Episode 201: Evolution and Politics of Sports Uniforms
In this episode Amira Rose Davis, Shireen Ahmed and Jessica Luther talk all things uniforms, from design evolution to the politics behind those changes. You'll hear about the sports bra, basketball shorts, the sports hijab and more. They also tease Brenda Elsey's interview with Andrew Maraniss on Glenn Burke, the first openly gay Major League Baseball player. Then they burn all the wretchedness in sport this week, shine light on those bettering sport, including Torchbearer Aminat Idrees who won the mixed Poomsae category of the Taekwondo section of the Nigerian National Sports Festival while 8 months pregnant. They wrap up the show with what's good in their lives and what they are watching this week. Burn on, not out.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Links
Uniforms As Factors Influencing Girls’ Participation in Sports: https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/do-you-know-the-factors-influencing-girls-participation-in-sports
How the first sports bra got its stabilizing start: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-first-sports-bra-got-stabilizing-start-180974427
Rain Dove’s Photo Series Explores 'Sexploitation' in Athletic Uniforms: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/photo-series-explores-sexploitation-athletic-uniforms-n635781
Nike's Pro Hijab: a great leap into modest sportswear, but they're not the first https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2017/mar/08/nike-performance-hijab-female-muslim-athletes
Inappropriate, uncomfortable uniforms turning girls off sport, Victoria University study finds: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-26/inappropriate-uncomfortable-uniforms-turning-girls-off-sport/13193624
Ireland women’s team change in toilets and share tracksuits: https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/soccer/ireland-women-s-team-change-in-toilets-and-share-tracksuits-1.3036274
Subverting the Skirt: Female boxers' “troubling” uniforms https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14680777.2012.698091
Criticism of NCAA's Treatment of Women's Sports Continues Over Volleyball Tournament: https://www.si.com/college/2021/04/09/ncaa-criticism-continues-over-womens-volleyball-tournament/
The NHL Has Made It Clear The COVID Outbreak On The Canucks Is Nothing To Worry About: https://defector.com/the-nhl-has-made-it-clear-the-covid-outbreak-on-the-canucks-is-nothing-to-worry-about
College track coach stole explicit photos from female athletes’ phones, prosecutors say: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/08/steve-waithe-northeastern-phones-photos
Transcript
Amira: Welcome to Burn It All Down. It may not be the feminist sports podcast you want, but it’s certainly the feminist sports podcast you need. I’m Amira Rose Davis, and today I’m joined by Jessica Luther and Shireen Ahmed. We are ready to get things going and dive into what should be a very fun and unexpected discussion of sports uniforms, something that we see all the time, obviously trend if they’re terrible or of they’re really good. But we’re gonna use this opportunity to dive right in to sports uniforms. Of course, we’re also going to burn some things down, we're gonna highlight some torchbearers, and tell you what's good in our worlds. Before we jump into all that though, there is a tweet that I had to bring up with y’all.
Liz Cambage tweeted, “We're all getting ready for the WNBA draft here.” So, Liz Cambage tweeted the other day that the top three of her draft class would be all the other top threes. I really enjoyed this debate. So, I really wanted to know who y'all would pick. I know I'll tell you off the bat that I'm really torn between going with 2013, the top three there were Brittney Griner, Elena Delle Donne, and then Skylar Diggins. They just seem really fucking hard to beat, like, I just don't understand maybe perhaps how you would maybe beat them.
I just don't really get it. And I think perhaps because they're fairly spread out, like they have bigs they have also power forwards and then Skylar, you know, can lead it. But then I also thought about 2002 and Sue Bird and Swin Cash as one and two in that draft class just also feels like they would do absolute damage. They're a little smaller, but Swin could hold their own, perhaps. So that's where I am. 2013, 2002. Notably not Liz's class. Where are y'all? Jess, are you taking up with Liz? That her draft class is the one to beat?
Jessica: Her draft class is so good. I think part of looking over this is that the WNBA is just so good. The top three every year are just so good, but I mean, Liz, Maya Moore, arguably the best to ever play – four time champion Liz, herself, who is the single game scoring record holder at this point. And then Vandersloot who was last year on the top of the list for MVP. She's like the assist leader. So when you talk about like three diverse players coming together, like that's a hell of a group right there.
Amira: And Slooty has her shot.
Jessica: Who could beat it?
Amira: Yeah. Especially cause Slooty can shoot.
Jessica: Yeah!
Amira: I mean, so you're taking up with Liz. You're like, all right, I got you.
Jessica: Yeah, I think she has a real argument.
Amira: Shireen, are you in agreement or do you have another draft class that's on your mind?
Shireen: I have another draft class, but I'm also going to interpret this question and this thing a little differently. Are we talking about when they were drafted or like now? Cause my favorite draft class is 2018 and like you've got A’ja Wilson, Kelsey Mitchell, Diamond DeShields. And I know that she's Vandersloot's teammate, but that class! And I will also say, is it just the top three? Are we talking about the whole class top 10? Because if that's the case, you got Gabby Williams, Azurá Stevens, right? And Kia Nurse. Okay? So like, let's think about this holistically. And if we do that–
Jessica: So you're changing Liz Cambage’s tweet, which is pretty straightforward. You're arguing with the tweet itself.
Shireen: It’s like, interpretation of the tweet! [Jessica laughs] It is! It is though!
Amira: She's a rebel. She’s a rulebreaker.
Shireen: You know how I do. But I love all of these. I think this was really tough cause I literally in the shower the other day.
Jessica: It was a really hard!
