As a young gymnast, Aimee Didierjean was always conscious of making sure her underwear wasn’t showing on the competition floor. A peek of a bra strap, or briefs if a leotard rode up, would cost a gymnast points in her routines.
“When I was growing and going through puberty, it was hard finding a bra that wouldn’t show through your leotard and having to wear a G string at a young age,” says Didierjean, who went on to represent New Zealand in artistic gymnastics.
Now she’s welcoming an overhaul of Gymnastics New Zealand’s attire rules that allow gymnasts in all codes to wear shorts or leggings over their leotards, and won’t penalise athletes for visible underwear when they compete in New Zealand. They’re changes that may help keep girls and young women in the sport longer.
“It can only be a positive change,” says Didierjean, now a gymnastics judge and an athlete advisor.
“Females in sport have always battled with societal norms every day. With shorts and leggings now able to be worn, or having your bra strap showing and not being deducted for it, it will help steer away from that toxic culture of body image and stereotypes.”
The changes, across all five gymnastic codes including trampolining and aerobics, have been introduced to make gymnasts – most of them young females – feel comfortable and safe while they’re competing.
“We’re acknowledging all the different body shapes our athletes come in,” Didierjean says. “And the changes also help promote healthy growth because some of our athletes are quite young and their bodies are developing. We want them to be able to compete while they’re on their period and be confident in the fact they won’t have to worry about what they’re wearing.”
Gymnastics New Zealand chief executive Andrea Nelson hopes relaxing some of the strict and “a little archaic” regulations around attire will keep young Kiwi women in the sport.
A 2021 Sport New Zealand study on female teenagers revealed many were dropping out of sport and active recreation because they felt uncomfortable in some uniforms.
Last year, Gymnastics NZ surveyed almost 300 gymnasts around the country to find out what they wanted in a uniform.
“Most of our young athletes say they feel fantastic in their leotard – they love it, and it’s a massive part of their competition experience. But some don’t feel comfortable in them,” Nelson says.
“We’re just making sure that wherever you are in the sport, you have the choice. So no one feels uncomfortable or excluded.”
Revolutions in other sports
Gymnastics NZ’s changes align with a new research report from Massey University into the role of national sports organisations (NSOs) in the design of their female uniforms.
Dr Rachel Batty, lead researcher for the School of Sport, Exercise and Nutrition study, says the main message from the research was the importance of communication and liaison with female athletes in each sport.
“If the uniform decisions have been made without any discussion or negotiation with the athletes, then maybe there’s a gap there that needs to be considered,” she says.
Of the 26 NSOs in the study, more than a third felt decisions about female uniforms should predominantly lie with the athletes (which was in line with the gymnastics survey).
Over 80 percent of sports were aware the style aspects of their female uniforms were affecting athletes’ confidence or anxiety. And more than half of the NSOs said they’d then made changes to their female attire. But three sports said they were ‘unsure’ if their current uniforms were impacting their female athletes.
Among the sports organisations that have made changes is Tennis NZ. After hearing their 11 and 13-year-old girls didn’t like the singlets of their uniform – the gap under the arm made them self-conscious – they switched the girls’ uniform to t-shirts.
Bowls NZ have introduced a skort to their women’s high-performance team’s playing outfits, and different lengths of shorts.
Snow Sports NZ have determined their uniform designs should be athlete-led, and if an athlete “felt that they looked good, they [felt] good, and therefore had confidence to perform better.”
Traditionally male-dominated sports – like rugby, league and softball – have all worked on ensuring the female uniform, particularly at the top of their sport, is now specifically tailored to fit the female form.
“There are some sports still in that mindset of ‘well, we predominantly have male participants and male athletes, therefore, the women can wear what the men do’,” Batty says.
The study showed every sport is unique, she says, and there’s a “very complex list” of considerations NSOs must go through when considering changes to their uniforms.
Understanding what female athletes want through communicating with them is at the top of the list. Then there’s practicality and safety – in the case of Rowing NZ, loose-fitting clothing could be dangerous in a boat, and athletes in ski racing must wear tight-fit suits to be streamlined for racing downhill. Squash players, though, preferred a more relaxed fit in their uniforms.
Colour is a major consideration, with white and light-coloured clothing an important issue for female athletes, especially around menstruation.
The Football Ferns requested black and teal shorts – instead of the conventional white – for last year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup. NZ Cricket are encouraging clubs to move away from cricket whites for girls. Equestrian NZ are steering away from fawn or white riding breeches because of female athlete concerns about the visibility of blood.
“A lot of sports brought up they were aware of the confidence and self-consciousness of female athletes wearing white when they have their period,” Batty says. “But a lot mentioned sweat as well, and what happens to the fabric when it’s wet.”
Cost and availability of uniform changes are also considerations, and the influence of international governing bodies and their uniform regulations.
“Overall we had a very positive set of results and outcomes with this,” says Batty. “The majority of sports were saying, ‘Look, we’ve started to make changes or we have made changes’. And some others were like, ‘Well now that you’ve mentioned this, it’s probably something we should do’.”
She believes Gymnastics NZ could be used as a successful case study if NSOs decided to work together and compare their approaches.
Short changed
Shorts were first allowed for female gymnasts in New Zealand in 2020 – incidentally before the wide-ranging independent review of the sport.
But there’s been some confusion around the shorts rule among clubs and competitors, so Gymnastics NZ decided to overhaul all competition attire rules across the five gymnastic disciplines.
“We realised while the rules had been changed in some codes, it hadn’t necessarily been clearly understood and implemented consistently,” Nelson says. “So we thought why don’t we do this properly, and actually ask people what they want? Then try to do it.”
At last year’s national championships in Tauranga, where the theme was ‘athlete voice’, there was a drop-in area where athletes could give their feedback on what kind of clothing they liked to wear in competition.
“There was one poster that asked, ‘How does your leotard make you feel?’ and one young woman wrote, ‘Like a superhero’. Beneath that, another athlete wrote ‘Disappointing’. And I think that combination of words was really impactful for us.”
Gymnastics NZ then emailed all their community with similar questions, and took their findings to the sport’s technical committees for guidance.
“We needed to understand why the rules are the way they are. In some cases, there were safety elements to the rules,” Nelson says. But they found the regulations around underwear were “unevenly applied… and a little archaic”.
“We’ve had a few parents whose daughters were in real distress because their coaches were telling them if they wore the wrong sort of bra and their bra strap showed they would be penalised. When you’re a young girl going through puberty, it’s a really challenging time already. That sort of thing shouldn’t be happening – so we’ve now made that very clear in the new regulations.
“We now have one set of clothing guidelines for trampoline athletes, regardless of their gender, because they’re doing the same thing on the same equipment.”
The new rules are only for gymnasts competing in New Zealand – they don’t apply to international competitions, governed by FIG regulations.
“It’s important our athletes realise you might not get a point deduction for your bra strap showing in aerobics in New Zealand, but you might in an international competition,” Nelson says.
The clothing changes are part of a wider effort to keep athletes – especially young women – in gymnastics.
“We’re so focused on that as a sport, listening to how we can make it a better environment for people to stick at whatever level they want to be at. The competition attire is part of it. But none of the things we’re doing on their own will make that difference,” says Nelson, who has a working group looking at appropriate training loads for athletes at different ages and stages.
“I hope all of the changes we’ve been putting in place over the last few years will build an environment that achieves that.”
