls and the implicit processing of physique salient media images.

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Anne C. Osborne  current research focuses on sport and the media, particularly related to gender and fandom. A Professor of Communications at Syracuse University, she co-authored Female fans of the NFL: Taking their place in the stands, which examines the experiences of women fans in the hypermasculine arena of American football and is writing a book on how media discourses about gender non-conforming athletes’ challenge and, more often, reinforce social definitions of male and female. Her research has appeared in the International Journal of Sport Communication, Sport in Society, and Journal of Public Relations Research. Anna Hafsteinsson Östenberg  (PhD, Medical Science, Lund University, Sweden) is a senior lecturer in sports science at the Linnaeus University in Växjö, Sweden. Her research interest varies from women soccer players’ injuries to female athletes and physical activity in children and adolescence. As a former Swedish record holder in discus throwing, she enjoys watching her children’s sports and music activities and regularly does some physical activity herself. Gertrud Pfister  (PhD in history and sociology) has worked at universities in Berlin and Copenhagen conducting several large national and international research projects and publishing more than 200 articles and 20 books. She has been the president of the International Society for the History of Sport and head of the International Sport Sociology Association. Ryan Rogers  (PhD) is an assistant professor at Butler University where he teaches undergraduate courses in sports media and media production. He holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame, an MA from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His professional experience includes: FOX Sports, ESPN, and the NFL Network. His research interests center on the psychology of human-computer interaction. Catherine M. Sabiston  is a professor in the faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto and holds a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity and Mental Health. She has 185 peer-reviewed publications, over 350 presentations, and has held over 19 million dollars in funding for her research broadly focused on

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physical activity and mental health. Her work has been used in documentaries and is regularly featured in the media. Her recent funded studies focus on the link between body image and specifically body-related self-­ conscious emotions (shame, guilt, pride, envy, and embarrassment) and sports participation among adolescent females. Shannon  Scovel (MSc, Gender Studies, University of Stirling) is a Fulbright postgraduate and a sports journalist whose work has appeared in USA Today, Yahoo Sports, espnW, and Sports Illustrated. A former Division I swimmer at American University, her research interests include the representation of women in sports media, with a particular focus on Olympic sports. She is an avid athlete and was a member of the Team USA for Age Group Triathlon World Championships in 2013 and 2015. Holly Thorpe  is an associate professor in the Faculty of Health, Sport and Human Performance at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. A sociologist of sport and physical culture with a focus on gender, social theory, qualitative methods and the moving body, she has published over 60 journal articles and book chapters on these topics. He is the author of Transnational mobilities in action sport cultures (2014) and Snowboarding bodies in theory and practice (2011), and is co-editor of the Routledge handbook of physical cultural studies (2017), Women in action sport cultures (2016), New sporting femininities: Embodied politics in postfeminist times (2018) and Sport, physical culture and the moving body: Materialisms, technologies and ecologies (2018). Katerina  Tovia-Dufoo (MA, Sociology, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand) uses the “Talanoa” methodology of engaging in inclusive, participatory, and transparent dialogue to explore in-depth the cultural and social practices of the everyday women participating in contact sports. A retired rugby player herself, she enjoys boxing discussions with her Mexican husband. Kulveen  Trehan  is Programme Coordinator at University School of Mass Communication, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University in Delhi, India whose research papers, book chapters, and book reviews have been published in double-bind peer-reviewed internationally reputed journals in media studies and marketing communications. She

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has chaired sessions on Media Education and Media and Sports for the International Association of Media and Communication Research Leicester, UK (2016) and Colombia (2017). Danica  Vidotto  is a doctoral candidate at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, her research edicated toward the mobilization of digital technology for social justice and unpacking the use of social media in youth sport. She finds joy in, on, or near the water as both an athlete and swim coach. M.  C.  Whitlock (PhD, Sociology, University of South Florida) is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Georgia Southwestern State University. She is a critical sociologist who specializes in sexualities, intersectionalities, and social movements. When she is not writing or teaching, she enjoys hiking, drinking beer, and hanging out with her partner and their three cats. Sarah M. Wolter  (PhD, Communication Studies, University of Minnesota) is Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Gustavus Adolphus College. Her research has been published in Communication & Sport, The International Journal of Sport Communication, and The Journal of Sports Media and centers on the political economy of the media, the influence of information on democracy, and mediated representations of female athletes. She was formerly a competitive golfer and now enjoys playing all sorts of sports with her two sons Sullivan and Spencer.

List of Figures

Chapter 8: Fetishization of Women’s Athletic Wear: Japanese Obsessions with Bloomers Fig. 1 A small sign says, “Rope Shibuya. Specialized in uniforms and underwear”145

Chapter 13: Thankful for Stretch Jeans; A Study on Female Throwers’ Views on Body Ideal Fig. 1 Thrower

224

Chapter 14: Females, Fashion, Freedom; The Emergence of Cycling Sportswear Fig. 1 Photo of Tony Dodd, Lottie Dodd, Lizzie LeBlond, and Harold Topham in bicycles. (Source: Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum)251

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Introduction to Sportswomen’s Apparel Globally Linda K. Fuller

Uniformly Uniform (noun): A special set of clothes worn by people belonging to an organization to show others that they are members of it. Cambridge Dictionary Uniform (adjective): Consistent in conduct or opinion. Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Uniformly, and globally, we find that both sporting and non-sporting publics are determinants of what girls and women wear while engaging in athletic forays both private and professional. Sometimes those “outfits” might be righteous or ridiculous, sexy or scary, detailed or downright simple. Oftentimes female athletes have no choice in what they wear,

L. K. Fuller (*) Communications Department, Worcester State University, Worcester, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected]; http://www.LKFullerSport.com © The Author(s) 2021 L. K. Fuller (ed.), Sportswomen’s Apparel Around the World, New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46843-9_1

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whether due to religious or rules-based reasons, but on their own they tend to choose “uniforms” that suit their own styles. While we realize that women make up 40 percent of athletes but only are featured in four percent of coverage, it is imperative that we analyze those perceptions. Nationalism and sport, of course, have long been intertwined (Maguire 1999; Tännsjö and Tamburrini 2000; Bainer 2001; Miller et al. 2001; Rowe et al. 2002; Smith and Porter 2004: Tomlinson and Young 2005; Giulianotti and Robertson 2007; Seippel 2017). “Sport is a global phenomenon whose impact goes far beyond mere entertainment,” Durbin and Descamps (2017) remind us, adding that, “It expresses and, in performance, embodies moral and cultural values, and it can be a force for change as well as an instrument to control the masses.” At the intersection of sport and nationalism, we argue, is gender, which has traditionally been dominated by patriarchal notions. “The global fashion industry,” Schwartz tells us, adds up to $2.4 trillion, some 20 percent of which is simply thrown away. As in my other volume, on sportswomen’s apparel in the US, this one will include a brief history, the economics of the industry, and some socio-cultural implications. As I have written elsewhere, “The standard mantra about female athletes claims that they have been trivialized, marginalized, hypersexualized, hierarchically devalued, made invisible, inferior, and infantilized” (Fuller 2016, p. 2); in fact, we are seeing challenges in recent studies and realities. Yet, far too many cases of gender inequity still exist in the sporting world generally (see Hanson 2012; Cooky and Messner 2018) as well as in specific worlds such as baseball/softball (Shattuck 2017), cycling (Nordland 2016), equestrian (Thompson 2016), golf (Pemberton and de Verona 2002), ice hockey (Avery and Stevens 1997), soccer (Grainey 2012), tennis (King 2008), and figure skating (Brennan 2013; Ryan 2000), amongst others. Since some contributors here (e.g., Julie Brice and Holly Thorpe on athleisurewear, Linda K. Fuller on Olympics outfits, and Ryan Rogers on uniforms for female eSports athletes) deal with historical perspectives on sportswomen’s clothing, we realize we have come a long way from early iterations of hoop skirts and petticoats, crinolines and corsets as sportswear was developed in the 1930s. Think back to Annie Londonderry’s “Women on Wheels” bicycle images (or Jungnickel 2018; Willard 1895), and/or the long skirts and restrictive clothing our foremother tennis players and golfers wore, and it is evident we have come a long way in civil/

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social reform and comfort in clothing. Consider Chanel’s new bike shorts, offered according to their “Snakeskin print” design, that were introduced in 2019. “It was sports that brought women out-of-doors into new activities that took them away from their housebound roles,” Patricia Campbell Warner (2006, p. 5) has written, adding, “It was sports that encouraged their latent competitive instincts. It was sports and exercise that changed their way of thinking about themselves.” While it has been argued that sportswear was an American invention (Martin 1985; Lockwood 2012), it clearly continues to span the globe. Further, “From baseball skirts to hydrodynamic swimsuits,” Adena Andrews of espnW (2015) has written—providing pictorial contrasts in softball, basketball, skiing, track, tennis, swimming, skating, racing, gymnastics, golf, and soccer, uniforms continue to reflect various nationalities. And leave it to Denmark to hold a recent fashion summit emphasizing sustainability. Of course, historically women’s clothing has had to pass any number of cultural tests; just as Jaime Schultz (2014) points out how such simple items as tampons and sports bras have helped facilitate women’s participation in physical culture, the topic of gender differentiation continues to concern some countries more than others. “When did leggings make the leap from garment to cultural lightning rod?” asks fashion editor Vanessa Friedman (2019), citing how United Airlines would not allow two teens in them on a flight and how that rebuke went viral. She continues: “Leggings began their rise to wardrobe domination with the advent of comfort culture: the post-casual Friday turn-of-the-millennium move away from formality that picked up steam with the rise of fleece-wearing hedge funders, the fall of old Wall Street and the fetishization of Silicon Valley’s hoodies- and Teva-clad geniuses, and became even more pronounced under the influence of the Wellness movement.” Today, the trend known as “Athleisure-wear” (see Brice and Thorpe, Chap. 2), a comfort outgrowth of our propensity to wear exercise clothing as fashion such that lines are blurring between gym-wear and office-­ wear, has become a major market—estimated at $83 billion in 2016. Starting at the bottom, take the sports sneaker (or trainer), which has gone from being simply a rubber-soled shoe to becoming part of a

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designer culture whereby special models can cost upward of $1000 (Milnes 2016). Consider: According to Grand View Research, the global athletic footwear market on 2017 was valued at $64.30 billion. Recognizing that fashion has forever been political, we note that sustainability concerns continue to grow globally. Adidas, headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Germany, is the leader, having joined the UN Climate Neutral Now initiative in 2015, since then working to “minimize its environmental impact all along the value chain” (Badloe 2019). Anticipating the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the Japanese firm Asics held a mass clothing drive for apparel that might be recycled into elite sportswear using scientific methods for issues such as solution dyeing. As we are experiencing the “fast fashion” movement, encouraging frequent purchase of inexpensive, easily disposable clothing, we see many examples of why we scholars see sporting apparel as worthy of investigation. While e-commerce platforms for fashion sportswear continues to escalate, Morgan Stanley has predicted it to have global sales of $350 billion by 2020—but then again, Trump’s tariffs are already noticeably scaring many clothing manufacturers who depend on items outside the US. The lingerie leader Victoria’s Secret lists New  York, London, and Shanghai, but its international store directory includes at least 100 more locations and the latest statistics for its most recent rollout included 1.6 billion viewers, 70 percent of them women. “Beyoncercise” (named for the singer/performer Beyoncé) has been enhanced globally by the star’s Ivy Park line; produced in Sri Lanka in collaboration with the British fashion firm Topshop, the activewear brand ran a campaign starring actress Laverne Cox, international model Grace Bol, dancer Karen McDonald, and male model Ralph Souffrant to celebrate beauty and strength. While sports-related websites such as The Chic Fashionista, Stiletto Sports, and Sweaty Betty might appeal to American audiences, young female activists around the world are responding to the #Never Again and #MeToo movements, LGBTQ groups, those speaking out against body-shaming, advocating for “body positivity,” and other “sheroes” in our midst (see Toffoletti et  al. 2018). Decrying the lack of (positive) media representation of sportswomen, Toni Bruce (2015, p. 382) figured out that, “The imbalance persists despite exponential increases in women’s

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sport participation and achievements in the past 60 years and exists independently of commercial considerations.”

DISCUSSed No matter the sport, when it’s a team event we’re talking about, uniforms and equipment are a key part of the conversation. For starters, we want to look good…So we all have to think about what it takes to protect our bodies from whatever hazards are unique to our sports–all while looking good…When you dress well, you play well. Uncategorized, WomenTalkSports.com (May 4, 2018)

Whether via print, electronically, or one-to-one, the subject of sport is ubiquitous. Sport-talk might take place literally at the water cooler—or its more recent manifestation of social media, 24/7 on radio and television stations; as a daily reminder of gendered language, it begs examination. Poststructuralist analysis argues that, despite heightened sensitivities to the dangers of sexist language, the language of sport still contains rhetorical variations that are neither random nor indiscriminate but are, in fact, structured and discriminatory—direct consequences of the structured social variations found in gender relations in general and, as such, contributory factors to the perpetuation of gender inequality itself. Research on the “battle of the sexes in the unequal language of sport” from the UK’s Cambridge University Press (Young 2016) found a continuance on notions where male athletes are described as “strong, big, real, great or fastest,” women more likely to be “aged, pregnant or unmarried”; based on an analysis of 160 million words from academic papers, newspapers, blogs, and tweets, it is found men are three times more likely to be mentioned in sporting contexts than women, and when the latter are cited it usually is in reference to their appearance, age, and marital status. Michael L.  Butterworth (2017) has suggested four primary themes that emerge in rhetorical studies of sport: (1) publish address, especially through instances of image repair; (2) sport as metaphor and the use of metaphor as sport; (3) rhetorical approaches to mediated representations

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in sport; and (4) rhetorical interpretations of the myths communicated by sport. Recognizing clothing as a marker of social differentiation, I might add the importance of recognizing LGBTQ and disability studies in our work. For example, Georgina Roy’s 2013 analysis of lesbian surfers’ wetsuits framed simultaneously as “disgusting and desirable” offers yet another key means whereby clothing can be used in revolutionary ways. Across the board, we recognize a number of sport idioms that cross worldwide borders—expressions such as “going back to Square 1” (which has origins in British soccer), the Shakespearian notion of going on a “wild-goose chase,” the baseball notion that something is “out of left field,” throwing one’s “hat in the ring” (a boxing term that first appeared in the London Times in 1804), horse racing’s “hands down,” or the cricket term “hat trick,” when three consecutive wickets signifies an amazing sporting achievement. What follows here is a review of the literature on sportstalk relative to the single aspect of sportswomen’s apparel, followed by a discussion on theoretical frameworks by which to better understand that phenomenon.

Literature Review Many autobiographies and biographies have been written about what women athletes wear, overflowing in magazines and articles about those outfits. Here are some examples of sport-specific uniform requirements: • To play at the “elite level,” the Badminton World Federation has decreed that women must wear dresses or skirts—a dictum that has drawn criticisms of sexism (Longman 2011); Pakistani female players, for example, must abide by their religious dictates. • “The manly art” of boxing, despite having women participants dating to the eighteenth century, was long associated with the scantily clad “ring-card girl” who carried placards announcing numbers of upcoming rounds (Gat 2010).

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• Safety is paramount in fencing, as Nick Evangelista (2000, pp. 299–300) points out, women’s jackets having “interior pockets in the chest area into which metallic breast protectors are placed.” • As a rugby player in the UK, Jessica Hudson (2010) has described peoples’ reactions to her as “deviant,” “un-girly.” • How about nurse Jessica Anderson’s breaking a Guinness World Record and winning the 2019 London marathon but not being recognized for it because she wore a baggy scrubs uniform rather than a dress with pinafore apron and white cap (Magra 2019). • Women’s snowboarding, Holly Thorpe (2008) reveals, is covered differently by mass media, niche media, and micro media. • Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Studies (2016), detailing her efforts during Olympic trials, introduces “technical suits, track blocks, false-­ start rules.” • “By presenting a dichotomized image of female and male tennis players, sports journalists help construct female tennis players as marketable commodities… reinforcing a patriarchal ideology where they are presented as inferior,” John Vincent (2010) has written. Note also that the All England Club has recently decided to eliminate “courtesy titles”—that is, dropping marital status designations. • Following FIVB (International Volleyball Federation) rules of compulsory adherence to uniform specifications (basically, bikinis), Michael Cantelon (2010, p. 15) has said that, the volleyball uniform issue “is a graphic example of the patriarchal nature of much of international sport, also demonstrating the relentless drive to ‘sell’ particular images of female sport to the media.” To date, however, only the above-cited 2006 Warner book When the Girls Came Out to Play offers an historical perspective—discussing such topics as public/private spheres, how women’s clothing was for “courting” purposes, and the amazing adoption of trousers as a turning point for female athletes. This volume aims to fill that gap.

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Gendered Critical Discourse Analysis (GCDA) Key is the theory of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which examines linguistic qualities of texts and their discursive social context, linking language and power across disciplines. Its central tenets, which are concerned with social power, dominance, and inequality, include notions of discourse shaped and constrained by social structures and culture. Linda K. Fuller, Female Olympian and Paralympian events (2018)

While numerous diverse theories are presented throughout, this section and its companion 14-chapter volume, Sportswomen’s apparel in the United States: Uniformly discussed (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), aims to outline my developing theory of Gendered Critical Discourse Analysis (GCDA). Feminist sport studies (Markula 2005) encourages the researcher’s personal experience and voice to be involved, and while there are any number of theoretical ways of analyzing the social power of gender/sport, mine is through language. Specifically, it involves extending basic notions of critical discourse analysis, an interdisciplinary means of studying language as a social practice. “Motivated by goals of social emancipation and transformation, the critique of grossly unequal social orders characterizes much feminist scholarship and, in regard to discursive dimensions of social (in)justice, research in critical discourse analysis (CDA),” Michelle M. Lazar (2007, p. 141) has written, bringing feminist studies into the discussion. My notion is to add the term “gender” to the language of sportstalk, drawing on Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2013, p. 6), where the dynamic performance of gender is a “social construction—as the means by which society jointly accomplishes the differentiation that constitutes the gender order.” Beyond biology, the psycho-social determination of gendered thoughts and actions are often witnessed in our everyday speech, as well as in our conscious and sub-conscious writings. Relative to sport, GCDA might analyze the amount of airtime for male versus female athletes by sports announcers; gender markings such as “defensemen,” “workmanlike orientation,” Ladies Final, and other delineators of sexist sports language (Segrave et al. 2006; Fuller 2009). It also has application in reportage on appearance through both live-action descriptions and on various social

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media. Facilitated by fourth-wave feminism, which focuses on (in)justices, the hope is that reportage and representations of sportswomen by groups such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube will move beyond being self-identifying merely as platforms to realizing that they also have socio-legal responsibilities. Darija Omrčen (2017, p.  143) has introduced the notion that, “Gender-sensitive language, gender-neutral language, gender-inclusive language, gender-free language and gender-fair language are terms used in English to refer to the usage of a tactful and respectful selection of vocabulary devoid of unfounded, unfair and discriminatory reference to women in contrast with men.” ExcelleSports.com (Linehan 2016) cites tennis player Serena Williams: “We are constantly reminded we are not men, as if it is a flaw…People call me one of the ‘world’s greatest female athletes.’ Do they say LeBron is one of the world’s best male athletes? Is Tiger? Federer? What not?” More recently, returning to the game after having a baby to her first French Open match since 2016, Williams wore a form-fitting black bodysuit that, she said, “represents all the women that have been through a lot mentally, physically with their body to come back.” Interestingly, tennis star Roger Federer has recently scored a $300 million endorsement deal with clothing magnate Uniqlo. The Japanese have the ZOZOSUIT, meant to flip the paradigm such that the clothing will fit the wearer rather than the other way around; stretchy and covered in white dots that perform 3-D body scans so consumers can use companion mobile apps to personalize them, the suits have been declared part of a “new era” by founder/CEO Yusaku Maezawa. It is encouraging that discourse analysis is being used in sports research. The work of the late philosopher/social theorist Michael Foucault, which focuses on societal power relationships expressed through language, has stimulated case studies on many different topics relevant here: feminist sexuality (McNay 1992); women’s body images (Duncan 1994); sociology of sport (Harvey and Rail 1995); the fitness publishing industry (Maguire 2002); hegemonic masculinity (Pringle 2005; Pringle and Markula 2005); exercise (Markula and Pringle 2006); snowboarding (Thorpe 2008), and more. Cross-cultural communication is also at play. Consider the case of Kim Kardashian West’s Kimono: when the celebrity businesswoman

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announced it as the name of her new shapewear line, there was pushback from some Japanese officials. Much as she must have enjoyed the media attention to the notion of cultural appropriation, in the end a compromise was reached and the product was relaunched and renamed Skims.

Sportswomen’s Apparel Analyzing gender norms and gender binaries in terms of uniforms, it turns out, provides a valuable means for understanding societal attitudes toward sporting females. Linda K. Fuller, Female Olympians (2016, p. 71)

As we continue to challenge traditional sexist barriers about female athletes’ appearances, these chapters loosely fall into categories of historical, socio-political, and socio-cultural, and sport-specific perspectives. Specifically, you will be enlightened here by chapters in these divisions:

Historical and Socio-cultural Perspectives Gertrud Pfister and Gerald R.  Gems begin this book focusing on the history of cycling and female bike riders’ challenges. Anne C. Osborne and Danielle Sarver Coombs consider the historical evolution of women’s tennis attire, then Julie Brice and Holly Thorpe offer an introduction to the athleisure phenomenon, and Linda K. Fuller outlines various outfits that female Olympians wear.

 onsumption and Representation of Uniforms: Digital C Media Perspectives Melissa deJonge, Amy Nesbitt, and Catherine M. Sabiston turn to social media to see how the hashtags #sportwear and #fitnesswear influence women’s sports and fitness, Ryan Rogers discusses uniforms available for women eSports athletes, and Sarah M. Wolter uses critical discourse analysis relative to ForPlay’s sexy sports costumes.

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Religion, Ethnicity and Intersectional Perspectives Najat Al Saied and Pam Creedon introduce us to today’s female athletes in Middle Eastern Islamic culture, while Adrianne Grubic discusses media coverage of the Nike Pro Hijab, and Kulveen Trehan analyzes the significance of the saree for Indian women. Yuya Kiuchi fascinates with the fetishization of athletic wear in Japan.

 egotiating Clothing and Athletic Identities: N Embodied Perspectives Katerina Tovia-Dufoo takes a sociological look into the social reflections of “front row” female rugby players, who are often plus size, battling their tight uniforms; Matilda Elfgaard and Anna Hafsteinsson Östenberg report on female throwers’ views of their bodies; Shannon Scovel takes on women’s wrestling shoes and uniforms; Katie Lebel and Danica Vidotto highlight limitations relative to the youth sportswear market through the lens of the Toronto Girls Baseball League; and M.C. Whitlock takes on women’s flat track roller derby uniforms and Third Wave feminism in terms of over-sexualization.

Reflections Inspired by a recent panel on “The problem of appearance for women journalists and athletes” at a Women, Sports and Media conference at the University of Maryland, this project just kept growing organically. After an initial Call elicited such an enormous response, reinforcing my initial reaction that sports uniforms were hardly uniformly appreciated, it became clear that an international volume was worthy of its own celebration. Channeling Leni Riefenstahl’s decision to make her opus on the 1936 Berlin Olympics into two films, based partly on logistics and partly on intuition, I am especially happy to include international perspectives. Having lived in Europe, Asia, and Africa, I just knew that women’s stories

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from continents other than the US needed to be told; hence, it has been my pleasure to include such varied contributions. A word about the Dedication. While I am so enamored by Coco Channel that we named a fancy, favorite Siamese cat after her, it nevertheless struck me that I should honor the many female athletes around the world who have their own sportswear lines. Several contributors helped me add to an initial list, and names of other such entrepreneurs are welcome. Sport has consequences, we continue to realize—cultural, socio-­ political, economic, spiritual, and/or personal. For many personal products, women pay a “pink tax” of some 7 percent more than men’s comparable ones, and often those products actually are pink. Clearly, it behooves us to monitor women’s sportswear—whether bloomers, sports bras (think about Reebok’s “Puremove,” that uses motion-sensing technology to adapt in real time to the wearer’s movements), thongs, tennis “whites” (see Tredway and Liberti 2018), wetsuits, studio socks, unitards, hijabs, plus-size pants, cashmere loungewear, and/or athleisurewear. “We must use the power of sport as an agent of social change,” the late Kofi Anan, former United Nations Secretary General, famously asserted. Those of us committed to peace and development need look no further than that statement to affirm our dedication to researching and reporting on the many varying aspects of sport—especially its gendered language.