Shireen: I was in the shower the other day, [laughter] and I was like having this compelling moment thinking about this tweet. I'm like, this is hard! I can't, I don't know what to do. And I was like having this existential crisis in the shower, thinking about this. Anyways, 2018, you have my heart. I love you.
Amira: Shireen’s shower dreams are about the WNBA draft classes. Noted. Noted! All right y’all, so, uniforms. They’re something that we see all the time, and I feel like unless they're really bad or really good we don't necessarily dwell on how they came to even be a thing. And certainly when there is say controversy like Serena's catsuit, which was, you know, amazing, and then also drew all the hate, let us to a brief discussion of, hey, why do we have such things as tennis whites in the first place? And obviously I know when I was doing the rounds over that it was talking about, well, the idea of like with white, you can't see sweat and it's really respectable and really uppity and things like that. So sometimes we have these glimpses of these conversations, but I really wanted to dive a little bit deeper on the history and the evolution of sporting uniforms, the racial and gender politics of them. And basically build into what we've seen this week, which is the release of a number of very exciting kits, both in soccer as well as in basketball and see if this indicates a larger kind of new leaf or renaissance of sporting uniforms and new iteration of them for women's sports in particular.
I’ll be a historian and kick it off before I pass it. You know, the evolution of uniforms from different sports, everybody has a little of their own history. Sometimes it's cosmetic. Sometimes it's about the technology, the actual thing that you need to wear to protect yourself. So obviously when you look at football uniforms, you look at old pictures of football or old games, you see obviously the helmets evolving because before it was leather and that wasn't helping. Obviously there's still a point of technology now because you know, CT is still a thing. But that constant changing of the helmet is definitely one way where you can see a place where technology and advances of the game is also compelling them to think about what you adorn yourself with in terms of safety. You'll have places where you see old styles still with us. So, old soccer uniforms, you know, in the Victorian age, players would use colorful scarves to distinguish themselves. But it was more of a free for all. So, you know, there wasn't necessarily this big uniform kit when they got going, you would just kind of wear these scarves.
Now, obviously, if you've watched a football match or you are repping team, one of the things you might have is that scarf, right? And that's hearkening back to that Victorian age there. Shireen, you can't see it, but she is holding her Thorns FC scarf up. And so that has still been a staple within contests now, even if it's not the primary mode of identification,
Jessica: I can't believe Shireen just had that like right there, like, Amira said scarf and Shireen just pulled it from wherever she's sitting. It was amazing.
Amira: [laughs] Exactly. So I think that, you know, she was ready for that. But, yeah. The idea of distinguishing yourself, understanding that you're part of a team and then actually what you need to play the game has been part of these evolutions of these uniforms. But then also within that of course we have seen it become fashion. We've seen it as a place of advertisement. We've seen it also impacted by changing ideas of gender, changing ideas about race and audience and market. And that's really what I want to dive into now, and not just uniforms, but all the kinds of adornments that it takes to play sports. And so actually, one of the first things that I thought about is this research I do on Black women in baseball. One of the things that had stuck out to me is that this one woman I write about was talking about somebody helping her pad her bra, and I realized aha, because sports bras weren't a thing then.
And so, something is not as that, that of course was made famous, say like by Brandi Chastain after the World Cup win in '99 and all of the hullabaloo about showing your sports bras, but thinking now…I’m following a Peloton instructor who just gave us a walkthrough of all of her Peloton bras in her closet lined up and hung. And so I have to ask and maybe we'll start here, Jessica, how has the sports bra itself evolved?
Jessica: Well, it's wild when you think about it, it's actually younger than Title IX, which on some level, I guess makes sense as sports got more popular for women in the US. But it was first invented just over 40 years ago. 1977, the sports bra, as you imagine it, which is wild when you think about someone's ability to be athletic, especially rigorously or for a long time, if they have breasts. So, our idea of the sports bra was invented in ’77 by a woman named Linda Lindahl. Her husband made a joke as her and her friend Polly Smith were trying to figure out some kind of bra they could wear, and he put jock straps across his chest and they were like, oh, wait a second. That's actually a great idea. So then was born the first sports bra, and it took a long time to get good ones. I actually would venture to say that people are still looking for good ones, a lot of people. And it's a highly technological thing.
I'll just say from…I don't talk about this a lot, but my sister designed a sports bra for lululemon a few years ago, and it took years and a lot of expertise to create this thing. Like, there's a lot of science that goes into it. But still, you know, especially for people with large breasts, like I've heard stories of people wearing multiple bras at once, wearing constrictive tops, like ways to manage. And of course, I would say the most famous athlete with large breasts would be Serena, the greatest of all time. And despite being repped for Nike – I think this is really interesting – she doesn't wear their sports bras. She wears an Australian company called Berlei, which was sold only in Australia until a few years ago. You can now find it if you're not in Australia.
Here's what Serena told Shape about finding Berlei: “I have a large bust. So when I first started playing tennis, my mom was like, we need to get you a better bra. We were in Australia in 2001, and she found this bra. She found Berlei and she was like, you really need to try this. Of course, I listened to my mom. Then I fell in love with it that second. Literally every match, since then every tournament I've only played in Berlei.” And she said that before it came to the States that she would buy 50 to 70 bras at a time because she could only buy them from down under. So, she was just buying them in huge quantities because of how often, like they were her daily uniform and she had finally found something that would actually support her in the work that she was doing.
