Why Are Women’s Uniforms in Track and Field High-Cut?

(Japanese article)

(Added Dec. 20, 2022: Rereading this, even I find parts of it unsettling. It seems to reveal some distortions in my own way of thinking.)

This article is a personal memorandum about racing shorts, racing briefs, high-cut uniforms, and athletic uniforms more generally.

I watched the following video on YouTube:

T&F Women’s Heptathlon Long Jump https://youtu.be/jMnWJAUNPd8

Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@japaneseathletevideos4044 (The mosaic processing was added by the author of this article.)

The video and the channel that uploaded it contain footage of female track-and-field athletes, and some of the camera angles struck me as sexually motivated. Even apart from those angles, while watching the video I felt that I myself was sexually attracted to the female athletes (updated May 30, 2026: “it seemed that a sexualized way of looking at them arose in me”). I am deliberately stating this internal reaction here, although I return below to the question of whether there is anything morally wrong in expressing such an internal reaction.

In recent years, the sexualized gaze directed at female athletes has increasingly been treated as a problem. Looking at this video, however, the uniforms themselves seemed to me as though they might have the effect of “unnecessarily arousing or stimulating sexual desire” (wording revised Jan. 24, 2024 from the stronger claim that they “have” such an effect).

Why, then, have women’s track-and-field uniforms taken this form?

With respect to two-piece uniforms, many explanations emphasize performance improvement. See, for example, Number Web, “Why Do Female Track-and-Field Athletes Wear Two-Piece Uniforms? The Vileness of Sexualized Image Capture That Tramples on Their Efforts”: https://number.bunshun.jp/articles/-/846814

What I could not find at the time, however, was a satisfactory explanation of why the bottoms needed to be so high-cut. One Yahoo! Chiebukuro answer referred to hip-joint mobility: https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q11232529681

If one assumes that the high-cut design improves performance, another question arises: why are men’s competition uniforms generally not similarly high-cut? One possibility is that a women’s-style high-cut garment would fit the male genital anatomy poorly and therefore become markedly less functional. If so, it might be unfair to regard the absence of high-cut men’s uniforms as puzzling in itself.

The Japan Association of Athletics Federations (JAAF) Technical Rule 5.1 has required athletes to wear clean clothing designed and worn so as not to be objectionable; the material must not become transparent when wet, and the clothing must not impede officials’ ability to judge the competition. Under the 2022 rules, I wondered whether a high-cut garment worn by a male athlete would itself be regarded as “objectionable.” More broadly, uniforms are surely affected by ordinary social conventions concerning dress. They therefore exist within gendered conventions as well. It may be that female athletes are assigned more “feminine” uniforms, and that “high-cut” styling forms part of what a given culture understands as feminine dress.

Another commentator has put the commercial explanation more bluntly: by appealing to male viewers, sports can attract attention, sponsors, and television-rights revenue, and sports uniforms have historically reflected such commercial pressures. See: https://president.jp/articles/-/48470

How much, then, might male sexual desire have entered into the process by which high-cut designs became established?

My own initial intuition was that the influence of a gendered social convention — roughly, “it is normal for women to wear high-cut garments, but strange for men to do so” — was more plausible than a direct motive such as “men want to see women in high-cut clothing.” In a hypothetical parallel world in which high-cut garments were normal for men, perhaps men’s track-and-field uniforms would also have developed in that direction.

Even if that were so, however, a further question arises: might the high-cut style itself have historically been shaped by male sexual desire? Or might it have become fashionable because it emphasized a culturally defined form of “feminine beauty,” including sexual attractiveness, by accentuating the curves of the hips? At that point, male and female perspectives may be intertwined rather than separable.

Suppose, as a hypothesis, that high-cut styling designed to emphasize “feminine beauty (including sexual attractiveness)” entered athletic uniforms under the influence of gendered social conventions. If so, it would hardly be surprising for male observers to perceive that same “feminine beauty (including sexual attractiveness).” Even if the design was not originally intended to serve that purpose, I had the impression that a high-cut garment can function visually in that way, and therefore that observers may find sexual attractiveness in it.

Is it therefore morally wrong for a man to look at a female athlete wearing such a garment in a sexual way? At minimum, if the garment has some capacity to evoke sexual attractiveness (working hypothesis, Aug. 25, 2026), then the emergence of sexual desire itself may be something one cannot simply choose not to experience. (Added Aug. 25, 2026: Feeling sexual attraction, or having a sexual response arise spontaneously, is not wholly a voluntary act of choice.) I had regarded this as parallel to the spontaneous sexual response a man might experience on seeing a woman in revealing clothing on the street. At least with respect to whether the response arises at all, the wearer’s intention is not decisive.

That said, I do not think it follows that one should express such sexual arousal toward the person concerned. A female athlete may be wholly focused on competition and have no intention of displaying sexual attractiveness, and sexualized comments or conduct may understandably offend or burden her.