References Andrews, A. (2015, March 20). The A-list: 11 ways women’s sports uniforms have evolved. espnW. Retrieved from http://www.espn.com/espnw/athleteslife/article/12494884/11-ways-women-sports-uniforms-evolved Avery, J., & Stevens, J. (1997). Too many men on the ice: Women’s hockey in North America. Vancouver: Polesstar. Badloe, N. (2019, September 24). Protecting our planet: Sports brands. Sport & Development. Retrieved from https://www.sportanddev.org/en/article/news/ protecting-our-planet-sports-brands Bainer, A. (2001). Sport, nationalism, and globalization: European and North American perspectives. State University of New York Press.

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Brennan, C. (2013). Edge of glory: The inside story of the quest for figure skating’s Olympic gold medals. Scribner. Bruce, T. (2015). Assessing the sociology of sport: On media and representations of sportswomen. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 50(4–5), 380–384. Butterworth, M. L. (2017). Sport as rhetorical artifact. In A. D. Billings (Ed.), Defining sport communication (pp. 11–25). New York: Routledge. Cantelon, M. (2010). Sex-a-side: Volleyball uniforms and the reproduction of female objectivity. In L.  K. Fuller (Ed.), Sexual sports rhetoric: Global and universal contexts (pp. 13–23). New York: Peter Lang. Cooky, C., & Messner, M. (2018). No slam dunk: Gender, sport, and the unevenness of social change. Rutgers University Press. Duncan, M.  C. (1994). The politics of women’s body images and practices: Foucault, the panopticon and Shape magazine. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 18, 48–65. Durbin, D., & Descamps, Y. (2017). The politics of discourse on the field of dreams: Political messaging and the mediated representation of sports. InMedia: The French Journal of Media Studies, p. 6. Eckert, P., & McConnell-Ginet, S. (2013). Language and gender (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. Evangelista, N. (2000). The inner game of fencing: Excellence in form, technique, strategy, and spirit. Master’s Press. Friedman, V. (2019, April 4). A breaking point for stretchy pants? The New York Times, p. D4. Fuller, L.  K. (2009). Gender markings, male generics, naming conventions, descriptive linguistics, and the metaphorical language of sport. Paper presented to the National Communication Association, Chicago, IL. Fuller, L.  K. (2016). Female Olympians: A mediated socio-cultural/political-­ economic timeline. Palgrave Macmillan. Fuller, L.  K. (2018). Female Olympian and Paralympian events: Analyses, backgrounds and timelines. Palgrave Macmillan. Gat, S. A. (2010). Wham! Bam! Thank you, ma’am!: The rhetoric surrounding female professional boxers. In L.  K. Fuller (Ed.), Sexual sports rhetoric: Historical and media contexts of violence (pp. 233–246). New York: Peter Lang. Giulianotti, R., & Robertson, R. (Eds.). (2007). Globalization and sport. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Grainey, T. F. (2012). Beyond bend it like Beckham: The global phenomenon of women’s soccer. University of Nebraska Press.

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Hanson, V. (2012). The inequality of sport: Women < Men. The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research, 13, 15–22. Harvey, J., & Rail, G. (1995). Body at work: Michael Foucault and the sociology of sport. Sociology of Sport Journal, 12(2), 164–179. Hudson, J. (2010). Women playing rugby: Rejection of ‘The Girly’ by girls. In L. K. Fuller (Ed.), Sexual sports rhetoric: Historical and media contexts of violence (pp. 247–256). New York: Peter Lang. Jungnickel, K. (2018). Vertinsk. MIT Press. King, B. J. (2008). Pressure is a privilege: Lessons I’ve learned from life and the battle of the sexes. New York: LifeTime Media. Lazar, M. M. (2007). Feminist critical discourse analysis: Articulating a feminist discourse praxis. Critical Discourse Studies., 4(2), 141–164. Linehan, M. (2016, December 2). What do we call you?: The controversies, conveniences of gender marking ‘female’ athletes. ExcelleSports.com. Lockwood, L. (2012, September 8). Sportswear: An American invention. Women’s Wear Daily. Longman, J. (2011, May 26). Badminton’s new dress code is being criticized as sexist. The New  York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes. com/2011/05/27/sports/badminton-dress-code-for-women-criticized-assexist.html Magra, I. (2019, May 6). No dress, no apron, no record: Guinness ignores nurse’s run at London marathon. The New York Times, p. A15. Maguire, J.  S. (2002). Fitness publishing and the cultural production of the fitness consumer. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 37(3–4), 449–464. Maguire, J. (1999). Global sport: Identities, societies, civilization. Cambridge: Polity Press. Markula, P. (Ed.). (2005). Feminist sport studies: Sharing experiences of joy and pain. Albany, NY: SUNY. Markula, P., & Pringle, R. (2006). Foucault, sport and exercise: Power, knowledge and transforming the self. Routledge. Martin, R. (1985). All-American: A sportswear tradition. New  York: Fashion Institute of Technology. McNay, L. (1992). Foucault and feminism: Power, gender and the self. Polity Press. Miller, R., Lawrence, G., McKay, J., & Rowe, D. (2001). Globalization and sport: Playing the world. London: Sage. Milnes, H. (2016, March 22). Designer sneakers and $200 leggings: How luxury stepped into the rise of athleisure. Digiday.

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Nordland, R. (2016, April 27). Afghan women, eager to play, are kept on sidelines. The New York Times, p. A8. Omrčen, D. (2017). Analysis of gender-fair language in sport and exercise. Rasprave, 43(1), 143–161. Pemberton, C. L. A., & de Verona, D. (2002). More than a game: One woman’s fight for gender equity in sport. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Pringle, R. (2005). Masculinities, sport and power: A critical comparison of Gramscian and Foucauldian inspired theoretical tools. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 29(3), 256–278. Pringle, R., & Markula, P. (2005). No pain is sane after all: A Foucauldian analysis of masculinities and men’s rugby experiences of fear, pain, and pleasure. Sociology of Sport Journal, 22(4), 472–497. Rowe, D., McKay, J., & Miller, T. (2002). Come together: Sport, nationalism and the media image. In L.  A. Wenner (Ed.), MediaSport. New  York: Routledge. Roy, G. (2013). Women in wetsuits: Revolting bodies in lesbian surf culture. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 17(3), 329–343. Ryan, J. (2000). Little girls in pretty boxes: The making and breaking of elite gymnasts and figure skaters. Grand Central Publishing. Schultz, J. (2014). Qualifying times: Points of change in US women’s sport. University of Illinois Press. Segrave, J. O., McDowell, K. L., & King, J. G., III. (2006). Language, gender, and sport: A review of the research. In L. K. Fuller (Ed.), Sport, rhetoric, and gender: Historical perspectives and media representations (pp. 31–52). Palgrave Macmillan. Seippel, O. (2017). Sports and nationalism in a globalized world. International Journal of Sociology, 47(1), 43–61. Shapton, L. (2016). Swimming Studies. Blue Rider Press. Shattuck, D.  A. (2017). Bloomer girls: Women baseball pioneers. University of Illinois Press. Smith, A., & Porter, D. (2004). Sport and national identity in the post-war world. London: Routledge. Tännsjö, T., & Tamburrini, C. (Eds.). (2000). Values in sport: Elitism, nationalism, gender equality and the scientific manufacture of winners. London: E & FN Spon. Thompson, K. (2016, August 18). Equal but not the same: Equestrian sports’ unisex approach hides inequity. The Conversation.

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Thorpe, H. (2008). Foucault, technologies of self, and the media: Discourses of femininity in snowboarding. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 32(2), 199–229. Toffoletti, K., Francombe-Webb, J., & Thorpe, H. (Eds.). (2018). New sporting femininities: Embodied politics in postfeminist times. Palgrave Macmillan. Tomlinson, A., & Young, C. (2005). National identity and global sports events: Culture, politics, and spectacle in the Olympics and Football World Cup. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Tredway, K., & Liberti, R. (2018). All frocked up in purple: Rosie Casals, Virginia Slims, and the politics of fashion at Wimbledon, 1972. Fashion, Style, and Popular Culture, 5(2), 235–247. Vincent, J. (2010). Sporting Lolitas, amazons, and freaks: British newspaper portrayal of female tennis players at Wimbledon. In L. K. Fuller (Ed.), Sexual sports rhetoric: Global and universal contexts (pp.  173–184). New  York: Peter Lang. Warner, P.  C. (2006). When the girls came out to play: The birth of American sportswear. University of Massachusetts Press. Willard, F. E. (1895). How I learned to ride the bicycle. Fair Oaks Publishing. Young, H. (2016, August 3). Olympics 2016: Battle of the sexes in the unequal language of sport. CNN. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/03/ sport/sexism-sport-rio-olympic-games/index.html

Part I Historical Perspectives

Chapter 1: Activewear: The Uniform of the Neoliberal Female Citizen Julie Brice and Holly Thorpe

Athleisure (ath-ˌlē-zhər): casual clothing designed to be worn both for ‘exercising and for general use’ / In the world of fashion, 2014 has become the year of “athleisure” —(“Athleisure” 2016)

Although many people may be unfamiliar with the term “athleisure,” and there have been debates around the proper usages and definitions of the term (Wilson 2018), it can be argued that the athleisure trend has become a symbol and central component of twenty-first-century Western Culture.

J. Brice (*) Te Huataki Waiora School of Health, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] H. Thorpe Faculty of Health, Sport and Human Performance, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. K. Fuller (ed.), Sportswomen’s Apparel Around the World, New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46843-9_2

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Athleisure is generally understood as an umbrella term incorporating more familiar categories of “sports-gear,” “activewear,” “gym gear,” and “casual wear.” Peter Cowgill, executive director of Britain’s JD Sports, summarizes athleisure writing somewhat comically, “It’s the type of gear you can use in the gym and walk to the pub in” (Armstrong 2016, n.p.). Incorporating the yoga pants people wear at the grocery store, the bicycle shorts Kim Kardashian struts in around Los Angeles (Carder 2018), the tracksuits worn on fashion walkways in Paris (Yotka 2017), and the wrapped tops seen in boardrooms in Canada (Richard 2015), athleisure is so omnipresent that it has even been parodied by the famous American television Show, Saturday Night Live (SNL) (Low 2018), and Australia’s well-known YouTube group, Skit Box, in their “Activewear” YouTube video that has amassed over 6.2 million views (SkitBox 2015). The SNL skit is a three-minute parody of a Nike commercial advertising “pro-­ chiller leggings” with the tag-line “Designed for endurance, but used for what most women actually do in leggings: setting up shop on their couch” (Low 2018). Similarly in the Skit Box video, women are seen in activewear performing their daily activities: “Waiting for the bus in my activewear, buying activewear in my activewear, smoking on the street in my activewear, doing literally nothing in my activewear” (Skit Box 2015). While these skits are parodies of activewear (and particularly women wearing activewear outside of fitness or sporting spaces), they highlight an important cultural shift in Western cultures: the rise and expansion of the athleisure phenomenon. Media articles recognize this shift with the following headlines: “Athleisure trend booms as sweatpants leave the gym” (Townsend and Rupp 2014); “Athleisure is not just a trend—it’s a fundamental shift in how people dress” (Green 2017); and “Athleisure: the emerging fashion statement that is becoming the new normal” (Hanson 2017). Yet the entire athleisure phenomenon is much more than simply casual clothing designed for physical activity. It is a complex entanglement of branding, marketing, fabric, skin, sweat, fat, muscle, consumption, capitalism, environmentalism, gender, sexuality, social media, healthism, neoliberalism, and more. This chapter explores the athleisure phenomenon, seeking to contextualize the popularity of activewear among women. In particular, we ask:

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• What has been the catalyst for this cultural shift? • Why are women primarily targeted in athleisure campaigns? • What are the embedded discourses and political underpinnings that support this international phenomenon? • How does the language of athleisure reflect discourses of neoliberalism and healthism? These questions serve as the inspiration for the following discussion, explaining how activewear has become the uniform for many women in the twenty-first century. When a woman pulls on her yoga pants in the morning and steps onto the street, she is telling the world that she is going to (at some point in the day) take ownership of her own health and well-being and to participate in some form of physical activity. In cafes, train stations, bus tops, urban streets, supermarkets, and universities, her body—sometimes clothed in form fitting attire—is read (often subconsciously) by others as self-disciplining, a body “in control.” Whether she exercises that day or not is beside the point. Specifically we adopt a feminist approach to explore the connections between athleisure and discourses of neoliberalism, healthism, and consumerism.

The Athleisure Phenomenon As discussed, there are varying definitions of the term “athleisure” and just as many ideas as to when the trend started (Rhone 2014; Wilson 2018). While it could be argued that athleisure started with the nylon tracksuits of the 1980s, the athletic apparel industry has seen expansive growth since 2010, particularly toward form-fitting clothing designed for physical activity (Rhone 2014). Since 2010, the sales of athletic apparel have outpaced all other apparel sales with an estimated 50% growth by 2020. More than halfway through this projection, apparel sales are still increasing with the trend evolving and continuing to gain popularity, especially among women (Salfino 2017). Women have been a major contributor to the success of the athleisure trend with women’s markets outpacing men’s markets, such that major companies are investing billions into their women’s departments.

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Despite its gendered nature and intense presence in most Western societies (and Asian markets such as Japan, China and India), relatively little academic work has focused on athleisure from a socio-cultural perspective and its connection with prevailing neoliberal-healthist discourses, especially regarding how the language of athleisure contributes to these pervasive ideologies. To date, most academic research on activewear has focused on the material properties of the clothing (including claims about increased athletic performance) (Cox 2017; Hanhel 2017) and the business/marketing tactics used by athletic companies (Hyo Jung et al. 2015; O’Sullivan et al. 2017). When examining the material properties of sportswear, research has tended to use quantitative approaches to both explore claims made by companies as well as to study the use of athleisure for non-sports-related practices; for example, Hanhel (2017) explores the performance claims of clothing by testing a random selection of common activewear clothing items regarding their moisture management claims (wicking, quick dry, stay cool, breathability, water resistance, and wind resistant claims). In the field of sport and exercise science, Brophy-­ Williams et al. (2015) explore the effects of different sizes of compression clothing on athlete performance, while Bowles et al. (2011) examine the various features of sports bras that make them more or less appealing to Australian women. Along with examining the material properties of athleisure clothing, research within marketing has examined the crossover between athleisure and branding. Chang et al. (2015) conducted a broad study on activewear stores to analyze which attributes impacted consumer satisfaction. Other studies have begun to make the connection between the neoliberal-­ healthism discourse and the branding of athleisure. For example, in their analysis of Lorna Jane, the Australian-based active-wear company, Horton et al. (2016) describe how the company markets itself around the philosophy of “Active Living” by offering in-store studio yoga classes, in-­ store juice bars, online communities, and online fitness challenges—essentially selling an “active, healthy” lifestyle to their participants that can be achieved through purchasing their products. Similarly, Nash (2016) conducted an analysis of Lorna Jane exploring the connection between the company and concepts of empowerment, independence, post-feminism, “fitspiration,” and body regulation. Mirroring

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these two studies, when Lavrence and Lozanski (2014) performed a case study focusing on Lululemon’s branding strategies, particularly emphasizing a lifestyle focused on love and self-care, they found, embedded in this self-love lifestyle, neoliberal principles of discipline and bodywork. In their branding strategies, LuluLemon uses messages of empowerment, choice, and self-care to reinforce the individualized, responsibilized self that is the essential characteristic of the neoliberal-heath discourse. This chapter builds upon and expands the company-focused research conducted by Nash (2016), Horton et  al. (2016) and Lavrence and Lozanski (2014) to explore the broader athleisure phenomenon, including the language surrounding it and the connection to discourses of healthism and neoliberalism. While Lorna Jane and LuluLemon are two well-known stores that tend to target and be frequented by wealthy, slim, white women, the athleisure phenomenon is increasingly affecting women from different classes, sizes, and ethnicities as seen by the various pricing options at budget chain stores (e.g., Target and Walmart in the United States; Kmart and The Warehouse in New Zealand) and the growing diversity of ethnicities present in activewear advertisements. We suggest that one of the primary reasons for the financial successes of the athleisure phenomenon is the desire (and social requirement) for women to embody, perform, and physically display their acceptance of neoliberal-­ healthism discourses (discussed in the following sections). Such ideals are certainly not limited to wealthy white women, and are increasingly pressing upon the bodies (and consumption choices) of women across varying demographics.

Women, Fitness, and the Athleisure Phenomenon Traditionally, sports have been identified as a “male preserve,” a space dominated by hegemonic notions of masculinity (Gee and Jackson 2017). Therefore, it may seem contradictory that the athleisure trend, with clothes designed for sport and physical activity, has been dominated by women. Still, the historical relationship between sport and

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masculinity is arguably one reason athleisure companies targeting women have found such success. In the context of post-Fordism (shift in the 1970s from an economic market focused on mass production to one focused on new small-scale, specialized consumption), women’s sport and physical recreation were identified as a largely untapped and underappreciated market (Thorpe 2011). In a recent piece for Forbes magazine, LuluLemon founder, Chip Wilson (2018), wrote that his first athletic company (snowboard and surfing apparel) did not succeed because, “Like most athletic companies at the time, we didn’t pay proper attention to the neglected women’s market. LuluLemon was the first company of its kind to focus on a growing market of highly educated, well-travelled, athletic women.” In response to the success of women’s activewear markets, large corporations such as Adidas, Nike, and Under Armour have also turned their attention to investing in the women’s market, most having plans to at least double sales by 2020 (Chitrakorn 2017). Pam Catlett, general manager of women’s apparel at Under Armour, elaborates on how the athleisure market has caused Under Armour to shift their focus: “We’ve grown up as a traditional sporting goods brand that began in men’s athletic performance apparel… [but the women’s market is] an area you’ll see us accelerating and evolving into” (Chitrakorn 2017). Sporting companies have historically catered to men since society previously only recognized the physical culture and sporting practices of men; however, as women have increasingly become active and visible in sporting and physical culture spaces, companies have slowly begun to take note and have changed directions to cater to this previously ignored market. The rise in popularity of athleisure among women may also be contextualized in societal shifts, political changes, and women’s movements in the 1970s and 1980s in the United States and other Western countries. As women became more visible and prevalent in social and political spaces, it became more socially acceptable, and popular, for women to engage in physical and sporting activities such as aerobics and running (Black 2013), with physical culture and sports increasingly recognized as sites for women’s empowerment and liberation (Theberge 1987). Many feminist scholars have revealed women’s participation in aerobics and fitness practices as highly disciplinary, with powerful discourses of

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consumerism and “biopower” operating on and through women’s moving bodies (Duncan 1994; Markula 1995; McKenzie 2013). More recently, research has examined new trends in social media and the effects on women’s fitness practices, including the rise of “fitspiration” (Robinson et al. 2017). According to Tiggemann and Zaccardo (2015), fitspiration is defined as “an online trend designed to inspire viewers towards a healthier lifestyle by promoting exercise and healthy food” (p. 61), which usually combines inspiring messages and text with images of young, lean, and toned women wearing some form of activewear (often a carefully selected combination of leggings or shorts and sports bras or tops) engaging in physical exercise and healthy eating. Fitspiration and similar tags, such as #fitspo, have been increasing in prevalence over recent years with one simple #fitspiration search on Instagram returning over 3.3 million results (Riley and Evans 2017). Fitspiration posts predominantly focus on images of women, research estimating that 67 percent of fitness images on Instagram alone feature women (Tiggemann and Zaccardo 2015), and 90 percent of fitness-­ related images across all social media platforms feature women (Boepple et al. 2016). Women are also the primary consumers of the fitspiration movement, with one study showing that 31 percent of all Australians like or follow fitspiration posts, but with women following twice as much as men (Carrotte et al. 2017). Embedded within these social media photos and videos of young, slim women dressed in fashionable active wear promoting their brands as fitness and nutrition gurus are discourses strongly associated with neoliberalism, healthism, and the “transformative imperative” where women are expected to employ their agency to attain the “ideal” body. In their analysis of the fitspiration trend on Tumblr, Riley and Evans (2017) note that fitspo images reinforce a narrative whereby the body is seen as malleable and a project that must be worked on to meet societal standards of feminine beauty, success, and health using language around concepts such as choice, empowerment, fun, agency, and individual freedoms. The neoliberal health imperative is prevalent in both the fitspiration movement and the athleisure phenomenon, both of which are entangled in a complex web of power relations that press upon women’s bodies, impacting their relationships with fitness, consumption, health, and well-being.

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F eminist Understandings of Healthism, Neoliberalism, and Athleisure The concepts of neoliberalism and healthism are mutually symbiotic, forming a powerful relationship that has infiltrated much of Western society. They have become so ingrained and pervasive in Western ideology that for many they are an accepted and normalized part of everyday life. McGuigan elaborates to describe neoliberalism as a feeling: “The neoliberal structure of feeling is not just a matter of ideas and emotions. It is inscribed into habitual modes of conduct and routine practices governing everyday life in a largely unexamined and semi-conscious manner” (p. 23). In many Western societies, and of great importance for the athleisure phenomenon, these habitual modes of conduct include the requirement to live a healthy lifestyle and to take ownership of one’s health and well-being. Neoliberalism emerged around the 1970s and 1980s as a political framework that removed responsibility of social problems from the state (via social welfare programs) and placed that responsibility on individuals and private companies. In place of social welfare programs, funds were allocated to maintain a deregulated, free market economy emphasizing privatization of previously publicly funded programs. As a result of the increase in privatization and decreased state sponsored programs, responsibility was placed on individuals for the maintenance of their health, finances, and education, regardless of any potential structural barriers (race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, economic class). The emphasis on individualism, consumerism, and societal surveillance work symbiotically with ideas present within healthism. Healthism developed in conjunction with shifts toward neoliberalism where health was recast as a primarily individual endeavor. Robert Crawford (1980) defined healthism as the “preoccupation with personal health as a primary—often the primary—focus for the definition and achievement of well-being; a goal which is to be attained primarily through the modification of life styles” (p. 368). Embedded within this concept is the re-articulation of health as a completely individual affair where, although health problems may originate outside the individual,

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the solution rests within the individual and their behavior and choices. In this context of neoliberal-healthism, ideas of individualism, choice, lifestyle, and consumerism pervade society. It becomes a moral and societal obligation for an individual to follow—or at least appear to be following—societal codes for health maintenance through normalized health measures (physical exercise, healthy eating). Therefore, the body (including clothed body) becomes a symbol and site for which health is inscribed, a physical manifestation of socially accepted behaviors (Roy 2008). The athleisure phenomenon is complicit in strengthening and normalizing neoliberal-healthism discourses. In this chapter, we use Foucault’s notion of discourse as a series of processes/events/ideas which “transmits, and produces power; it reinforces it but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it” (Foucault 1978, p. 101). This includes, but is not limited to, the language, text, images, apparel, materials, and social media that contribute to the athleisure phenomenon. The language used within the athleisure phenomenon has served to contribute to neoliberalism and healthism and normalize the socially defined active healthy lifestyle. As described above, Nash (2016), Horton et  al. (2016), and Lavrence and Lozanski (2014) have shown how the language used by companies such as Lorna Jane and LuluLemon reinforce an idea of women taking ownership over their bodies’ appearance, disciplining the body through a socially acceptable active lifestyle, and promoting self-improvement. Lavrence and Lozanski (2014) describe how even the bags of LuluLemon are inscribed with self-help, individual empowerment ideology encouraging women to embody the active-­ healthy lifestyle. These phrases include “sweat once a day to rejuvenates your skin,” “your outlook on life is a direct reflection of how much you like yourself,” and “life is full of setbacks, success is determined by how you handle setbacks.” On athleisure companies websites as well, language is used to reinforce the self-help individually empowered, active lifestyle. For example, on Under Armour’s website under their description for the UA Favourite Pairing collection reads, “Be relaxed: Ultra-light performance cotton feels laidback, not lazy” (Under Armour Collections 2018), reinforcing a negative association with “laziness” or non-active people. The neoliberal-healthism language also expands and becomes imprinted on the apparel and body. Shirts from Reebok’s #Bemorehuman collection

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read “I am unlimited, my strong goes on and on,” “One person’s light can electrify the world,” “Kick the door open and let change in,” and “Wake your power and who knows what you’ll change” (Reebok: Be More Human 2018). The language used around athleisure and within the phenomenon emphasize living a socially acceptable active lifestyle and preach principles of self-improvement and self-maintenance, which serves to reinforce and strengthen the neoliberal-healthism discourse. Although many would argue the messages within the athleisure phenomenon and language used are inspiring and motivational, athleisure can serve as an “othering mechanism.” In the twenty-first century, athleisure becomes the uniform for those seeking to identify as belonging to the socially conscious, healthy neoliberal “team.” It serves to symbolically distinguish oneself, aligning an individual with a group that internalizes neoliberal discourses, and actively seek to make the “correct” choice and control their own bodies by adopting a healthy lifestyle from the “others,” those who societal discourses deem as “lazy or irresponsible” (Welsh 2011). However, it is not necessary that people are living, practicing, or embodying this healthy lifestyle, but rather they are consuming, representing, and performing it. It can be argued that the activewear phenomenon is based on “appearing” to be physically active rather than actually engaging in physical activity. Statistics have shown that although activewear apparel sales have increased, physical activity rates have remained constant. For example, in 2013 yoga apparel sales increased by 45% but actual yoga participation only saw a 4.5% increase (Weinswig 2016). Through their consumer choices, women are increasingly presenting an image of a socially conscious, healthy citizen. Indeed, it is very trendy and increasingly fashionable to do so!