Amira: Yeah, that's incredible to think about, the lengths that people have had to go to, to be that elite level and do that, and then also we just know day to day, even if you're like a weekend warrior, like finding the right fitting sports bras and especially ones that are not super expensive, it can be really hard. And it really can be an impediment for participation. Shireen, you've covered a lot about the Nike hijab and thinking about ways that sporting adornments have also started to think about accessibility in different ways. What parallels do you see here in terms of sports hijabs?
Shireen: I think one of the things that parallels a lot to sports bras is the technology and the development and the design, which has been imperative because a lot of people may not know this, but I've been covering sports hijabs and inclusion and exclusion rather, and lack of uniform accommodation, and what that looks like, for years. And the first one was, in fact, not Nike. Capsters is a company that's been around since 2000 and Cindy van den Bremen is a Dutch woman who actually is an industrial design engineer, and she came up with it. ResportOn was another one. And the reason that sports hijabs evolved in mainstream or “mainstream” quote unquote was literally to challenge hijab bans. So, that's how they came to be. And that's how ResportOn came to be was Elham Seyed Javad is an Iranian Canadian woman who lives in Montreal and she found out about the hijab ban and she said, you know what, even though she and Cindy both don't wear hijab, it's really interesting that she's like, I can help with this problem.
So, it's very much women creating solutions to the problems that men create. What we saw was initially Capsters was the material that was thinner. It was breathable, but it was almost like taking a shirt, like a sports shirt, a Dri-FIT, and then adapting it into a hijab. And the thing is it's very similar to sports hijabs and I really do enjoy this parallel because not all woman have the same shaped head. So, the Nike hijab while, you know, if they want to send me the swag, I'm all here for that, but it doesn't work well with my head. I have fairly thick, long hair and it's almost like that hijab was created for people who had very short hair. You kind of look like a Navy SEAL uniform in it, and it doesn't work for me. And it doesn't work for a lot of women I know. So what ends up happening from that is that other companies, one is Asiya Sport which was created by – and I love Asiya Sport, they’re a grassroots organization, predominantly Somali Muslims in Minneapolis who came up with an idea and they created it out of themselves.
There's some in Indonesia and Malaysia, there are many in Australia. Like, the first burkini was created by a woman whose company Ahiida…I don't know, something about Australian women's sports apparently, they're pretty solid down there. But I think what happened was…I do want to comment on Nike, because I do want to talk about cooptation of this. Nike was nowhere to be found while people were fighting hijab bans. They were not, they were not advocating FIFA or FIBA – which came later, which I also covered extensively. And they still haven't shown up to AIBA, which is the boxing federation, which we'll talk about a little bit later because the AIBA is shady as fuck when it comes to stuff like this. And very much hijab bans are correlated to men really deciding what women wear and what policies are created are created by men. And I think that's something we really have to think about.
In my work over the years I've realized this is about controlling women's bodies and what they wear. It's the exact same thing. And so much so that let's for example talk about FIVB, is that they mandate the level of, of the bikini, the width of the bikini bottom, and the bra top that beach volleyball players wear and that is correlated to all of this. I do also want to say that in commodification of hijab, there's a market and you see hijabs, it’s not just, you know, Ibtihaj Muhammed, who is like, you know, a Nike sport person. And I want to see that because I love seeing women and different women, like Muslim women, all kinds of women – pregnant Muslim women, Black Muslim woman being out there. That’s important to me, but I am very cognizant of how it's being done. And I don't want the Nike-washing o f this to happen in this conversation.
So I did write a piece for the Guardian about that. Under Armour has a sports hijab, Adidas has a sports hijab. And so I think there's something to be said about this as well. And I want to keep it in perspective that the systemic racism and gendered Islamophobia that is suffered by Muslim women who don't wear hijab is still there. So, when we decide to focus on hijab-wearing Muslim athletes, there's almost an erasure of Muslim woman who aren't, who suffer that structural racism, and it creates a conflation between the choice of clothing and their choice of religious practices, because whether you wear a hijab or not, it doesn't define how good of a Muslim you are. And I think that's really important in this conversation.
Amira: Yeah. So, one of the things that you indicate there a lot Shireen is this idea about like control, who is setting the terms of what's available, who's setting the design. And then, so I think that there's a way in which we've seen the evolution of uniforms, like I was talking about at the beginning, based on need or just kind of trends in the sport. And then we've also seen it based on various ideas about control. And one of the ways that I think about this especially is through basketball and through contrasting the uniforms of the WNBA and the NBA. So, if we look at the trends, for instance, in NBA short wearing, we know if you go back to the 60 and 70s, they have short shorts. The average inseam was about 3-4 inches, and that was what the style was. And of course that's going to give away longer shorts.
One of the people who popularized that, of course, is Michael Jordan. He wanted longer shorts. He wanted to wear his college shorts under his uniform and he kept rearranging them because he didn't have room to do that. And so he reached out to manufacturing companies to say, hey, build me a longer short. Champion answered that call and was responsible for providing clothes to the Bulls, and of course other teams followed suit. So you can see if you have your star like Michael Jordan starting this that's one thing, but it wasn't the only other place that you started seeing longer shorts in the early 90s. The fab five at Michigan was another the group of people who popularized longer shorts in the early nineties. The fab five, for folks who don't know, were a basketball team, very good in the early 90s. Of course not only were they idolizing Jordan, but the media attention that they got was absolutely coded and racialized, that understood their style of play and their quote unquote “antics” and their whole kind of persona to be this Blackness, to be this kind of urban transition of basketball.
