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The Tokyo Olympics 2020 began with Mirabai Chanu winning Silver in Weightlifting for India. Congratulations to her and this medal-starved country!
Mirabai's achievement reminded me of Karnam Malleswari, who became the first Indian woman to win an Olympic medal when she bagged Bronze in the same sport at the Sydney Games in 2000. Her historic win was what got me interested in Olympic sports early on.
So, I want to take this opportunity to talk about women's sports, though not about the usual our-women-have-talent-but-lack-opportunity problem as you may expect.
On 25 July, the German female gymnastics team wore full-body leotards instead of the usual bikini-cut leotards – which have been prevalent for decades.
It was a statement against 'sexualisation' of women gymnasts as their male counterparts get to wear comparatively body-covering clothes of loose shorts or long pants.
In 2018, Larry Nassar, a former US Gymnastics national team doctor, was sentenced to prison for 176 years for sexually abusing hundreds of gymnasts, including some of the well-known sportswomen.
Earlier, in July, the Norwegian women's beach handball team was fined for wearing shorts instead of the bikini bottom uniforms prescribed by the International Handball Federation (IHF).
These women had deliberately broken the rules to highlight the double standards in the uniforms. While the IHF requires women to wear bikini bottoms no longer than four inches on sides, the men are allowed to wear shorts as long as four inches above their knees.
Beach handball isn't the only game with discriminatory uniform rules. Women are required to wear more revealing outfits in several sports, including track and field, beach volleyball, badminton, and tennis as well.
Heartwarming as these gestures are, it will require more than a few altruistic champions of freedom to put an end to the rampant exploitation of women.
So, what's the rationale behind this disparity? When asked, an IHF spokeswoman said that she doesn't know the reason for such rules.
However, the real intention behind this discrimination was laid bare when the Badminton World Federation in 2011 decreed that women must wear skirts or dresses to play at the elite level.
How did we reach here?
Here's a short primer: Women joined the workforce in droves to fulfil the labour requirements generated by the industrial revolution in the late 18th and early 19th century.
However, it wasn't possible to exploit women's femininity and sexuality for male libido and wallet, without them first shedding their natural inhibitions.
Thus began an effort to encourage women to 'liberate' themselves from social and gender norms. A value was created in the deliberate acts of sexual rebellion, including risqué clothing.
These efforts managed to find resonance with the feminist movement.
Consider the irony: Women who fought for their dignity in society, by demanding equal wages and the right to vote, were losing their dignity in beauty pageants, advertisements and cinema – where men continue to dictate the terms and women don't have much of a choice. And all of it happens in the name of women empowerment.
That's also the reality of women's sports. The feminist movement did get women to compete in spectator sports, but they are as much about athleticism as they are about their sexuality.
Google the names of some of the famous sportswomen and you'll get a large number of search results that have nothing to do with their sporting exploits and are only in service of male sleaziness.
And this aspect of female athletes is as valuable to the sponsors and organisers as their prowess on the field.
And since the usual male uniform was proving to be a hindrance in the way of complete objectification of women, they changed them to skimpier outfits that have no relevance either to weather conditions or the sport itself.
It's a challenge for the proponents of feminism to not let their ideals be hijacked for the commodification and exploitation of women. It requires a much forceful denunciation of all the forms of discrimination.
It also requires them to acknowledge their complacency in consciously and unconsciously enabling the degradation of women.
And above all, it requires a new discourse beyond the language of rights and personal choice.
(Musab Qazi is National Secretary at Students Islamic Organisation of India (SIO). He has previously worked with the Hindustan Times. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the authors’ own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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