(Added Sept. 29, 2025: The same distinction applies more generally. A man may spontaneously experience sexual arousal when he sees a woman in revealing clothing in public, but expressing that arousal toward her may be ethically objectionable or harmful to her feelings. Clothing is one form of self-expression, and sexual signaling is only one possible function among many. Someone may simply be wearing a favorite brand. Being subjected, while going about one’s day, to intense sexual scrutiny by strangers would often be deeply unpleasant — though, of course, people differ in how they experience attention.)

This leaves a peculiar situation: a person may internally experience sexual desire while being expected not to express it toward the person who elicited it. How should we evaluate that? I originally thought the issue required further analysis.

(Added Sept. 29, 2025: On reflection, there may be nothing especially unusual about this. Modern social life is full of situations in which people restrain impulses and refrain from expressing them. Still, people differ in their capacity for self-control. My earlier phrase that “holding a person who cannot control himself morally guilty is only one possible way of thinking” was too compressed.)

(Added Aug. 25, 2026: What I meant by “one possible way of thinking” was not that responsibility should be rejected. Social and legal systems generally proceed on the assumption that people possess some capacity to regulate their desires and actions, and responsibility is assigned on that basis. Yet capacities for self-control differ, and the question of what degree of control is sufficient to ground moral or legal responsibility is not a self-evident law of nature. It belongs to broader normative and philosophical debates about free will, agency, and responsibility.)

Summary of the original memorandum

I began with a simple question about women’s track-and-field uniforms, especially high-cut bottoms. At the time, I did not arrive at a firm answer, but the questions themselves became somewhat clearer. I therefore ended the original memorandum there.

(Added Jan. 9, 2025: On looking into the subject again, I found that the Wikipedia article on “high-leg” garments also contains a number of potentially relevant historical observations: https://w.wiki/4Xnr.)

Added May 19, 2025 — Mai Murakami on leotards, sexualization, and athlete choice

An interview with former Japanese artistic gymnast Mai Murakami contained a relevant exchange. See Bunshun Online, page 4: https://bunshun.jp/articles/-/78644?page=4

The interviewer noted that there had been concern that wearing leotards itself may place psychological pressure on gymnasts.

Murakami replied that when athletes train only among themselves she does not think about it much, but when she becomes conscious of being watched by large numbers of people, she does feel embarrassment. When photographs or articles are presented in a sexualized way in online news, or sexual comments reach athletes directly through social media, she described it as producing a feeling that she herself was being worn away. She emphasized the potentially enormous psychological burden on younger athletes.

Asked about the German team’s decision at the Tokyo Olympics to compete in full-length unitards rather than traditional leotards, Murakami welcomed the increase in available options. She expressed hope that such changes might reduce sexualized reporting and voyeuristic photography. At the same time, she also observed that the traditional leotard can make the limbs appear longer, improve the visual impression of a routine, and flatter the athlete’s physique. In her view, the issue therefore requires balance and careful consideration rather than a single mandatory uniform type.

She also referred to measures such as encouraging non-transparent fabrics and regulating photography at competitions, as well as the continuing problem of sexualized comments on social media.

This interview is not about track-and-field uniforms and should not be treated as direct evidence about racing briefs. It is nevertheless relevant to the broader problem considered here: an athlete may simultaneously value the aesthetic or functional characteristics of a revealing competition garment and experience sexualized attention as burdensome. Those two facts are not contradictory.

2026 Addendum — Why Are Racing Briefs More Common Among Female Track-and-Field Athletes Than Among Male Athletes?

(Added Aug. 25, 2026)

When I wrote the original article in 2022, I was unable to find sufficient evidence explaining why female track-and-field athletes so often wore highly cut bottoms that exposed substantially more of the upper thigh and hip than typical men’s competition bottoms. I therefore raised several possibilities — athletic function, the history of sportswear, gender norms, and sexualized spectatorship — largely as hypotheses.

Since then I have been able to examine official rules, studies of female athletes, reviews of sports clothing and performance, research on the embodied experiences of female athletes, historical advertisements and catalogues from the late 1960s onward, the 2024 controversy over the U.S. Olympic track kit, rules on photography at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, and 2026 broadcasting guidelines. Taken together, these materials make it possible to say considerably more precisely what is unlikely to explain the sex difference and what factors appear more plausible.

For convenience, I use “racing briefs” or “brief-style bottoms” below for the high-legged competition bottoms often worn by women. “High-cut” remains useful as an ordinary descriptive term, but it is not a precise technical category and encompasses multiple cuts. Nor should historical terms such as track briefs, competition briefs, and bikini briefs from the 1960s and 1970s automatically be assumed to refer to garments identical in cut and coverage to contemporary racing briefs. The historical sources directly establish the existence of product categories and marketing language; continuity of exact shape and actual rates of use require separate evidence.

1. Female athletes are not required by rule to wear brief-style uniforms

The first important point is that current track-and-field rules do not require women to wear racing briefs or two-piece uniforms.

