The Provocation-Purpose Uniform Paradox

aka How Gymnastics Became the Thirst Trap of Women's Sports

Jan 24, 2025

There’s a particular incivility that comes with having to pick your underwear out of your ass. Or a swimsuit. Or a leotard if you're a female gymnast. For cheerleaders, it's a cover-up pantaloon called ‘briefs’ or ‘shorties’ worn underneath the skirt and over the underwear.

So immodest is the act of picking a wedgie, it just isn’t done. At least not in front of the judges or the fans. And, if you’re a super badass, unwritten-rule-follower, not even in front of your teammates.

The cheeks will be out on any given weekend during NCAA women’s gymnastics season this winter—from starting salute to finishing salute, through every tumbling pass and split leap in between, and with step-by-pointed-toe-step as the gymnast walks off the floor to greet her gym mates with their team-specific celebration ritual.

So entrenched are the wedgies, so resolute the gymnasts to NOT pick them, social media accounts have ‘black-boxed’ or blurred gymnasts’ asses when replaying highlight clips.

PHOTO: MY BOXED-ASS EDIT OF LIVVY DUNNE IG POST

Now you have the answer to this random sports trivia question: What do gymnasts and the women of The Bachelor have in common? Subjective censoring.

When a female athlete picks a wedgie, the tsk-tsk stays with her forever—preserved on her score sheet and etched into the judgmental memory of whoever saw it. It's one form of institutionalized sexualization faced by "light-body" sports such as gymnastics, ice skating, and cheerleading. Olympic skater Gracie Gold describes it in her memoir Outofshapeworthlessloser as "offputtingly prudish."

Please do choose sensual music, wear costumes that reveal your lithe figure, and paint your face with MAC makeup. But do not pick your wedgie…under any circumstance.

Be sexy, but have manners.

Be comfortable with your body being judged, but not so comfortable you forget you’re being judged.

It's the sports version of a peep show. And we’ve all bought into the voyeurism.

But no female athlete should have to put their butt on the line.

This wedge between proper and porny did not always exist in women’s sports but has evolved with fashion, function, and female empowerment during the past 100 years of Olympic and college competition. In 1928, when women began competing in Olympic gymnastics, uniforms looked more like your great-grandmother’s bloomers—a plain-colored, one-piece jumper with slightly puffed sleeves and boxy, Bermuda-type shorts with full seat coverage.

But, as the sport’s pendulum swung from more artistic to more acrobatic, gymnasts required more freedom of movement, and the leotard was birthed. By the time Nadia Comaneci won All-Around in 1976, and the average age of gymnasts dropped from the mid-20s to 16, leotards were altered to highlight the clean, nimble lines of the juvenile form. They were tight but still simple in construction and adornment—long sleeves, modest necklines, flag colors, with full briefs underneath. Think Danskin, not Flashdance. More Sandy, less Rizzo.

Major evolution happened in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Nadia’s Romanian coaches emigrated to America and ushered in a power-driven era of tumbling-centric gymnastics. More flexible and functional fabric was required to accommodate the new tricks and fit gymnasts' more muscular physiques. New fabrics and construction techniques also allowed for more bling to showcase the country’s Olympic darlings (sparkly stars!) and their rippling abs (shiny stripes!). As the average height of gymnasts fell to ~5’, the leg cut inched higher to present the illusion of longer legs and peep strong hips, and the material was slightly shaved off the rear to play up their strong glutes. The butt dimple just peeked out, but no cheek. Briefs, like Wonder Woman in her high-cut, full-bottom blues, still saved the day.

As we entered the ‘00s, gymnastics became more influenced by pop culture, with swimwear becoming a leading gymnastics fashion indicator. Compression fabrics helped keep the athletes tight. Adornments, including up to 3,000-4,000 crystals per outfit, custom colors and patterns, and multi-material custom designs, encouraged uniqueness in the increasingly crowded field of elite competitors (and pushed the price per uniform above $1000!).

Butt appreciation reached its peak—or valley, in this case—as thong and ‘cheeky’ bikinis became mainstream. NCAA gymnastics programs loosened their uniform codes, and suddenly, underbutt was oversaturated.

The wedgie situation cracked into the mainstream in the lead-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Many elite gymnasts had competed in college after Rio in 2016 but returned to elite for an Olympic run, where they brought their cheekier preference to bare on the global stage.