The Young, Fit, Feminine Body and Athleisure The athleisure phenomenon not only contributes to the pervasive neoliberal, healthism ideology within Western culture but also serves as a site and uses language that contributes to the sexualization and (renewed) propagation of the thin, toned, female body. Athleisure is reminiscent and emblematic of the contradictory environment of the twenty-first century that combines liberating ideals of empowerment, choice,

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feminism, and strength with hyper-sexualization and celebration of heteronormative femininity of both sportswomen and women’s “fit” bodies (Toffoletti et al. 2018). The recent collection at Under Armour featuring well-known American Prima Ballerina Misty Copeland is an example of this: Marketed as “Handpicked fits, fabrics and design details that turn softness into strength by highlighting the powerful contributors of the female form” accompanied by images of Copeland’s long, lean, and sculpted physique (Under Armour 2018). The athleisure phenomenon is a complex layering of heteronormative femininity and hyper-­sexualization with neoliberal-healthism exemplified through women’s consumption and embodiment practices. Social media, and the fitspiration trend in particular that it has spawned, has further contributed to the sexualization of female bodies through intense objectification and specific depictions of the female body. In their analysis of fitspiration images on Instagram, Deighton-­ Smith and Bell (2017) show how women, more often than men, were shown as “passive objects” showing their entire body, “wearing sexualized clothing and revealing their legs.” The authors found that, in more than 1000 fitspiration images, 90 percent of the individuals featured had low body fat and 55 percent were coded as “muscular.” The authors also examined the accompanying text within fitspiration posts which they found both contributed to the sexualization of the fit, female body and reinforced the neoliberal-healthism individual active lifestyle narrative. For example, Deighton-Smith and Bell (2017) found fitspiration text that read “Workout now so next year everyone will be like holy shit (picture of woman wearing sports bra)” (p.  9) and “YOU HAVE A CHOICE. You can throw in the towel or you can use it to wipe the sweat off your face (Woman in sports bra and underwear)” (p.  9). Through these athleisure-clad images and text, women are expected to not only embody the neoliberal, health lifestyle but also to shape and transform their bodies into fit, feminine, sexualized objects. Simply put, consuming and wearing clothing is just the first step toward fully realizing the ideal self-disciplining, neoliberal, feminine, fit, desirable self. The materiality and fabric of athleisure is more important than many give credit, as it also contributes to a specific fit, feminine, body ideal. Much of athleisure is comprised of tight leggings and tops that essentially put the female body on display and obscure the boundary between skin

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and fabric. Lorna Jane markets their activewear as a clothing-­body-­self assemblage, improving both self-confidence and performance, declaring: “Because our garments fit you, you will feel better. Because our fabric moves with you, you will move better. Because our pieces perform with you, you will perform better.” Also interesting to note is the hyper-­ individualization these mottos employ and underlying notions of performance and self-betterment. In a sense, the tightness of the clothes exposes the female form and serves as a marker, distinguishing those bodies (thin, toned) that are acceptable and celebrated within the context of neoliberalism from those that represent the “other,” the lazy and undisciplined. In response to the increase of athleisure clad, lycra-draped bodies, a hotel in North Canterbury, New Zealand, put up a sign reading that, “No lycra shorts allowed please,” the owner of the hotel saying that, “It’s just a little unsuitable, we don’t always want to see any unsightly bumps and bulges” (O’Reilly 2016). As this example suggests, athleisure clothing is more suitable to some bodies—young, thin, toned—than others. Some companies have capitalized upon the fear of displays of “unsightly bumps and bulges,” producing and marketing “anti-cellulite” leggings with the description reading, “We understand that some ladies are not comfortable with wearing just any type of legging that’s out there these days. Some are too thin, too revealing or just sit too low on your hips! These new Anti-Cellulite textured leggings are intended for active women who love to train, but also like to wear something that they feel comfortable wearing in public” (FitGirlsLand 2018). So, if women’s bodies do not “naturally” conform to the thin, toned, feminine form, athleisure companies have presented options to disguise aspects of the human body not considered “desirable” within the context of neoliberalism.

 ctivewear as the New Uniform A for Neoliberal Women We have argued that athleisure has become the uniform of the twenty-­ first century for (primarily young) women who have embodied neoliberal-­ healthism discourses. In line with neoliberal and healthism principles of

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individualism and consumerism, many women are engaging in consumer citizenship through their activewear purchases. Through consuming athleisure (and the accompanying language and imagery), women are exemplifying their commitment to societal norms, embodying (either through representation or actual engagement) the healthy, active lifestyle that has come to exemplify the disciplined neoliberal citizen. Concepts of empowerment, choice, strength, power, self-transformation, and health become connected to the athleisure phenomenon through the strategic marketing campaigns of athleisure companies, yet, the more insidious effects of this trend include the hyper-sexualization of women’s bodies in both fitness and everyday spaces, as well as the pressures on women to obtain the unobtainable, and the wide array of body image issues associated with such social pressures. Still, not all women are complacent with this trend, as there have been some popular press articles and opinion pieces pushing back on the sexualization of the female body through athleisure and against the overt healthist ideals. For example, in a recent opinion piece for The New York Times, columnist Honor Jones critiques the sexualization of activewear, particularly the tightness of yoga pants, expressing how she feels judged by other women and pressure to conform to the thin ideal; she concludes, “Women can, of course, be fit and liberated. We may be able to conquer the world wearing spandex. But wouldn’t it be easier to do so in pants that don’t threaten to show every dimple and roll in every woman over 30?” Other authors have critiqued athleisure for its “casualness” with headlines reading “Millennial women-we can do better than athleisure” (Sharma 2016) and “Awful ‘athleisure wear’ is turning us into a nation of chavs” (Proud 2016). As these articles demonstrate, there is some resistance against the athleisure trend, some of which is informed by feminist principles and others more focused on fashion concerns. Despite some concerns, however, the athleisure trend appears to be growing and transforming Western societies. The athleisure phenomenon embodies the practices that have become emblematic of the twenty-first century: Social media, branding, neoliberalism, healthism, and, therefore, becoming the material (and symbolic) uniform of many women in the twenty-first century. Interestingly, whereas athleisure was initially a Western phenomenon,

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with many of the early athleisure companies based in North America, today some of the largest growth markets include India and China. Further research is needed to explore how athleisure trends are being consumed, practiced, and embodied outside of Western contexts. While it could be argued that athleisure is a global phenomenon, how athleisure is presented and how women across different demographics and in different local contexts make meaning of such clothing trends (and the associated language and imagery) is also worthy of further critical exploration.

References Armstrong, A. (2016). The rise of athleisure: How the high street is cashing in on office-to-gym wear. The Telegraph. Black, J. (2013). Making the American body: The remarkable saga of the men and women whose feats, feuds, and passions shaped fitness history. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Boepple, L., Ata, R. N., Rum, R., & Thompson, J. K. (2016). Strong is the new skinny: A content analysis of fitspiration websites. Body Image, 17, 132–135. Bowles, K.-A., Steele, J. R., & Munro, B. J. (2011). Features of sports bras that deter their use by Australian women. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 15, 195–200. Brophy-Williams, N., Driller, M.  W., Shing, C.  M., Fell, J.  W., & Halson, S. L. (2015). Confounding compression: The effects of posture, sizing and garment type on measured interface pressure in sports compression clothing. Journal of Sports Sciences, 33(13), 1403–1410. Carder, S. (2018). The Kardashians have officially brought back cycling shorts. The Standard (UK). Carrotte, E. R., Prichard, I., & Lim, M. S. C. (2017). “Fitspiration” on social media: A content analysis of gendered images. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 19(3), 95. Chang, H.  J., Watchravesringkan, K., Cho, H.  J., Gupta, M., & Turner, T. (2015). Effects of store attributes on retail patronage behaviors: Evidence from activewear specialty stores. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal, 19(2), 136–153.

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Chitrakorn, K. (2017). Global sportswear brands making a play for women. The Business of Fashion. Retrieved from https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/how-sportswear-brands-are-making-a-play-for-women Cox, D. (2017). Do compression sports clothes really improve performance? the Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/19/under-pressure-do-compression-sports-clothes-reallyimprove-performance Crawford, R. (1980). Healthism and the medicalization of everyday life. International Journal of Health Services, 10(3), 365–388. Deighton-Smith, N., & Bell, B. T. (2017). Objectifying fitness: A content and thematic analysis of #fitspiration images on social media. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 7(4), 467–483. Duncan, M.  C. (1994). The politics of women’s body images and practices: Foucault, the panopticon, and Shape magazine. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 18(1), 48–65. FitGirlsLand. (2018). Retrieved from https://fitgirlsland.com/products/anticellulite-leggings?variant=12414588452942 Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality volume 1: An introduction. London, UK: Penguin Books. Gee, S., & Jackson, S. (2017). Sport, promotional culture and the crisis of masculinity. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Green, D. (2017). Athleisure is not just a trend-it’s a fundamental shift in how people dress. Business Insider-Australia. Hanhel, K. M. (2017). An analysis of performance claims in athleisure. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky. Hanson, L. (2017). Athleisure: The emerging fashion statement that is becoming the new normal. whichPLM. Retrieved from https://www.whichplm. com/athleisure-emerging-fashion-statement-becoming-new-normal/ Horton, K., Ferrero-Regis, T., & Payne, A. (2016). The hard work of leisure: Healthy life, activewear and Lorna Jane. Annals of Leisure Research, 19(2), 180–193. Hyo Jung, C., Hyeon Jeong, C., Thomas, T., Megha, G., & Kittichai, W. (2015). Effects of store attributes on retail patronage behaviors: Evidence from activewear specialty stores. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal, 19(2), 136–153.

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Lavrence, C., & Lozanski, K. (2014). ‘This is not your practice life’: Lululemon and the neoliberal governance of self. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie, 51, 76–94. Low, E. (2018). Nike upgrade echoes this “SNL” athleisure spoof: Under Armour jumps. Investor’s Business Daily. Retrieved from https://www.investors.com/news/nike-stock-buy-point-hsbc-upgrade-athleisure-trend-adidasunderarmour/ Markula, P. (1995). Firm but shapely, fit but sexy, strong but thin: The postmodern aerobicizing female bodies. Sociology of Sport Journal, 12, 424–453. McKenzie, S. (2013). Getting physical: The rise of fitness culture in America. Lawrence, KY: University Press of Kansas. Nash, M. (2016). Selling health and fitness to sporty sisters: A critical feminist multi-modal discourse analysis of the Lorna Jane retail website. Sociology of Sport Journal, 33(3), 219–229. O’Reilly, M. (2016). Lycra, cyclists and cafes: Acceptable or controversial? Stuff. com. Retrieved from https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/food-wine/79399912/ lycra-cyclists-and-cafes-acceptable-or-controversial?rm=m O’Sullivan, G., Hanlon, C., Spaaj, R., & Westerbeek, H. (2017). Women’s activewear trends and drivers: A systematic review. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: An International Journal, 21(1), 2–15. Proud, A. (2016). Awful ‘athleisure wear’ is turning us into a nation of chavs. The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinkingman/awful-athleisure-wear-is-turning-us-into-a-nation-of-chavs/ Reebok: Be More Human. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.reebok.com/us/ be-more-human-tee/BI1069.html Rhone, N. (2014). Athleisure apparel taking over the streets. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Richard, J. (2015). Athletic wear gets active in the boardroom. Toronto Sun. Riley, S., & Evans, A. (2017). Lean light fit and tight: Fitblr blogs and the postfeminist transformation imperative. In K.  Toffolett, H.  Thorpe, & J. Francombe-Webb (Eds.), New sporting femininities (pp. 207–230). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Robinson, L., Prichard, I., Nikolaidis, A., Drummond, C., Drummond, M., & Tiggemann, M. (2017). Idealised media images: The effect of fitspiration imagery on body satisfication and exercise behaviour. Body Image, 22, 65–71. Roy, S. C. (2008). ‘Taking charge of your health’: Discourses of responsibility in English-Canadian women’s magazines. Sociology of Health & Illness, 30(3), 463–477.

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Salfino, C. (2017). Despite retail headlines, athleisure category remains strong. Sourcing Journal. Retrieved from https://sourcingjournal.com/topics/lifestyle-monitor/despite-retail-headlines-athleisure-category-remains-strong69509/ Sharma, S. (2016). Millennial women, we can do better than athleisure. Elite Daily. SkitBox (Producer). (2015). Activewear. Retrieved from https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=CYRENWT8lz8&t=46s Theberge, N. (1987). Sport and women’s empowerment (pp. 387–393). Elsevier. Thorpe, H. (2011). Snowboarding bodies in theory and practice. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Tiggemann, M., & Zaccardo, M. (2015). “Exercise to be fit, not skinny”: The effect of fitspiration imagery on women’s body image. Body Image, 15, 61–67. Toffoletti, K., Francombe-Webb, J., & Thorpe, H. (2018). Femininities, sport and physical culture in postfeminist, neoliberal times. In K.  Toffoletti, H. Thorpe, & J. Francombe-Webb (Eds.), New sporting femininities: Embodied politics in postfeminist times (pp. 1–19). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Townsend, M., & Rupp, L. (2014). “Athleisure” trend booms as sweatpants leave the gym. Business of Fashion. Retrieved from https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/news-analysis/athleisure-trend-booms-sweatpantsleave-gym Under Armour. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.underarmour.co.nz/ en-nz/womens/ Under Armour Collections. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.underarmour. co.nz/en-nz/MVP-Collection.html Weinswig, D. (2016). How ‘athleisure’ is lightin gup lackluster clothing sales. Forbes Magazine. Welsh, T. (2011). Healthism and the bodies of women: Pleasure and discipline in the war against obesity. Journal of Feminist Scholarship, 1, 33–48. Wilson, C. (2018). Why the word “athleisure” is completely misundersood. Forbes Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/chipwilson/2018/04/18/why-the-word-athleisure-is-completely-misunderstood/#7c f75b234697 Yotka, S. (2017). Bike shorts are officially Paris Fashion Week’s most curious trend. Vogue Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.vogue.com/article/ spring-2018-trend-bike-shorts

Chapter 2: Olympics Outfits for Women: From “Feminine Only” to Burqas and Bikinis Linda K. Fuller

Background Of course, at the original, Ancient Olympic Games (776 BCE) no clothing was worn at all, and the naked male participants excluded women—considered “delicate, ephemeral and emotional” from even being spectators. When the Baron Pierre de Coubertin re-instituted the Games some 2675 years later, in 1896, he notably declared that, “Women have but one task, that of the role of crowning the winner with garlands” (cited in Fuller 2016, p.  27). It took another four years (1900 Paris) before women could compete—in the elite, respectable (i.e., “feminine”) sports of lawn tennis and golf, as well as in coed competitions of equestrian and sailing/yachting. Competitors wore long-sleeved, ankle-length dresses for tennis and golf, variations of official “uniforms” for other sports.

L. K. Fuller (*) Communications Department, Worcester State University, Worcester, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected]; http://www.LKFullerSport.com © The Author(s) 2021 L. K. Fuller (ed.), Sportswomen’s Apparel Around the World, New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46843-9_3

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It was not until the fourth Olympiad, 1908 London, that women’s events were officially added to the program, some countries still refusing to send their female athletes as part of a protest against short competitors’ skirts. The notion of Victorian “modesty” reigned (Hodkiewicz 2008)—a patriarchal means of controlling girls’ and women’s activities. As the Olympic Games grew in popularity and importance, female athletes began to discard traditional athletic attire for clothing that would not inhibit their athletic performance…Increased participation in sport helped women to modify traditional Victorian fashion and the Olympic Games became a venue for women to display more practical garments that were more suitable for athletic competition. (Schweinbenz 2000, pp. 135–136)

Today, when comfort is the new sexy and when fabrics continue to enhance physical activity, we still beg the question: Whether the topic is bikinis for women beach volleyball players, bodysuits for swimmers, burqas and hijabs for Muslim women, shorts, skirts, or mini-skirts for badminton players and boxers, aren’t we still “skirting the issue” of female Olympians’ uniforms? “The Olympics, whose history has been well examined by many writers, have always provided a springboard for new ideas and designs for sleekness, speed, and success in a highly competitive world,” sports fashion historian Patricia Warner (2006, p. 102) has said. This chapter aims to extend that examination.

 Brief Literature Review of Women A and the Olympic Games Jennifer Hargreaves was one of the first scholars to discuss sexist ideology and discrimination in the modern Olympic Games, her Sporting Females (1984/1997) reporting on Melpomene, a Greek woman who unofficially crashed the 1896 marathon as symbolic of “a bastion of bourgeois male privilege.” Others have delineated subjects ranging from exclusion to gender-appropriate sports to theoretical feminist concerns (Blue 1988; Cahn 1994; Daddario 1994; DeFrantz 1995; Lenskyj 2000, 2013). In her review of the research in 1994, Pam Creedon suggested that,

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“Production techniques, language, terminology and commentary applied to women’s sport are selectively imposed by the media to provide a highly stereotypical feminized view—one that tends to strategies reinforcing masculine ideology, including condescending descriptors (comments differentiating traditionally male versus female sports, where, for example, luge competitors might be described as ‘strong’ or ‘tough,’ figure skaters are as ‘elegant’ or ‘beautiful’), compensatory rhetoric (media ability and willingness to make excuses for poor performances, especially for male skiers as ‘hot dogs’ or just ‘a little crazy,’ females more likely characterized as mentally weak), the construction of female athletes according to an adolescent ideal (prepubescent, described as the ‘girl next door’ or as a ‘spunky little performer’), and their presentation as co-operative rather than competitive (female athletes competing not to win for themselves but for someone else—such as parents).” Relative to television coverage of 1996 Atlanta—including qualitative (narratives) and quantitative analyses (running time, length of segments, production methods such as slow-motion, onscreen statistics), Higgs et  al. (2003) concluded that market-forced gender biases account for athletic women’s under-­ representations. By 2012 London, female Olympians out-numbered men, out-medaling them for the USA, China, and Russia, and by 2018 PyeongChang they were playing nearly all the same sports.

Olympics Language With the introduction of gendered discourse into sports studies (Hall 1978, 1988; Segrave et  al. 2006; Fuller 2010a, 2010b, 2012; Bandy 2014), we have the opportunity to analyze a range of ways that language allows us to better understand and critique those many intersections into perpetually consistent sexual objectification of female Olympians. While the Games themselves officially use English and French, as well as the language of the host country, the bigger issue are lessons that are socio-­ culturally translated across the globe. Following an analysis of millions of words gleaned from news reports and social media relative to 2016, Cambridge University Press remained

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concerned about gender disparity and representations in the following arenas: The amount of airtime received by men and women remains unbalanced, the focus of attention on the aesthetic rather than the athletic for women remains a prevalent issue, the gender-marking of women’s sports as the lesser ‘other’, and the trivialisation and infantilisation of women’s sports are just some of the ways that gender inequality manifests linguistically. (p. 12)

In her 2017 analyses for gender-fair language in the Olympic Charter and nine documents published by the International Olympic Committee, Darija Omrčen found the male generic (i.e., sportsmanship and man-to-­ man defense) still dominating and that, “The term sportswoman has not once been used in any edition of the Olympic Charter” (p.151). Scholars have monitored sportscaster language of the Games, alert to notions of gender markings, male generics, naming conventions, descriptive linguistics, and other metaphorical aspects of the language of sport— finding Olympic reportage of female gymnasts as “pixies,” female skiers held up to male standards, female figure skaters called “girlie-girls,” and having their highest compliments for an Olympian woman who “plays like a man.” But underlying it all are concerns about objectifying women, B.J. Epstein (2012) admitting, “Skimpy outfits, made-up faces, smoothly waxed bodies. These are some of the images that come into my head when I think of the Olympics.”

Case Studies of Olympics Uniforms Dating to 1984 Los Angeles, the first fully funded Olympics with private athletic sponsorship, brands and branding have become increasingly emphasized, with corporate logos and celebrity designers coming on board. As outlined throughout this book, we have come a long way from floor-length dresses to skimpy suits, and it did not take long before sports uniforms became sexualized, even hyper-sexualized, “to ensure that female athletes look like ‘real women’” (Weaving 2012)—such as sporting see-through skating outfits, butt-hugging running shorts, gym suits

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that look like bathing suits, aerodynamic, breathable biking pants, miniskirts, and catsuits for tennis players. Along that history, several Olympics outfits stand out: • Golfers, archers, tennis, and croquet players, and female bikers wearing high-necked, ankle-length dresses at 1900 Paris, 1904 St Louis, 1908 London. • Female gymnasts donned in knee-length skirts at 1912 Stockholm, woolen bathing/swimsuits considered too immodest until 1928 Amsterdam. • At 1936 Berlin, trouser tracksuits, culottes, and loose-fitting vests were worn in track and field, fencing, and bicycling. Puma shoes were introduced, starting a trend toward footwear such as Adidas, Asics, Under Armour, Saucony, Nike, New Balance, Fila, Converse, Reebok, etc., the Olympics becoming fully commercial by 1984 Los Angeles. • When British fencers showed up at 1948 London in A-line skirts they started a trend. • Mass manufactured synthetic fabrics such as Spandex and Lycra helped swimmers at 1956 Melbourne, 1960 Rome, and 1964 Tokyo, cyclists at 1968 Mexico City, gymnasts in leotards at 1972 Munich, field hockey players at 1980 Moscow. • East German figure skater Katarina Witt’s costume for 1984 Sarajevo was notable but the feather-trimmed one she wore at 1988 Calgary prompted a rule requiring skater skirts. Nancy Kerrigan (USA)’s for 1994 Lillehammer was designed by Vera Wang, who said, “This is more pressure than an Oscar dress in a strange way.” In her 2018 historical review of Olympic figure skating outfits, Lia Ryerson has written that “In the 1920s, competitors dressed for the weather rather than for the glory. Now, Olympians tend to favor outfits that stand out and reflect the character of their routines.” • At 1992 Albertville, the iconic black/gold outfit worn by Kristi Yamaguchi (USA) resides at the US Figure Skating Museum and freestyle skier Donna Weinbrecht (USA)’s fancy fashions got as much attention as her wide twists and turns such that even today her collection is featured on Pinterest.

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• Tie-dye jerseys, trendy tracksuits, and futuristic bodysuits premiered at 1992 Barcelona and 1996 Atlanta, the “fastskin” swimsuit at 2000 Sydney, high-tech, streamlined sportswear at 2004 Athens, and it was Nike vs Adidas at 2008 Beijing. • At 2012 London, the move was made to “midriff-baring micro-sized tops and pants, showing off the all-important physique of these elite athletes” (Julie 2012, p. 18). • Black athletes from the US became role models in 2016 Rio, gymnastics phenom Simone Biles along with Gabby Douglas, boxer Claressa Shields, the water polo team, hurdler Dalilah Muhammad, fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad, sprinter Allyson Felix, shot putter Michelle Carter, swimmers Simone Manuel and Lia Neal, tennis sisters Serena and Venus Williams, and track-and-fielders Brianna Rollins, Kristi Castlin, and Nia Ali all adding to #BlackGirlMagic. Plus, with the introduction of rugby and the reintroduction of golf, fashion watchers took note, and the Canadian Press emphasized that its Paralympic team wore “Dsquared2-designed” uniforms in the country’s colors of red, white, and black. What follows are some case studies that will be discussed here as an introduction to the wider issue of how Olympics uniforms reflect nationalistic, patriarchal decision-making.