But they also were on the media's radar all the time, and so you can see if the rising stars in the college space, the fab five and Jordan, you can see how that starts a trend. So to just tell you the impact of that progression to starting to see longer in inseams, in the 80s and 90s, you have the average inseam now at five inches. By the early 2000s, the average inseam length of basketball shorts in the NBA were 11 inches. That's how fast [laughs] they started to grow. Now they average about 8 to 10. So they've found a little bit of a middle ground there, but you can see how that's tied up in these kinds of racialized notions of cool and urban and Black and all these things.
But as NBA shorts are getting shorter, the WNBA is going long and short and long and short, it's more like a rollercoaster ride. Sydney Colson during the women's final four said, “Shoutout to all the college girlies nowadays with the beat faces, lashes, acrylics, and baby hairs, because my generation used to just be ugly and hoop.” [Jessica laughs] What followed was a hilarious thread of college…Talking about how they would be out there with baggy shorts down to their ankles cause they didn't fit and how they would try to arrange the uniform and things like that. And I think part of what they were speaking to is a generation of hoopers and ballers who have tried to find their own style within it. I think that that points to Shireen's points about what direction is this change coming from, but that can't be seen without also understanding the kind of gendered lens of people who are forcing decisions on uniforms.
So, we know we have a long list of asinine comments from people from Sepp Blatter, right, who said, if you want to popularize women's sports, you make their shorts shorter. And so you definitely have these gendered notions of uniforms, aI know that we've seen this not just in basketball, but in stuff like boxing, right Shireen?
Shireen: Yeah. I definitely remember thinking around the Olympics in London, there was a discussion about women boxers – or before that, 2011 – having to wear skirts. And I thought about that and thinking about, that's not where we are now, but that's definitely where we were then, which isn't a very long time ago. Women boxes were expected to wear skirts, and according to 2011, president of AIBA, which is the global boxing federation, Dr. Ching-kuo Wu, “People would have a hard time telling men and women apart.” That's what he actually...These are words that came from this man's mouth, nevermind that the categories were completely separate. We function in binaries in most of sport, and this is what…I was just like, I remember reading that then and thinking this is exactly what Amira said. It’s absolutely asinine.
There was an attempt to force women to wear skirts in the 2012 London Olympics, but it was overturned. And I think this is just another example of men trying to control women's bodies, and as in the case of hijab, men creating arbitrary world rules for women to follow.
Amira: Absolutely. And obviously if anybody's watched A League of Their Own 15,000 times you'll know those old uniforms were skirts. And part of that was to play up on the spectacle of like, look at this spectacle of women – you can tell they're women, they're wearing skirts, playing the manly sport of baseball! Right? It was in that juxtaposition that they felt was really what the gate attraction was to do it. And so this idea of like, how do we still assert femininity? As like men controlling the sport saying like, how do we impose femininity on a space that we understand to be inherently masculine? Because it's sport. It is the crux of a lot of these new jersey negotiations, but that's not the only importance about them. Right Jess? There's actually consequences to these jersey debates.
Jessica: Yeah. So, earlier this year, a Victoria University study down in Australia, it focused on girls ages 12 to 18 and it found that a main reason that girls drop out of sports or don't do physical activity at all is because according to ABC news, “they feel embarrassed about putting their bodies on display or not adhering to societal standards of beauty.” Doesn’t that break your heart? What the study found was that girls wanted uniforms that are stretchy, breathable, they hide sweat and they have dark colored bottoms. And that is so interesting to me because when I interviewed New York Liberty's Layshia Clarendon on episode 77, about periods, they talked about how wearing white uniforms can be terrifying for athletes who are on their period.
Layshia: You’re wearing, if you have a heavy flow or god forbid, you are wearing white that day, you're like, oh my god! Like, I had someone in camp, I don't even remember who it was during USA. It was like, oh my god, we're wearing, like, I like, I'm on my period. We're all like, oh no! We'll look out for you! [laughs] So every time we get out and go into the game we’re like, “Okay, she's good. We got your back.”
Jessica: Players count on teammates to let them know if there's an obvious leakage. I can a hundred percent see that turning off young people who get their periods. The study also found that girls want t-shirts and shorts and no skirts. That was actually part of what they said more than anything. And I think this is really important to think about. They just want choice. They want to pick the thing that feels best on their body that will allow them to work out and play in ways that make them feel the most comfortable, which seems simple on its face, but like Amira said, Sepp Blatter in 2004, talking about tighter shorts in order to get sponsors and fans…And there's a great example of all of this.
There's an interesting photo series by Rain Dove, an androgynous model that NBC news published in the run-up to the Rio Olympics in 2016, that shows side-by-side men and women's uniforms so that you can really see the difference between the two. It draws attention to the sexualization that happens with uniforms. We'll link to the piece in the show notes on our website so you can see them for yourselves. But according to NBC, Dove said that she did this photo shoot because she wanted to, “open up a dialogue around practicality versus exploitation," or what she views as sexploitation and athletic uniforms. And that's clearly a conversation that we still need to have in 2021.
Amira: Yeah, absolutely. Shireen?
Shireen: One of the things that I just wanted to touch upon on this idea of uniforms in my research about adolescent and young Muslim girls, the biggest barrier is uniform accommodation. So, lack of choice is absolutely the problem here. And it's at almost every level, not just preteens and teens and whatnot, is that when you think about it's not just clothing, it's not just uniform, it speaks to so much of how we treat women. Like, we can't decide what we're going to wear – and I'm not talking about jewelry or other things that could be dangerous to a player and opponent, I'm talking about just simply existing and playing and competing and training and what works.
