The Strange New Rules For Women’s Sports Coverage

The European Broadcasting Union just dropped new guidelines telling cameras how to film female athletes. No more low angles from behind or beneath. No prolonged close-ups of body parts. No slow-motion replays that don’t “contribute to the understanding of the sporting action.” All in the name of preventing the “sexualization” of women on screen.

I reject it. I think it’s stupid. 

These guidelines treat ordinary athletic movement as inherently suspect when it comes from a woman. A low angle under a high jumper or pole vaulter isn’t automatically pornographic. It’s often the best way to show the height and the technique. Slow motion isn’t automatically leering. It’s how we see elite skill and athleticism. 

When we decide that certain shots of women require special moral scrubbing while the same shots of men are just “good television,” we are not protecting women. We are reinforcing the idea that their bodies are the problem.

Film athletes playing their sports. That’s it. That’s the job. Capture the leap, the strain, the power, the precision, the moment she clears the bar and the moment the finish line breaks. 

Do it for the men. Do it for the women. Same cameras. Same angles. Same standards. 

The idea that we need a special rulebook because women’s bodies might make someone somewhere have a thought is exhausted, condescending nonsense.

What’s next? Hijabs and total body coverings for female athletes so no bad men get distracted? 

For years there have been cries to change the uniform for gymnasts — the leotard — to something more demure. But that is the uniform for good reason. I know this firsthand. I was a gymnast. The 1986 U.S. National Champion, in fact. The leo, as we called them, provides the most comfortable, least interfering outfit for an athlete flipping and flying through the air. Nothing gets caught on the bar or the beam. Nothing flies over the athlete’s head. Anything looser would be dangerous. If it covers the legs, it’s a problem on bars, where the thighs hit the bar for casting to handstand. Anything covering the legs can be slippery against the fiberglass in a way that skin, covered in chalk, is not.

The leotard exists because it works. It is functional. It is the tool that lets the athlete do her thing at the highest level. Just like the swimsuit. Should swimmers not wear bathing suits now because they are too revealing and show women’s bodies? 

The argument in gymnastics always comes up when a pedophile coach is arrested. Like it is somehow the athlete’s fault that he’s a sexual assaulter and abuser and serial rapist. It’s her outfit, you see. It’s the “what was she wearing?” approach. No. Just no. 

It’s his fault for abusing young girls. Whoever he is. Larry Nassar, Don Peters (the 1984 Olympic coach now banned from the sport for allegedly assaulting three gymnasts) — the list of gymnastics creeps goes on and on.

While of course nothing should be gratuitous in shooting female athletes, we don’t need separate rules for men and women. Film the athletes. Film what they do: their athleticism, their feats, their leaps and jumps and strength and flair.

Should athletes be offered more modest uniforms if they prefer? Sure. Why not. But we don’t need to upend the world of sport so that pervy men don’t perv. I’ve got news: Pervy men are gonna perv no matter what. You can dress every female athlete in a potato sack, and the creeps will still find a way to ogle. The solution is not to hide the athlete. It is to stop treating her body as the story and start treating her performance as the story.

I spent a career in a sport where the uniform is skin-tight for good reason. I know what it feels like to have people fixate on the outfit instead of the work. The answer was never to make us cover up. The answer was to demand that people look at the gymnastics. Look at the performances on bars and beam and floor exercise. Look at the amazing thing that a remarkable athlete just did. And, yes, rid the sport of pedophile coaches and instate a governing body that actually cares about its athletes. 

These new guidelines treat women’s bodies as the problem. The irony, of course, is that in the name of protecting women’s sports, they implement silly camera guidelines while these same broadcasters won’t take a stand to ensure women’s sports are actually for women only. 

Give us our sports back. And stop the special rules. Stop the pearl-clutching about athletic uniforms. Film the athletes. All of them. The same way. Their bodies are not the scandal. Their excellence is the point.

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Jennifer Sey is the CEO of XX-XY Athletics. She is an author, filmmaker, and retired national champion gymnast.

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