Here's a shot of the men's and women's teams in their official sanctioned uniforms. Spot the difference.
Make the men wear budgie smugglers, I say. In the hellhole that is twitter, someone made that suggestion, only for a bunch of responses to fly back talking about how they didn't want to see some dude's package, that's gay.
That's such a powerful photo for showing sexism in sport.
If the women are required to dress like this, then the whole sport is saying: we do not want you to play this sport if you are not thin, attractive, and non religious. What happens if a conservative christian woman wants to play? or a Muslim woman? Or simply, a fat woman. I would be incredibly self conscious of my rather abundant kummerspek being on display like this. I know it's internalised fat shaming to say that noone wants to see my 100kg of fat dyke wallowing around in the sand.
The fact that the men can wear such baggy clothing is just adding insult to injury. There are sports where the clothing you wear can actively improve your performance (cycling, skating, swimming come to mind). But I'm pretty sure that is not the case for handball.
At risk of bringing this into cycling, something that some people find off putting about cycling is the belief that you need to be wearing skin tight lycra to be able to take part. I know I've cycle past groups of teenage boys who have laughed at my ample mass bulging from the largest size shorts I could buy. There was a really interesting post from one of the rapha 100 women women yesterday about what she wears to ride. She doesn't wear rapha tights, or assos, or any of the big names, but some unnamed brand off ebay, cos they are the only company she's found that make very light summer cycling tights that she can wear. I'll let you work out which of the 100 women this was. Interestingly, while they did take the preformative act of making a colour coordinated Hijab to wear, they didn't follow through by making it available as a product for general public to purchase (or if they did, I can't find it on their website).
We talk a lot about how to encourage more women to partake in cycling and in sports in general. And you know what? it's bullshit like this that's stopping them. Girls play sports almost as much as boys do right up to about the point they become teenagers, and then it drops off dramatically. Bullshit dress code rules for many sports are part of that. Even netball requires skimpy dresses... As for Tennis whites... ARGH.
Remember, every woman responding to this thread on this forum is cycling not because of the environment the cycling community and sport has created, but in spite of it.
J