On April 26, 2023, the Japan Association of Athletics Federations (JAAF) published an official explanation of uniform rules. It stated that even in relay races at national-level competitions, athletes on the same team may use different uniform types provided that the design and color scheme comply with the applicable requirements. Examples included singlets with running shorts, racing tops with racing tights, two-piece uniforms, and one-piece uniforms. JAAF explicitly encouraged athletes to choose the uniform in which they can perform most effectively and asked coaches to create an environment in which individual athletes can choose among uniform types.[1]

The 2026 JAAF version of Technical Rule 5.1 likewise regulates matters such as cleanliness, opacity when wet, and whether clothing interferes with officials’ ability to judge the competition. It does not require women to wear briefs.[2]

Accordingly, at least in contemporary Japanese athletics, the prevalence of racing briefs among women cannot be explained by a rule requiring them.

This matters because it sharpens the original question. If the difference is not imposed by formal competition rules, why do men’s and women’s competition clothing nonetheless tend to look so different?

2. How far can the “performance” explanation take us?

One obvious explanation is function. A garment with less fabric around the upper thigh may allow freer hip movement and may feel cooler or reduce rubbing and bunching.

There is some evidence for this account.

In July 2026, Runner’s World interviewed several female track-and-field athletes about why they race in briefs. The 800-meter runner Emily Richards said she preferred briefs to spandex shorts because they felt less restrictive around the hips in an event that requires powerful knee drive. Other athletes referred to shorts riding up, rubbing, interfering with leg lift, or feeling hotter.[3]

Such testimony should not be dismissed. It shows that at least some women actively prefer racing briefs for functional reasons. It would therefore be inaccurate to explain every instance of women wearing briefs as something imposed on athletes by men, manufacturers, or spectators.

Nor is the pursuit of mobility in women’s sportswear new. Sports historian Amanda Schweinbenz notes that at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, when women’s track-and-field first entered the Olympic program, six Canadian women cut the sleeves from their tops and wore shorter running shorts than many of their competitors in order to free their arms and legs.[4] Thus, functional motives for reducing fabric in women’s competition clothing can be documented at least as far back as the early Olympic period.

But this does not establish that women are faster in racing briefs, or that women require greater exposure than men for scientific reasons.

A 2022 narrative review by Isaiah Di Domenico, Samantha Hoffmann, and Paul Collins examined 32 studies on sports clothing, thermoregulation, comfort, and performance in the heat. Results were mixed, study designs varied, and the literature was strongly male-dominated: 72% of the reviewed studies included only men, 16% only women, and 12% both sexes. None of the four mixed-sex studies directly compared clothing effects between men and women. The authors themselves identified sex comparisons as a research need.[5]

Two propositions must therefore be distinguished.

First, some individual female athletes prefer racing briefs for reasons such as mobility, rubbing, heat, or comfort. Existing testimony supports that proposition.

Second, women as a class need brief-style bottoms more than men for athletic-performance reasons, and this biological or biomechanical advantage caused the sex difference in uniform design. I have not found adequate empirical evidence for that stronger proposition.

In other words, performance considerations can plausibly explain why sportswear becomes lighter, tighter, and less restrictive. They do not by themselves explain why that process has so often produced briefs and high leg openings for women, while men more commonly wear shorts, half tights, or unitards.

3. What the 2024 Nike controversy shows

The controversy surrounding the U.S. track-and-field kit unveiled before the 2024 Paris Olympics is particularly instructive.

Nike presented a very high-cut women’s one-piece design that drew criticism from several female athletes. Reuters reported objections from athletes including steeplechaser Colleen Quigley, who questioned whether the revealing design had truly been optimized for performance.[6]

Yet it would also be inaccurate to describe the episode simply as a case in which women were forced to wear a revealing design they uniformly disliked. Nike offered multiple competition options, including versions of unitards with brief-style and short-style bottoms, and athletes were to receive individual fittings. Some women also preferred briefs.

The 2026 Runner’s World interviews similarly include athletes who prefer briefs functionally but sometimes switch to shorts when they become more conscious of cameras or spectators. They also indicate that sponsored athletes generally choose from a set of available designs rather than exercising complete control over the design itself.[3]

The important point is therefore not that “women like briefs” or “women dislike briefs.” Female athletes have different preferences. The same garment may feel maximally functional to one athlete and psychologically burdensome to another.

More importantly for the historical question, the fact that an athlete chooses among available options does not explain why those options are gendered in the first place. Athletes choose within menus shaped by manufacturers, sponsors, schools, teams, and sporting culture.

4. What does the history of competition clothing show?

Contemporary advertisements and catalogues from the late 1960s through the early 2000s reveal that gender differentiation in track apparel predates the widespread adoption of Lycra and spandex.

4.1 Gendered product categories existed before the 1980s

Umbro advertisements in the July 19 and July 26, 1969 issues of Athletics Weekly listed GIRLS' & LADIES' TRACK BRIEFS as a separate product category from general SHORTS. The ordinary shorts themselves were described as Brief cut, action-free styling, reminding us that men’s running shorts at the time could also be extremely short. Still, the advertisement directly shows a female-specific track-brief category.[7]

A 1974 running-apparel catalogue published in the September–October issue of NorCal Running Review is especially useful. Under women’s nylon track shorts it listed Popular standard length competition briefs and the new bikini, with separate Competition Briefs and Bikini Briefs products. On the same page, a women’s singlet was described as tailored to preserve a feminine appearance while allowing freedom and comfort. The briefs themselves were described more directly as Lightweight and modest, with comfortable elastic at the waist and legs.[8]

This distinction matters. The catalogue does not prove that the brief cut itself was chosen in order to make athletes look feminine. The phrase feminine appearance refers to the singlet, not the briefs.

