Beyond Buttcheeks: Why Alaska’s Swimsuit Scandal Resonates with Women of Color
Have you ever considered that what you’re wearing could kill someone? Maybe, just maybe, if your workout tank was too low, your business suit is too formfitting or your skirt shows too much leg, a noble and hardworking man might drop a dumbbell on his head or gets his tie caught in the copier and die right there?
Absurd as this thinking is, this is how women and girls are forced to think at a very young age, and I can’t help but blame schools for part of this social conditioning.
Why, you ask? Because I remember a time when leggings, skirts, and tank tops were forbidden in school. It didn’t matter the brand, the occasion, or if you had a dress over the top. From seventh grade all the way to senior year, Warsaw High School would meet us with tactics used to publicly humiliate us, like being forced to wear oversized, salvaged clothes from the principal’s office, being asked to leave for the day or receiving hallway lectures from teachers about intentional promiscuity and self-respect. These ideas were hammered into us growing up and upheld by an entire school district.
In 2019, where body-positivity frolics naked in a field of daisies, it seems absurd to think that anyone still thinks this way, but the recent uproar in Alaska’s swimming community has revealed that this ludicrous concept still lingers.
The subject of inappropriate policing and body-shaming of women and girls has received national attention since a high school swimmer, Breckynn Willis, was publicly humiliated. After winning her race, Willis was immediately disqualified for a swimsuit violation because her swimsuit wedgie was “immodest.”
It’s already problematic for a referee to complain about seeing a bit of buttcheek at a swim meet, what’s worse is that everyone on her team, which is predominantly white, was wearing the exact same suit yet she was the only one who received backlash (and has received it in the past).
Over the last year, Breckynn Willis has been targeted in the swimming community and has experienced severe public harassment. Not only has the child’s mother been asked by other parents to cover her daughter up “for the sake of their sons,” but just last year, the poor girl was inappropriately photographed by a teammate’s parent to criticize how her backside appeared in her suit. To add icing on the cake, supporters of the referee have gone as far to applaud his decision, claiming that she was doing this purposefully so “that’s what she gets.”
While the Alaska School Activities Association (ASAA) has overturned this incompetent decision, saying it “was the result of the misapplication of the rule,” the scandal’s roots run deeper than youth sports, just ask Serena Williams, Misty Copeland, and Jameela Jamil. Women are in a tug-of-war with body image but there’s no question that black women and women of color receive the worst backlash because we’re expected to meet European body standards that are typically unachievable.
Over the last year, Breckynn Willis has been targeted in the swimming community and has experienced severe public harassment.
One of my close friends found herself in a similar situation at our job last year. It was summer break and we had to attend a professional development meeting later in the afternoon, so she decided to decorate her classroom in the morning and attend the meeting after lunch. But when she arrived at the meeting, wearing a crop top and high rise joggers, she apparently pissed someone off.
Instead of investing energy into something worthwhile, they snapped photos of her without her consent and distributed them to the administration. As mortified as she was to know someone had taken pictures of her, it was more hurtful to know that her body had actually offended someone.
Despite that other women wore shorts, tank tops, and casual attire, it appeared that whoever made the call, just didn’t want to see her body, which is curvy and black, in those clothes.
The truth is that black women, women of color and curvy women are fighting for our bodies to be accepted in society and we’re tired of being held to the beauty standards founded on white supremacy and sexism.
Young girls are confusingly trying to navigate a world where their bodies are sexualized and criticized in the same breath.
Fat women are tired of being criticized for showing too much skin while a fat man can mow the lawn with no shirt without a second thought.
Black women and women of color are struggling to find sanity in a world where a smaller figured white woman is applauded at work for the same skirt that we are told is too fitting, too promiscuous, too unprofessional.
This is the double-edged sword women and girls live with and are conditioned by. We all need to be angry for Breckynn Willis but, more so, we need to start holding folks accountable for the inappropriate sexualization of children’s bodies and shutting down those body-shaming tendencies at the door. The referee needs to be fired and kept away from children.
You’re in the right body and you’re beautiful in it…don’t let society tell you otherwise.