Also, we think of uniforms as a basic need. And I still remember in 2017, the Irish women's national football team, there was an article that came out in the Irish Times and how we think of uniforms as just basic, but there's so much more. How we treat our women athletes are reflected in something like this. I remember reading their tracksuits when they competed, and it was pre Euro qualification I believe, they had to go to the airport, change out of their tracksuits and uniforms, then hand them back to the Federation because the Federation didn't even have enough to give them a national women's team. And I remember being appalled, but unsurprised.
Amira: Yeah. As much as we're talking about uniforms and how they fit or don't fit and who's controlling them, the fact remains that even getting uniforms is still a battle for many sports teams. And we know that this is a place where we've really tracked lack of funding for programs in terms of what uniforms they have or don't have access to.
Jessica: Yeah. I can remember when I was playing middle school basketball, which was granted a long time ago and there were like no choices for uniforms. Like, I remember I was number 44 because like that was big enough to fit my body and that was the choice that I had. But it is interesting, like, this is a basic equity issue. For all the things we talk about in sport that are unequal, this is a huge one, right? And it just flies under the radar so often, and according to the Women's Sports Foundation, “even uniforms aren't funded for many girls programs at the same level as boys.” And so we're talking about what we need to change moving forward, just looking at this one aspect…As I said before, this is a thing that keeps so many girls out of sport. If we want to get them in, this feels like an easy way. I know there's a lot of money here, but like it does seem like a basic way in.
Amira: Absolutely. And that brings us kind of up to today where you're still fighting for access and control of these uniforms, but also uniforms are fashion, right? They are also a place where we're now seeing partnerships like big partnerships with Nike and their “innovative redesigns” that are conveying messages and stories along with identifying teams and people. Some of these push the envelope in ways that I don't like – read the new Nike uniforms for the Red Sox, which are bright yellow. They're the first uniforms without the traditional red incorporated in any way. They are an homage to Boston Strong and to the marathon, and I do not like them, if you want my opinion! Shit is just very bright. I don't like bright!
Jessica: My marathon husband likes them a lot. [laughs]
Amira: See, listen, he can. It's just very marathon-y and it hurts my eyes. So, this has really been one of the areas where you start seeing fun kind of debates over it. But it's not just about fashion, right? The uniforms have become a site of political statements too. Right, Shireen?
Shireen: Absolutely. And I think there's something to be said about that when the 2019 kits came up before the Women's World Cup. Okay, they were glorious. And again, Nike has really gotten on top of how to brand this. Although we know there's inherent problems with actually how...We’ve talked about it on the show, maternal health and whatnot, but they’re really good at presenting this look of we support women's sports, which was exactly what the rollout was. Wearing a kit that was brought out by Nike or for one of the teams competing in the Women's World Cup in 2019 was about your stance on how you support women's sport. That's exactly what it was. And there's other ways to do this, like merchandise that can be political for anybody that follows football globally.
For example, you know, we're talking about in Scotland that the Celtics, the football team, they're very anti-oppressive. They have a lot of merchandise that either said they're pro-Palestine, that talks about different things. They've been talking about racial justice far before it became popular in sport or necessary to be honest. So there's ways to do it. In fact, another scarf – and I do have scarves literally right beside my desk. This one I got from Lewes FC and Maggie Murphy has actually been on our show before. The Lewes FC had a supporter scarf to talk about Blue Girl, the supporter in Iran, because women can’t enter stadiums.
So not only are the scarves, a sport affiliation or a team recognition, they're an association with where you stand on politics, and we've seen that happen. We've seen now land acknowledgements, the stickers on the PWHPA recent Dream Gap Tour. We see patches, and whether or not they're performative, this is still something that's happening, that is political.
Jessica: Yeah, that's so true. And recently the US women's national soccer team has used jerseys as sites of education and protests. We talked about both of these on the program when they happened, but in March 2019 each member of the team picked the name of an inspirational woman to put on their jersey and lieu of their own name for a She Believes Cup match. The names included Sally Ride, Cardi B, Briana Scurry, Maya Angelou, Mia Hamm, Audrey Lorde, Sojourner Truth. Each player explained why they had chosen that name. And so hopefully viewers that night got a little education from the jerseys themselves. A year later in March 2020, the team was again playing in the She Believes Cup, but this time used their jerseys as part of a protest against the US Soccer Federation.
It had just been revealed that in the back and forth with the lawsuit that the players had filed against the Federation in which they were suing for equity, USSF had used incredibly sexist arguments to make their case. And so the team went into warmups with their jerseys turned inside out, which hid the US Soccer's crest. It was this beautiful moment. And so we know that what is on jerseys can be really powerful. And it made me think about last summer when the WNBA jerseys featured Breonna Taylor's name for the whole season, which was an act of both education and of protests. And it was, I would say, powerful. The whole time, just every single game, you really felt something seeing that on a lot of Black women's bodies as they were playing the sport.
Amira: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, we've talked about these jerseys as a site of education and also of course we've seen a proliferation of equality and united, and you know, that jerseys are also a place where some teams who are less actively involved in things have seen fit to say, okay, if we put equality there we're conveying a message, especially to our corporate sponsors that we are in this fight in certain ways, even if some teams or some leagues we know are more involved than others. I think that part of this conversation has been so great to think about all of the different reasons you have an evolution of sporting uniforms from the practical to the tactical to the fight for control over them.