Nevertheless, the page demonstrates that several values — freedom of movement, comfort, lightness, modesty, and feminine appearance — coexisted within the marketing of women’s track apparel. Women’s competition clothing was therefore not discussed solely in terms of performance; appearance as women was also part of the market discourse.

Viga advertisements from 1978–79 make the sex differentiation even more explicit. The same product line included Viga King Men's Shorts and Viga Track Queen Ladies' Competition Briefs.[9] By the late 1970s, at least in this segment of the British athletics market, men's shorts and ladies' competition briefs were already distinct gendered product categories.

Advertisements, however, tell us what manufacturers offered and how they described it. They do not tell us what proportion of athletes actually wore each product, nor do they reveal the manufacturers’ internal design decisions.

4.2 The Lycra revolution of the 1980s made men as well as women more body-conforming

The spread of Lycra/spandex in the 1980s was a major shift in sportswear, but it is misleading to describe it as a technological development that simply exposed women’s bodies.

A January 1985 Los Angeles Times article described Lycra running tights — sometimes dubbed “Carl Lewis tights” — as a new form of sportswear used by both men and women. The article quoted the founder of Hind-Wells describing the move of Lycra from swimwear into track clothing and emphasizing properties such as close movement with the body, support, and moisture transport. Nike likewise linked tights worn by Olympic athletes to functional performance claims.[10]

This is a newspaper report, not a controlled experiment proving those performance claims. Its value is historical: it shows that by the mid-1980s male as well as female athletes were adopting close-fitting Lycra garments and that those garments were discussed in functional terms.

Thus the technological shift was not fundamentally “women becoming more exposed.” It was a move toward body-conforming clothing for both sexes.

That makes the original question more precise. The puzzle is not why women alone began wearing tight clothes. Men did too. The question is why the same technological movement toward close-fitting, unrestricted sportswear tended to crystallize into high-legged briefs/leotards for women and thigh-covering tights/unitards for men.

4.3 By the mid-1990s crop tops and high-cut briefs were highly visible — and contested

By the mid-1990s, women’s high-cut briefs combined with cropped tops had become highly visible, at least in U.S. elite and collegiate athletics.

A 1996 Washington Post article on Olympic clothing described spandex as bringing speed, precision, comfort and sex appeal to the Games. It discussed Marie-José Pérec’s high-riding briefs and cropped top, while also citing functional arguments for shorter clothing and noting that male athletes wore leotard-like garments as well. Nike emphasized the technical properties of Lycra and Dri-Fit.[11]

This article does not prove that spandex improved performance by a specific amount, nor that sex appeal caused particular design decisions. Rather, it shows that contemporary discourse simultaneously understood competition clothing as performance technology and as a visual presentation of the athletic body.

At roughly the same time, the NCAA explicitly reacted to the spread of bare-midriff tops in women’s track. An April 1, 1996 article in The NCAA News explained a rule change prohibiting women’s bare-midriff tops partly as an effort to stem a trend toward increasingly revealing uniforms.[12]

This is significant because it shows that by the mid-1990s, increasingly revealing women’s uniforms were widespread enough in U.S. collegiate athletics to be recognized by rule-makers as a “trend.” It also shows that the change was contested: institutions disagreed over what counted as appropriate women’s competition clothing.

4.4 By the early 2000s women’s crop tops and track briefs were established product categories

An Athletics Weekly sportswear advertisement from October 23, 2002 listed LADIES CROP TOP, LADIES TRACK BRIEFS, MENS TRACK VEST, and UNISEX LYCRA SHORTS as separate products.[13]

This demonstrates that the women’s brief vocabulary documented in the 1960s and 1970s and the cropped-top style visible in the 1990s coexisted by the early 2000s as recognizable women’s competition-apparel categories.

At the same time, the presence of UNISEX LYCRA SHORTS is important. Women did not lack alternatives. Nor can one infer from a single advertisement that the majority of female athletes wore briefs. The evidence establishes the existence of a gendered product category, not its exact market share.

5. How “looking like a serious athlete” can reproduce individual choices

A 2023 New York Times article, “The Runners Changing Course on Uniform Expectations,” provides suggestive qualitative evidence about the cultural meaning of briefs among female runners.[14]

The article describes women’s competition uniforms as tending to become smaller and more body-conforming as runners move from high school to college and professional competition, while men more often remain in relatively conventional singlets with shorts or, for sprinters, knee-length spandex. Formal rules do not require this sex difference.

