Last week, Nike revealed a handful of uniform designs for the Paris Olympics, where the sportswear company will be outfitting a wide slate of American and international competitors. The designs for Team USA’s track-and-field runners included a unitard with a high-cut bikini line that was widely criticized by female athletes who called it the latest instance of women’s sports uniforms prioritizing sexualization over function.
Here’s what to know about the controversy.
What does the unitard look like?
Nike debuted a handful of U.S. Track & Field looks during its Nike Air Innovation Summit in Paris, where 40 of the brand’s signed Olympic athletes modeled designs. (Also shown: a Brazilian-flag-themed soccer jersey, a vintage look for the U.S. women’s basketball team modeled by A’ja Wilson, and pink-and-blue tie-dye for the skaters.) The full collection will be shown in New York this week at a U.S. Olympic Committee media summit.
But the outfit that received the most attention was not modeled on an athlete at all. Photos circulating online show a mannequin at the event wearing the unitard in question: a red, white, and blue-striped garment with a bikini line high enough that some female athletes questioned how anyone could reasonably compete in it.
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How did people react?
When images of the mannequin emerged, some of the loudest critics were female professional athletes themselves. In the comments section of Citius Magazine’s Instagram post spotlighting the team kit, Olympic long jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall wrote, “wait my hoo haa is gonna be out.” Hurdler Queen Harrison Claye tagged European Wax Center, writing, “would you like to sponsor Team USA for the upcoming Olympic Games!? Please and thanks.” Paralympic runner Jaleen Roberts added, “This mannequin is standing still and everything’s showing … imagine MID FLIGHT.” Steeplechaser Colleen Quigley, one of Team USA’s 2024 medal hopefuls, told Reuters the unitard is “absolutely not made for performance.”
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Lauren Fleshman, a retired runner and coach, criticized Nike’s unitard as another misstep. “This is a costume born of patriarchal forces,” she wrote. “Stop making it harder for half the population.”
What does Nike say?
Nike has pointed out that the unitard isn’t the only option the brand is offering female runners. During the event, Sha’Carri Richardson modeled a unitard with compression shorts, while hurdler Anna Cockrell and middle-distance runner Athing Mu both wore brief separates that seemed to offer much fuller coverage. The brand’s “chief innovation officer,” John Hoke, told the New York Times that designers created “nearly 50 unique pieces” for the U.S. track-and-field teams, including “a dozen competition styles fine-tuned for specific events.”
In an e-mail to Reuters, a Nike spokesperson said that, unlike for the Tokyo Olympics, where the only unitard option had briefs, the brand was offering runners unitards with shorts as well. Nike also claims tailors will be on hand for Olympic and Paralympic athletes. USA Track & Field, which runs the selection process for Team USA, told Reuters that athlete options were “the driving force in the planning process with Nike.” Hoke too told the Associated Press that Nike worked “directly with athletes throughout every stage of the design process.”
Pole-vaulter Katie Moon, who is sponsored by Nike, defended the brand on Twitter and Instagram, where she wrote that the mannequin was “concerning” but that women have “at least 20 different combinations” of uniforms to compete in and that the men’s designs are available to them too. Moon added that because skin-baring clothing isn’t the only option offered to female athletes, calling it “sexist” is “ultimately attacking our decision as women to wear it.”
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