I participated in corporeal consumption, as researchers call it, at the 2024 Olympic Trials in Minneapolis, which I attended last July. The warmup leotards were itty bitty. The competition leos a tad more modest. Waning gibbous cheeks, craggy hip bones leading into the deep trench of crotch, nearly revealing the lowlands.

What has stayed the same over the past 100 years--besides men’s gymnastics kits (shorts and stirrup pants over a singlet) and cheer uniforms (straight-fit pants) have remained the same since the dawn of competition?

Bras. Gymnasts still wear a standard wireless bra with a back clasp, albeit with transparent or skin-toned straps.

Party on the bottom, purity on top.

The irony of gymnastics and cheer competition uniforms is that they barely resemble what cheerleaders and gymnasts wear to practice. Enter a practice gym, and you’ll see girls of all ages in sports bras or leos and tight Nike Pro boy shorts. If competitions have become PG-13, practices are G-rated.

When I was an elite gymnast in the early to mid-90s, we wore boxers over our leotards—not the ‘boyfriend boxers’ that sell today for $50 on the back of the nostalgia ‘90s fashion reboot. No, we bought men’s boxers and rolled the waistband over two, three, or four times. My mom and I spent non-gym weekend hours scouring stores for boxers that matched my leotards. I had a more extensive collection than my brother, father, and boyfriend(s) combined, rolled neatly into rainbow rows in their own drawer.

When I cheered in high school and college through the '90s, Under Armour hadn’t yet created its tight booty shorts, and ‘shorties’ hadn’t become mainstream. Boxers were too flimsy for stunting. Instead, we wore the ever-popular and widely available $10 Soffe shorts, waistbands rolled down to expose the white elastic. Like boxers, they were available in every color. The maroon and gold we sported to represent the University of Minnesota at college cheer camp or our many official appearances were part of the school’s Champion apparel deal.

Under the Soffes, we wore granny panties or practice briefs. Some girls, me included, wore thongs under the granny panties or briefs. Why? A buttload of reasons. I’ll share the most important three. The first was practical: *that* time of the month when a little leakage could become a big embarrassment without a layer of extra absorption. The second was self-esteem: most girls were uncomfortable with the exposure of competition or game-day uniforms. The third, well, I’ll vague and let you fill in the gaps as to why an additional layer of fabric over the crotch might be sensible: a stunt called a ‘Chair Sit,’ where the Base (boy) lifts the Top (girl) over his head, supporting the ankle of the Top with one hand and her bottom with the other hand. One finger slip, and…

Once gymnasts or cheerleaders leave the sport, I’ve found that most revert to a G-rating. There seems to be an inverse relationship between active athletes’ ass coverage and former athletes' underwear preferences. By the age of thirty, few of us still wear thongs. By forty, it’s full-coverage brief underwear with silicone edges to lock the seal. Or (and) smoothing briefs. Or (and) built-in biker shorts anywhere they can be sew in—shorts, skirts, skorts, dresses. You couldn’t pay us to wear 'cheeky' swimsuit bottoms. I am confident that none of us pick a wedgie. Because we don't put ourselves in the situation to get one.

Bottom line? There is no ‘performance’ benefit from an exposed ass.

So, if gymnasts and cheerleaders don’t practice in the same thing they wear for competitions, and men are allowed to wear shorts and pants, what is the benefit of wearing an audience-mooning PG-13 uniform?

Surprisingly, female uniforms and the sexual objectification they represent is a hotly reported and researched topic of a highly intersectional issue within the complex systems and structure of modern sports. This rich and interesting topic warrants a few more deep dives. We’re talking hegemonic masculinity, self-objectification, sexualized labor, media cultivation theory, financial valorization, athlete commodification, spectacularization of bodies, othering, sports as cultural identity, subliminal activism, and more. The list of impacts and consequences of the current state of female uniforms is long.

Longer than the side seam of a gymnastic uniform, for sure.

And particularly impactful on young female athletes. In a butt-ugly, devastating way.