Former U.S. champion Lauren Fleshman described women’s buns — racing briefs — as a badge of honor. The article reported similar feelings among a number of the collegiate and professional women it interviewed. Fleshman recalled that choosing shorts for comfort could feel, to her, like choosing the less “professional” option.[14]

This is not a representative survey and cannot establish that female track athletes in general think this way. It is a qualitative newspaper interview. Its importance is narrower: it documents the existence, among multiple elite and collegiate runners, of a cultural norm linking briefs to seriousness and athletic status.

If such a norm exists, there is no contradiction between saying that athletes “freely choose” briefs and saying that gendered sporting culture shapes the probability of that choice.

Suppose a female athlete is surrounded by elite women who wear briefs; her team supplies briefs; manufacturers sell women’s racing briefs; teammates wear them; and briefs are perceived as a sign that one has become a serious competitor. In such an environment, even a very small personal preference for briefs over shorts may be enough to make briefs the likely choice.

Conversely, if a male athlete rarely sees male high-cut racing briefs offered by manufacturers, issued by teams, or worn by elite role models, and if such a garment is not coded as ordinary men’s track apparel, an otherwise comparable small preference may not produce the same choice.

This is not a causal effect directly measured by the available studies. It is a sociological hypothesis derived from historical product evidence and athlete testimony. But it is sufficient to caution against treating observed preferences — “women prefer briefs,” “men prefer shorts or tights” — as culturally neutral preferences existing prior to the history of the sport.

Once a convention such as “women’s track = briefs” and “men’s track = shorts/tights” becomes established, it can reproduce itself through product lines, team kits, imitation of elite athletes, and athletes’ own sense of professional identity. In that sense, the pattern can be hypothesized as path-dependent.

6. How much explanatory weight should gender norms carry?

The historical evidence has led me to give gendered sporting culture and market formation more explanatory weight than I did when I wrote the original article.

Susan K. Cahn’s history of women’s sport documents a long-running anxiety that athletic participation might “masculinize” women. She shows that women’s sports clothing has repeatedly been used to mark gender difference and to display feminine beauty, modesty, and at times sexual appeal in ways that distinguished female athletes from men. In chapter 9 of Coming on Strong, athletic clothing itself is treated as one site at which gender difference was actively produced and defended.[15]

This is not a direct history of the invention of women’s track racing briefs. It does, however, establish that pressure to make female athletes look recognizably feminine is not merely speculative; it is part of the broader documented history of women’s sport.

In the 2023 New York Times article, Cahn similarly suggested that smaller women’s uniforms could function to make women appear more feminine and sexy, thereby countering older anxieties that sport made women masculine.[14] Again, this is a historical interpretation, not a reconstruction of the internal design decisions of a particular track manufacturer in a particular year.

The 1974 catalogue discussed above provides a useful contemporaneous point of contact: a women’s track singlet was explicitly marketed in terms of feminine appearance as well as freedom and comfort.[8] Because the phrase applies to the singlet rather than the briefs, it cannot prove that the brief cut was selected for feminine appearance. It does, however, show that women’s track apparel was marketed in a framework in which performance and feminine appearance could be simultaneously salient.

Research on the so-called female-athlete paradox also documents the continuing tension between the strong, muscular, performance-oriented athletic body and social expectations of femininity. Krane and colleagues analyzed this tension in 2004,[16] and a 2026 thematic synthesis by Tremonte and colleagues reviewed 43 qualitative and mixed-method studies involving 764 female athletes from 2001 to 2025, finding persistent tensions between the body as a performing instrument and the body as an object of appearance evaluation.[17]

None of this proves that racing briefs were “invented to satisfy male sexual desire.” I have not found evidence supporting such a single-cause origin story.

The historical picture is more complicated. In 1928 female athletes themselves shortened clothing for mobility. By the 1970s women-specific brief categories existed in the marketplace, while marketing of women’s track clothing also explicitly referenced feminine appearance. In the 1980s both men and women moved toward close-fitting Lycra. In the 1990s women’s brief-plus-crop-top silhouette and men’s shorts/tights silhouette became increasingly conspicuous as different conventions.

This suggests that performance considerations help explain why athletic clothing becomes light, tight, and non-restrictive, while gendered markets and sporting culture may be more important in explaining why those functional pressures became standardized in different silhouettes for men and women.

It would be unjustified to say that gender accounts for, for example, 60% of the difference and function 40%. What can be said more cautiously is that a performance-only hypothesis leaves important historical facts unexplained, whereas a model incorporating gendered product categories and sporting culture fits a wider range of the evidence currently available.

7. Could anatomical sex differences — especially male genital anatomy — help explain the difference?

It would also be premature to explain the entire sex difference in terms of social gender alone.

In the original article I wondered whether male external genital anatomy makes a women’s-style high-cut brief less suitable for male competition. That possibility remains worth considering.

The penis and scrotum create requirements of containment and support during activities such as running. The Urology Care Foundation’s general medical guidance notes that in non-contact sports including running, an athletic supporter or compression shorts can be used to hold the penis and testicles closer to the body and limit movement.[18]

It is therefore plausible that male sportswear requires somewhat different front construction and support from female sportswear, and that this anatomical difference acts as a design constraint.

