Yesterday, thinking about ways to supplement my walking and bouldering with some cardio exercise, I started googling tips for beginner swimmers. I swam weekly as a child, and it struck me as an ideal form of exercise for the winter months, as the cold and the rain start detracting from the pleasure of outdoor exercise.
I found Just Swim, a website run by Swim England – the national governing body for the sport - encouraging swimming as a means “to get a little healthier, fitter and happier”. Just Swim hosts a range of articles about swimming, health and exercise, and I clicked on a post titled “Guide to Choosing Swimwear for Women”. After all, I don’t actually own a swimming costume at the moment, and could do with some advice on how to avoid wasting money.
I expected the article to provide information about good brands, materials, value for money, comfort and athletic performance. There was one line advising me to “Look out for swimwear that advertises chlorine resistance and shape retention, and that dries quickly”, but that’s about the limit of helpful comments regarding swimming.
The bulk of the page was instead taken up with a section on “Choosing swimwear for women by body shape”. This did not, as you might hope, provide advice on comfort and support for different body shapes. It opened instead with a bald statement that “Ensuring you have the right swimwear for body shape is vital”, before stating: “If your body is short in proportion to your legs, you will want a swimsuit that gives the impression of litheness”, swiftly followed by “A pear shape has often been the plague of women, but it no longer needs to be so”.
Apparently, the national governing body for swimming in England is concerned more with how women look at the pool than with how they’re swimming.
The post proceeded from bad to worse. It advised women to choose a swimming costume that “will draw attention to your more appealing characteristics” and offered thoughts on how to “add curves and subtle cleavage to a small bust”.
“Plus size” women were also advised to choose colours that “have an overall minimising effect”, although the author graciously allows that “you do not have to rely solely upon black swimsuits”. Those with flabby stomachs are firmly warned away from bikinis, (which “totally expose a jiggly belly”) or “trying to squeeze into a one-piece”.
Finally, we’re given some tips for those with a “Boyish Body”: “Try push-up cups … to enhance your cleavage”...“Wear boy shorts and low-leg briefs to add curves to your hips.”
I’ve become pretty jaded as far as sexism goes. But this genuinely shocked me. The message the article conveyed was that women’s concern when buying sportswear should be not with their comfort or performance, but instead with their sexual attractiveness. Before venturing to buy a swimming costume, we should first scrutinise our bodies and identify the ways in which they fail to conform to a specific feminine ideal. Fat bodies must be minimised - God forbid anyone see a flabby stomach at the swimming pool. A boyish body must be appropriately feminised: cleavage created, curves enhanced. Small breasts should be pushed up; large breasts should be pressed down. Women going swimming should, apparently, endeavour to appear thin but curvy: to have long legs, lithe limbs and a defined waist. It is almost too obvious to point out the near-impossibility of conforming: if I’m thin enough not to need minimising, I run the risk of being boyish and needing my curves enhancing. I have no idea what size my breasts should be in order not to need any corrective work from my swimming costume. The harmful, restrictive effects of these sexual beauty standards are even more damaging to trans women, women of colour, disabled women and other marginalised groups. And – just to hammer home the point – this was the message being given by the national governing body of swimming in England.
The surveillance and objectification that the article promotes is precisely the kind of thing which discourages women from participating in sports: the self-consciousness about one’s body, the worry that it doesn’t look right, is too flabby. Swim England have now apologised and taken the post down, saying that it was an old post which no longer accords with their values. It was written in 2010, apparently: were these Swim England’s values then? Feminism hasn’t just happened in the last eight years: an organisation aiming to promote swimming should never have published material like this. And, since their website was updated in 2016, it’s not as if they’ve lacked the opportunity to revise their content.
This morning, I ordered a swimming costume from an online retailer. I have no idea if it will make my legs look long or enhance my cleavage: I elected not to undergo the process of self-surveillance and critique advocated by Swim England. Instead, I hope it will be comfortable and adequate for me to get back in the pool and use my body – for doing, acting, exercising, and not merely to be seen.
Simone Webb is a PhD student in Gender Studies at University College London