Of course this week we have had new kids from the NWSL, we've had the WNBA release its dope jersey line for the 25th anniversary season, and we want to dive into that. So, if you are a Patreon, please head over to Patreon to hear me and Jess and Shireen dive into our favorite looks from the new kits that we've seen, the meanings behind them, and some very interesting things they have going on like the ones that are gender-neutral or the ones that have meaning about the cities that the teams are playing in and are conveying these politics through the fashion of the uniforms as well. Of course, the other part of all of these discussions, especially when it comes to these new uniforms, are, will there be enough made? Will fans have access to them? We know that there's been a shortage and a severe underestimation of the need and want for these, and one of the things I saw as soon as these uniforms are trending were people are saying, where are they? Can I have them? Where do I, like…We’re trying to give you money for these things!
If we know things historically, we know there's always a severe underestimate on how many people want to support women's uniforms and, to Shireen’s point, the very act of buying and sporting these uniforms have in and of itself become a politic of support and respect for women's sports. I think many of us would love to also just rock our favorite kits, support the athletes, support the teams, and not necessarily need it to be this kind of big political statement. But in terms of fighting for control and access and still being able to even buy them, that's where we're still at. So if you want more of that discussion and a fun deep dive on our favorite uniforms that just dropped, head over to our Patreon for our exclusive patron-only discussion of those kits.
Do you know enough about the first openly gay player in the MLB, Glenn Burke? Neither did we. So Brenda talks to Andrew Maraniss, our good friend and author of the new book, Singled Out: the true story of Glenn Burke, which brings together the histories of racism, the AIDS crisis, and the incredible obstacles that Burke faced. Check it out on Thursday.
Andrew: Why haven't any other major league baseball players come out as active players? And here's an example you can see of just what a precarious idea that is and what all the different factors that go into it and what different motivations people have for wanting you to come out. But Glenn was really the only one that understood that as good of a story this might be, as beneficial as it might be for other especially young people to see this example of a gay player, that it might cost him his career – and it did cost him his career.
Amira: it is now time for everyone’s favorite segment: the burn pile. There is a lot going on this week, so we will just jump right into it. First of all, I have to say, if you want a way to not do an introductory press conference, if you've been named the new head coach of something, I don't know, say UNC basketball, and you talk about how significant your role is to be named to this position as somebody who is Black and you're doing great, you're talking about that significance, and then all of a sudden – plot twist – you start talking about you're also very proud to have a white wife and it it's just a bit awkward, a bit awkward presser from Hubert Davis, just not exactly going the place that many people thought it would go. Just to be clear, like, it's fine if you are in interracial relationships. I don't necessarily know if it's a point of pride to have a white wife. Like, it's just awkward. It's just awkward. I'm not quite burning it, but I'm just saying that that was awkward, and I'd put it in like a simmering pot of awkward water because that was awkward and cringy. Anyways, Shireen, what do you have this week?
Shireen: I just wanted to draw attention to something that’s, speaking of simmering, and also stinks of rot. We've talked a lot about transphobia on the show and you know, this week there was a huge hullabaloo about Digit Murphy, who is coach of the Toronto Six NWHL team, actually being part of that wretched Sport Policy Working Group that we have talked about multiple times on the show and the outrage coming from women's hockey fans was very apparent and necessary and excellent. But it takes a toll. It takes a toll on the fans, it takes a toll on the culture around women's hockey. The NWHL many days later, and I would say about three or four days later, after probing and questioning by women's hockey reporter Marisa Ingemi, released a statement that Digit Murphy would be “distancing herself,” but the damage was already done. We will keep you updated about that. And also, just wanted to add to that simmering pile of festering nonsense: Cyd Ziegler actually had Nancy on his podcast to talk about her important work. And I just want to…It’s not quite a burn because I will burn something, but this is nonsense. So this is in the nonsense stinky pile.
Moving on to the actual actual burn, because I'm pissed about this – and thank you to Amira for bringing it to my attention. The NCAA Div 1 women's volleyball playoffs will be happening this week, the same week that this episode drops. We love volleyball. I'm a volleyball mom – never played it, love it. I actually watch it on television. But I think one of the things that really upset me was this article that's actually Sports Illustrated, Madeline Coleman's article explaining how the women's tournament, the first two stages of it, will not actually get any announcers. So you'll be watching women play volleyball without any announcing, without any commentating, which for those of you that do watch volleyball know it's imperative to understanding strategy, momentum, movement, who’s playing. It’s absolutely imperative. Otherwise I might as well just be a screaming mom on the sidelines! There's a place for that. Not here, not in the NCAA Div 1. I'm sorry.
And the problem is as well, and this is something that really was brought to my attention: Big 10 analyst, Emily Ehman reported that the practice courts outside the convention center are just Sport Court layered over cement flooring. This is bad for a variety of reasons. Those of you that know how it works, the tremendous amount of jumping required for middle blockers or hitters, it takes a toll on their knees what's underneath. So although you might be like, well, Sport Court is fine laid on top – no, it's not fine. Not for this level. I mean, coaches have spoken out about it and said that after what had happened with the women's Div 1 tournament and the attention, I mean…That’s the Div 1 basketball tournament, which we know is hype. It's almost like the…It’s not “almost like.” The NCAA is treating women athletes like second class citizens, and it's a testament to how they actually feel about women's sport. And it sucks. I hate it. I want to torch it. This isn't the stinky pile, this is the I am literally torching you pile. I want to burn it all down. Burn.
All: Burn.
Amira: I'll go next with my real burn of the week, which is about Northeastern track coach Steve Waithe, who has just been indicted in an elaborate scheme that he concocted to get nude and semi-nude pictures of the women on the track team that he coached. He's been indicted in I think it's like 10 women with like over 300 images. And basically he would as his role as an assistant coach on this team, he would tell the women on the team that he needed their phones to record their form. He would take their phones, scroll while pretending to record their form. He would instead scroll through their photos and forward any explicit images in their phones to himself. Then later he would create a fake social media profile, reach out to that same girl and say, “I found compromising pictures of you online such as this one, I can help you scrub them. But in order to do that, I need you to send me this or new pictures,” et cetera.
