This article in Odyssey about how women runners at Rowan University were forbidden from running in only their sports bras seems like it should be a spoof in The Onion. It’s real. The university’s response was half-hearted, though ultimately the no-sports-bras-in-practice policy will be rescinded.
How much longer will we be having these conversations? After the brouhaha this summer over the ridiculous outfit policing by the tennis powers (which we wrote about on this blog), causing grief to Serena Williams (Let Women Wear What They Want and Serena Williams and the multiple ways of policing black women’s bodies) and Alize Cornet (Is Tennis Trying To Win a Chauvinism/Misogyny Award?), how is it possible the university administrators at Rowan forgot? Or did the news never even reach their ears?
Every time this happens, I am grieved by the lack of respect for women and their bodies. Men are responsible for their own lack of decorum and inability to contain their impulses, not us!
A sports bra is not provocative. It is comfortable. It is practical. It makes us feel strong and capable and empowered.
Oh … maybe that is provocative … because it provokes fear?!
Do you workout in sports bra only?
I don’t work out in just sports bras but I’m not exactly modest when I’m done. I keep in my bike jersey while riding for sun protection as much as anything but on the bike rally when we pull into camp off comes the jersey and I wander around in a sports bra until I cool off. One time someone informed me, as if I might be concerned, that I’d walked behind the TV crew filming the rally and so I was on TV in a bright pink sports bra. I smiled but I didn’t care. There were lots of shirtless men. It’s weird.
Me neither–though this sort of makes me want to take off my shirts more. I do have to admit that I’m not a fan of men running shirtless, so maybe I need to think about why and rethink that.