Bikinis “Beach volleyball is one of the most glaring examples of uniform discrepancy, with men and women wearing strikingly different outfits to play the same sport,” Sarah Netter (2008) has noted: “Men jump and dive into the sand wearing loose-fitting tank tops and shorts that hit midthigh. Women wear bikinis, the kind that make waxing oh-so-crucial.” Volleyball has been contested as an indoor sport at the Summer Olympic Games since 1964, beach volleyball introduced at 1992 Barcelona—an official Olympic sport as of 1996 Atlanta. In 1999, the sport’s governing body, Federation Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB), determined that the bikini would be its compulsory uniform, which Michael Cantelon

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(2009) has noted is “a graphic example of the patriarchal nature of much of international sport…demonstrating the relentless drive to ‘sell’ particular images of female sport to the media.” Bissell and Duke (2007) found rampant sexploitation in their analysis of commentary and camera angles of women’s beach volleyball during 2004 Athens, and Sailors et al. (2012) saw the requirement “that women wear tighter, smaller uniforms that cover less body area” nothing less than promotion of objectification of female athletes. “Have you ever noticed the rampant sexism that you see in sports?” asked Stan Cox (2008) in Watchman Digest. He then elaborated: Last month during the Olympics it was especially noticeable. Interestingly, it was most noticeable to me during the volleyball games. Especially beach volleyball. Now beach volleyball is rather infamous for bikinis, bare chests, beer and boisterous crowds and music. While the men wore normal type shorts, the women wore the spandex tops and bottoms that leave little to the imagination. The question is, why the double standard? Undoubtedly for the same reason that you see mainly female nudity in movies… it is an outright appeal to sexual interests.

Bodysuits At 1912 Stockholm, when “Fanny” Durack (AUS) invaded the swimming pool, a “bastion of male privilege,” and broke a world record for the 100yard freestyle, officials were said to be shocked to learn that she had sported a sleeveless, form-fitting, one-piece swimsuit. It took a while before swimmers were able to trade in those heavy (9-lb), full-length uniforms to muscle-compressing bodysuits such that by 2004 Athens high-­ tech, streamlined zip-up bodysuits had become de rigueur. More recent FINA (Fédération Internationale de Natation) aquatic regulations state that women’s models must be sleeveless or to extend below the knees (Heining 2009). Following accusations that women’s swimsuits for 2008 Beijing were comparable to “technological doping,” rubber and polyurethane have been prohibited, and all eyes were on Speedo’s Fastskin3 Super Elite racing suit for 2012 London. “The 2012 Olympics is being dubbed the Fashion Games,” according to Julie (2012, p.  18), adding: “From

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ankle-length dresses to ankle-length futuristic bodysuits. From a lack of femininity to the height of fashion. From practical sportswear to consumer branding.” Aquatics are always a draw, spectators drawn to uniforms made of spandex, sequins, and sparkles. Consider, too, the cutting-edge racing suits worn by skiers and speed skaters: form-fitting, ultra-fast, “slippery,” seamless, and aerodynamic. Lindsey Vonn (USA) took grief for what she wore at 2010 Vancouver when competitors thought she had an advantage with her high-tech, seamless suit and media took note more recently when she wore an air bag device under her racing suit; in announcing her retirement, she conceded, “Maybe I should just ski in bubble wrap.” And then there was the black catsuit that Serena Williams wore at the 2018 French Open that caused such a sensation that the tennis officials accused her of not respecting the game. “I feel like a warrior in it, a warrior princess,” declared the top-earning female athlete in the world, but the real reason she donned the rubber uniform was medical, as she had suffered blood clots in her lungs following the birth of her daughter. Latvian figure skater Diana Nikitina made headlines with her sequined catsuit at 2018 Rio, and she reportedly told USA Today that, “I am a strong person, I am not a bit like a princess…This look makes the costume a bit mean. Everything is strong in my program and in my life” (cited in Fuentes 2018)

Burqas Body-covering burqas worn as part of some Islamic traditions certainly are difficult to wear for most sports, but many Muslim women opt for the hijab, a headscarf/veil covering head and neck, to signify modesty and privacy (Benn 2011; Tansin et al. 2011). That history in the Games is fascinating. The first female Muslim Olympian was Turkish fencer Halet Çambel (1916–2014), who competed at 1936 and became best known as an accomplished archaeologist and the athlete who made a famous snub: “Our assigned German official asked us to meet Hitler. We actually would not have come to Germany at all if it were down to us, as we did not approve of Hitler’s regime,” the then 20-year-old reportedly explained.

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When Hurdler Nawal El Moutawkel (MAR) was victorious in the inaugural women’s 400-metre event at 1984 Los Angeles, that made her the first Arabian and first Muslim woman from the African continent to win. Later, though, Algerian middle-distance runner Hassisa Boulmerka was denounced by fundamentalist Muslims for showing her legs, and even received death threats after winning the 1500-m in 1991 World Championships at Tokyo; yet, she persisted, winning Gold at 1992 Barcelona. At 2012 London, which was considered a secular event, it was encouraging that Muslim women from Brunei, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia participated for the first time but best of all was that His Royal Highness Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan, VP of FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) recommended a revision to their laws for women, arguing that, for safety and medical reasons, a ‘Velcro-opening’ headscarf would work (Coleman 2012).

Boxer Shorts On the subject of shorts and short-shorts, governing bodies of both badminton and boxing have gone back and forth on dictates for female players. “Women should wear women’s clothing,” the deputy president of New Zealand’s Badminton World Federation (BWF) has been quoted as saying relative to wanting them to “dress nicely” and “be more fashionable and good role models” (cited in Baxter 2011). When badminton officials decided that “a stylish presentation of the players” would draw more fans—code for their declaration that they should wear skirts, there was a huge backlash and charges of sexism and marginalization until the officials relented. Boxing had a similar story. Officials of the International Amateur Boxing Association, noted fashion mavens, had a brilliant idea over the past year, a fistic version of “Project Runway.” Jere Longman (2012) reported: “They suggested that women try wearing skirts in competition, urging pleats to feminize the punches. The man in charge of the association—they are always men—said he had received complaints that spectators could not tell women from men beneath the protective headgear.” Claressa Shields, the youngest member of USA Boxing, wondered why

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people wouldn’t know the difference between male and female boxers, shouting, “But we got different names! Women got breasts! We got butts! Can’t you tell which one is who?” (cited in Clarke 2012). Although some 55,000 people signed the petition against forcing women to wear skirts, the real turnaround came when some male boxers showed up in skirts to show support. “Some women love fighting,” Tansy E.  Hoskins (2012) has offered, adding, “There is nothing inherently male about wanting to put on a pair of stinking sweat-soaked gloves and go at it in a ring.” Add the cult of winning to women’s agenda as part of their inclination to wear clothing that would best accommodate their prowess. National team outfits have also come under scrutiny (Idacavage 2016). “The uniforms here create a vibrant backdrop, with each athlete becoming a moving billboard for his or her country,” Lynn Zinser (2008) wrote about Beijing. “They form a seemingly haphazard collection—some country names are written in English, some in other languages.” For 2012 London, Ralph Lauren’s red-white-and-blue theme for Team USA drew quite a bit of criticism as looking “preppy-sailor,” but the worst flack came from the fact that they had been made in China. He made up for it at 2018 PyeongChang (when we wondered what Team Korea would wear to signal unity) with meticulously detailed “uniforms, with heated parkas, snowflake-pattern sweaters and mittens” (Trebay 2018) as vintage Americana. Drawing on the theme of the Union Jack, Team GB has been designed by Stella McCartney, while the daughter of Bob Marley designed uniforms for Jamaica. H&M’s collaboration with Sweden for 2016 Rio— light blue and gold, made with sustainable materials—were a fashion hit, but other uniforms were reportedly made from Zika-repellent textiles.

Concluding Thoughts “In one sense, the angst over female athletes’ attire in a handful of Olympic disciplines is a mere footnote to a 17-day global competition that celebrates the best in sporting achievement and sportsmanship,” Liz Clarke (2012) has noted, adding, “But in another sense, it offers a window on the complex and competing interests involved in staging the $18 billion Games: issues of marketing, gender politics and cultural diversity.”

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Clearly sexism is part of the equation but also it is clear that sex sells. Shira Springer (2012) has pointed out how the average WNBA game draws 27,000 basketball fans, while the Lingerie Bowl, where female athletes in full football gear (elbow pads, helmets, knee pads, shoulder pads, and performance gear) play seven-on-seven tackle football, drew 43 million viewers to MTV as counter-programming to Super Bowl XXX1X. Olympic beach volleyball is one of the hottest tickets. In their 2015 audit on gender equity in the Games, Donnelly et  al. identified “two competing issues related to uniforms and appearance: (1) Increasing sexualization of women’s sports and (2) [Women’s] demands for the right to wear modest uniforms. Wondering if we should change the “body-baring” Games to the Ogling Olympics, J.R.  Thorpe (2016) muses, “Is the media unfairly focusing on women’s sports in which the revealing nature of the uniforms are the priority, rather than the athleticism of the participants?… Skimpiness is an asset to some and a drawback to others. Are athletic sports in which less clothing is worn simply more interesting to audiences?” Sport is a “major global business” (LaBat and Sokolowski 2010) and gender equity issues in terms of uniforms provide a glimpse into deeper sport/sexism societal concerns.

References Bandy, J. S. (2014). Gender and sports studies: An historical perspective. Movement & Sport Sciences, 86, 15–27. Baxter, K. (2011, December 26). When you nock someone’s head off, look like a lady. The Los Angeles Times. Benn, R., Pfister, G., & Jawad, H. (Eds.). (2011). Muslim women and sport. London: Routledge. Bissell, K.  L., & Duke, A.  M. (2007). Bump, set, spike: An analysis of commentary and camera angles of women’s beach volleyball during the 2004 Summer Olympics. Journal of Promotion Management, 13(1–2), 35–53. Blue, A. (1988). Faster, higher, further: Women’s triumphs and disasters at the Olympics. London: Virago Press.

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Cahn, S. (1994). Coming on strong: Gender and sexuality in twentieth century women’s sport. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cambridge University Press. (2016). Language, gender and sport (Part of the Cambridge Papers in ELT Series). Cambridge University Press. Cantelon, M. (2009). Sex-a-side: Volleyball uniforms and the reproduction of female objectivity. In L.  K. Fuller (Ed.), Sexual sports rhetoric: Global and universal contexts (pp. 13–23). New York: Peter Lang. Chen, R. (2016, August 11). Outfits’ shifting fashion throughout the history of the Olympic Games. womenofchina.cn Clarke, L. (2012, July 26). At London Olympics, women’s athletes’ wardrobes are source of debate. The Washington Post. Coleman, I. (2012, July 25). London Olympics breaks new ground for women. CNN World. Cox, S. (2008, October 8). Sexism in sports. Watchman Digest. Retrieved from http://watchmanmag.com/digest/2008/10/05/sexism-in-sports Creedon, P. J. (Ed.). (1994). Women, media and sport: Challenging gender values. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Daddario, G. (1994). Chilly scenes of the 1992 Winter games: The mass media and the marginalization of female athletes. Sociology of Sport Journal, 11(2), 275–288. de Coubertin, P. (1912). Les femmes aux jeux Olympique. Revue Olympique, 79, 109–111. DeFrantz, A. (1995). The Olympic Games and women. Retrieved from http:// w w w. l a 8 4 f o u n d a t i o n . o r g / O l y m p i c I n f o r m a t i o n C e n t e r / OlympicReview/1995/oreXXV5/oreXXV5zg.pdf Donnelly, M. K., Norman, M., & Donnelly, P. (2015). The Sochi 2014 Olympics: A gender equality audit. CSPS Research Report. University of Toronto. Epstein, B. J. (2012, September 9). Objectifying women: The latest Olympic sport. The Huffington Post. Fuentes, T. (2018, February 21). A Latvian figure skater stole the show at the Olympics in a sequined ‘catsuit’. Good Housekeeping. Fuller, L. K. (Ed.). (2010a). Sexual sports rhetoric: Historical and media contexts of violence. New York: Peter Lang. Fuller, L. K. (Ed.). (2010b). Sexual sports rhetoric: Global and universal contexts. New York: Peter Lang. Fuller, L.  K. (2012). Sexist commentary at the Olympic games. International Symposium for Olympic Research. University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario.

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Fuller, L.  K. (2016). Female Olympians: A mediated socio-cultural/political-­ economic timeline. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hall, M. A. (1978). Sport and gender: A feminist perspective on the sociology of sport. Ottawa: University of Calgary and Canadian Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation (CAPHER). Hall, M.  A. (1988). The discourse of gender and sport: From femininity to feminism. Sociology of Sport Journal, 5(4), 330–340. Hargreaves, J. (1984/1997). Sporting females: Critical issues in the history and sociology of women’s sports. London: Routledge. Heining, A. (2009, July 29). High-tech suits, Phelps bring high drama to swimming, again. The Christian Science Monitor. Higgs, C. T., Weiller, K. H., & Martin, S. B. (2003). Gender bias in the 1996 Olympic games: A comparative analysis. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 27(1), 52–64. Hodkiewicz, L. G. (2008). Breaking the norms: Women and the modern Olympic Games of Pierre de Coubertin. Unpublished thesis. History Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Hoskins, T. E. (2012, February 13). Fighting for equality: Sexism in the ring. Counterfire.org Idacavage, S. (2016, August 8). Fashion history lesson: How Halston, Levi Strauss and Ralph Lauren changed Olympic uniforms. Fashionista.com Julie. (2012, August 3). Olympic sportswear: A complete history. V is for Vintage. LaBat, K., & Sokolowski, S. (2010). Olympic dress, uniforms and fashion. In J. B. Eicher & P. G. Tortora (Eds.), Berg Encyclopedia of world dress and fashion. Berg Publishers. Lenskyj, H. J. (2000). Inside the Olympic industry: Power, politics, and activism. Albany, NY: SUNY. Lenskyj, H.  J. (2013). Gender politics and the Olympic industry. Houndmills; Basingstoke; and Hampshire: Palgrave Pivot. Longman, J. (2012, April 25). For women at games, messages are mixed. The New York Times. Napoli, D. S.-D. (2018, February 20). These are the most memorable outfits in Olympic history. SFGate.com Netter, S. (2008, August 18). Olympic uniforms: Less clothing means better results. abcnews.go.com Omrčen, D. (2017). Analysis of gender-fair language in sport and exercise. Rasprave, 43(1), 143–161.

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Ryerson, L. (2018, February 9). Here’s how Olympic figure skating outfits have evolved over 94 years. Insider. Sailors, P.  R., Teetzel, S., & Weaving, C. (2012). No net gain: A critique of media representations of women’s Olympic beach volleyball. Feminist Media Studies, 12(3), 468–472. Schweinbenz, A. (2000). Not just early Olympic fashion statements: Bathing suits, uniforms, and sportswear. Fifth International Symposium on Olympic Research, 135–142. Segrave, J. O., McDowell, K. L., & King, J. G. (2006). Language, gender and sport: A review of the research literature. In L. K. Fuller (Ed.), Sport, rhetoric, and gender: Historical perspectives and media representations (pp.  31–41). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Springer, S. (2012, July 22). At Olympics, it’s time to focus on sports, not sex appeal. Boston Globe. Tansin, B., Pfister, G., & Jawad, H. (Eds.). (2011). Muslim women and sport. New York: Routledge. Thorpe, J.  R. (2016, August 16). Is the focus on ‘body-baring’ sports at the Olympics sexist? Bustle. Trebay, G. (2018, February 22). Athletes take a fashion-forward stance. The New York Times, D6. Warner, P.  C. (2006). When the girls came out to play: The birth of American sportswear. University of Massachusetts Press. Weaving, C. (2012, October). ‘Babes boxing in skirts:’ A critique of the proposed AIBA uniform rule. Problems, Possibilities, Promising Practices: Critical Dialogues on the Olympic and Paralympic Games, 88–93. Zinser, L. (2008, August 19). Even the clothes on their backs have rules. The New  York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/ sports/olympics/20uniforms.html

Chapter 3: Uniforms for Female eSports Athletes Ryan Rogers

Introduction to Women in eSports eSports can be understood as competitive video game play (Jenny et al. 2017), the professional eSports industry being perhaps the fastest growing area in sports entertainment (Ingraham 2018). According to Brown et al. (2017), eSports has roots in the 1970s but then expanded to hundreds of millions of players once high-speed Internet became more widely available. Internationally, South Korea has led the charge in the advancement of eSports to the degree that it is supported by government programs (Brown et al. 2017). The global eSports economy is estimated to be roughly under $700 million with audiences of nearly 400 million (Godfrey 2018). Despite the industry’s tremendous popularity and rapid growth, the role of women in the domain of eSports is not fully understood; in fact, it may be contentious such that women are either

R. Rogers (*) Butler University, Indianapolis, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. K. Fuller (ed.), Sportswomen’s Apparel Around the World, New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46843-9_4

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underrepresented, sexualized in their portrayals, or alienated by community at large. Men tend to dominate the eSports community and women are underrepresented despite one of the top Starcraft II players being female (Van Allen 2018). Indeed, the Overwatch League recently signed the first female player to join her male teammates and opponents (Webster 2018). The relationship between women and eSports is examined here relative to their uniforms and how they are presented/discussed. eSports are uniquely positioned to examine in this context because, unlike many other sports that segregate men and women, like the National Basketball Association versus the Women’s National Basketball Association, or Major League Soccer versus the National Women’s Soccer League, men and woman can play alongside one another in eSports. Thus, there is no reason for there to be any difference between men’s and women’s eSports uniforms. As a result, this chapter explores the role of women in eSports by examining their uniforms.

Women and Video Games While the relationship women have had with video games is important to the current discussion, that relationship is well documented elsewhere (Burgess et al. 2011; Rogers 2016; Rogers and Liebler 2017; Williams et al. 2009; Yee 2008). As such, this section will provide a cursory review of the literature on the topic. Within the videogames themselves, few female characters are presented (Williams et al. 2009). When women are presented, they are depicted stereotypically as highly sexualized characters (Burgess et  al. 2011; Rogers 2016; Rogers and Liebler 2017). In other words, women in games are either not there or they are portrayed in sexualized ways. In terms of female players themselves—not game characters—the video game community is not typically welcoming to all types of demographics. Yee (2008) showed that women frequently felt that they were targeted in a variety of ways by others in the video game community based on being identified as women. For example, women were not considered “legitimate” players once they were discovered to be women. The GamerGate controversy involving Anita Sarkesian and Zoe

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Quinn (Massanari 2017) provided a meaningful example of the troublesome events that can emerge for women involved in the video game community. While GamerGate has been thoroughly explored by Massanari, it essentially refers to the harassment of several women in the video game community. In summary, the role of women in the video game community can be broadly explained as confrontational, uncomfortable, and problematic. This relationship likely extends to women in the domain of eSports as well.

Top eSports Teams and Top Players In order to begin this examination, the top-earning teams were examined—Team Liquid, Evil Geniuses, Newbee, LGD Gaming, Wings Gaming, Fnatic, and SK Telecom T1—(Nguyen 2018), including not only teams but also the eSports athletes on those teams. There are certainly other metrics through which a team might be considered one of the “top” but, for a growth area like this one, it is a useful perspective and the one decided upon for this chapter. When examining the rosters for these top-earning teams, very few women were present. Likewise, while many of the earnings figures are not readily accessible to the public, the top-earning female eSports athlete was not in the top 250 for overall earnings for eSports athletes (Highest Overall Earnings 2018). This disparity in pay reflects salaries earned in other professional sports such that women usually make less than their male counterparts even when the women athletes and teams might be more successful than the men or men’s teams (A look 2014). Indeed, women were rarely, if at all, present on the top teams. Some of these teams’ sites and social media accounts made frequent references to their players as “guys” (Newbee 2018; Fnatic 2018), thereby casually dismissing female participation. There were two main exceptions: As of this chapter, Brittany Lattanzio was in a leadership role as manager of several teams for Team Liquid (Starcraft II Roster 2018) and Ricki Ortiz (2018), a Streetfighter player for Evil Geniuses, was given the same footing and pose (arms crossed, staring into the camera, no smile) as most of her male counterparts on the same site. Notably, the uniform that Ortiz wore appeared to be identical

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to the one worn by male athletes on the site. To be clear, eSports jerseys tend to be short-sleeved, with a crew neck and several colors often in unique patterns. Usually the team logo is printed on the front of the jersey with a player name across the back. Occasionally, sponsor logos are also present on the jersey. Perhaps the closest analogue to eSports jerseys would be professional soccer jerseys. Expanding on uniforms for these teams, most team sites either did not sell jerseys or did not distinguish between men’s and women’s jerseys. The one exception was Fnatic, which sold women’s jerseys that were cut differently—presumably to accommodate different gendered builds (Fnatic Shop 2018).

Top-Earning Women eSports Athletes Since the top-earning teams did not provide a wealth of information on women eSports players and their uniforms, the top-earning female players were examined (Top Female Players 2018).

Scarlett Sasha Hostyn (aka Scarlett) is the top female eSports player focusing on Starcraft II, a real-time strategy game set in a science fiction universe. Given her success in Starcaraft II, she has been profiled in a variety of popular press articles and maintains social media presence (Sasha 2018). In a photograph in The Guardian, Scarlett is shown competing in the Red Bull Battle Grounds Grand Finals (Baird 2015). She is smiling while looking at the screen in what appears to be a jersey with short sleeves and a three-button collar. The picture, in all, appears to present her as a competitor enjoying her craft. In this article, however, she is compared to a male analogue, “Scarlett is considered something of a Kasparov—quick-­ witted, daring, stoic in the face of peril.” In a New Yorker article, she is shown in three-quarter profile in a jersey similar to the one described above (Hueston 2014). She is not competing in the photo but looks focused and is described in the caption as “accomplished” and “kick ass.” In this article, the author describes the scene after Scarlett won:

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Two reasons for everyone’s astonishment: Scarlett was neither from South Korea, where StarCraft has rivalled baseball in popularity, nor a young man, like all the other top players. Korean Kryptonite, she has been called. The most accomplished woman in the young history of electronic sports.

A third photo, on The AV Club, shows Scarlett playing, a discarded Diet Coke bottle in the foreground, in a heathered sweatshirt, not wearing a jersey at all (Smith 2014). This article describes Scarlett as disruptive to the “established order” of a “hypermasculine subculture comprised mostly of young guys.” This particular photograph adds a meaningful fold to this discussion: In eSports, what is the purpose of a jersey? In a soccer game or basketball game, a jersey might serve a utilitarian purpose such that players and audiences can quickly identify team members to know who is a teammate and who is an opponent. Likewise, the jerseys in other sports should not inhibit any of the required athletic activities like running or jumping. Since eSports competitions take place in virtual environments, the actual jerseys are virtually cosmetic. As a result, one might argue that eSports jerseys are irrelevant and, as such, they occupy a space that is not one of function but of fashion. This should be considered when looking at this type of jersey. This chapter suggests that the uniform instead communicates that a person is a serious or credible gamer.

Mystik The second-highest paid female eSports player is Katherine Gunn (aka Mystik), who has made most of her money from playing the Halo video games. Notably, Mystik is also a cosplayer—a portmanteau of costume and play whereby individuals dress up in elaborate outfits, often replicating memorable media characters. When competing, Mystik looks focused and professional, athletic. She has been closely affiliated with Team EnvyUs, where jerseys appear to be standard with no distinction between men and women (shop.envy.gg 2018). However, when examining Mystik’s social media accounts, one sees that she is hypersexualized. Her Instagram account, for example, often shows her in tight, revealing

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outfits, positioned in suggestive or provocative poses. Rarely do the pictures focus on game-related activities. When games are featured, it is only tangentially, such as Mystik wearing a green tank top with iconography from the video game series The Legend of Zelda but the tank top stops at her upper thighs where she appears to have on no other garment thereby exposing her legs and side of her buttocks (Mystikgunn A 2018). A very similar image is provided when Mystik is wearing a Fortnite t-shirt—a popular third person shooter game—where the shirt ends at her upper thighs and no other garment can be seen (Mystikgunn B 2018). Comments on these photos include: “Nice when a T-shirt works as a dress. :p,” “U nd i have same problems in life, can’t leave games and lack of pants ☹,” “Love that on ya, would off invited you out to dinner,” “Puck fants!” “Best pants ever, ” and “You’re Looking Hot and Sexy in Green .” In a third photograph, Mystik sits on her gaming rig—a computer optimized for playing video games, vital for any competitive game player—wearing thigh high socks and flirtatiously playing with her hair (Mystikgunn C 2017). Comments on this post include: “Please excuse me for a second while I pick my jaw back up from the floor.” “You ” and “Sexy are hot gamer,” “Oh gosh those thighs,❤ ” “I want, kitty.” Importantly, each of these photographs is accompanied by a caption that promotes her Twitch channel, a streaming service where streamers can interact with fans and make money outside of game competition. A cynic might argue that these sexualized photographs are designed to boost traffic to her Twitch channel. On the stream titled “THICC LLAMMA,” she played games but also described her new eyeliner and her hair care technique. Notably, “thicc” is “when a person has fat in the right places, creating sexy curves,” according to urban dictionary. Thus, a dichotomy is introduced such that Mystik is portrayed as a professional during competition but sexualized in other contexts. It is worth noting that Mystik is likely choosing to portray herself in this way on her personal Instagram account and her fans are more than willing to engage in kind. The next section will examine some other female eSports athletes to see if a similar pattern emerges.

