Creepy Men Are Melting Down Over Women’s Olympic Beach Volleyball Outfits
One would think the most controversial aspect of the 2024 Olympics beach volleyball is that a convicted child rapist is competing in the men’s competition. However, according to creepy men, it’s more controversial that female players are wearing pants.
Even though the Olympics are supposed to be about sports and athletes, the Games have frequently made things about women’s uniforms and bodies. Often, women are expected, or even required, to wear revealing uniforms, while men are not. It’s standard for female gymnasts to wear bikini-cut leotards, while many male gymnasts compete in shorts or pants. While male beach volleyball players play in tank tops and long shorts, women are expected to wear bikini tops and bottoms.
In fact, for years, the Olympics actually mandated that women wear bikini bottoms to compete in beach volleyball or beach handball. The International Olympic Committee went as far as to establish rules dictating how tiny the bikini bottoms had to be, with no bottoms more than 7 cm long on the sides permitted.
Women who tried to wear shorts or something they felt more comfortable in would face fines for breaking the bizarre rule, even though the bikini bottoms would inhibit their performance as they constantly had to worry about their bottoms riding up during matches. Finally, the 2024 Paris Olympics decided to stop enforcing the rule and allow women to wear leggings or shorts over their bikini bottoms. Of course, it didn’t take long for a bunch of men to run to the internet to creepily broadcast how distressed they were that they couldn’t see some beach volleyball players in bikini bottoms.
Men are being creeps over women’s beach volleyball
Given the rule changes, some female beach volleyball players did opt for leggings instead of bikini bottoms. One of the first preliminary matches was between Team USA and Team Canada, with both teams’ players wearing leggings. It seems the women were taking advantage of the option to wear leggings due to the bad weather. Many audience members also had to dress appropriately for the overcast, rainy conditions. Since the weather picked up, most women have chosen the more heat-friendly bikini bottoms instead of leggings.
However, men caught wind of a handful of players wearing pants and immediately started to lose their minds. The thing about creepy men is that it’s not enough that they have to act weird about all women, whether they’re Olympic athletes or fake video game characters; they also always have to announce to the entire world how creepy they’re being. As a result, a bunch of X posts started cropping up from men who think they’re entitled to see female athletes in bikini bottoms, ranting and expressing their rage that some players wore pants.
One Tweet read, “I waited 4 years for f***ing PANTS?!!?!??!??! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.” An even creepier post read, “I also generally support tight yoga pants in public. However, yoga pants, no matter how tight they are, have NO place in women’s beach volleyball. For us traditionalist fans, this is heresy.”
Meanwhile, if you search “beach volleyball” on X, none of the top posts are about the games’ results or highlighting the best moments of the most talented players. Instead, almost all of the top posts are videos and photos zoomed in on the female Olympic athletes’ bottoms. There are also tons of memes about men rushing to droves to watch the Olympic women’s beach volleyball competition and men making pointed posts about how they’re the biggest women’s beach volleyball “fans” in the world.
It’s still unclear why men are in such a rush to publicly announce how pathetic and lonely they are that their only joy comes from gawking at women through a television screen. Somehow, though, the tweets losing it over women wearing pants garnered hundreds of likes and comments in agreement. Fortunately, there were also a lot of users who weren’t afraid to call out how weird, creepy, and pathetic these men are being.
The women’s beach volleyball players have trained their entire lives to become the best in the world in their sport. They made it all the way to the Olympics to try to win a gold medal for their country. Yet, millions are acting as if their sport isn’t a real sport, and they’re simply there to please a bunch of creepy, pathetic men. The only thing that should stir outrage is that the IOC itself tried to validate this creepy and sexist view by dictating what these women could wear for decades.
It’s also a very sad testament to the state of the world that a woman participating in women’s boxing and women wearing pants drew far more outrage than the fact that the Olympics invited convicted child rapist Steven van de Velde to compete.
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