{"id":41082,"date":"2011-11-03T12:23:12","date_gmt":"2011-11-03T17:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=41082"},"modified":"2015-09-19T23:32:17","modified_gmt":"2015-09-20T04:32:17","slug":"female-boxers-may-be-required-to-wear-skirts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/11\/03\/female-boxers-may-be-required-to-wear-skirts\/","title":{"rendered":"Female Boxers May Be Required to Wear Skirts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Ms.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

According to a BBC News story<\/a> sent in by Leiana S. and Kinesiology professor Mary Louise Adams,\u00a0the International Boxing Association may soon require female boxers to wear skirts. \u00a0The President of the Association,\u00a0Dr. Ching-Kuo Wu, argues that it will allow viewers to tell the difference between the men and the women who currently wear the same uniforms, including headgear. \u00a0Right now the skirt is an optional variation on the official uniform but, Dr. Wu says, “After we hear about its comfort and how easy it is to compete in the uniform, it may be compulsory.”<\/p>\n

At the European Championships in Rotterdam last week, female boxers from Poland and Romania adopted the new uniform. \u00a0A coach of the Poland team said: “By wearing skirts, in my opinion, it gives a good impression, a womanly impression.”<\/p>\n

\n

This might be an example of officials assuming that (1) men are the main audience for boxing and that (2) men will watch women’s boxing more if they differentiate\/sexualize women.<\/p>\n

It might also, however, be an\u00a0example of an attempt to retrench difference between men and women exactly when those differences start to dissolve. \u00a0Discomfort with the lack of actual <\/em>differences between men and women sometimes leads individuals to encourage or enforce artificial <\/em>ones. \u00a0I would say that this is one of the main functions of clothes today. Yeah, I said it. I think\u00a0exaggerating\u00a0what are actually rather weak and strongly overlapping differences between men and women is one of the primary functions of clothes.<\/p>\n

In any case, it’s probably a combination of both.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year they tried this with Badminton, but it didn’t take<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The idea that female athletes aren’t sufficiently feminine has been around as long as sports have been around. \u00a0Today, the feminizing of athletes is ubiquitous. \u00a0See\u00a0our posts on Serena Williams\u2019s\u00a0ESPN<\/em> cover<\/a>, Candace Parker \u201cis pretty, which helps<\/a>,\u201d press photos of female athletes in dresses<\/a>,\u00a0groundbreaking female sailor is also pretty<\/a>,\u00a0sexualizing female Olympic athletes<\/a>,\u00a0diets of champions<\/a>,\u00a0media portrayals of female athletes<\/a>, and\u00a0valuing dads in the WNBA<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at Ms. According to a BBC News story sent in by Leiana S. and Kinesiology professor Mary Louise Adams,\u00a0the International Boxing Association may soon require female boxers to wear skirts. \u00a0The President of the Association,\u00a0Dr. Ching-Kuo Wu, argues that it will allow viewers to tell the difference between the men and the women who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[279,225,55,2096,2093,8092,108],"class_list":["post-41082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-objectification","tag-clothesfashion","tag-gender","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-objectification","tag-gender-sports","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41082"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67923,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41082\/revisions\/67923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}