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All-Female eSports Teams Many of the women listed as top players beneath Scarlett and Mystik compete on the same teams. A few all-female teams have been formed for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a team-based shooter video game. Team Dignitas has an all-male Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team and an all-­ female team (Teams 2018). For Team Dignitas, the male team is labeled “CSGO,” a common acronym for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The female team is labeled as “CSGO Fe”—presumably the Fe referring to female. Beşiktaş Esports, another team, labels their all-female team as “women CS:GO” (Beşiktaş Esports 2018). In other words, the distinction between men and women which is made in other professional sports manifests in eSports as well—at least for CS:GO.  This is noteworthy given the lack of necessity to split the teams. Notably, Beşiktaş Esports does not appear to offer jerseys for purchase. Like Fnatic, Team Digintas offers a team jersey and a “female” jersey (Shop 2018). The production description for the “Team Jersey” and the “Female Jersey” are quite similar with the exception of the following passages. The “Female Jersey” says “This jersey features the option to customize with your own gamertag!” while the “Team Jersey” says “This jersey features the option to customize with your own gamertag or buy your favorite players jersey!” This implies that Team Dignitas does not perceive that buyers will purchase a female jersey of a favorite player, that a female player is not likely to be a favorite, and/or women buying jerseys will not buy one that represents their favorite players. It is also important to call attention to the fact that the female jersey is labeled as distinct from the “regular” jersey, suggesting that the need for a female jersey is not “regular” like a male jersey. Also of note, the Team Dignitas site sells “Allure” women’s leggings (Dignitas Allure Leggings 2018). Of course, with the name “Allure” these women’s leggings are intended to attract and charm. There is no counterpart for males to purchase. As for the female athletes on the teams, team photographs, posts, and descriptions on sites present them as professionals. In each case, webpages show headshots wherein the athletes display a confident sneer or smile—that they might even be considered intimidating (CSGO FE

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2018). The uniforms are not uniquely tight or revealing and there appears to be no difference between the men and women regarding the way that they are posed and uniformed. Given the consistency of treatment between men and women on the team-related materials (with the exception of the jersey distinction), the social media accounts of the individual players were examined. Team Dignitas CSGO Fe includes: Carolyn Noquez (aka artstar), Amanda Smith (aka rain), Emmalee Garrido (aka emuhleet), Kiara Makua (aka milk), and Catherine Leroux (aka Cath). The players on this team all maintain varying degrees of social media presence. • artstar has many pictures of herself both in uniform and playing games out of uniform on her Facebook and Twitter accounts (Carolyn “artstar” Noquez 2018; Artstar A 2018). Broadly, they are professional and occasionally cutesy and playful, but not sexualized; for example, in one photo, artstar slyly winks at the camera (Artstar B 2018). When playing she says things like “small stweamer playing big boye games” enforcing that she is an outsider and “Stay gold❤ ” referring to her jersey colors. Posing in her jersey she also types sentiments of pride but perhaps still feeling an outsider—“feelin like a cool kid with the cloud flights on #HyperXFamily #ad.” • rain maintains broadly professional Twitter and Instagram accounts (Amanda Smith 2018; Amandasmith_4 A 2018), one with a full-­ length body shot of her lounging by the pool in a bikini (Amandasmith_4 B 2018). Text accompanying her in her jersey say “WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!!!” and “We won @girlgamerfest for the second year in a row! Thanks for all the support this weekend❤ GG to the teams we played. #DIGWIN” • emuhleet maintains a wide range of accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch (Emuhleet A 2018; Emuhleet B 2018; Emuhleet C 2018; Emuhleet D 2018). Like artstar, Emuhleet’s presentation of herself is mostly professional and occasionally cutesy but not overtly sexualized. While in her jersey, her posts often reflect the games she is playing or promoting her live stream but occasionally she talks about her hair style while in her team uniform.

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• milk may have the least prolific presence on social media. On her Twitter account, she has few photographs of herself but many featuring dogs and gaming equipment (Kiara 2018). • Lastly, Cath has accounts on many social media platforms, and she is more active on some than others (Cath 2018; Catherine “Cath” Leroux 2018; Cathcsgo A 2018; Cathcsgo B 2018). These accounts feature selfies while she is playing games, pictures of her in competition, and some silly pictures in which she wears digital dog ears on her head. She also has a handful of selfies showing off her jerseys. The exception to these posts are some of her personal pictures from several years prior in which she is attending parties and wearing somewhat revealing outfits (cathcsgo C 2018). Accompanying the pictures of her in her uniform, she is typically promoting her team and her live stream. Though she too mentions her hairstyle and says “Feeling cute today with my new streaming lights!” Some of the top players are also on Beşiktaş Esports. Again, they are portrayed as competitors and equals to their male counterparts by the team, not as sex objects. Then, the social media accounts of these top players were examined. First, Ksenia Klyuenkova (aka vilga) maintains a Twitter account (Vilgacs A 2018) where she can be seen proudly displaying her new team’s jersey—“Lucky number? New organization—@bjkesports! Thanks for believing in us, i am sure we will show what we are ” The jersey looks comfortable, not revealing or tight. capable of. When competing, she appears focused, even states that she is. In her personal posts, there are a few shots of her full body that are more revealing but none are sexualized (Vilgacs B 2018; Vilgacs C 2018). There is even a photograph of her assembling a desk to set up her gaming station (Vilgacs D 2018). Her teammates Zainab Turkie (aka zAAz) and Julia Kiran (aka juliano), however, routinely post pictures of themselves that are suggestive, sexualized, and revealing. zAAz, for example, displays her flexibility in a bikini on a beach (zaaz.csgo A 2018; zaaz.csgo B 2018) and points her bottom toward the camera while in a dress (Zaaz.csgo C 2018). Meanwhile, juliano poses in her bra and cut-off shorts (Jjuliakiran A 2018) or in a sports bra and jeans (Jjuliakiran B 2018).

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For the most part, these players do not sexualize themselves when they are playing or when they are in uniform. The one exception is a team picture where zAAz has modified her jersey to display her midriff while none of her teammates have (zaaz.csgo D 2018). This again highlights the dichotomy first seen with Mystik such that some players are professional when in uniform but personally may present themselves otherwise. In fact, it appears that some female eSports athletes choose to sexualize themselves on their personal social media accounts while others do not. The agency then seems to be in the hands of the individual athlete who can choose to express herself in whichever way she feels is appropriate. Notably, presenting oneself sexually does not seem to have a clear relationship to her prominence in the eSports community. In other words, one need not sexualize herself in order to succeed. Thus, the uniform serves as a way to legitimize these players regardless of how they choose to present themselves. The teams and competitions do not sexualize these athletes when they play in or out of uniform. However, and importantly, many members of the audience readily sexualize the women in uniform even when the women themselves did not do so. In the individual photo of jjuliakiran in her new uniform, showing off her number on the back, the comments include “Nice ass girl” and “That ass tho!! Dayum.” In team press photos that are not sexual, all players are in uniform and the comments include “Juliano’s thinking *im the prettiest here*,” “No need to be that hot… your supposed to play on a PC after all”—playing on the stereotype that PC gamers are ugly—and “blowjob krew XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD”—suggesting an alternate meaning for the team initials BJK. This suggests that the uniforms serve as a way to legitimize these players within the industry but fans have not fully accepted them, make efforts to invalidate them, or at least sexualize them in ways that were not intended by the organization.

Conclusions Uniforms in eSports, broadly, do not serve to alienate women from the wider sporting community. In fact, they likely help to legitimize female players. The exception to this may be the Team Dignitas “allure” leggings

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and the “female” version of uniforms offered in some cases. Other than those rare examples, a few other elements uncovered during this analysis, such as the unnecessary distinction between male and female teams, the large discrepancy in payment, and the way that fans are treating these players, may serve to alienate women in the realm of video games and eSports specifically (Yee 2008). Indeed, many of the posts from these athletes suggest that they feel like outsiders in the community. Overall, uniforms for eSports provide a space where men and women are generally treated equally and women are not lesser than men even though they may be treated as such in other domains of eSports and in the video game community broadly. This chapter was a simple exploratory study of the phenomenon of women’s eSports uniforms and, as a result, the findings should be interpreted with caution. This is a new industry and area of study without codified practices for examination. Using this study as a foundation, a more formal content analysis could be done of the uniforms, as well as of the player’s social media accounts, photographs of the competitive events, and the discussion thereof. Similarly, player names may be worth examining such that there may be a difference between men and women’s usernames.

References A look at male and female professional sport salaries. (2014). Adelphi University. Retrieved from https://sportsmanagement.adelphi.edu/resources/ infographics/a-look-at-male-and-female-professional-athlete-salaries/ Amanda Smith. (2018, August 1). Twitter.com. Retrieved from https://twitter. com/raincsgo Amandasmith_4 A. (2018, August 1). Instagram.com. Retrieved from https:// www.instagram.com/amandasmith_4/ Amandasmith_4 B. (2018, August 1). Instagram.com. Retrieved from https:// www.instagram.com/p/BldadFkArsR/?taken-by=amandasmith_4 Artstar A. (2018, August 1). Twitter.com. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/ LynnieNoquez

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Artstar B. (2018, August 1). Twitter.com. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/ LynnieNoquez/status/1009615500408545281 Baird, C. (2015, February 6). Hostyn plays in the eliminations round during the Red Bull Battle Grounds. The Guardian. Beşiktaş Esports. (2018, August 1). Twitter.com. Retrieved from. https://twitter. com/bjkesports/status/1025420579250348032 Brown, K. A., Billings, A. C., Murphy, B., & Puesan, L. (2017). Intersections of fandom in the age of interactive media: Esports fandom as a predictor of traditional sport fandom. Communication & Sport, 6(4), 418–435. Burgess, M.  C. R., Dill, K.  E., Paul Stermer, S., Burgess, S.  R., & Brown, B.  P. (2011). Playing with prejudice: The prevalence and consequences of racial stereotypes in video games. Media Psychology, 14(3), 289–311. Carolyn “artstar” Noquez. (2018). Facebook.com. Retrieved August 1, 2018, from https://www.facebook.com/lynnienoquez/ Cath. (2018). Twitter.com. Retrieved August 2, 2018, from https://twitter. com/CAthCSGO Cathcsgo A. (2018). Instangram.com. Retrieved August 2, 2018, from https:// www.instagram.com/CAthCSGO/ Cathcsgo B. (2018). Twitch.tv. Retrieved August 2, 2018, from https://www. twitch.tv/CAthCSGO Cathcsgo C. (2018). Instangram.com. Retrieved August 1, 2018, from https:// www.instagram.com/p/aEDoK_ADkF/?taken-by=cathcsgo Catherine “Cath” Leroux. (2018, August 2). Facebook.com. https://www.facebook.com/CAthCSGO CSGO Fe. (2018). Team-dignitas.com. Retrieved August 1, 2018, from http:// team-dignitas.net/teams/csgo-fe “Dignitas Allure Leggings”. (2018). team-dignitas.net. Retrieved July 25, 2018, from http://team-dignitas.net/shop/Team-Dignitas/Clothing/95/ dignitas-allure-leggings Emuhleet A. (2018). Twitter.com. Retrieved August 1, 2018, from https://twitter.com/EMUHLEET Emuhleet B. (2018). Twitch.tv. Retrieved August 1, 2018, from https://www. twitch.tv/EMUHLEET Emuhleet C. (2018). Instagram.com. Retrieved August 1, 2018, from https:// www.instagram.com/emuhleet/ Emuhleet D. (2018). Facebook.com. Retrieved August 1, 2018, from https:// www.facebook.com/emuh.leet

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“Fnatic Roster”. (2018). Fnatic. Retrieved July 16, 2018, from https:// fnatic.com/ Fnatic Shop. (2018). Fnatic. Retrieved July 16, 2018, from https://shop.fnatic. com/collections/pro-kit Godfrey, C. (2018, August 1). ‘It’s incredibly widespread’: Why eSports has a match-fixing problem. The Guardian.com Highest overall earnings. (2018, July 16). Esportsearnings.com. Retrieved from https://www.esportsearnings.com/players/highest-overall-x200 Hueston, J. (2014, November 24). Scarlett. The New  Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/good-game Ingraham, C. (2018, September 10). The massive popularity of eSports in charts. The Washington Post. Jenny, S.  E., Douglas Manning, R., Keiper, M.  C., & Olrich, T.  W. (2017). Virtual (ly) athletes: Where eSports fit within the definition of “sport”. Quest, 69(1), 1–18. Jjuliakiran A. (2018). Instagram.com. Retrieved August 7, 2018, from https:// www.instagram.com/p/BjhhxtmheKC/?taken-by=jjuliakiran Jjuliakiran B. (2018). Instagram.com. Retrieved August 7, 2018, from https:// www.instagram.com/p/BlLJBAHBD22/?taken-by=jjuliakiran Kiara. (2018). Twitter.com. Retrieved August 1, 2018, from https://twitter. com/BasedGodMilk Massanari, A. (2017). # Gamergate and the Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures. New Media & Society, 19(3), 329–346. Mystikgunn A. (2018, March 18). LIVE MEOW twitch.tv/katgunn Hope you had a wonderful St Patrick’s day! The only green thing I could find. Lul. Instagram.com Mystikgunn B. (2018, March 23). LIVE MEOW twitch.tv/katgunn 99 Problems but ______ ain’t one. FILL IN THE BLANK! Instagram.com Mystikgunn C. (2017, August 6). LIVE MEOW! twitch.tv/katgunn Best game of 2017 so far? Instagram.com “Newbee”. (2018). Twitter.com. Retrieved July 15, 2018, from https://twitter. com/newbeecn/status/1015057957246177280 Nguyen, M.-H. (2018). See how much the top eSports teams, athletes, and their organizations make. Businessinsider.com. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/top-esports-teams-players-salaries-2018-1 Ricki Ortiz Evil Geniuses. (2018, July 16). Evil Geniuses. Retrieved from http:// www.evilgeniuses.gg/#home

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Rogers, R. (2016). How video games impact players: The pitfalls and benefits of a gaming society. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Rogers, R., & Liebler, C. (2017). Jubblies, mammaries and boobs: Discourses of breast physics in video games. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 9(3), 257–278. Sasha. (2018). Twitter.com. Retrieved July 25, 2018, from https://twitter.com/ onfirescarlett “Shop”. (2018). Team-dignitas.net. Retrieved July 25, 2018, from http://teamdignitas.net/shop Shop.envy.gg. (2018). Retrieved July 21, 2018, from https://shop.envy.gg/product-category/jerseys/ Smith, R. (2014, February 5). How a transgender ‘foreign hope’ is challenging the pro StarCraft world. Avclub.com. Retrieved from https://games.avclub. com/how-a-transgender-foreign-hope-is-challenging-the-pro-1798265974 “Starcraft II Roster”. (2018). Teamliquidpro.com. Retrieved July 16, 2018, from https://www.teamliquidpro.com/players#sc2 “Team”. (n.d.). Team-dignitas.com. Retrieved from http://team-dignitas.net/team “Teams”. (2018). res-gaming.com. Retrieved July 24, 2018, from http://www. res-gaming.com/teams/ “Top Female Players”. (2018). esportsearning.com. Retrieved July 16 2018, from https://www.esportsearnings.com/players/female-players Van Allen, E. (2018). Scarlett is currently dominating StarCraft, one match at a time. Kotaku.com VilgaCS A. (2018). Twitter.com. Retrieved August 7, 2018, from https://twitter. com/vilgaCS VilgaCS B. (2018). Twitter.com. Retrieved August 7, 2018, from https://twitter. com/vilgaCS/status/1014591192326078465 VilgaCS C. (2018). Twitter.com. Retrieved August 7, 2018, from https://twitter.com/vilgaCS/status/1020010836381851649 VilgaCS D. (2018). Twitter.com. Retrieved August 7, 2018, from https://twitter.com/vilgaCS/status/1025792269478178816 Webster, A. (2018). The Overwatch League signs its first female player. Theverge. com. Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/14/17011504/ overwatch-league-first-woman-player-geguri-shanghai-dragons Williams, D., Martins, N., Consalvo, M., & Ivory, J. D. (2009). The virtual census: Representations of gender, race and age in video games. New Media & Society, 11(5), 815–834.

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Yee, N. (2008). Maps of digital desires: Exploring the topography of gender and play in online games. In Y. B. Kafai, C. Heeter, J. Denner, & J. Y. Sun (Eds.), Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New perspectives on gender and gaming (pp. 156–183). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Zaaz.csgo A. (2018). Instagram.com. Retrieved August 7, 2018, from https:// www.instagram.com/p/Bc0ZrZJhoWT/?taken-by=zaaz.csgo Zaaz.csgo B. (2018). Instagram.com. Retrieved August 7, 2018, from https:// www.instagram.com/p/Bl5Nre4AVAt/?taken-by=zaaz.csgo Zaaz.csgo C. (2018). Instagram.com. Retrieved August 7, 2018, from https:// www.instagram.com/p/Bir-BOEghw_/?taken-by=zaaz.csgo Zaaz.csgo D. (2018). Instagram.com. Retrieved August 7, 2018, from https:// twitter.com/zAAzCSGO/status/102024773921554841

Part II Socio-Political Perspectives

Chapter 4: Women’s Sports and Fashion in Arab Gulf Countries Najat Al Saied and Pam Creedon

Middle Eastern Sportswomen’s Apparel Women’s sports have a historic relationship with beauty and apparel norms. In the first female Olympic competition at the 1900 Paris games, women wore ankle length skirts in tennis and golf. American women’s sports attire emancipated during the nineteenth century, when tightly laced bodices using whalebone to shape the female body evolved into elastic spandex allowing an athlete’s body to showcase its own shape (Creedon 1994).

N. Al Saied (*) Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates e-mail: [email protected] P. Creedon School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Iowa City, IA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. K. Fuller (ed.), Sportswomen’s Apparel Around the World, New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46843-9_5

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Culturally, women athletes in the Arab Gulf also have experienced emancipation once they were allowed to participate by their governments. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Brunei were the last three Muslim countries to allow their women to enter the Olympic Games. Beyond their ability to participate, apparel controversy continued at 2012 London when one wanted to wear a hijab head covering in judo competition (Creedon and Al-Khaja 2012). Today, Muslim women’s participation in sports is advancing through cultural change focused on gender equity. In the United Kingdom, for example, a Muslim Women’s Sports Foundation (MWSF) was started in 2001; seen as exemplifying the generational evolution of gender equity in Muslim culture, its goal is: (T)o increase the involvement of Muslim women and girls in sport without compromising their religious or cultural values through catering to and raising awareness of their specific needs. We exist to proactively promote diversity and inclusion within sport… (http://www.mwsf.org.uk/)

In Middle Eastern Islamic culture, women’s sports play a key role in achieving gender equity. The relation of women’s sports and fashion showcases a delicate and tenuous balance between cultural sensitivity and gender equity in Arab culture. Cultural sensitivity also requires media understanding and recognition of Islamic values in images of women. In the Gulf region, the female hijab veil that covers the head and the abaya cloak that is worn over regular clothing are in evolution expressing personal or family values. A review of women’s sports attire in Arab Gulf countries can provide valuable insight into the changes and conflicts these athletes have both experienced and accomplished and what they face today. However, while cultural values appear to be changing for women to compete in sports, religious sensitivity reached new heights in one Arab Gulf country in September 2018 when Getty Images, the world’s largest picture agency, announced it would no longer accept women wearing a burka or hijab into its Creative and Editorial collections without a signed release from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In respect to cultural sensitivity, Getty decided it would remove previous images of Emirati women in a burka covering the entire face or hijab and

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would no longer publish “Images or video files containing an individual woman wearing a burka or hijab without a model release” (http://wiki. gettyimages.com). This decision could also affect some media coverage of Emirati women in sports if they chose to wear a hijab unless they have signed a release. As the UAE is hosting the International Special Olympics in March 2019, perhaps, any female competitor wearing a hijab will need to sign a release in order to be photographed. Given the controversy, challenges, and choices for Arab women in sports, it is important to examine the effect of Islam and culture. This chapter will explore the intersections between women’s sports, Islam, and fashion in the seven Arab Gulf countries: Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

Women’s Sports, Islam, and Fashion Sporting attire can be an issue for Muslim women when dress codes prohibit them from wearing Western-style sports clothes, especially when participating in international events, and the subject often generates heated debate (Limoochi and Le Clair 2011). The controversy around the hijab (headscarf ) is never ending among Muslims. As Muslim women who wear hijab use pro-hijab discourse to validate their use of it, other Muslim women who do not wear the hijab tend to use themes from the anti-hijab discourse to defend their choice (Pasha-Zaidi 2014). There are various interpretations of verse number 31  in the Quran from surah Al-Nūr (The Light) about whether the headscarf is compulsory. The verse says, “wa-l-yaḍribna bi-khumurihinna ʿalā juyūbihinna” or “Let them [women] draw their scarves over their bosoms” (The Quran 2014). Some Islamic scholars interpret the verse to mean that women should be decent and not show their bosoms, but the headscarf is not compulsory because the verse clearly refers to covering the bosom not the head. Other interpretations say that a woman’s body is alluring so it must be covered entirely, so wearing a headscarf is compulsory and also the word “khumurihinna” has been interpreted by some clerics as head-scarf not only a scarf on the bosom (Al Shabndar 2005).

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Some religious scholars describe Islam as more restrictive through interpretations of Quranic verses related to women. They describe the verses as the biggest obstacles to women wanting to exercise and play sport. For example, from Verse 31, surah Al-Nūr states: Let women not display their charms except to their husbands, or their fathers, or their husband’s fathers, or their sons, or their husband’s sons, or their brothers, or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or their slave girls, or male dependants lacking [sexual] desire, or children uninitiated to women’s parts. (The Quran 2014)

This verse is interpreted by some religious scholars to mean that practicing sport in public, regardless of what women wear, can reveal their charm, so it should be forbidden. These scholars often fail to describe how the Quran recognizes women being equal to men before God. Islam also promotes good health and fitness for both men and women (Gohir 2012). As a result of these interpretations of Quranic verses, secular feminists tend to equate the hijab with patriarchal oppression and the subjugation of women. They argue that hijab-wearing is a practice that predates Islam, one which is more connected with political and cultural motives to humiliate women. On the other hand, some Islamic feminists perceive the hijab to be an Islamic practice and a symbol of freedom from materialism and the imperialism of Western ideals (Pasha-Zaidi 2014). Because of these different interpretations and controversies, Muslim women’s apparel varies depending on the country, culture, politics, and sect. In some countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, clothing rules are enforced by the government. In other Muslim countries, women have more of a choice but there is social pressure to wear the headscarf or conservative attire, such as in the UAE. The term hijab is interpreted differently too: Sometimes it refers to Islamic dress as whole, other times only to the head covering. For this reason, there are some sports activities that are easier to practice than others. For example, it is easier for Muslim women to take part in sports such as archery, volleyball, tennis, and table tennis rather than swimming and gymnastics (Limoochi and Le Clair 2011).

