5 Things That Are Just as Unimportant to Talk About as the Clothing Female Athletes Are Wearing at the Olympics

olympicssexism
It’s no secret that this year’s Team USA female athletes are total badasses. We’ve written blogs on them and been inspired by their stories and their perseverance. So why is it that too many times when I see a female athlete covered in a news article we’re talking about their clothes?!
I mean, REALLY folks?! These are powerful and accomplished women and girls who have worked their tails off to compete at the Olympics to bring home gold medals for the United States and yet the most important thing we can think to highlight is their leotards or their appearance??

For anyone else out there who may be just as frustrated as me, don’t worry. I have created a list of five other news worthy things going on at this year’s Olympics that are just as uninteresting as those patriotic uniforms

  1. Pokémon Go is not available to play at the Olympic Games.
  2. People Snap-chatted the opening ceremony rehearsal, even though they weren’t supposed to.
  3. The mascot of the games is an adorable hybrid of a bunch of Brazilian animals and is named Vinicius
  4. The Brazilian mountain Pao de Acucar translates to “bread of sugar.”
  5. In order to take the perfect selfie in Rio, you should “try different angles.”

Think that these five developments are uninteresting or irrelevant to the athletes competing at the games? Well, so are the leotards and track suits the women on Team USA will wear. So why are we talking about them so much? And more importantly why aren’t we talking about the speedos or track suits that the men on Team USA are wearing?
When we focus on the appearance of our female athletes we are reducing them to just that and are significantly undercutting their accomplishments.
Just as it would be ridiculous to spend half an article about the Rio games on the translation of Pao de Acucar, focusing an article on the clothing female athletes will wear or their “looks” is equally as ridiculous and does a huge disservice to the time and work these women devote to their sport.
Don’t get me wrong, those Team USA gymnastics leotards and Team USA uniforms are fabulous, but I believe that the female athletes sporting them are equally as fabulous and that their accomplishments deserve the ink in a news article – not their garments.

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