Women athletes have said that Nike's Team USA track and field kit for women is “needlessly revealing and sexist,” after the brand unveiled its outfits for the Paris Games, according to Ewing & Reid of REUTERS. Images made public on Thursday of the women's kit “on a mannequin, showing a very high-cut pantyline, triggered criticism from several athletes for what they saw as a decision to prioritise skimpiness over function.” U.S. runner Colleen Quigley said the uniform is "absolutely not made for performance.” Nike said that it was “offering athletes unitard options with both a brief and a short for this Olympics,” whereas it “only offered the brief for the Tokyo Olympics.” Nike-sponsored U.S. pole vaulter Katie Moon in a post on X said that the kit shown on the mannequin was “concerning,” but added that “women athletes are given many options on what to wear, and that she prefers briefs to shorts” (REUTERS, 4/13).
A CERTAIN PREFERENCE: In N.Y., Vanessa Friedman wrote the two uniforms Nike chose to single out on the mannequins included a "men’s compression tank top and mid-thigh-length compression shorts and a woman’s bodysuit, cut notably high on the hip.” It “looked sort of like a sporty version of a 1980s workout leotard.” But as it was displayed, the bodysuit “seemed as if it would demand some complicated intimate grooming.” Nike Chief Innovation Officer John Hoke pointed out that the company "consults with a large number of athletes at every stage of the uniform design.” Friedman noted there are “certainly runners who like the high-cut brief.” What Nike “missed, however, was that in choosing those two looks as the primary preview for Team U.S.A., rather than, say, the matching shorts and tanks that will be also available, it shored up a longstanding inequity in sports -- one that puts the body of a female athlete on display in a way it does not for the male athlete” (N.Y. TIMES, 4/12).
HITTING A NERVE: The WALL STREET JOURNAL’s Rory Satran wrote the high-cut bikini “appears to have struck a nerve, with athletes and commentators wondering why it even exists.” This particular design has "some scratching their heads.” Runner Katelyn Hutchison said, “It doesn’t seem like a woman was in that room advocating for that short strip of runderwear to go across our private parts.” Quigley said, “It feels like what the athlete wants and what the athlete needs was not the No. 1 priority” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 4/12). THE ATHLETIC’s Tess DeMeyer reported two-time U.S. champion distance runner Lauren Fleshman “ripped into the uniforms in a post on her Instagram account.” She wrote, “Women’s kits should be in service to performance, mentally and physically. If this outfit was truly beneficial to physical performance, men would wear it.” The post continued, “This is not an elite athletic kit for track and field. This is a costume born of patriarchal forces that are no longer welcome or needed to get eyes on women’s sports” (THE ATHLETIC, 4/12).