But it does not follow that men cannot wear brief-style competition garments. World Aquatics rules for men’s pool swimwear establish maximum coverage limits — no higher than the navel and no lower than the knee — but do not require thigh coverage.[19] Men have historically competed in brief-style swimsuits. Thus male anatomy is clearly compatible with a small-area brief-style athletic garment when that garment is designed appropriately.

Male genital anatomy is therefore better treated as an additional design constraint — how should a men’s garment provide containment and support? — rather than as a reason why brief-style clothing is impossible.

More importantly, I have not found research directly demonstrating that support/containment requirements caused men’s track apparel to standardize around shorts or half tights rather than high-cut briefs. The anatomical hypothesis is physiologically plausible, but it should not be presented as an empirically established cause of the historical sex difference in track uniforms.

The anatomical and gender explanations are not mutually exclusive. Anatomical sex differences constrain the feasible design space. Within that space, however, multiple technical solutions are possible: briefs, shorts, compression shorts, half tights, and so on. Which solution becomes coded as “normal men’s track clothing” or “normal women’s track clothing” may then depend on gender norms, product design, and existing clothing cultures. Once standardized, those norms can be reproduced through ordinary individual choices.

A useful three-level distinction is therefore:

• Anatomical sex differences: possible constraints on garment design.
• Gender, market structure, and sporting culture: factors shaping which feasible designs become standardized for men and women.
• Present-day individual preferences: choices made within already-existing menus of products and norms.

8. How do female athletes themselves experience revealing competition uniforms?

A 2025 Japanese study directly examined uniforms and anxiety among female track-and-field athletes.

Sae Kumagai, Takuya Yano, and Fumi Nakazawa studied 25 female track-and-field athletes with a mean age of 20.44.[20] They compared more revealing competition uniforms with more covering training wear and also varied whether spectators were present.

The study reported that the presence of spectators and the use of more revealing competition uniforms may increase state anxiety, and that more revealing uniforms may increase bodily tension.

The sample was small, and the paper should not be generalized to all female track athletes. Nor did it investigate the historical origin of racing briefs.

Nevertheless, it provides direct evidence against the assumption that athletes necessarily cease to care about bodily exposure simply because a garment is a competition uniform.

At the same time, other women actively prefer brief-style clothing for functional reasons. The same racing brief can therefore be “the most comfortable garment for competing” for one athlete and a source of psychological burden for another. External observers should avoid assigning one uniform meaning to all athletes.

9. Sexual attraction, photography, and broadcasting should be distinguished

One of the original triggers for this article was my impression that some camera angles in track-and-field coverage seemed sexually motivated.

Since then, athletics organizations and broadcasters have increasingly treated sexualized imagery as an institutional issue.

In 2023, JAAF implemented measures against inappropriate photography at the Japan Championships and addressed not only photography at the venue but also secondary harms created through the use and circulation of images online and on social media.[21]

At the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, official spectator guidance prohibited recording, transmitting, or creating photographs or videos that could reasonably give rise to suspicion of a sexual-harassment purpose. Organizers also stated that where potentially sexually harassing photography was identified, they could inspect the material and request its deletion.[22]

In 2025 Mizuno introduced a track-uniform option using lining designed to make the garment less transparent to infrared cameras.[23]

In June 2026, the European Broadcasting Union and European Athletics published Raising the Bar: Guidelines for Respectful Media Coverage in Women’s Athletics. The guidelines explicitly address sexualization and objectification and recommend production practices that emphasize performance, technique, and emotion while avoiding compromising or unnecessarily sexualizing shots. Olympic athletes including Holly Bradshaw, Ivana Španović, and Blanka Vlašić contributed their experiences.[24]

Thus the concern I expressed in 2022 about sexualized camera angles is not simply an idiosyncratic personal reaction. It has become a matter addressed institutionally by competition organizers, athletics bodies, manufacturers, and broadcasters.

Still, several distinct phenomena should not be collapsed into one another.

A person’s spontaneous perception of an athlete as sexually attractive is not the same thing as deliberately filming particular body parts, saving or editing images for sexual purposes, disseminating them, or directing sexual comments at the athlete.

The former may be substantially involuntary as an internal response. The latter are actions and therefore proper subjects of choice, ethics, and institutional regulation.

It is therefore a logical error to move from the proposition “some observers may experience sexual attraction toward female athletes in competition uniforms” to “sexualized photography or sexual objectification is therefore unavoidable or acceptable.”

10. Methodological limitations of this addendum

The account above is a provisional historical and sociological synthesis of the sources I have been able to identify. It is not a statistical estimate of causal effects.

First, the historical evidence is geographically skewed. The product advertisements and much of the sporting-culture evidence examined here come primarily from the United States and the United Kingdom. One should not automatically assume that the same process occurred in Japan or elsewhere at the same time or in the same form.

Second, advertisements and catalogues show which products existed and how they were marketed. They do not show actual wearing rates or the distribution of athlete preferences, and advertising language does not by itself reveal the internal reasoning of designers or manufacturers.

