Broadcasters at the Tokyo Olympics have been told to stop sexualizing athletes and to report about their “sports appeal,” but not their “sex appeal.”
Olympic Broadcasting Services CEO Yiannis Exarchos promised that this year’s reporting would be different from that of previous Games.
“You will not see in our coverage some things that we have been seeing in the past, with details and close-up on parts of the body,” Exarchos exclaimed according to Fox News.
“What we can do is to make sure that our coverage does not highlight or feature in any particular way what people are wearing,” Exarchos continued.
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The IOC cautioned broadcasters not to focus “unnecessarily on looks, clothing or intimate body parts.”
“We in media have not yet done all that we can do,” Exarchos said. “This is something that we need to be frank and open (about) among ourselves.”
Several teams have made moves to defeat the sexualization of athletes this year. Norway’s beach volleyball team, for one, decided to wear shorts instead of the skimpy bikini bottoms that are de rigueur for the sport. Olympics officials fined the team prompting pop star Pink to offer to pay their fines.
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In other areas, Germany’s female gymnastics team debuted full-body leotards replacing the more commonly seen unitards.
“We wanted to show that every woman, everybody, should decide what to wear,” 27-year-old gymnast Elisabeth Seitz said. She added that this month’s uniforms “doesn’t mean we don’t want to wear the normal leotard anymore.”
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