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"Female Athletes in Skirts: Let the Panting Begin" by Heather Mallick published on Wednesday May 2, 2011 in the Toronto Star.

Heather Mallick, a staff writer at the Toronto Star, wrote this wonderful article after her editor (male) asked her to write a column on the "badminton skirts" issue. She started off the article by empathtically proclaiming that the 2012 Olympics has "officially become a girlie show" and that "The news that the dress code for badminton players will be skimpy skirts for the women and shorts for the men is good for the odd little men with their hands in their pockets in the stands, but bad for the rest of us." Love it.

The article did far more than lay out the badminton skirts issue, it went on to include a very brief, and quite hilarious, description of the gradual sexualization of all women's sports- from beach volleyball, to gymnastics, to badminton, to- you guessed it- lingerie football.

Here is my favourite excerpt from the article:

I write as a feminist who wears only skirts and dresses. But for badminton, I wear shorts because anything else would be gross. You don’t want to see your mom trying to bat a shuttlecock out of a hornbeam with her skirt flying upstairs. That would be sexualizing badminton. It would be wrong.

We sexualize everything nowadays. Nigella Lawson did it to baking, reality shows did it to life. It’s as if bodies now have arrows pointed at their junctions — “sexy time!” as Borat would say with a dental gleam — and instructions on how to shave and shape them, dress them with a flourish and sell them for big money.

Follow the money. The money trail leads to underarms, crotches, breasts and toes, anything that cleaves and hides. After flippy badminton skirts come see-through spandex pole-vaulting corsets. I see track shoes with mirrors on the toes, I see England, I see France, I see badminton’s underpants. Anything to make a buck.

The regular followers of this blog will be well aware of both our views on "badminton skirts" as well as on lingerie football. The way that Heather ties these issues, and related issues together are simply perfect.

She is also able to whittle all of this ridiculousness of women playing sport in their underpants down to what may very well be the underlying issue- money. It is far easier to sell "women's sports" by putting the gorgeous, fit, athletes in bras and panties than actually marketing them for what they are. This is incredibly frustrating for me and my group as there is an ever increasing number of women and girls that participate in athletics and would love to watch women's sports for what they are. Do leagues/sponsors/federations not realize that this group, and the families that support them, are a completely under serviced audience just dying to have a female sport that they can get behind without having to look at a peep show?

When will the leagues/federations learn that marketing women's sports to men by having them play in half naked states is turning away the real fan base of these sports- women and girl athletes and their families that support and respect them.

How many men do you think would watch golf if the men had to play in their underpants (see image left). Men are the main audience of men's golf.

Putting Tiger and Phil in their knickers may get more women to tune in out of curiosity (or not) but it certainly would not impress or expand upon the traditional fan base of the sport.

But for now, we are left with, in the words of Heather Mallick "I see England, I see France, I see Badminton's Underpants."


The complete article is available online here: http://www.thestar.com/sports/article/985861--mallick-female-athletes-in-skirts-let-the-panting-begin

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This post is related to an ongoing story:

• Badminton federation requires female players to wear skirts

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