Third, product terms such as briefs, bikini, shorts, and tights vary across period and manufacturer. A 1969 track brief cannot simply be assumed to have the same cut as a 2026 high-cut racing brief. A rigorous history of shape would require comparison of photographs, patterns, surviving garments, or other visual evidence.

Fourth, interviews in the New York Times and Runner’s World are valuable for documenting athletes’ experiences and the existence of cultural norms, but they are not random or representative samples. They cannot establish population percentages or average psychological effects.

Fifth, I have not found a study that simultaneously compares performance, anatomical sex differences, gender norms, manufacturer supply, and sporting culture and estimates the relative contribution of each to men’s and women’s uniform shapes. The multilevel model proposed here is therefore a hypothesis that integrates heterogeneous evidence, not a statistically established causal model.

11. Provisional conclusion as of 2026

The best answer I can presently give to the original question is as follows.

The fact that racing briefs are more common among female than male track-and-field athletes is not explained by a rule requiring women to wear them. Nor have I found comparative sports-science evidence sufficient to conclude that women, as a sex, need more revealing bottoms than men for performance.

At the individual level, however, some female athletes genuinely prefer briefs for mobility, heat, fit, or reduced rubbing, and functional motives for reducing fabric in women’s competition clothing can be documented as far back as 1928.

Yet performance alone does not explain the sex difference.

Women-specific track briefs were already marketed by 1969; competition briefs and bikini briefs appeared in a 1974 catalogue; the same catalogue discussed feminine appearance and freedom and comfort in relation to women’s track apparel; and by 1979 a single manufacturer clearly distinguished men's shorts from ladies' competition briefs. The Lycra revolution of the 1980s made men as well as women more body-conforming, yet the gendered product distinction persisted. By the 1990s women’s briefs-plus-crop-top silhouette and men’s shorts/tights silhouette were increasingly visible as distinct conventions, and by the early 2000s women’s crop tops and track briefs were explicit product categories.

Athlete testimony further suggests that briefs can become a cultural symbol of being a serious female runner. Once such a convention is established, it may reproduce itself through manufacturers, team kits, elite role models, peer norms, and athletes’ own professional identities.

For the specific question of why men’s and women’s silhouettes differ, I therefore now give more explanatory weight than I did in 2022 to gendered sporting culture and market formation. More precisely: functional factors are important in explaining why competition clothing becomes lighter, tighter, and less restrictive, whereas a model that also includes gendered product classification and sporting culture fits the historical evidence better when explaining why men and women came to standardize different silhouettes.

That does not eliminate anatomical or functional factors. The need to contain and support male external genitalia may impose different design constraints, and any particular woman may choose briefs for entirely functional reasons.

The most coherent model presently seems to be:

1. Performance requirements encourage lightness, mobility, and close-fitting construction.
2. Anatomical sex differences may impose different design constraints.
3. Among multiple technically feasible designs, gender norms, manufacturers’ product decisions, and sporting culture historically shape which designs become standardized as “men’s” and “women’s” competition clothing.
4. Once established, those conventions may be reproduced path-dependently through team supply, role models, athlete identity, and even small individual functional preferences.

This model can accommodate two facts at once: a present-day female athlete may sincerely choose briefs because they feel better to race in, while the historical existence and normality of that option may itself have been shaped by a gendered market and sporting culture.

The relative contribution of each factor remains unknown. I also have not found a quantitative historical study showing exactly when and by how much the sex difference in uniform type widened. A future study could code the uniforms of male and female finalists at Olympic Games and World Championships from roughly 1968 to 2004 into categories such as shorts / briefs / half tights / unitard and test the original empirical premise of this article more directly.

Notes and References

[1] Japan Association of Athletics Federations (JAAF), “Interpretation of the Uniform Rules,” Apr. 26, 2023. https://www.jaaf.or.jp/news/article/17826/

[2] JAAF, 2026 Competition Rules, Technical Rule 5.1, “Clothing.” https://www.jaaf.or.jp/about/rule/

[3] Abby Carney, “Why Female Athletes Race in Briefs Has Nothing to Do With Vanity. Here’s What the Kit Actually Does for Performance,” Runner’s World, July 23, 2026. https://www.runnersworld.com/about/a73249212/track-field-broadcasting-guidelines-critics-misconceptions/ This article is useful as athlete testimony but is not a controlled comparison demonstrating an objective performance advantage of briefs.