For now, a hot Reddit thread that has almost 7,000 answers will give us their TL;DR:

Normalization: For gymnasts, wearing a standard, code-informed competition uniform has always been the norm. Some would even say it helps ritualize competition and create team unity. For judges, it helps to calibrate the field by reducing the number of subjective elements.
Commercialization: For gymnasts, uniforms are a way to monetize a sport for which they receive no pay via endorsement deals. Some gymnasts, like Aly Raisman and Simone Biles, have leveraged their success into exclusive leotard lines; the US National Team has even worn Simone’s line at international competitions. Other gymnasts, like Livvie Dunn at LSU, have leveraged how they look in their uniform into swim, athletic wear, and other body-driven endorsement deals. Yet other gymnasts, especially Olympic team members or marquee college gymnasts, appear in uniform in non-sport endorsements. For brands, they reach women with gymnasts’ girl-next-door credibility and men with gymnasts’ lady-in-waiting fantasy.
Validation: For marquee gymnasts, their input is solicited from uniform partners like GK Elite, who replicate aesthetics increasingly influenced by couture fashion, citing celebrities, celebrity designers, and the Met Gala as drivers of the more provocative uniform elements. This association with high fashion helps widen and elevate gymnasts’ non-sports platform. Media gets more soundbites to broaden the conversation beyond athletic publications, elevating the sport’s profile and giving luxury fashion brands international attention. Uniform brands get to extend their equity beyond functionality and extend sales as they reproduce for the masses (albeit with more modest measurements for the Youth line).
Sexploitation: For media, butt-baring uniforms guarantee eyeballs, which in turn guarantee advertisers. Advertisers guarantee revenue. Sometimes—but only rarely—ad revenue is shared with gymnastics governing bodies (ex., USA Gymnastics for elite or Big Ten Conference for college), which helps fund the sport, whether directly through travel, uniforms, or coaches' salaries or indirectly via services like mental health or nutritional support. While some gymnasts have questioned the sexualization of the sport by media and brands, some believe that the current uniforms celebrate their athletic bodies. Tails they’ve worked off over years of effort in the gym. Yet others point out the hypocrisy of current uniforms, given the hyper-sexualized environment uniforms could have contributed to, as the more provocative critics would cite, sexual abuse such as the Larry Nasser case.

And then there is the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) Code, which governs global competition, including the Olympics. Section 2.3.2 of the 2022-2024 Women’s Artistic Gymnastics Code re: attire. The points related to the ass are strict yet also leave a little wiggle room.

a) Must wear a correct sportive non transparent leotard or unitard (one piece leotard with full length legs-hip to ankle), which must be of elegant design. She may wear complete leg coverings of the same colour as that of the leotard; under or on top of the leotard.
c) The leg cut of the leotard may not extend beyond the hip bone (maximum). The leotard leg length cannot exceed the horizontal line around the leg, delineated by no more than 2 cm below the base of the buttocks.

Violations of the Code range from 0.3-1.0-point deductions during individual or team events. Judges can dock a further 0.1-0.3 points for ‘adjusting uniforms,’ including picking a wedgie.

The US’s governing body for elite gymnasts, USA Gymnastics, goes even further. Its attire regulations for bottoms state, “Gymnasts should not intentionally have underwear…visible during their entire routine.” If briefs peek out repeatedly during a routine, the gymnast will get a single-event warning. If it happens again, she’ll get a major deduction on the next event.

Cheer and ice skating regulations are similar in terms of restrictions and consequences. Clearly, judges are allowed—if not encouraged—to be as hot and bothered about the current ‘sportive’ uniforms as fans.

What’s a girl to do? Well, some use double-sided fashion tape. Or skin glue, Hold Up being the brand of choice. However, neither tape nor glue has endorsement deals with gymnasts or cheerleaders. Most simply free the cheeks to CYA from the possibility of ‘peek-a-boo’ deductions.

But what if it’s not just a run-of-the-mill, seam-in-buttcrack, PG-13-rated wedgie but an X-rated wedgie? One that must be picked not only to restore comfort but for modesty under threat of an FCC fine for ‘obscene, indecent, and profane content.’

Let me introduce the Full Equator Wedgie.

In my first year cheering at the University of Minnesota, our football team went 4-7. More often, we cheered for the time clock to wind down than for a Gopher touchdown. In October, Michigan came to play in the Metrodome, and we were slaughtered 44-10. By that point in the season, the student section was laughable. Only a few fraternities reliably showed up; Beta was always shirtless and full of liquid courage in the front row. They knew all our cheers and dances. They made the games somewhat bearable.