This had occurred for while he was fired from a coach in February 2019, after an investigation. They charged him with cyber-stalking and wire fraud in connection to this scheme. But, like I said, 10 women, over 300 images have been identified at this point. It's an ongoing case. He was scheduled to make an initial appearance last week. And you know, we will see how this plays out, but just the fact that you would prey upon athletes trusting you to help perfect their form, to get to the top of the game, to work on their craft and to take advantage of that, and instead violate their privacy, go through their phone, find compromising private images of them, create an account to then scare them – which is not just about that reaction, that's a mental fuck, right?
To get this type of cyber-stalking, this type of blackmail, and then to solicit more images…It’s awful. It's violating, it's abusive and, you know, all the love in the world to the members of this track team who are still dealing with the ramifications of this issue. Abusive coaches in sport, burn it down.
All: Burn.
Amira: Jess, take us home.
Jessica: That was horrible. Wow. So, 25 members of the Vancouver Canucks, 21 players and 4 members of the coaching staff, came down with COVID over the last couple of weeks. Only a handful of players – literally, you could count them on one hand – did not get the virus. It also spread to family members of the team. Brandon Sutter originally isolated from his pregnant wife and two children after he tested positive, but once his whole family tested positive they were isolating together. Braden Holtby, his wife, and their two children all contracted the virus. The team's physician said the spread originated from one person “who had gone to a place within the guidelines.” And that place was subsequently found to have had cases of COVID. The doctor went on to say, “Everybody's been working incredibly hard in the last year to avoid getting it,” and, in spite of their best efforts, this can happen.
It's not an accident that it happened when it did given what's going on in the broader community. The doctor is referring to the fact that British Columbia is currently experiencing a spike in COVID cases, clocking over 1200 new cases in consecutive days this week. Part of the issue is that highly contagious coronavirus variants are spreading rapidly in BC, including the P1 variant, which is responsible for more than 800 cases in the province over the past month. The Canucks have said their outbreak is a variant, but they've not yet said which one. The Canucks have had to postpone seven games and have not played since March 24th. The NHL has altered the whole schedule, including extending the regular season by eight days in order to squeeze everything in. The Canucks facility, which has been closed since March 31st, was to reopen on Sunday April 11th, but that was delayed after yet another player ended up in COVID protocol.
Still, they're going to try to begin play this Friday and then they will play their final 19 regular season games in just 31 days – that’s a hell of a schedule for any team, forget one that has just had a lot of sick players. No one had to be hospitalized, but apparently some of the players were very ill. What's perhaps most alarming here is how unconcerned the NHL is. First, Canada is grappling with vaccine shortages. I'm sure Shireen can speak to this. It does not have the ability to manufacture its own vaccine. So it's competing with other countries for supplies. Seven, SEVEN of the NHL’s 31 teams are in Canada.
Second, the NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told SportsNet that the league did not even consider shortening the Canucks’ schedule. This is wild – “I wouldn't consider this situation to be any more worrisome or concerning than any other. The potential variant aspect and the timing within this season are just two potentially distinguishing facts from other cases, nothing more.” Daly also told the Washington Post that the NHL would not be changing any COVID protocols, but that “reminders on specific points of protocol were re-communicated to the clubs.” Cool. The general manager of the Canucks, Jim Benning, toed the party line saying, “I know talking to players, they're worried about their families and stuff, and we'll get through all that. But these guys, they're competitive guys, and they want to get back playing again when they know that they're going to be safe, their families are going to be safe.”
He said, “My conversations with the league are we're going to continue with our schedule here at some point, and we're going to play all 56 games.” Whew. The head in the sand aspect of all of this over a year into this while British Columbia is spiking and COVID cases, Canada is dealing with vaccine shortages and an entire fucking team has been ill with a virus whose long-term effects we still don't know or fully understand is mind-boggling. I cannot believe we were talking about literally the same thing that we were talking about a year ago, but on a more devastating level for a single team. This is just utter failure of leadership here. It's terrible all around, and I just want to burn it.
All: burn.
Amira: After all that burning is time to shout out some torchbearers of the week. I'll start: shoutout to Bianca Belair and Sasha Banks who, at WrestleMania 37 this past weekend, became the first two Black women to ever compete in a one-on-one championship at WrestleMania. Bianca Belair, special shoutouts for you for capsuling the title. And if you tuned into watch Bad Bunny perform – I know our friend Brenda did – at WrestleMania 37, you also watched history be made. Shoutout to you. What do we got next? Jess, who are our petitioners of the week?
Jessica: Students at Marist college are speaking out about a reported assault. A student said that a member of the Marist football team physically assaulted and threatened them, but the school's response has been mediocre at best. So, students have organized a petition amassing over 11,000 signatures and have held demonstrations urging Marist’s Title IX department to investigate. At one of these demonstrations, members of the Marist football team joined their fellow students to speak out against assault and to stand with them in solidarity.
Amira: stand for this. And when this officially came out and we all started hearing about, we all had conversations, we all was furious that this even happened on the campus, let alone one of our own at that. Kudos to all of these students.
Amira: Shireen. Who's our in-house torchbearers of the week?
Shireen: Burn It All Down! 200 episodes! Love you all. I can't believe it. Can we for the next 200.