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Other barriers holding girls back from sports include cultural expectations and individual family restrictions. This varies from one country to another even among the Arab Gulf states that share similar norms and culture. For instance, at the London 2012 Olympic Games, Khadija Mohammed, a 17-year-old Emirati weight lifter, explained that there was widespread societal resistance to women’s weightlifting because people are afraid girls will develop masculine bodies and then not receive marriage proposals (Gohir 2012). Although Saudi Arabian women were granted the right to drive on June 24, 2018, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has spoken of easing the requirement of women wearing hijabs and abayas in public, the situation remains controversial there (Saudi crown prince says abaya not necessary, 2018). Saudi female participants in the London 2012 Olympics, for example, faced much harder challenges back home. The country’s ultra-conservative clergy tried to ruin participants’ prospects because they wore a type of headscarf they found to be indecent. Wojdan Shaherkani, a Saudi judo competitor, was aggressively attacked more than Sarah Attar, a Saudi-American runner. Shaherkani was labelled by extremist racists and sexists as the Prostitute of the Olympics (Wharton 2012). Her family was bombarded with racial abuse and in the racists’ eyes they did not represent the country (Shergold 2012). In Kuwait, where the social norms are more relaxed than those in Saudi Arabia, the situation varies: Women can play sport if their husbands allow it. There, women’s sport is viewed less negatively if husbands are supportive. Nada Al Jeraiwi, a Kuwaiti triathlete who wears a headscarf, explained that while older people refuse to accept women in sport regardless of whether they wear the headscarf younger people are more accepting (Culpepper 2016). Some young women in Kuwait, once married, reject sport because they don’t want their wives participating. Jeraiwi’s husband, however, indicated that he is proud of her sporting achievements, and he posted pictures on Instagram and Twitter of her competing. It appears that society accepts her involvement because she has her husband’s support.

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Controversies Over Muslim Women in Sport Since the Muslim world is divided over whether the headscarf should be obligatory and there are numerous debates about women’s sport apparel, it appears that the increased visibility and participation of women in international sports may serve to further complicate matters and generate accusations of bias. Marisol Casado, president of the International Triathlon Union, said: “Women’s participation in sport is very different from one country to the next. In some countries they are really very open, like Lebanon and then they have no problem at all and in others like Iran, for example, they have more problems, although if they wear the hijab they are allowed to compete” (Culpepper 2016). Cindy van den Bremen, the founder of Capsters Dutch Company for the sport hijab, suggested this: The choice to cover yourself should be yours and yours only; otherwise you deny the right of the women themselves. Both the Muslim community as well as people outside the community are forcing their ideas upon the women to cover or not. So there is social pressure as well as connotations that are based on assumptions and stereotypes. (Cited in Culpepper 2016)

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), a global football governing body, barred the Iranian team from participating in the 2010 Youth Olympics because the team insisted on wearing headscarves, arguing that it was for safety reasons and the prevention of religious and political statements on the field (Limoochi and Le Clair 2011). However, two years later, headscarf-wearing Muslim women participated in the 2012 London Olympics (Abbas 2012), where female competitors were allowed to wear the hijab. Modest forms of sport apparel, whether preferred by pious women themselves or by conservative societies as a whole, can lead to death threats in the event that women do not abide by the conservative dress code. This happened to the Algerian runner Hassiba Boulmerka who, in the 1992 Olympic Games, wore shorts and, as a result, was forced into exile after the Games because of death threats made against her (Limoochi and Le Clair 2011). Research done by Dr. Emma Tarlo, a reader in

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Anthropology at Goldsmiths University of London found that, “(W) omen have been put off sport because of the clothing; that’s part of the problem with swimming for instance. Others have been excluded from sport because of what they wear” (cited in Khaleeli 2012).

 port Apparel for Muslim Women Who S Cover Up Nike, a company whose brand is estimated to be worth US $27 billion, understands the need to satisfy the market in the Middle East; so, in its latest release, the brand has turned to the Gulf region, where female athletes are in need of various outfits. In spring 2018, Nike announced its Pro Hijab for female Muslim athletes. The hijab costs US $35 and is made out of lightweight, stretchy mesh polyester and comes in different colors. Throughout several stages of development, the product was tested by a group that included Zahra Lari, the first figure skater from the UAE to compete internationally, and Amna Al Haddad, an Olympic weightlifter also from the same country (Safronova 2017). Zahra Lari, who participated in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and was among those who first tried on the new hijab, reported: “I was thrilled and a bit emotional to see Nike prototyping a Hijab. I’ve tried so many different hijabs for performance, and … so few of them actually work for me. But once I put it on and took it for a spin on the ice, I was blown away by the fit and how light weight it was.” Amna Al Haddad said, “The product would help women, who chose to wear a head covering, to compete more effectively” (cited in Sun 2017). But some were less impressed by the product. The fact that Nike made this pro hijab sportswear to empower Muslim women rather than to improve women’s health more generally by providing opportunities to women of diverse faith backgrounds has caused criticism and mixed reactions. Some are even claiming that Nike was effectively making it easier to force women to wear the hijab.

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Other critics have said that the pro hijab is cashing in on subjugation and the domination of extremist clerics, who impose the idea of the hijab as compulsory and think that women should be hanged for not covering their hair and bodies. Nike must recognize that not all Muslim women wear the headscarf and by referring to this sportswear as pro hijab for Muslim women it not only risks making the hijab compulsory for Muslim women but also endangers the lives of those who choose not to wear it (Sports Life 2017). ESPN columnist Kavitha A. Davidson said, “The focus should be on women’s health and not women’s empowerment. It should be noted that Nike’s moves are likely not entirely socially-motivated. They’re a business and their decisions reflect demand” (Sun 2017). She also added, “Keep in mind that Nike is a business not a lobby group. This product will most likely do very well; otherwise they would not have chosen to sell it” (cited in Ahmed 2017). While there are numerous female athletes from the Middle East who appreciate how Nike has embraced diversity in sports, football player and sports activist Shireen Ahmed pointed out, “The modest sportswear industry is not a new one, and although the move is exciting, it’s hardly groundbreaking” (Sun 2017). Alex Hider, a sports commentator, questioned whether Nike’s hijab is about Muslim women’s empowerment or whether it is a cash grab: “It feels to me that the second Nike added its logo, it instantly used hijab as a status symbol. They have just found a way to turn a religious garment into a designer accessory” (cited in Sun 2017). While there are numerous female athletes from the Middle East who appreciate how Nike has embraced diversity in sports, football player and sports activist Shireen Ahmed pointed out, “The modest sportswear industry is not a new one, and although the move is exciting, it’s hardly groundbreaking” (Sun 2017). Smaller companies designed and sold sports hijabs for decades. Capsters, a Dutch sports clothing company, started in 2001 and has been selling sports hijabs all over the world. A scarf design from the Canadian company ResportOn was one of the reasons that the international taekwondo federation allowed Muslim women to compete in recognized tournaments. Both Capster and ResportOn submitted prototypes to the Iftab International Football Association Board (IFAB) that formally

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overturned FIFA’s hijab ban in 2014 (Ahmed 2017). At the 2012 London Olympics, Sarah Attar was one of two women to represent Saudi Arabia, in her own hijab. Attar’s uniform was designed by an Oregon-based company called Oiselle (ibid.). On International Women’s Day in 2016, Danish sportswear company Hummel, whose motto is “Change the World Through Sport,” released new kits for the Afghan women’s football team. In 2016, British kick-­ boxer, Ruqsana Begum, started her own line of hijab to encourage women to get involved in sports (ibid.). Macy’s and Adidas followed in the footsteps of Nike and American Eagle Outfitters, who both began selling hijabs in 2017 (Pasquarelli 2018).

 ebellious Women’s Sporty Fashion R in Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told a US news station that wearing an abaya or a hijab is a woman’s choice (Pudney 2018), then also said in an interview with CBS television on March 19, 2018, “The laws are very clear and Sharia stipulates that women wear decent, respectful clothing, like men. This, however, does not specify a black abaya or a black head cover. It is entirely up to women to decide what type of decent and respectful attire to wear” (Reuters 2018). His opinion on the abaya encouraged moderate clerics to speak up in support of him. Sheikh Ahmed Al-Ghamdi, former head of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Mecca, said that the statement of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman regarding the “abaya” (a black cloak or dress) not being obligatory is consistent with the teachings of Islam, then added that “The cloak is meant to maintain a modest look and it does not have to be black” (Al-Jaber 2018). These changes motivated Saudi fashion designers to develop practical sport apparel for women, especially an abaya for public sports activities. Opposition to colorful and funky abayas has largely been muted following the recent comments of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that the abaya is not mandatory in Islam.

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Eman Joharjy, a Saudi fashion designer, has designed colorful sports abayas to offer increased mobility for women’s physical activity, in contrast to the classic baggy version where tripping on the hem of the flowing garment is routine. She also used fabrics that are tolerable in the Kingdom’s scorching heat along with abayas that can be worn with baseball-style caps over headscarves. Some people were critical of the design in the beginning and called it a “batman style” while others called it a “cleaner’s style,” but Joharjy thought it was practical and she initially designed it for herself in 2007. She said, “You zip up and are ready to go” (cited in Chopra 2018).

 evelopments in Saudi Women’s Sports D Following Saudi Vision 2030 Saudi Vision 2030 was announced in April 2016 to represent Saudi Arabia’s plan not only to diversify its economy and address the challenges brought by low global energy prices but also to progress social and lifestyle changes to make the Kingdom more modern (Reardon 2017). These changes in women’s sport have been taking place while Saudi Arabia is going through a liberalization drive, including a historical royal decree in June 2018 allowing women to drive and to enter sports stadiums for the first time. The government has also been moving toward compulsory physical education classes for girls, after lifting the ban in 2014. This was a huge step, especially in an ultra-conservative country like Saudi Arabia where women doing sport was considered un-Islamic. Saudi officials have also announced that women will be able to participate in the Riyadh international marathon in 2019, previously a male-only event. Women exercising in public were for a long time a target for the Kingdom’s austere religious police, but in recent months they have largely been neutered (AFP 2018). In August 2016, Saudi Arabia’s Cabinet announced the appointment of Princess Reema Bint Bandar Al Saud, a prominent Saudi Princess, as head of a new Department for Women’s Affairs at the General Authority

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for Sports (Meet Princess Rima, first woman to head a Saudi sports federation 2017). This has been widely seen as signaling greater access to sports for women in the Kingdom, a country where women’s participation in sports has been relatively rare (Reardon 2017). Princess Reema, the daughter of a former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, is a graduate of George Washington University known for her fashion business and philanthropy (AFP 2017). Since taking up her role, she has played a part in helping to mobilize women, saying, “I’ve been telling women they don’t need permission to exercise in public. They don’t need permission to set up their own sports activities. And more and more they are doing it” (cited in Buller 2018). Princess Reema has indicated that the Saudi Kingdom is hoping to license 500 medium-­ sized gyms in 2018, adding nearly 4000 jobs for women (Buller 2018). She has also been driving attempts to loosen gender restrictions and she played a pivotal role in the staging of the world-ranking squash event in Riyadh, one that she hopes will help alter the sporting landscape in the Kingdom (Affleck 2018).

L ooking Ahead on Muslim Women’s Sports and Fashion The 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics became known as the inaugural “hijabi Olympics.” US media touted female fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad, the first American Olympian to compete in a hijab, along with television coverage of women’s bikini-clad volleyball teams competing against hijab-clad teams, Al Jazeera (Shabi 2016), streaming this statement: (I)f you’re celebrating the fact that Muslim women are making it to the Olympics against incredible odds, maybe also mention that women all over, regardless of faith, face giant obstacles to compete in sporting professions where men are promoted, pushed and rewarded so much more. But the trouble is that this hijab-focus is part of a much larger vat of pointless, gratuitous commentary around sportswomen, how they look and what they wear—which obviously has nothing to do with the actual field in which they’ve worked hard to become globally ranked competitors.

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The Arab Gulf States, mainly the UAE, preceded Saudi Arabia in embarking on a path toward modernity and women’s development in all fields including sports. This is reflected in the increasing number of Saudis living in the UAE (approximately 70,000), due to its lifestyle and treatment of women. This influence is likely to grow with the establishment of the UAE-Saudi Arabia council in June 2018. The UAE-Saudi Arabia alliance is an economic, military, political, and strategic power (Salama 2018). However, the UAE has decided to make media coverage of women more contentious with the recent requirement of signed authorization for any photo of an Emirati female in a hijab or abaya. That could have a significant influence in the empowerment of women and coverage of women’s sports. In contrast, Saudi Arabia has taken on a role of encouraging equality and serving as a model of modernity. The changes initiated by Mohammed bin Salman through Vision 2030 will be felt not only by Saudi Arabian women athletes but across the whole region as well. The geopolitical weight of Saudi Arabia, because it is home to the two holiest mosques and is the richest country in the region, will make Saudi Arabia a powerful force for modernity if these reforms are a success. Media coverage of women’s sports around the world today is expected to focus on athleticism and competition. Arab women’s sports competition is about to reach the needed cultural level of acceptability. The hijab is no longer a barrier to taking part in sport. It is now time for media coverage of women’s sports in the Arab Gulf and other Muslim countries to refuse to lead their stories with commentary about the “hijab,” and instead focus on these females as athletic competitors.

References Abbas, M. (2012, August 1). Olympics-Hijab no hurdle for Muslim sportswomen as bans eased. Reuters. Affleck, K. (2018, January 26). Squash ace Nada Abo Alnaja blazing a trail for liberated women in Saudi Arabia. Arab News.

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AFP. (2017). Meet Princess Rima, first woman to head a Saudi sports federation. [Online]. Gulf News. Retrieved from https://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/ saudi-arabia/meet-princess-rima-first-woman-to-head-a-saudi-sportsfederation-1.2105670 AFP. (2018). Saudi women embrace sports abayas—in pictures. [Online]. The National. Retrieved from https://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/fashion/ saudi-women-embrace-sports-abayas-in-pictures-1.722660 Ahmed, S. (2017, March 8). Nike’s Pro Hijab: A great leap into modest sportswear, but they’re not the first. The Guardian. al-Jaber, M. (2018, March 28). Saudi cleric al-Ghamdi: Abaya is not mandatory as per Islam’s teachings. english.alarabiya.net Al Shabndar, G. H. (2005). The meaning of ‘alā juyūbihinna’ between linguistics and interpreters. Elaph. [‫”معىن (جيوهبن) بني نظام‬.)2005( ‫ �إيالف غالب حسن الشابندر‬.”‫املفرسين‬ ‫]اللغة ومواقف‬ Buller, A. (2018, March 9). Princess Reema: It’s time to focus on Saudi women’s capabilities, not their clothes. Arab News. Chopra, A. (2018, April 19). Rebellious fashion: Saudi women embrace sports abayas. The National. Creedon, P. (1994). From whalebone to spandex: Women and sports journalism in American magazines, photography and broadcasting. In P. Creedon (Ed.), Women, media and sport: Challenging gender values (pp. 108–158). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Creedon, P. J., & Al-Khaja, M. A. W. (2012). Arab women’s sports: An historical and descriptive overview. Durban, South Africa: International Association of Mass Communication Research. Culpepper, C. (2016, July 30). Muslim female athletes find sport so essential they compete while covered. The Washington Post. Gohir, S. (2012, August 1). Extraordinary Muslim women at the Olympics— Past to present. HuffPost. Khaleeli, H. (2012, July 23). Sports hijabs help Muslim women to Olympic success. The Guardian. Limoochi, S., & Le Clair, J. (2011). Reflections on the participation of Muslim women in disability sport: Hijab, Burkini ®, modesty and changing strategies. Sport in Society, 14(9), 1300–1309. Meet Princess Rima, first woman to head a Saudi sports federation. (2017, October 4). Gulf News.

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Pasha-Zaidi, N. (2014). The Hijab effect: An exploratory study of the influence of hijab and religiosity of on perceived attractiveness of Muslim women in the United States and United Arab Emirates. Ethnicities, 15(5), 742–758. Pasquarelli, A. (2018). Modest fashion goes sainstream. AdAge. Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/modest-mainstream/312591/ Pudney, H. (2018, April 18). This Saudi designer has created a sports abaya. Emirates Woman. The Quran. (2014). Chapter 4: Al-Nūr (The Light) [Online]. Retrieved from http://al-quran.info/#24 Reardon, J. (2017). Developments in Saudi Sports following Saudi Vision 2030. AL TAMIMI & CO. Retrieved from https://www.tamimi.com/law-updatearticles/developments-in-saudi-sports-following-saudi-visions-2030. Reuters. (2018). Saudi crown prince says abaya not necessary. [Online]. Gulf News. Retrieved from https://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/ saudi-crown-prince-says-abaya-not-necessary-1.2190993 Safronova, V. (2017, March 8). Nike reveals the ‘Pro Hijab’ for Muslim athletes. The New York Times. Salama, S. (2018, June 7). UAE-Saudi council to help counter regional threats. Gulf News. Saudi crown prince says abaya not necessary. (2018, March 18). Gulf News. Saudi women embrace sports abayas—in pictures. (2017, April 18). The National. Shabi, R. (2016, August 12). Hello and welcome the Hijabi Olympics. Al Jazeera.com Shergold, A. (2012, August 3). The Muslim women who overcame the odds and the prejudice to make history today on the Olympic stage. Mail Online. Sports life. (2017). Backlash as Nike launches sports hijab. [Online]. news.com. au. Retrieved from https://www.news.com.au/sport/sports-life/backlash-asnike-launches-sports-hijab/news-story/863fee314446e69244f9d405 635d527a Sun, M. (2017, February 18). Nike unveils athletic hijab: Social statement or business savvy? The Christian Science Monitor. Wharton, D. (2012, July 30). London Olympics: Women from three Muslim countries are pioneers. The Los Angeles Times.

Chapter 5: Just Wear It: Media Coverage of the Nike Pro Hijab Adrianne Grubic

Since its inception in 1964, founder Phil Knight positioned Nike as a premium brand that offered high performance, at first as running shoes to track and field athletes and then later on including sports apparel and equipment to the casual athlete. In the 1980s, the brand expanded into the production of women’s apparel. The 1980s brought the Nike slogan “Just Do It” as well, which ultimately came to epitomize the bravado of the brand (Encyclopedia of Global Brands 2012), with flashy, rebellious athletes such as Andre Agassi (Rovell 2005). Thirty years after the iconic slogan, the company had former NFL player turned activist Colin Kaepernick appear in a commercial (Coaston 2018). Kaepernick, known for his silent rebellion of protesting social injustice during the national anthem, voiceovers and appears briefly in the ad among other athletes who overcame odds to become great, and the ad ends with the tagline, “So don’t ask if your dreams are crazy, ask if they are crazy enough”

A. Grubic (*) University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. K. Fuller (ed.), Sportswomen’s Apparel Around the World, New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46843-9_6

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(Thomas and Golden 2018). Nike was rewarded for its defiant ad with a six-billion dollar rise in market value (Reints 2018). As a Fortune 500 company (Fortune 2018), Nike has very few markets left it would need to conquer in its efforts to expand its brand (Encyclopedia of Global Brands 2012). This usually means exploring raw or emerging markets (Busnaina 2014) to find something novel (Bordo 1993) and the fashion industry in the Arab world fits this criterion. The Middle East and Northern Africa consist of 22 countries in which the majority use one language: Arabic. However, it can be misunderstood as it has unique characteristics as far as the culture is concerned. Balancing these issues along with whether to adapt the apparel lines they have or to create new ones can be daunting for any company (Busnaina 2014). In 2017, Nike launched a commercial like no other, titled “What will they say about you,” which begins with a woman wearing a hijab [hijabs are head coverings worn by some Muslim women either chosen as a symbol of their faith or for modesty reasons (Nike 2017b)] looking timid as she goes out for a run, and she gets a stare from an older woman. The scene then changes to another young woman with a head scarf skateboarding, as an older man looks on stone faced. The commercial then proceeds to show Arab and Muslim women participating with vigor in various sports such as boxing, soccer, figure skating, fencing, parkour, and also includes a pop singer from the United Arab Emirates (Nike 2017a). The commercial finishes with the voice over “What will they say about you… they will say you’re the next big thing…” then shows the Nike swoosh and the tagline “Believe in More” (Nike Middle East 2017). The commercial garnered 241,000 views on twitter. The first response to it on that medium was from a user named Basim who said, “Hi folks, your ad is really bad and it hardly supports anything other than your business interest” (Nike Middle East 2017). Not long after the commercial launch, the company revealed it would be launching a Pro Hijab in the spring of 2018 (Safronova 2017). In its December 1, 2017, press release, about the Nike Pro Hijab being available, the company stated how it would be available: “In black and obsidian on nike.com and at select retailers in Europe, North Africa, North America and across the Middle East. Other colorways, including white and vast gray, will launch in January on nike.com and at select

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retailers in more than 20 countries.” Nike touted not only how breathable the fabric was but also how empowering the item would be for Muslim women (Nike 2017b). Yet, it failed to state that they are also selling this headgear because there is a profitable market for it. As of 2015, there were 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, almost 24% of the world’s population (Lipka 2017). Estimating that women make up half of that population, it is a very lucrative market for the brand. Adding to that Muslim shoppers buying footwear and apparel will reportedly top $484 billion in sales annually by 2019 (Banks 2017). The University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research conducted a survey in seven Muslim-majority countries (Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon) on how women should dress for the Pew Research Center. Most respondents preferred that women cover their hair and ears as opposed to being completely covered by a burqa (fully covered from head to feet) or wearing a niqab, where only the eyes are visible (Poushter 2014). Nike however is not the first to make a hijab for athletic women (Najmah Abraham 2017), but yet it won the most important design of the year in the 2017 Innovation by Design Awards (Downes 2017) and was also named one of 2017’s best inventions by Time magazine (Time 2017). These accolades inadvertently make a statement, but the real question becomes how did American and international media cover the global launch of Nike’s hijab? Was context given about why this is important? Did it acknowledge those companies that have previously made hijabs for female athletes? Were the athletes these items made for highlighted? These are all important questions that will be analyzed in the following chapter.

Media Coverage of “The Other” For many in the western so-called civilized world, Muslims, especially Muslim women, are typically thought of as “the other” (Mohanty 1984). The image of the veiled woman conjures up an exotic image in the mind of the west (Said 1979). Hijabs can be perceived as markers of religious adherence, empowerment, or marginalization, complicating how female

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athletes who compete in hijabs are interpreted and understood by western audiences. Gaye Tuchman (2000) deemed that women in general suffer from “symbolic annihilation,” meaning they are either ignored or marginalized in the realm of media coverage. Media coverage of female athletes is no different. In a 2015 study, Messner and Cooky (2010) found that coverage of women’s sports had not increased in twenty-five years and probably that of female Muslim athletes in the west is even more miniscule. When female athletes are covered by the media they are seen only through the lens of the heterosexual male. This results in usually female athletes as either being sexualized by the media, being seen only as mothers (most recently and notably this applies to advertisements involving tennis player Serena Williams), or only known by their “exotic markers,” in this instance Muslim women with their hijabs (Leonard 2017). This is in conflict with the majority of female athletes who are celebrated for “showing their navels” (Collins 2004) and for selling sex. Female athletes are not usually known for their performance as athletes, and their athletic accomplishments usually take a backseat to how they look. Compound this with the fact most female athletes do not receive pay on par with male athletes so they feel they have no other choice but to portray their bodies in a sexual manner (Liang 2011). It will be interesting to see how the media covered the launch of the Nike Pro Hijab since it is an item geared toward female athletes only, one that does not play upon an athlete’s sex appeal, and illustrates an awareness of Muslim athletes as consumers in the United States (Ivanova 2017). Wearing a hijab can make it difficult for an athlete to perform her sport, especially those involving jumping and running. In the past, they sometimes had to find male-free areas to be able to practice in more comfortable clothing while others abandoned sports because of these restrictions (Karmelek 2015). It was important then that Nike’s Pro Hijab was tested by various athletes from different sports. These are some examples: • Zeina Nassar, a German boxer • Manal Rostom, an Egyptian marathon runner, the first Arab to be featured on the Global Nike + Run Club app (“Manal Rostom Is the First Arab Featured on the Nike App” 2018). She also

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debuted the Pro Hijab for the first time during an international race at the New York City Marathon. (Hamilton Rushforth 2017) • Amna Al Haddad, a weightlifter • Zhara Lari, a figure skater • Ibtihaj Muhammad, an American fencer who won a bronze medal during the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics (Hauser 2018). She has the most social influence out of the three athletes with 264,000 followers on Instagram (Instagram 2018) and 62,000 on Twitter (Twitter 2018). Muhammad is an author of Proud: My Fight for an Unlikely American Dream (Muhammad and Tharps 2018). In 2017, Mattel unveiled a Barbie doll fashioned after her that included the hijab, without the Nike swoosh (Hauser 2018). Muhammad characterized the event as “revolutionary” for its depiction of a strong, Muslim woman. Despite her feelings, critics blasted the act as cultural appropriation or “racial capitalism” by the toy company. Racial capitalism can be termed as selling an “imagined feeling” of inclusion and it has become big business as white institutions extract value from those who are the other (Khoja-Moolji 2017). However, for the Muslim athletes who tested the Nike Pro Hijab, they too felt it was a “symbol of empowerment” (Nike 2017b). The question then becomes, did the media present both sides of this story?