My stunt partner also made the games fun. He had involuntarily retired from football after an injury and savored every moment he could remain on the sidelines via cheerleading. He'd swapped shoulder pads for wrist tape, tights for pants, hitting guys to throwing girls. He used his megaphone for play-by-play analysis like an ESPN commentator. The Betas loved him.

So did I, until the Michigan game.

During the fourth quarter, our exhausted defense held Michigan to a field goal, which warranted a big response from our squad: school song, stunt line, basket tosses. By the end of the prolonged celebration, I'd been tossed up, down, and sideways, and when I returned to my spot on the line, I realized I had a Full Equator Wedgie. You've heard of a nip slip? This was a lip slip.

I had turned my back to the student section and was about to arrange my pom-poms in such a way I could peel the offensive briefs out of my crotch without notice when another huge cheer came from the Betas behind me. Nothing was happening on the field, so I pivoted forty-five degrees to scan the jumbotron for the source. The crowd got even louder. I searched for my partner, hoping he'd fill me in on the cause. Turns out he was the cause.

When I spun the last forty-five degrees toward the crowd, I felt a breeze under my skirt. My partner had used his megaphone to lift my pleated curtain and had given the crowd a VIP screening of my X-rated peep show, much to the delight of the Betas.

There was no modesty left to be had. I did the uncivil thing and, with a swift mini squat, plucked my briefs from their fleshy disgrace.

That night, the Betas hosted a huge Halloween party and talent show. A few of the upperclassmen impersonated the dance team, using official dance team uniforms complete with briefs. I watched, in my thrifted ‘naughty brownie’ costume, as a redhead who sat front and center at football games twirled in front of me, a testicle hanging out. The dance team girls who’d loaned the uniforms acted as judges; they did not deduct any points.

Uniform changes are happening, albeit slowly. Turns out it takes big balls to challenge the code and confront the culture. In 2021, a study in New Zealand revealed many pubescent gymnasts were leaving the sport out of fear of sexualization, and they adjusted their competition attire code to allow shorts or leggings. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the German gymnastics team wore full-length unitards as a protest against sexualization and as a plea for more body autonomy.

After receiving strong support from other countries, FIG adjusted the code in 2022—as reflected above—to allow unitards, which had the secondary effect of bringing more religious inclusivity to the sport. But these changes won’t be embraced until one of the more influential governing bodies or headlining gymnasts gives the gymnastics community a kick in the butt.

Other sports, such as beach volleyball, have attempted to remove gender bias from the sport by allowing female athletes to wear the same competition uniforms as male athletes. And some influential athletes, like Serena Williams in tennis, have pushed the limits with non-traditional uniforms. In both specific cases, the tests failed. Women’s volleyball players reverted to bikinis, which was their choice. The USTA forced Serena Williams back into a skirt, although she rebelled by wearing a tutu.

After the Trials and unform chatter picked up again in gymnastics circles, I was anxious to see the kit for the 2024 Olympics. Would they be designed for performance or profit? For the mission or the male gaze? Would they be more pervy than pure? Would they serve the latest fashion or the more altruistic cause of inclusivity? Would a marquee gymnast like Simone Biles leverage her leotard deal with GK Elite, the selected US Team partner, to design a range of uniform options that give gymnasts a choice to deviate from the norm, claim agency, and champion bodily autonomy on the most commercialized global stage of their lives? As GK Elite has claimed, could they do it by “having leg lines that don’t ride up, overexpose a gymnast, or make them feel uncomfortable?”

When Nike revealed the Olympic women's track and field kit, some declared the 2024 Olympics slogan: ”Sun’s out, buns out!” I wondered how many full-equator wedgies we'd see in Paris.

"I see London, I see France..."

For the first time, USA Gymnastics and GK Elite revealed the Olympics leos before the Games. This video gives a good preview of the uniforms and the context of the importance of a big reveal. See the designs below and rate the maturity level: G, PG, PG-13, or R. Tell me your rating below in the comments!

The Provocation-Purpose Uniform Paradox

aka How Gymnastics Became the Thirst Trap of Women's Sports

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