From The Daily Mail:
Women handball players in Spain are up in arms over a ‘sexist’ rule that stipulates that their midriffs must be exposed while playing on sand.
European Handball Federation regulations also insist that bikini tops and bottoms should have a maximum width of 10 centimetres. The rules for male players are far less rigorous, with players allowed to wear clothing that is ‘loose and long’...
“[It] infringes on principles of equality, it’s sexist and it puts the appearance of the players before their technical capabilities,” Izaskun Bilbao, Member of the European Parliament for the Basque Nationalist Party said.
The Basque Women’s Institute told the Spanish edition of Huffington Post that the rule seemed to be in place ‘so that girls’ bodies lure people to the sport’. Spain’s main sports council slammed the rules as ‘sexist’.
The row flared up after the Spanish Handball Federation was told last weekend that 21 of 22 women’s teams playing in a tournament in Cantabria were wearing team kits that covered up the body too much, according to The Leader.
Friday, 11 July 2014
Great bit of satire in The Daily Mail
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8 comments:
It'll be funny if they win this. All their sponsors and TV coverage will vanish overnight. You might even see the IOC dropping the sport from the Olympics.
TS, maybe the IOC will replace it with mud wrestling?
10cm seems positively generous when you compare it to the prescribed kit for the womens' Olympic volleyball:
'The top must fit closely to the body and the design must be with deep cutaway armholes on the back, upper chest and stomach.[...] The briefs should be a close fit and be cut on an upward angle towards the top of the leg. The side width must be maximum 7 cm.'
It would be interesting to know what kind of presumably protracted and certainly expensive decision-making process was needed to arrive at this final choice of attire and who had the final say.
Ooops! Should, of course, have read womens' beach volleyball, a sport where the fact that the Benny Hill theme is played between points might at least give participants an inkling of why their kit should be described in such meticulous and heavy-breathing detail.
The Basque Women’s Institute? Didn't they knit woolly jumpers for Franco's forces in the civil war?
IH, no, they distracted the oppostion troops by walking around wearing basques.
"deep cutaway armholes on the back, upper chest and stomach"
That is some weird garment. No armholes where the arms are, one on the back, one on the front and one exposing the breasts. I suppose it would sort of work if you put it on sideways and upside down.
Reminds me of a French minister's justification for banning the burqa in public.
According to him, it is an affront to French cultural values, where women should be wearing as little as possible, not covering up their assets.
Got the love the French for getting their priorities right.
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