gymnastics, floor

[PassiveAgressiveQueen]

I have been watching the gymnastics on telly. Last night was the mens, the floor routine was impressive, no element of choreography at all, just strong men bouncing around.
Whereas the women's is dancing,music and damn strong women bouncing around the floor.

Is this sexist?

I was wondering that too. It doesnt seem to be set to the music as such (Like Torvil and DEans ice skating).

The flappy hand stuff is just weird. They flap around above, you think they're done - then they flap to the side and do the next bit.

Its strange.

I was coming on here to say about the men being able to wear shorts and the women not. Reminds me of being at primary where the girls weren't allowed to wear trousers.

I wouldn't want my crotch out there for the world to see or my bum.

gym knickers

I'd like to see them lose the music (or introduce it for the men and go back to the original dance element - otherwise it perpetuates the idea of dance being a women's thing that is beneath the men) and focus on the athleticism of the tumbles.

And improve the equality in attire. As a minimum. Professional athletes shouldn't need to engage in intimate grooming to participate in their sport. (As I suspect many of them would feel pressured to do at present).

is it still the case that there's a large age disparity between men and women competitors? It used to be that the men were clearly men, 18 plus, usually 20s, and the 'women' were young girls. There were also some concerns raised about the long-term effects of the extreme flexibility required on young girl's development I think. I used to love watching it years ago but gradually stopped after hearing that

Yes, that certainly seemed to be the case.

Absolutely it's sexist that women can't just be athletic, and have to be able to pose and dance. All while wearing little more than a swimsuit.

Those poor girls must be very well acquainted with wax! All those splits and straddle leaps wearing so little.

They could easily wear shorts or leggings without hiding their technique. But no, once again women have to display themselves in a way men do not.

Watching it with the DDs (8 & 4)this morning and loving how they have become instant experts. I asked them what they thought about the difference betweeen the mens and womens floor routines and they thought it was the men couldn't do both bits.

The most surprising thing for me was how strong and muscly the women look now.
They aren't the hip-less girls of the soviet era. They look incredible and so strong. I was in awe.

I agree that gymnastics is very stereotyped with women being expected to be graceful and dancy where as men can just concentrate on being strong and co-ordinated.
I'd scrap the dancy moves and let the women just show off their tumbling with some strength and agility poses like the men on the floor.
When my son did gymnastics he was disappointed that he didn't get to do dancy bits and beam and had to concentrate on upper body strength.

There isn't so much difference in age between the women and men now. GBs single female gymnast at the Barcelona Olympics was 16 or 17 at the time, and nearly at the end of her gym career.

At London 2012 the women's team were 15, 18, 20, 23 and 27 years old. (Beth Tweddle was 27). One lady who competed at the London games age 37 was also at the Barcelona games 20 years previously. The change of scoring system made it a bit easier to continue competing for longer, along with the age rules that now say you must be rising 16 to compete at senior level.

I did wonder last night why the women gymnasts had stopped wearing leotards that cover their arses. Some just looked plain uncomfortable.

Although it's the same with athletics isn't it, no shorts any more.

Spare - yes, most of the women appeared amazingly muscled, but there were a couple of very young-looking (though the one in particular was apparently 19, she looked 9) women who looked malnourished, if anything. Though they still displayed incredible strength and power.

Nishky I've asked here about the knickers in athletics and running too, but apparently those are my issues and women need to be seen in a tiny gusset for their optimum performance. Men are much more able to cope with restrictive/flappy shorts.

If and when you go to the ballet do you question why the woman are being gracefully lifted about by the men?

There are physical differences between men and woman - mainly that men are taller and bigger built. I had to laugh when they commented on how tall a gymnast was - when she got off the beam and stood next to the coach she looks about 5'5! Hardly 'tall'!

Look at other sports - swimmer, high jumperss and basketball players are generally tall. Ballet dancers and gymnasts are usually petite. Sport is one of those professions where talent alone is not enough - your physical growth will affect your performance.

Its the same in athletics, men wear shorts and a vest, women seem to wear increasingly tiny pants and crop tops. Are they pressured by sponsors, is this the kit supplied by national associations? If there was a sports science reason for tiny shorts I am sure in the cutthroat world of top athletics the men would wear them, but no mo Farah wears a perfectly normal pair of shorts rather than budgie smugglers.

So glad it's not just me.

Years ago when I did gymnastics, girls did sometimes wear shorts for training but they were tight lycra ones, not like what the men wear for some apparatus. Baggy shorts can hinder you on the bars (or maybe that was just me being utterly useless at them). Louis Smith wears what are more like leggings for the pommel, presumably for similar reasons and/or it's harder to see if you're clearing the pommel if you have baggy shorts on.

Women's gymnastics is very a visual sport, similar to diving. Running/swimming/cycling is about speed, it doesn't matter how you look. Men's gymnastics has strength elements as well as visual ones. It is essentially a sport for showing off what your body can do though.

I do think that the women should be able to wear the legging type things though. I don't know for certain but IIRC they are currently not allowed to.

I'm questioning the whole requirement for the women's performances to be flouncy, dancey, and more sexualised than the men's. All that stuff actively detracts from the demonstration of strength & skill.

I disagree on this.

Why shouldn't it be? Why should the women conform to the men's sport not the other way round?

Have you watched any figure skating? Plenty of sparkles and dancey bits.

I actually prefer the women's because of the music, the men's seems to be thump, thump, thump.

I went to a girls' school. One of the teachers once said she had to fight at standardization meetings because the EVs would tend to mark down work with pretty pictures or fancy folders, she had to point out that the extra decoration was in addition to the content and the content was just as good. She said girls seemed more likely to add pictorial content and that they shouldn't be marked down for it.

It's obviously my issue as well, it really winds me up that women have to wear such skimpy knickers when they could easily wear shorts.

I watch a lot of tennis and I am always pleased to see a female player in shorts, but it's unusual.

The girls in DD's gymnastics class mostly wear shorts for practice, and only wear the leotard alone for competitions.

And while ballet might have women being lifted by men, the last dance performance I watched was contemporary dance in which the female dancer was allowed to show off her strength and lifted the male dancers as much as they lifted her.

I hate gymnastics as it creates a sport where women need to wax and show their bums while the men don't.
Also, the girl's career is over very quickly but the men can carry on longer.

The women also don't have apparatus that shows upper body strength the way the men do - this assumes women shouldn't have muscled arms or upper bodies but it's ok to have a leotard garotting your rectum.

My friend's daughter dropped out of gymnastics at 16 as she was 6 stone and told she was overweight.

The women do look a LOT younger than they actually are though. There was a Chinese girl who I thought was 9 or 10 who was actually 19.

It's also to do with the impact it has on girl's bodies, their bodies give up on gymnastics long before their head does. That's not the case for men.