[4] Amanda Schweinbenz, “Not Just a Fashion Statement in the Early Olympic Games,” in Bridging Three Centuries: Intellectual Crossroads and the Modern Olympic Movement, Fifth International Symposium for Olympic Research, 2000, pp. 133–142, esp. p. 139. https://digital.la84.org/digital/api/collection/p17103coll10/id/13457/download

[5] Isaiah Di Domenico, Samantha M. Hoffmann & Paul K. Collins, “The Role of Sports Clothing in Thermoregulation, Comfort, and Performance During Exercise in the Heat: A Narrative Review,” Sports Medicine – Open 8, 58 (2022). DOI: 10.1186/s40798-022-00449-4. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40798-022-00449-4

[6] Reuters, “Olympians criticise Nike for skimpy women’s kit,” Apr. 13, 2024. https://www.reuters.com/sports/athletics/olympians-criticise-nike-skimpy-womens-kit-2024-04-13/

[7] Umbro advertisements, Athletics Weekly, July 19, 1969, p. 7; July 26, 1969, p. 9. https://athleticsweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/securepdfs/2025/06/July-19-1969-Vol-23-No-29.pdf https://athleticsweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/securepdfs/2025/06/July-26-1969-Vol-23-No-30.pdf

[8] NorCal Running Review, Sept.–Oct. 1974, p. 18, apparel catalogue, “Women in the sport.” The women’s singlet is described in terms of feminine appearance and freedom and comfort; women’s track shorts include standard length competition briefs, the new bikini, and the phrase Lightweight and modest. https://lynbrooksports.prepcaltrack.com/ATHLETICS/CTRN/ncrr50_1974-Sept-Oct.pdf

[9] Viga advertisements, Athletics Weekly, Dec. 30, 1978; Jan. 13, 1979. https://athleticsweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/securepdfs/2025/06/Dec-30-1978-Vol-32-No-52.pdf https://athleticsweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/securepdfs/2025/06/Jan-13-1979-Vol-33-No-2.pdf

[10] Bettijane Levine, “TIGHTS: There’s Something New in the Running: Running Tights Make Fast Trek to the Top With Fitness Buffs,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 25, 1985. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-01-25-vw-9508-story.html

[11] Robin Givhan, “THE TIGHT STUFF: High-Tech Fabrics Let Olympians Go With the Flow,” The Washington Post, Aug. 1, 1996. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1996/08/01/the-tight-stuff/091c41d2-0ad1-4d34-9d15-8b2ba01c33b4/

[12] Stephen R. Hagwell, “BARING DOWN: Committee action puts an end to midriff top in women’s track,” The NCAA News, Apr. 1, 1996, p. 5. https://ncaanewsarchive.s3.amazonaws.com/1996/19960401.pdf

[13] Athletics Weekly, Oct. 23, 2002, sportswear advertisement listing LADIES CROP TOP, LADIES TRACK BRIEFS, and UNISEX LYCRA SHORTS. https://athleticsweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/securepdfs/2025/06/Oct-23-2002-No-43.pdf

[14] Nell Gallogly, “The Runners Changing Course on Uniform Expectations,” The New York Times, Apr. 8, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/08/sports/olympics/running-uniforms-evolution.html Includes interviews with Lauren Fleshman, Susan K. Cahn, Katelyn Hutchinson, and others. Athlete testimony is used here as qualitative reporting, not as a representative survey.

[15] Susan K. Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Women’s Sport, 2nd ed., University of Illinois Press, 2015, ch. 9, “Women Competing/Gender Contested,” pp. 207–245, esp. pp. 218–221. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1ht4vcf

[16] Vikki Krane, Precilla Y. L. Choi, Shannon M. Baird, Christine M. Aimar & Kerrie J. Kauer, “Living the Paradox: Female Athletes Negotiate Femininity and Muscularity,” Sex Roles 50 (2004), pp. 315–329.

[17] Isabella L. Tremonte, Diane E. Mack, Meghan K. Crouch & Catherine M. Sabiston, “Exploring the ‘female-athlete paradox’: A thematic synthesis of 20+ years of qualitative literature,” Body Image 57 (2026), 102096. DOI: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2026.102096.

[18] Urology Care Foundation, “Ask a Urologist: Athletic Cups and Supporters,” UrologyHealth extra, Spring 2014. https://www.urologyhealth.org/Documents/UHe/UrologyHealthextra-Spring-2014.pdf This is general medical guidance, not a comparative study of track-uniform cuts.

[19] World Aquatics, Competition Regulations, Part One, swimwear rules. https://www.worldaquatics.com/news/3090417/competition-regulations

[20] Sae Kumagai, Takuya Yano & Fumi Nakazawa, “The Relationship Between Uniforms and Anxiety Emotions in Student Female Track and Field Athletes,” Bulletin of the Sports Research Center, Hosei University 43 (2025), pp. 57–64. DOI: 10.15002/00031527. https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1390305411858935552

[21] Japan Association of Athletics Federations, “Measures Against Inappropriate Photography at the Japan Championships,” May 26, 2023. https://www.jaaf.or.jp/news/article/18043/

[22] World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25, spectator guidance. https://worldathletics.org/jp/competitions/world-athletics-championships/world-athletics-championships-tokyo-2025-7190593/be-prepared-for-your-journey

[23] Mizuno Corporation, announcement of a track-uniform option incorporating infrared anti-transparency technology, Feb. 4, 2025. https://corp.mizuno.com/jp/news-release/2025/20250204

[24] European Broadcasting Union / European Athletics, Raising the Bar: Guidelines for Respectful Media Coverage in Women’s Athletics, June 2026. https://www.ebu.ch/news/2026/06/new-ebu-guidelines-tackle-harmful-stereotypes-in-women-s-athletics-coverage