Media Reactions to the Nike Pro Hijab When, in 2017, Nike announced it was making available a hijab for female athletes, this study began looking at online articles, including commentary from newspapers, magazines, and broadcast outlets with the Google search term of “Nike” and “hijab.” The company revealed it would produce a hijab and provided a press release on its web site in December of the same year to ascertain what coverage it received by the mainstream media. So, American and also international media were analyzed to get a broader picture of the reporting of this launch. The news jumped on some obvious techniques when writing about the Pro Hijab. The Associated Press (2017), an American wire service, felt the

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need to lead with the line “NIKE has unveiled a hijab for Muslim female athletes,” an obvious play on words given the fact that some Muslim female athletes are wearing a hijab to cover themselves in some manner (Associated Press 2017). While others (oddly fashion magazines) misreported that this what the first sports hijab produced for female athletes (Elle 2017; Murdoch-Smith 2017). Puns were easy to come by in the headlines, “Nike just did it, they launched a hijab collection” which borderlines belittles the importance of such a company acknowledging Muslim athletes (Pitjeng 2017). The Guardian chose to focus on the fashion aspect of the hijab in one of its headlines: “‘I’d love a hijab that matches my trainers’: what Muslim athletes think of Nike’s new sportswear.” Doubtful a headline about a man’s sports apparel would garner such a headline. The story did interview international athletes about people being able to use such a product, but as one soccer player pointed out: I’m always happy to see positive representation of Muslim women in sport, but Nike wasn’t the first to do this. It is the most influential brand in the world to do it, but it’s not Nike that is elevating Muslim women in sport— it’s the athletes themselves who are doing that. (Noor 2017)

The paper also ran a sports blog on the hijab news with the headline, “Nike’s Pro Hijab: a great leap into modest sportswear, but they’re not the first.” The blog article lauded the act by Nike “in age of renewed xenophobia.” It also noted however the not so-coincidental timing of the move by Nike after the roll out of the “what will they say” ad (Ahmed 2017). The Telesur, Venezuela’s state-funded media outlet, article was titled, “Exploiting Empowerment? Nike’s New Sports Hijab Spurs Debate.” It was one of the few pieces to quote a Muslim activist. She pointed out that Nike producing a sports hijab might push out Muslim women who already make this product: While large corporations starting to produce hijab-friendly clothing has some invaluable weight when it comes to representation in a world that dehumanizes Muslim, the larger context is that these corporations are … breaking into an untapped market that is worth millions if not billions of

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dollars. Because by celebrating the so-called sign of ‘acceptance’ by a large corporation, we are going to be watching money flow out of the community; innovative Muslim women designers lose out on opportunities; and the perpetuation of labor rights violations, except this time in the name of ‘standing with Muslims.’

The story also referred to the “What will they say” ad and included that it was critiqued by some for portraying a stereotypical sexist, Arab man while leaving out any representation of black female Muslims (Telesur 2017). ESPN.com’s Kavitha A. Davidson imparted an in-depth look at the history of female athletes wearing hijabs in athletic competitions illuminating the struggles they endured just to be able to compete: But seven years after Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir became the first hijabi athlete to compete in NCAA Division I women’s basketball, FIBA, the sport’s international governing body, is still dragging its feet on the subject…The drawn-out process, which effectively keeps women like Abdul-Qaadir from turning pro…

Davidson also noted that Nike’s interest may also not be about inclusion as “they’re a business and their decisions reflect demand” (Davidson 2017). Fortune magazine provided commentary on the subject by proclaiming Nike’s ad campaign was not a political answer to the immigration ban on Muslim countries by American President Donald J. Trump in February of 2017. It was one of the few articles sampled to mention the ban. Given the name of the magazine, it was appropriate that the commentary focused on the capitalist mindset of Nike “as a business move to reach new female consumers in the Middle East” and “introduce Muslim women to athleisure wear” an expanding market. Fortune mentioned that succeeding in markets such as those takes “cultural dexterity” meaning one has to be able to maneuver expertly and be able to sell to various cultures (Banks 2017). After Nike’s December press release on the Pro Hijab, a cbsnews.com posted an article titled “Nike launches its sports hijab in the US.” The writer pulled a lot of information from the Nike press release. It did

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however acknowledge that Nike was not the first to create a hijab in the United States and Muhammad probably helped the cause with her success in the Olympics. The story also pointed out that Nike may be selling sports hijabs “for simple demographics” citing 610,000 Muslim women under the age of 20 live in the United States and that would obviously contribute to the company’s bottom line (Ivanova 2017). “While most Muslim women wear the hijab for religious reasons as an expression of modesty, other Arab or Muslim women choose to wear it to express cultural identity,” wrote Doug Stanglin for USA Today on the Nike Pro Hijab. The article also quoted Manal Rostom from another article saying, “It is giving a chance to those women who are putting off the idea of wearing a veil completely in order to compete.” Mentioned as well were the two Saudi runners who competed at the London Olympics in hijabs (ironically by another Oregon company, Oiselle.) The USA Today article also noted that Nike designed the hijabs to the specific style of each Muslim country (Stanglin 2017), something not said in the press release by the company (Nike 2017b). One glaring issue with this story was its headline, “Nike begins selling sports hijab for Muslim female athletes”; obviously this could be marketed to other athletes who are not Muslim as many religions around the world dictate modesty in their dress (Stanglin 2017). Glamour, a fashion magazine, also relied heavily on the Nike press release lifting quotes from it, including this one from Muhammad, “suddenly, I could hear, I wasn’t as hot and it felt like my body was able to cool itself down better and faster. It really sunk in how much my previous hijab was hindering my performance.” The magazine focused on the breathability of the material but also pointed out how “the sportswear world is making moves toward inclusivity” (LeSavage 2017). Obviously, it failed to recognize how the fashion industry starts including people of color or certain religions when there is money to be made off of them. Another fashion magazine, Vogue UK, interviewed Zahra Lari (Murdoch-Smith 2017), the first figure skater to compete internationally for the United Arab Emirates (Martinelli 2017). She is also the first figure skater to compete internationally in a headscarf in 2012 (Pavone 2017). Once again there was another incorrect headline stating, “Nike Pro launches first sports hijab with UAE Ice Skater Zahra Lari.” The

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magazine also states that Zahra Lari was the first athlete ever to compete in a hijab. At this point, there would have been copious articles to dispute this if the writer or their editor had done their homework. That being said, things were said in this article that were not always touched upon in others because it was an interview. For instance, Lari was asked how important it was to be able to compete in a hijab, The hijab is part of who I am, so to me, whether in school, at the gym, on ice or just hanging with friends, I am always wearing it. When I am not wearing it, I feel something is missing.

It also mentioned that previously when the figure skater competed in a hijab she would be deducted points in competition for being covered. She did not acknowledge the other companies that made hijabs for athletes but was grateful to Nike: Everyone including myself was so surprised and happy to see such a large company like Nike do something like this to cater specifically to Muslim athletes. It’s like a dream that we [hijabi athletes] never really thought it would happen.

The theme of empowerment was also highlighted as Lari said she could see that many Arab and Muslim girls were inspired by her being able to compete in a hijab (Murdoch-Smith 2017).

Conclusions Wearing a hijab in the past has made it difficult for Muslim and Arab female athletes to be able to participate fully in their respective sports. Add to that the fact that many traditional Muslims feel women should not be participating in athletics at all (Karmelek 2015) and one has a situation that is difficult to convey to those who have not lived that experience. However, Nike producing a Pro Hijab brings Muslim and Arabic culture into the vernacular of the mainstream media.

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For the most part, media outlets did a good job of communicating the importance of the production of this athletic garment for female Muslim athletes. Where it failed generally was providing context of this being the first large American corporation to make one or claiming it was the first one to make a hijab for athletes at all. Nike continues to remake its image from the sweatshop scandal of two decades ago where it paid generally women as little as possible for their factory work (Lutz 2015) as now the company seemingly champions women’s empowerment and inclusion. However, some in the media are not buying what the mega-corporation is selling (Ivanova 2017). Whether the intentions of Nike are benevolent are not, it got some of us talking about female athletes, but unfortunately it was still about their bodies and what they were wearing. A female athlete in her hijab lies is a stark contrast to say a volleyball player in a bikini, but whether it is empowering for all women remains to be seen. At the very least, companies are trying to be more inclusive of what women want to wear on their bodies.

References Ahmed, S. (2017). Nike’s Pro Hijab: A great leap into modest sportswear, but they’re not the first. The Guardian. Associated Press. (2017). Nike launches a hijab for Muslim female athletes. News.com.au Banks, B. (2017). Why Nike’s ‘Pro Hijab’ is more than just politics. Fortune. Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture, and the body. Berkeley: University of California Press. Busnaina, I. (2014). Fashion marketing in Arab world: Brand identity vs. adaptation. Journal of Textile and Apparel, Technology and Management, 9(1), p1. Coaston, J. (2018). Nike has made billions selling rebellion to young people. Vox.com Collins, P. H. (2004). Black sexual politics: African Americans, gender, and the new racism. Routledge. Davidson, K. A. (2017). Nike Pro Hijab gives important validation to Muslim women athletes. EspnW.

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Downes, S. (2017). Nike’s sports hijab has won a major design award. Emirates Woman. Elle. (2017). Nike introduces the first sports hijab for Muslim athletes. Elle India. Encyclopedia of Global Brands. (2012). Nike. Detroit: St. James Press. Fortune. (2018). Fortune 500 companies 2018: Who made the list. Fortune. Hamilton Rushforth, S. (2017). This Egyptian athlete just put the Nike Pro Hijab in the global spotlight. Harper’s Bazaar Arabia. Hauser, C. (2018). New Barbie is modeled after American Olympian who wears a hijab. The New York Times. Instagram. (2018). Ibtihaj Muhammad (@ibtihajmuhammad) Instagram photos and videos. Ivanova, I. (2017). Nike launches its sports hijab in the US. cbsnews.com Karmelek, M. (2015). Special uniforms keep Muslim girls on the court. Newsweek. Khoja-Moolji, S. (2017). Don’t be quick to celebrate the hijab-wearing Barbie. Aljazeera.com Leonard, D. J. (2017). Playing while white: Privilege and power on and off the field. Seattle: University of Washington Press. LeSavage, H. (2017). Nike’s first hijab for athletes is finally available. Glamour. Liang, E. (2011). The media’s sexualization of female athletes: A bad call for the modern Game. Inquiries Journal/Student Pulse, 3(10), 2. Lipka, M. (2017). Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the U.S. and around the World. Pew Research Center. Lutz, A. (2015). How Nike fixed its sweatshop image. Business Insider. Martinelli, M. (2017). Nike launches Pro Hijab to make sports more inclusive for women. For the Win, USA Today. Messner, M. A., & Cooky, C. (2010). Women play sports but not on TV. Women’s Sports Foundation. Mohanty, C. T. (1984). Under western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Boundary 2, 12(13), 333–358. Muhammad, I., & Tharps, L. (2018). Proud: My fight for an unlikely American dream. New York: Hachette Books. Murdoch-Smith, L. (2017). Nike Pro launches the first sports hijab with UAE ice skater Zahra Lari. L. British Vogue. My Salaam. (2018). Manal Rostom is the first Arab featured on the Nike app. Retrieved from https://www.mysalaam.com/en/story/manal-rostom-is-thefirst-arab-featured-on-the-nike-app/SALAAM03062018061713 Najmah Abraham, N. (2017). 6 Muslim companies that created sports hijabs way before Nike. My Salaam.

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Nike. (2017a). Nike celebrates pioneering spirit of the middle east. Nike News. Nike. (2017b, December 1). The Nike Pro Hijab goes global. Nike News. Nike Middle East. (2017). What will they say about you? Maybe they’ll say you showed them what’s possible. #justdoitpic.Twitter.Com/ NZbQLC1JuB. Tweet. @nikemiddleeast. Noor, P. (2017). I’d love a hijab that matches my trainers’: What Muslim athletes think of Nike’s new sportswear. The Guardian. Pavone, B. (2017). How Muslim figure skater Zahra Lari is changing history. Brit+Co. Pitjeng, R. (2017). Nike just did it; they launched a hijab collection. Eyewitness News. Poushter, J. (2014). How people in Muslim countries prefer women to dress in public. Pew Research Center (blog). Reints, R. (2018). Colin Kaepernick pushes Nike’s market value up $6 billion. Fortune. Rovell, D. (2005, July 25). Changing clothes: Agassi signs deal with Adidas. ESPN.Com Safronova, V. (2017). Nike reveals the ‘Pro Hijab’ for Muslim athletes. The New York Times. Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Random House. Stanglin, D. (2017). Nike begins selling a performance hijab for Muslim female athletes. USA Today. Telesur. (2017). Exploiting empowerment? Nike’s new sport hijab spurs debate. Telesur. Thomas, L., & Golden, J. (2018). Here’s Nike’s full ad featuring Colin Kaepernick and other athletes. cnbc.com Time. (2017). The 25 best inventions of 2017. Time.Com Tuchman, G. (2000). The symbolic annihilation of women by the mass media. In Culture and politics (pp. 150–174). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Twitter. (2018). Ibtihaj Muhammad verified account @IbtihajMuhammad. Twitter.

Chapter 6: Saree as an Official Indian Dress at International Sports Events: A Critique Kulveen Trehan

Introducing the Saree Variously spelled sari, saree, or shari, the middle designation chosen here, saree comes from the Sanskrit word Satsi, meaning strip of cloth, early mention of it dating back to the Indus Valley civilization (2800–1800) BCE. Vandana Kumar’s 1994 Evolution of a Saree says that evidence of Indian women wearing a saree can be traced back to 1500 BC. Vinay Bahl (2005) cites the sculptures of women wearing knee length sarees from the ancient civilization of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa to establish the existence of the dress. Katiyar (2009, p. 23) notes that sculptures dating back to the Mauryan empire show both Indian and Greek women dressed in a saree bearing certain western influences “with one end pleated at the waist and other draped over the shoulder called the pallav” referred to as the Nivi drape similar to the contemporary saree as the Indian

K. Trehan (*) University School of Mass Communication, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi, India © The Author(s) 2021 L. K. Fuller (ed.), Sportswomen’s Apparel Around the World, New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46843-9_7

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official dress in sporting ceremonies. Though traditional draping styles in Maharashtra, such as the navari, Gujarat, and Bengal, the nine yard drape, continue to mark religious and social events, the three piece (pleated saree with a blouse and petticoat/skirt) a European influence, is now universally Indian (Chishti and Singh 2010). India has a saree type for nearly every region. Regional textile and design are reflected in the different types of saree fabrics and motifs. If tie and patterns in chiffon and georgette represent the states of Rajasthan and Gujarat, silk in six yards with broad borders conjure up the image of Dravidian India. The finely woven Jamdaani comes from West Bengal, and temple embroidery in silk cloth signifies the holy city of the Hindus, Benaras. Although it is available in a variety of materials—cotton, silk, chiffon, and nylon—and is worn by being pleated and wrapped around the body in countless ways depending upon ethnicity and religion, its all pervasiveness makes it the national dress for women in India. Even after globalization, the saree continues to be the most enduring image of an Indian woman (ibid.), compelling us to see it as a defining women’s wear. Judith Schwartz, Professor of Art and Art Education at New  York University, called it “the Iconic Garment synonymous with India’s Legacy” while lending support to The Saree Project, an attempt to make the world more informed and appreciative of the Indian saree. As a dress, it has lived longer than most Indian markers.

The Saree in Women’s Sport Saree was constructed as an obstructive garment in relation to sports during the British rule. Majumdar (2003) mentions that when Bengali sports journalist Brajrajan Ray was under the aegis of the Women Sports Association setup in 1929, he started an annual soccer tournament for women at the college level in Calcutta and female players wore the saree. Notably, their on-ground injuries were attributed to their dress and were reported widely in the press in opposition to women’s entry into professional sports; this illustrates the relationship between saree and sports in

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pre-independent India. By 1941, women footballers discarded the saree for western dress. Bahl (2005) writes that women, especially from the upper caste, were reluctant to play tennis in the European style dress and preferred the saree, triggering the appropriate female dress for sports debate. Suparna Bhattacharya’s 2004 exploration of the growth of sports among Hindu, Parsi, and Jewish women in Bengal writes that Hindu women started playing competitive sport in 1950 and, owing to the conservative social system, were limited to playing at certain clubs. Their entry into competitive sport flourished from the 1960s onward. As more Indian women started to play competitive sport at national and international levels, the saree marked its presence as the official Indian dress at international sports events. It was arguably first worn at the 1972 Olympics in Munich and then at all competitive events till 2018. The traditional dress of a yellow saree and a blue blazer epitomized the Indian contingent marching at the opening ceremonies in the multi-­sport competitions. All of that changed, though, in 2018 when the India Olympic Association (IOA) decided that the saree would no longer be the official dress for Indian women athletes at international sporting events such as the Olympic Games, Asian Games, or the Commonwealth Games. In February 2018, just before the Commonwealth Games, the IOA announced that female athletes did not have to wear a saree at any of the official functions held during the games, including the opening and the closing ceremonies. The new official dress code was also announced such that women would be wearing trousers in place of the traditional saree. Official dress manufacturer for Indian sportspersons Raymond spokesperson Rohit Khanna (as quoted by the international news agency AFP) said that they created a new look for women at multisport event ceremonies: white shirt, blazer, and trousers with scarfs. This decision was later adopted for the Asian Games and the international events. So navy blue blazers and trousers are the new dress code for both men and women. The decision evoked a mixed response from the female athletes, but the media largely covered it either as an announcement or was supportive of it.

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Grounding the Saree in Sports Controversy Ramchandra Guha’s (1998, p.  157) reference to sports as a relational idiom is the perfect frame to develop a critique of recent development. Wearing a saree is distinctively Indian and the contingent is recognized from afar because of it. In his essay Sport, social history and the historian, James Walvin (1984) argued that sports is not merely playing the game but is in fact a representation of rituals and relationships of people in a commune or a social formation. For the rest of the world, sport becomes a window to the culture of nation, a society. It communicates to the local and to the global through its various signs and symbols. Country flags, jerseys, logos, and the official dress create a differential identity in an otherwise homogenized run of the game. They construct nations in a multinational environment. Viewers identify and imitate these signifiers, leading to lasting associations. These symbols unite and divide players, teams, and nations with spectators. Therefore, any change in official dress calls for more than a banal news report.

Saree, Sports, and Culture Cultural uniqueness, as opposed to cultural universalism in sports ceremonies (Hogan 2003) makes an international sporting event gain distinctive global attention and media mileage. Clothing, says Olga Barrios (2014), plays a significant role in the construction of individual, social, and national identities. A prominent cultural signifier, the saree exemplifies the cultural uniqueness of India. The saree as an iconic carrier of culture is underlined by events like India’s first woman pilot, Sarla Thakral, entering the cockpit of an aircraft in a saree. That saree presenting India to the world is substantiated when DCM Carlson of the US embassy in India wore sixteen sarees made from different fabrics and draped in different styles to represent the unified culture of a diverse nation. Hashtags like #WeWearCulture #IncredibleSaree used by Carlson showed the saree as a cultural agent.

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In India, diversity is reflected in many subcultures, with each having its own language and dress. Emma Tarlo (1996, p. 17) likens clothing to language vis-à-vis construction of identity as she writes that clothes “Confer the wearer a distinct mark of nationality and culture to express cultural allegiance.” Different draping styles negate the notion of “one proper way of wearing a saree,” factoring in comfort, community, and cultural uniqueness. Contemporary designers discard the frames of tradition and discomfort attached to the saree as they position it as a dress for all occasions. In 2009, Sabyasachi Mukherjee, a famous costume designer for Indian films, launched a “Save the Sari” project to revive the heirloom. In 2011, French couture designer Hermès, with saree as a muse, came to the Indian market with 28 handcrafted saris. New designers want to change the perception of the saree as an uncomfortable thing that woman wear. Mathew (2013) provides an expert view on its reinvention by quoting designer Debarun Mukerjee: “The sari has been reintroduced for its new, younger wearer in silhouettes that can be worn effortlessly, like the divided trouser sari accessorized with suspenders for an experimental look” to highlight the changing nature of the traditional drape. Chinki Sinha (2018)’s blog draws a parallel with the revival of Japan’s national dress, the kimono, to dissolve the binary of tradition and modernity by positioning the dress as an aspirational garment in neoliberal India, quoting designer David Abraham (owner of Abraham & Thakor): “It is a long piece of untouched fabric, which could represent a regional culture, could be a uniform for work, or even a metaphor for steamy sex.” The saree can also be a sports dress, as showcased by designer Masaba Gupta in her recent collection #SportASaree that created stories of women playing cricket draped in a saree. A collaboration between the House of Masaba and Banarasi saree brand Ekya, this digital media campaign embedded sarees in sports by creating analogies like Pleats On The Pitch, Hit Wicket Heroines, Skipper Sheryl, and Not Out Namita, presenting the saree as a dress that sets you free to play cricket, India’s most loved sport. Falguni Sheth (2009) says that the saree is not strictly limited to the Hindu religion but is also worn by Muslims and Christians in India. It is the defining image of an Indian woman irrespective of age, class, religion,

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borders, and boundaries. Predominately worn in India, it extends to South Asian and Oriental nations in addition to the diaspora spread across continents. Therefore, the saree is not just a garment but is, in fact, a symbol of endurance.

The Saree in Indian Media In India, the saree has been both the site of a woman’s self-empowerment and resistance to authority (Barrios 2014). The young girl who was disgusted with the oppressive definition of the saree in her childhood in Shakuntala Booollen’s book La femme enveloppe embraces it as follows: “because of Saree she is in perpetual construction” (quoted in Barrios 2014). Maitryee Chaudhari (2012) wrote that the saree is still caught up in the binary of tradition vs. modernity in Indian media. A working woman in a corporate setup wears shirt and trousers on screen (such as a mid-shot of the central protagonist, Nishiganda Dasgupta in Madhur Bhandarkar’s film Corporate) whereas the homemaker is dressed in a saree (Brooke Bond Red Label TV ad 2016) structuring the image of conventional and modern women. Rarely do images of saree-clad drivers appear to free the veteran drape from its conventional bondage. The saree is not just a garment; it tells stories. It binds one generation to the older one by creating strong associations. Pooja Pande’s portal The Aaerogram has nine chapters titled Sari Stories that contain interviews with distinguished Indians about the history, politics of, and passion for the garment. Shabani Hassanwala, its documentary filmmaker, recalls how her paternal grandmother (who only wore sarees) yearned for a special saree from Delhi before breathing her last (Chap. 3, Sari Stories). Countless stories of passion, pride, prestige, and esteem are hidden in every fold. In Chap. 7, Himanshu Verma wears a saree to communicate the unisexual nature of Indian traditional wear; known as the Saree Man, he is committed to dissolve the binaries of gender in clothing and remove the layers of alienation young Indians have with their traditional sense of dressing. It is an unstitched fabric waiting for a creative expression of an identity submerged in Indian history, after all.

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Also in Sari Stories, Artika, a communication specialist, and Alka, a video producer, said they “think insisting on saris for athletes to wear at the opening ceremonies of the international games is important. They should absolutely wear only sarees at platforms like that” (Chap. 8)— underscoring the prominence of the saree in India as sporting nation. Integration of economies after the adoption of new economic policy in 1991 pushed the country toward globalization, creating a perceived threat to national self-determination. Even as western formal wear received significant attention as party wear, the saree remained dress code for offices and official purposes. Ranavaade and Karolia (2017) describe the saree as a daywear, workwear, and occasion-wear, illustrating its role in women’s personal and professional lives. A 2014 survey on India’s casualwear market shows the saree being highest (37%) within women’s wear categories. Nyna Amin and Devakshanam (Betty) Govinden in Sari stories: Fragmentary images of “Indian woman” (Moletsane et  al. 2012) speak about the imbrication of saree in the professional life of an Indian woman through memory reconstructions of the diaspora women. Mira—of Indian origin, lives in South Africa and is a mother, a writer, and academic—recalls that Saras Naidoo, principal of the New Haven Primary School in South Africa, told her she wore a saree to school to command authority. Hers signifies authority, compelling obedience, and respect at workplace. Later in the same chapter, Amin and Govinden establish how the saree provides a stable point of reference in professional dressing. That saree is unsuited in business and bureaucracy is dismissed through the story of Meena, an Indian in South Africa who attends board meetings and special events like book launches in a South Indian (Kanjivaram silk) saree.

