Friday, May 27, 2011

"[A] more female aesthetic.” (by res ipsa)

Badminton has a new dress code:
To create a more “attractive presentation,” the Badminton World Federation has decreed that women must wear skirts or dresses to play at the elite level, beginning Wednesday. Many now compete in shorts or tracksuit pants. The dress code would make female players appear more feminine and appealing to fans and corporate sponsors, officials said.
And I did not know this, but apparently lots of Muslim women play badminton, so ...
Women will still be allowed to wear shorts or long pants for cultural and religious reasons....
Well, that's nice.
...But these garments must be worn beneath a dress or skirt, which could be cumbersome.
Possibly cumbersome. Definitely sexist.

Back in the day when I first started to work in offices, the boss (a woman), issued a memo saying that women must wear pantyhose. Remember hose? Ick. They were itchy. They were hot. They were expensive. (Leggs would have taken a chunk out of the $14,000/year I was earning at the time.). One brave assistant (there were about twenty of us, all but one female) approached the boss who wouldn't relent. Then she approached H.R., which was a joke. And so she told everyone she was headed downtown to have a chat with the E.E.O.C. ... and the memo was immediately rescinded.

Doubly aggravating about the badminton thing is that Federation isn't even bothering to mince words. They're instituting the rule because they want the players to look like babes so as to attract (male) fans and corporate sponsors. The End.

Just as an aside, I'm never going to misspell "badminton" again.