Jenice Armstrong: About those skimpy outfits

SO, THERE I WAS, idly watching the female gymnasts compete Sunday night.

And it seemed to me that in addition to all the flips, vaults and dismounts displayed, so was a whole lot of female flesh. Some of these competitors weren't more than high-school students. This was their big moment - the one they'd sacrificed and trained for their whole young lives. And there they were with the whole world watching as their leotards crept up.

Do you mean to tell me that there isn't a piece of double-sided tape strong enough to hold their leotards in place? I know I'm grasping here, but wedgies just don't have a place in world-class athletics. And I refuse to believe that it's so incredibly difficult for someone to design a female gymnast's uniform that doesn't ride up into an athlete's backside. Why weren't the design wizards at Victoria's Secret consulted about this seemingly insurmountable design dilemma? Couldn't they have just competed in, say, stretchy boy-shorts instead of leotards?

We've seen the same thing with female beach-volleyball players who competed in barely-there bottoms and bra tops while their male counterparts wear long, baggy shorts and loose-fitting tops. Women runners have competed in what looks like underwear. In contrast, the men are dressed the way we've come to expect of male runners - longish shorts, maybe, and a stretchy shirt.

In fact, unless we're talking about a swimmer, I can't recall seeing the bare torso of a single male competitor.

Where are the feminists? And aside from the blogosphere, why hasn't there been more noise about the disparities in terms of females wearing body-baring getups at the Olympics? Has everyone just caved, figuring you can't fight the combination of so much nubile flesh and skin-exposing getups?

Salon, the Internet Web site, calls what's been going on the "pornification of sports."

This stuff is rampant. Do a Google search and you'll be startled at the number of photos of gymnast Alicia Sacramone's booty. In many of the photos, you won't even see her face - just shots of her from the waist down. In some she's bending over. In others, she's going through elements of her routine, never imagining that the photographs taken of her would wind up on some adolescent's "Alicia Sacramone is hot" Web site.

"Do we really need to see women playing volleyball in bikinis?" complained Joan R. Cear, of New York, in an e-mail to me yesterday. "Would shorts and a T-shirt REALLY hinder their performance? I'm convinced the REAL reason that Women's Olympic softball is going the way of the cassette player is because the players compete fully-clothed. And, who picked the fabric for the U.S. women's gymnasts outfits? Yikes!

"I haven't seen so much shiny spandex since a Jazzercise class in 1989. Just Google 'shiny spandex' and see what you get - not Olympic athletes."

It isn't that there's anything inherently wrong with baring a little skin and showcasing the human form. History tells us that the original Olympians competed in the nude. And I'd be lying if I didn't feel inspired to up my workout routine as a result of watching the muscular forms of the female runners.

But what's needed the next time around is a little equity between the sexes. In other words, if we can have world-class female athletes performing essentially in bikinis, the same should be required of their male counterparts. I can see it now: Instead of having just the women volleyball players jumping up and down in bikinis, their male counterparts could squeeze into skimpy briefs as well. That'll give all the camera folks who zero in on all those booty shots as the women volleyball players do their behind-the-back hand signals more to work with when they film the guys' games.

Can't you see it now: USA spelled out on the booties of the male volleyball players' Speedos? *

Have you peeped a hot trend that hasn't been reported? E-mail heyjen@phillynews.com and let me know what you know. To discuss this column and to also see what else we're talking about, log onto my blog at http://go.philly.com/hfyje