The Saree, Sport, and National Identity The saree can be traced as the dress of women in positions of power through a timeline from powerful warrior Queen Rani Jhansi to former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to current female politicians saree-clad at most official occasions. It is the official, most worn professional dress in

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the service sector. Banerjee and Miller (2003, p. 11) note that Indian men in politics find themselves dwarfed in front of power sarees worn by the women politicians, as it symbolizes authority and aura. In an interview with Pooja, activist Jasmine Lovely George tells that she dons a saree at international panels both for style and to illustrate identity (Politics in my pleats, Chap. 3, Sari Stories). Jasmine and later Laila Tyabji, co-­ founder of craft brand Dastkar, in a chapter titled Sentimental glimpses of the saree, look at it as a uniform for diplomatic, academic, or showcase events/occasions representing India. Amruta Patil, the storyteller, also wears only the saree at international events as she asserts her identity and refuses to blend into the globalized citizenship. As soon as P.V. Sindhu won a silver medal in badminton at the 2016 Rio Olympics, Indians across the world showed their pride and association with her by changing their display picture on social networking sites, posting match details, congratulatory feed, etc. Everyone was Sindhu as she was the first Indian athlete to get a silver medal at the Olympics. When she wrapped the national flag around herself on the podium, with the Indian national anthem playing in the background, it became a defining moment in the expression of Indian identity. That Indian female athletes can win at international sporting events became a theme communicating new, more aggressive, and more competitive times for a more gender-equal India. This expression of national pride at the athletes’ success underscores how sports take ritualistic form to evoke national feelings and sentiments (Seippel 2017). Singh and Kenneth (2014) describe dress code as a style of dressing appropriate at a place. They outline the projection of culture and attitude, bonding and discouraging the formation of sub-groups as salient reasons for prescribing a dress code. Beneath the surface, this decision compels us to explore some critical questions: 1. What is the contextual history of the saree as an official dress? 2. How has the media covered the issue? 3. Are there larger implications of it for India as a sporting nation? 4. Is it the sign of gender marking or any way to make sports more masculine?

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Methodology In order to determine attitudes toward the notion of the saree as sportswear, interviews were held by this author with five women athletes and six sports journalists in October/November 2018 and February/March 2019. Additionally, thirteen news stories on the saree as the official dress code at international events were analyzed, showing that opinions are deeply split and the frames reflected binary oppositions on the issue. While most journalists supported the decision and wrote in favor of IOA, some resenting opinions were also expressed in the interviews. Harpreet Kaur, a sports journalist and former editor of the Deccan Chronicle, questioned the duplicity of this decision: On one hand the IOA replaced the saree at the international sporting events where the entire world watches, while on the other hand all women athletes have to wear a saree as the official uniform at felicitations and award functions (interview, February, 2019). She cites the example of the Arjun awards in 2018 where all women athletes were dressed up formally in red sarees and maroon blazers. News stories tend to frame comfort, beauty, choice, convenience, and freedom through headlines, leads, quotes, and pictures. The saree dominates the headlines, represented as conservative, regressive, and uncomfortable; it not only represents the culture but also illustrates beauty, making the sportswomen look attractive and feminine. It presents the Indian notion of a beautiful dress that is vivid, stylish, and unique, making a pretty picture cutting away from the sporting overalls worn during events, embodying glamour, fluidity, and feminine power. Jwala Gutta, the Indian Olympian badminton player, is a huge advocate, declaring, “I love sarees, I always found sarees very beautiful and elegant” as quoted by journalist Sengar (2018). In a November 2018 interview, basketball player Vidhushi Singh is also reported as liking the saree as the official dress. Sareeto honi chahiye, ek din to beautiful lagte hain (the saree must remain as the dress code, it is this one day that we look beautiful) (Interview November 5, 2018). Female athletes who endorse trousers or call the new uniform “no major issue,” such as international shooter Avneet Sidhu, concede that “the Olympics, Asian Games, and the

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Commonwealth Games may be a once in a lifetime affair, so they are special and that saree is the special dress that makes pictures of the sporting event a beautiful memory” (Interview February 9, 2019).

Framing the Saree: Traditional or Modern? Traditional sports reportage has framed the saree as a carrier of tradition; yet, it becomes problematic for young athletes seeking modernity. The aspirational social order framed by Indian television and films presents western dress as urban, chic, and modern, critically influencing young minds. A decade ago, graduate student girls dressed up in sarees to celebrate special occasions, but today we see a few of them and many in dresses, both short and long—their way of telling the world that they are modern. Clearly, celebrations, special days, and occasions are not so much about comfort or convenience but making a statement about oneself and self-perception. In terms of reinforcing the saree as uncomfortable for international events, consider headlines like these from the Hindustan Times, where the saree is framed as uncomfortable and difficult to wear: • Commonwealth Games 2018: Comfort over convention dominates India’s saree conundrum (February 25, 2018) • No more sarees for Indian women athletes at Commonwealth Games (February 21, 2018) Or, this headline from the Times of India: “Sorry to saree: Finally, Indian women athletes to sport trousers & blazers at 2018 Commonwealth Games,” framing sarees as an unwanted convention. In interviews, both Saumitra Bose, Sports Editor of the Hindustan Times, and Prabhjyot Singh, Chief Editor of the PTC Sports Channel (Interviews 1 and 3, October 2018) used the comfort/distinctiveness binary to reinforce the notion of the saree as (un)comfortable as compared to the new official dress. While responding to the question on IOA’s decision, Saumitra Bose said, “YES. I agree with them. Athletes are more comfortable in trousers and blazers.

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Saree may be traditional but comfort level translates into looks and confidence when you walk” (Interview 1: October 2018). Yet another example of the uncomfortable saree as a frame is found in the opening paragraph of journalist Shweta Sengar’s (2018) article, which begins with an intertextual reference to an iconic Indian film, Chak De India!, where young female hockey players crib about tying a saree for the official dinner: “At official dinner before the World Cup final match, an Indian hockey player tells her teammate how uncomfortable is it to wear a saree on certain occasions, this scene capturing the true sentiments of the players.” The interior paragraph too is littered with phrases like “Finally, the discomfort and the pressure to display culture,” and “It’s comfort over tradition, after all comfort is gender neutral.” This media frame is challenged, however, by Harpreet Kaur, former deputy sports editor of the Deccan Chronicle as she says that, “The saree is a cultural signifier. Athletes represent nations in multi-sporting events and the ceremonial wear must reinforce national identity. As for the game, all athletes play the games in sports wear as assigned” (Interview February 10, 2019). A news report in Sportskeeda, a sports website by Mayank Vora (NS13) about Kranti Salvi, a marathon runner who broke the Guinness world record as the fastest marathon wearing a saree in Berlin, also annihilates discomfort as a media frame. Analyses of news stories show that media describe the saree as a choice of the older generation disliked by millennials. My interviews with players and the journalists, along with their quotes in news stories, showed that teenage athletes and older sportswomen differ in opinions. While young athletes like shooters Avneet Sidhu, Manu Bhaker, Heena Sidhu, and Apurvi Chandela, as well as race walker Khushbir Kaur, are happy with the decision, Khushbir Kaur, 2016 Rio Olympic race walker who represented India at the Olympics, Asian Games, and the Commonwealth Games, was quoted by the news agency Press Trust of India (PTI) as saying, “I would love to wear a blazer; looking from the point of view of comfort, I would definitely love to wear a blazer.” Experienced athletes such as badminton players PV Sindhu and Jwala Gutta and weightlifter Mirabal Channu favored retaining the saree as the official dress because of its distinctiveness and the fact that it symbolizes Indian national

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identity at international events. Channu told me that she would prefer a saree over a blazer as it is our traditional attire. Showcasing our tradition in these big international events is important. There were some notable exceptions. Vidhushi Singh, a young basketball player, differs with her colleagues who found merit in this decision (Interview November 5, 2018). Both P.V.  Sindhu, the 2016 Olympic silver medalist in badminton, and bronze medal winner in wrestling Sakshi Mallik like it, the former saying, “Wearing a saree has a distinctive flavor.” Although the media did not frame the saree as a conveyor of Indian identity, many players and journalists referred to it in their interviews. Vidhushi Singh, a basketball player recalled in an interview how “Fans spot your saree, know that you are Indian, and run towards you for pictures.” On the foreign soil, “Saree becomes India and India becomes Saree” she said, while reiterating the saree as a representative of Indian national identity and culture. Singh wants the saree back at sports ceremonies as “Indian saree at the March Past is a sight in itself ” (Interview November 5, 2018). Rakesh Singh, Associate Executive Producer at Star Sports, brushes aside the IOA argument of modernity and dwells upon how sports internationally must create cultural uniqueness and, “What better than a flowing saree in bright colors on the opening ceremony to create salience in the western world, saree tells the world who we are, how old a civilization we are” (Interview March 12, 2019). Major Pallavi Sharma, a 50-point pistol specialist, also is disappointed with no saree at the international ceremonies, declaring in our interview that, “Saree is our history, we must share it especially when the whole world is watching like the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games” (Interview November 4, 2018).

Conclusions In this analysis of news stories and interviews on decisions to replace the saree in sports ceremonies, attempts to homogenize Indian sports toward a global identity can be inferred. Firstly, uniformly dressed in western formals at international sports events as enforced by Indian authorities

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does not augur well for the cultural uniqueness of a sporting nation. A latent frame was the need to seek approval from the western world with regards to the appropriateness of a dress. The selection of Rohit Khanna of Raymond’s as the official designer for Indian sports at international events underlines the difficulties in wearing a saree, advocating for a unisex dress code promoting the principle of uniformly dressed. Concern is for the effect it may have on the embodiment of a non-western female athlete, meaning Asian women would define their bodies as per norms set in the western world. Adoption of a global female look and body type based on similarity in social aspirations, self-discipline, and lifestyle choices make the homogenization of sports complete. This uniformity in female athlete dresses sharply contradicts sports as a manifestation of national identities. It will only reinforce the hegemony of the cultural elite in sport. The alternative could be to hire designers to address issues of tying, carrying a saree, retaining the flow, embodiment, and aesthetics of the traditional Indian costume. #SportASaree is indicative of the need of an integrated approach in selecting the designers for the Indian sports contingent. Merely skill in designing clothes may not do justice to the relationship a dress has with sports, identity, and culture. This campaign presents the simulation of the dress and the game in order to destereotype both the saree and sports. The saree is not uncomfortable if you liberate yourself from the idea of wearing it in a given way. Within the commonness of the garment, creative flexibilities need to be inserted in draping styles to dispel the fear of discomfort and alienation. Secondly, the critique reveals how sports authorities and the media use the narrative point of view to make it a case of performance versus persona. The two in this case, however, are as totally disconnected as the dress code is just for the opening and closing ceremonies and formal occasions. The contradiction of player comfort as the dominant frame in building the narrative against the saree was highlighted as instances of players attending award ceremonies and official functions. Lastly, a deeper reading of the news reportage brings to the fore how an athlete’s need to assert individual identity is pitted against the national identity, ignoring that sport forms nationalism through fans. Players become national emblems and their individual identity gets subsumed in

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their nationality. The player or the team and the nation are one in times of glory or despair on the field. While comfort and choice of player for the game is to be prioritized in designing sports uniforms (acknowledging specific requirements of tennis, shooting, hockey, wrestling, etc.), ceremonial dress can be seen through a national lens. On the field, all players are homogenized by the game, but the distinctiveness of a ceremonial dress provides an opportunity to present the cultural salience of a geographical entity. It imprints a nation onto the world.

References Bahl, V. (2005). Shifting boundaries of “nativity” and “modernity” in South Asian clothes. Dialectical Anthropology, 29, 85–121. Banerjee, M., & Miller, D. (2003). The sari. Berg Publication. Barrios, O. (2014). Unveiling and subverting hidden meanings: The sari as a creative tool in designing a woman’s identity. In Boolell, Shakuntala, “La femme enveloppée”. Linguistics and Literature Studies, 2(1), 16–28. Belliappa, J. L. (2018). Gender, community identity and norms regarding women’s sartorial choices: Responding to designer Sabyasachi’s remarks on the sari from an anglo-Indian perspective. International Journal of Anglo Indian Studies, 18(1), 3–19. Bhattacharya, S. (2004). Women in sport: The Parsis and Jews in twentieth-­ century India. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 21(3–4), 502–529. Chaudhari, M. (2012). Indian “modernity” and “tradition”: A gender perspective. Polish Sociological Review, 2(178), 277–289. Chishti, Ṛ. K., & Singh, M. (2010). Saree of India, tradition and beyond. Goli Publishers. Guha, R. (1998). Cricket and politics in colonial India, past and present. Oxford University Press. Hogan, J. (2003). Staging the nation: Gendered and ethicized discourses of national identity in Olympic Opening ceremonies. Journal of Sports and Social Issues, 27(2), 100–123. Katiyar, V. S. (2009). Indian saris: Traditions, perspectives, design. Wisdom Tree. Kumar, V. (1994). Evolution of a saree. Retrieved from https://indiacurrents. com/evolution-of-the-saree/.

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Majumdar, B. (2003). Forwards and backwards: Women’s soccer in twentieth-­ century India. Soccer & Society, 4(2–3), 80–94. Mathew, E. (2013, June 26). Reinventing the saree. The Hindu. Moletsane, R., Mitchell, C., & Smith, A. (Eds.). (2012). Was it something I wore? Dress identity materiality. HSRC Press. Ranavaade, V. P., & Karolia, A. (2017). Study of the Indian fashion system with a special emphasis on women’s everyday wear. International Journal of Textile and Fashion Technology, 7(2), 27–44. Seippel, Ø. (2017). Sports and nationalism in a globalized world. International Journal of Sociology, 47, 43–61. Sengar, S. (2018, February 27). Sorry to saree: Indian women athletes to sport trousers and blazers at 2018 Commonwealth Games. Hindustan Times. Sheth, F. A. (2009). The hijab and the sari: The strange and the sexy between colonialism and global capitalism. In M. Roelofs (Ed.), Contemporary aesthetics (vol. 2). Singh, A., & Kenneth, S. R. (2014). A study on workplace attire in Indian corporations. International Journal of Engineering Technology, Management and Applied Sciences, 2(4), 37–47. Sinha, C. (2018, November 27). Is saree an aspirational symbol? India Today. Tarlo, E. (1996). Clothing matters: Dress and identity in India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Walvin, J. (1984). Sports, social history and the historian. British Journal of Sports History, I(1), 5–13.

Part III Socio-Cultural Perspectives

Chapter 7: The Portrayal of Women’s Sport and Fitness Attire on Instagram: A Thematic Content Analysis of #sportwear and #fitnesswear Melissa deJonge, Amy Nesbitt, and Catherine M. Sabiston

Introduction According to objectification theory, self-objectification occurs when females internalize societal standards of physical attractiveness and appearance (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997). Self-objectification manifests as persistent body monitoring (ibid.; Moradi and Huang 2008) and is associated with a variety of negative outcomes including: • Body shame (Noll and Fredrickson 1998) • Heightened risk for disordered eating (Slater and Tiggemann 2010a)

M. deJonge (*) • A. Nesbitt • C. M. Sabiston Kinesiology and Physical Education, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 L. K. Fuller (ed.), Sportswomen’s Apparel Around the World, New Femininities in Digital, Physical and Sporting Cultures, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46843-9_8

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• Depression and anxiety (Grabe et al. 2007) • Decreased self-esteem (Oxman and Denmark 2017) • Decreased cognitive performance (Guizzo and Cadinu 2017) Self-objectification can occur within social interactions and through engaging with social media (Daniels 2012; Fredrickson and Roberts 1997). Indeed, self-objectification through posting images on social media is particularly popular and content analyses consistently demonstrate that a high proportion of women are depicted in ways that over-­ value their appearance and body (Deighton-Smith and Bell 2017; Toffoletti et  al. 2018). The high prevalence of objectifying content on social media is concerning as researchers suggest that exposure to sexually objectifying social media is directly related to the internalization of beauty ideals, self-objectification, and body-surveillance (Vandenbosch and Eggermont 2012) As such, it is important to understand how social media content may endorse self-objectification and unhealthy appearance-­ based ideals. Notably, Instagram is the most popular image-focused social media platform, and has become the second most popular social networking site behind only Facebook worldwide. Instagram is a photo and videosharing platform where users can actively post and socially interact with other users. The hashtag (#) is critical to the sharing capabilities of Instagram. A hashtag is a keyword or phrase used to describe a topic or theme. When a user searches a hashtag, a page featuring the most recent and popular posts that contain the hashtag is displayed. In this way, hashtags have given rise to the capacity for individuals to globally share and discover content through a symbol that links different communities together through the use of a common phrase or keyword. This means that anyone in the world who searches a hashtag is directed to a search feed that displays similar content globally. Of particular interest is the widespread popularity of the generation and consumption of fitness and sport content on Instagram (Boepple and Thompson 2016; Carrotte et al. 2015; Creedon 2014; Fox and Duggan 2013). Sport and fitness cultures endorse, and are both generally influenced by, societal standards of appearance and body ideals, even if they

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perpetuate such standards in different ways (e.g., Lunde and Gattario 2017; Powell and Fitzpatrick 2015). Fitness culture focuses on health, cardiovascular well-being, and body-building, with specific attention given to diet, food, body weight, and representations of fit bodies (Andreasson and Johansson 2013; Jong and Drummond 2016; Raggatt et al. 2018). On the contrary, sport cultures often emphasize the importance of having a body that is strong, fast, and agile (Lunde and Gattario 2017). While fitness cultures often emphasize appearance (Aubrey and Hahn 2016; Willis and Knobloch-Westerwick 2014), sport cultures are suggested to integrate both aesthetic and functional views of the body with an emphasis on functionality rather than appearance (Frisen and Holmquist 2010; Greenleaf et  al. 2009). Nonetheless, the functional body has been predominantly reserved for the portrayal of male bodies, whereas appearance tends to be the prevailing focus for females (Carrotte et al. 2017; Sherry et al. 2016). Sport and fitness cultures are therefore considered conceptually distinct, yet overlapping content in how these cultures are represented on social media may be blurring the distinction (Carrotte et  al. 2017; Geurin-Eagleman and Burch 2016; Prichard et al. 2018).

The Current Study The objectified and appearance focused nature of sport and fitness is thought to be endorsed by poses and model/body characteristics, but also by tight and revealing clothing (Prichard and Tiggemann 2005; Steinfeldt et  al. 2013). While previous research has examined media images of females in fitness and sport, empirical research regarding the portrayal of fitness-wear and sportswear is limited. Specifically, little emphasis has been placed on understanding how fitness and sport cultures are portrayed on social media and particularly through clothing. Clothing is an important avenue for research and discussion as it is proposed as an additional way to socialize objectification and functions to express one’s identity (e.g., gender, age, social class; Goodin et al. 2011). This is particularly salient on social media where the emphasis is on visual representation. Exploring the language and connotations associated with fitness-wear

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and sportswear may further our understanding of appearance-based ideals and self-objectification in sport and fitness. Given that females are more commonly objectified in sport and fitness (Carrotte et  al. 2017; Sherry et al. 2016), the primary objective was to further understand the representation of female sportswear and fitness-wear. As such, a content analysis was completed on the visual and textual content associated with the hashtags #fitnesswear and #sportswear on Instagram. Based on research suggesting that fitness may promote appearance-based ideals more so than sport (e.g., Lunde and Gattario 2017; Powell and Fitzpatrick 2015), a secondary objective was to compare differences in the portrayal of sportswear and fitness-wear.

Methodology Content was selected from images posted on the user-generated photo-­ sharing social media platform, Instagram. The site was searched for any image marked with the #sportswear hashtag and the #fitnesswear hashtag. The hashtags were searched independently on August 8, 2018, to yield separate results. Consistent with previous methodologies (Boepple and Thompson 2016; Ghaznavi and Taylor 2015) and predictions for thematic saturation, 600 images were selected for analysis (i.e., the first 300 fitness-wear images that appeared and the first 300 sportswear images that appeared). All photographic content and associated photo captions/ descriptions were included in the analysis. For images that met inclusion criteria, but included non-English textual content, the visual content of the image was included for coding. Overall content category. Images were first coded based on overall content category people, clothing, or other. Photos with a clear emphasis on one individual were subjected to more detailed analysis on gender, physical characteristics, action, objectifying pose, clothing, and the content and implied intention of the written content. Gender. To understand the representation of females compared to males, people were coded based on gender. Given that the primary objective of the analysis was to understand the representation of female

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­ tness-­wear and sportswear images containing males were excluded fi from further analysis on physical characteristics, action, and objectifying pose, clothing, and written content. Physical characteristics. Physical characteristics included the physical build and degree of visible muscular definition displayed in the image. The individual’s physical build was coded based on three categories: (1) thin slight frame (i.e., slight frame with no visible fat), (2) normative (i.e., medium frame with moderate level of visible fat), and (3) larger frame (broad frame with a high level of excess fat). The degree of muscular definition was coded based on four categories: (1) none (no level of visible musculature), (2) visible definition (moderate level of visible musculature), (3) high-level definition (physique revealing attire and highly defined musculature), and (4) no visible muscular definition (i.e., clothing or framing covered the view of the body). Action and objectifying pose. The action and the individual’s objectifying pose were coded to understand the context associated with the image and the objectifying nature of the pose. The action of the individual was coded based on four categories: (1) engaging in a fitness activity (i.e., visibly participating in a sport or fitness activity), (2) posing in athletic clothing in an athletic setting (i.e., wearing athletic clothing and posing in the gym or sporting environment), (3) posing in athletic clothing in a nonathletic setting (i.e., posing in athletic clothing outside of gym or sporting contexts), and (4) posing in nonathletic clothing in a nonathletic setting (i.e., posing in clothes not typically designed for sport or fitness outside of the gym or sporting contexts). The individual’s pose was also coded for the presence or absence of elements of objectification: (1) a specific body part was the focus of the image, (2) posing in a sexualized manner (e.g., alluring/sultry gaze, winking, or arching), or (3) individual’s head and/or face was absent or not clearly visible. Clothing. Clothing was coded based on the type, size (i.e., revealing), and objectifying nature of the clothing. Clothing type was defined as either: (1) athletic clothing (i.e., clothing functional for exercise such as lycra, spandex) or (2) non-athletic (i.e., clothing not typically designed for exercise; e.g., jeans, dresses, and other street clothes not functional for the gym or sport). The revealing nature was coded as (1) unrevealing

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(i.e., no body parts were emphasized), (2) slightly revealing (less than 50% of the body was exposed), (3) revealing (more than 50% of the body was exposed and/or a specific body part was emphasized), and (4) bathing suit/lingerie. The separation of this latter code was to limit any potential over-coding based on these two clothing pieces that are intended to be minimal coverage. The presence of objectifying clothing was coded if (1) it revealed a sexualized body part or (2) emphasized a sexualized body part. Sexualized body parts included the chest, waist, buttocks, and legs. The content and implied intention of the written content. English captions were coded based on whether the text was neutral (e.g., joke or emoticon), promoted aesthetic-based fitness content (e.g., appearance motives to engage in sport or fitness), performance-based fitness content (e.g., accomplishing performance goals), unspecified fitness content (e.g., post was related to fitness but did not emphasize appearance or performance), or if the captions were unrelated to fitness (e.g., the post had inspirational content was but unrelated to sport or fitness).

Coding Reliability Two different researchers independently coded 25% (n  =  150) of the sportswear data and 25% (n = 150) of the fitness-wear data and the lead author coded all images. Inter-rater reliability was calculated and ranged from moderate to high for sportswear and fitness-wear.

Results Category Content In fitness-wear, the categorical content of the 300 images were primarily individual people (85.2%), followed by clothing (7.7%), other (2.4%), group photos (3.0%), and duplicates (1.7%). After excluding images of clothing, other images, group photos, and duplicates, 253 images remained. In sportswear, the categorical content of the images associated

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with the hashtag sportswear (n = 300) were primarily of people (79.7%), followed by clothing (17.7%), and other (2%). Images primarily contained original content (0.6% were duplicates) and focused on individuals as opposed to groups (4.7% were group photos). After excluding images of clothing, other images, group photos, and duplicates, 225 images remained.

F emale Representation in Sportswear and Fitness-Wear In the fitness-wear images, females (73.5%) were significantly [χ2 (1, 252) = 126.3, p