Amira: Our new hires of the week are Natalia Dorantes, hired by the Washington Football Team as coordinator of football programs, the first Latina to ever hold that role. And also Johnnie Harris, who's been named the head coach of Auburn women's basketball. Harris is a long time assistant, 16 years as assistant head coach in the SEC, most recently with Texas. Congrats to you, coach Harris. Shireen, who are game changers of the week?
Shireen: Black Girl Hockey Club’s scholarship applications are now open. So you game-changers please apply. Go to blackgirlhockeyclub.org/bghc-scholarship. Please apply in there. This is an amazing opportunity for all you young hockey players who are Black.
Amira: And the drum roll, please!
[drumroll]
Our torchbearer of the week is Aminat Idrees, the 26 year old, along with her partner, Arowora Roqeeb, won the mixed Poomsae category of the Taekwondo section of the Nigerian National Sports Festival. And she did so while eight months pregnant! Despite too many people who are not her doctor or tournament officials or herself feeling the need to weigh in her choice to participate. Idrees picked up multiple medals at the festival, earning a women's team silver, an individual bronze, and of course that precious gold, making her one of the leading medalists at the games. Later she said, “It's such a privilege for me. I just decided to give it a try after training a couple of times. It feels really good. Before I got pregnant I've always enjoyed training and it didn't seem different with pregnancy.” Congrats to you, Aminat. You are our torchbearer of the week.
Okay, y’all, we made it to the end. I want to know what's good in everybody's world. Shireen, I want to start with you. I know Ramadan's coming up.
Shireen: Yes. In fact, the first fast will drop the day this episode drops, April 12th – Ramadan kareem to everybody! It’s going to be amazing. I know a lot of us are online, no visits, but I’m wishing everybody a beautiful, beautiful month, and I hope it's filled with joy, happiness, and serenity. Also, my baby turned 15 on March 31st and I wasn't on the show to say that. I do want to say that. You are not my favorite child. That's not what I'm saying, but I just love you very much.
Amira: And we had a lot of BIAD birthdays. Brenda's birthday was last week, as well as her daughter Luna. Happy birthday to you. I'll go next. My what's good is that I have been awarded the Harrington fellowship at the University of Texas, which is very exciting for many reasons, not least of which is it means that me and my family will be relocating to Austin for an entire year and I will get to be 10 minutes–
Jessica: That’s my what's good!
Amira: [laughter] I’ll hand it off to you. I'm happy to be obviously back in Texas to be with my family and to be with a wonderful intellectual community at the University of Texas. But also–
Jessica: DOWN THE STREET FROM ME! [laughter] We’re going to live, like, miles apart! Like literal…My husband can run to your house. That's how close we will be. Not me! I’m gonna drive.
Amira: And I'm going to be there to eat all of the baking things.
Jessica: Yes!
Amira: I’m going to go get…Every time you put on Instagram something that you're baking, I will be right there.
Jessica: Yes. I cannot wait. I'm so excited.
Amira: I'm very excited as well. All right. So, what we're watching this week. Well, the NWSL is back in action, and so we have matches on Wednesday April 14th, Thursday the 15th, and Friday the 16th of this week. You can see the Pride take on Gotham FC on the 14th, the Spirit take on Racing Louisville, and Chicago Red Stars take on the Thorns on Thursday, and the Reign take on the Dash in that Friday night game, 10:00 PM. It's a late one. All of those games can be found on Paramount Plus, with the exception of the Pride and Gotham on Wednesday night where you can find that on CBS sports network at 7:00 PM Eastern. Not your only soccer action – if you're listening to this episode the day it drops on Tuesday April 13th, the US women's national team is playing a friendly versus France. They're playing in France 3:00 PM Eastern on ESPN2. See those women back in action!
We're also hitting the postseason for a bunch of fall sports being played in the spring. Women's volleyball, you heard Shireen's burn about their conditions, but they are playing on. The first round and the second round begins this week. The first round drops on Wednesday April 14th, a slew of games, many of which are featured on ESPN3, check your local listings for which ones you get. That second round will continue on on Thursday the 15th. Women’s soccer is also finishing up their postseason play, the first part of it. This is not the NCAA tournament yet, it is still at each level of each conference. So, I have my eye on the Big 10, of course. Penn State plays Iowa in the semi-finals of the Big 10 championship round on Thursday April 15th. Lots of schools in action across the country for soccer as well.
That's it for Burn It All Down. Burn It All Down lives on the Blue Wire podcast network and can be found on anywhere that you get your podcasts. We always appreciate your reviews, your listens, your feedback. Subscribe, rate, anywhere you listen. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram @burnitalldownpod and on Twitter @burnitdownpod. You can email us at burnitalldownpod@gmail.com. Check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. You'll find previous episodes, transcripts, a link to our Patreon – our patrons, where you get that extra part of this episode this week, plus many more things. I have it on good authority that there may be a certain spoon cake recipe video dropping soon. So, head over to Patreon to check out that and many other behind the burn looks.
We wish you safety and health and whatever joys you can muster during this chaotic time. The world seems especially heavy right now. Every other day there's another anti-trans bill. I'm thinking of Adam Toledo, shot in Chicago and killed. I'm thinking of the ongoing Chauvin trial. I'm thinking of just yesterday, Daunte Wright was killed in Minnesota, 20 minutes away from that same trial. Whatever you're carrying, whatever you're dealing with, whatever you are doing to make it through the world each day, we hope that you find joy. We wish you safety. We wish you health and community and love. And as Brenda says, now more than ever: burn on, not out. And we'll see you next week, flamethrowers.