Who Wears Short Shorts?

When I run, I wear shorts. Short shorts. My thighs rub together, but the shorts are comfortable I can move in them—essential when one is running. I admit I run so maybe my thighs will rub together a little less, but mostly I run to get away from it all. In the muggy, green nature preserve which I run, I can forget it all; what I’m doing with myself and what I’m not doing with myself, what I look like and what I should look like. I can just think, dream, and breathe.

Could I run in a skirt? No way. And this from the girl who got involved tennis for the skirts. So, when I read an article called “The Rise of Skirt Culture” in Runner’s World magazine, all I could do was sigh.

Women have long been forced to wear skirts in sporting events. At the turn of the century, female athletes wore long, cumbersome skirts in every sporting event. As the hemlines began to rise in fashion in the sixties, they did in sports as well. After Title IX, high school athletes still wore kilts in lacrosse and field hockey and skirts and dresses in tennis, although some of that is changing.

The one sport that has avoided skirts is running. In the fifties and sixties, women runners wore skirts because they had to; they also weren’t permitted to run in road races. In 1973, Katherine Switzer illegally entered the Boston Marathon, being the first woman to enter the all-male race. Subsequently, she did so in a skirt.

In the seventies, running swept across the country. Everyone from hippies to New-Agers, to yuppie businessmen engaged in the running lifestyle. Steve Prefontaine set the mile record and made the University of Oregon the running bastion it remains today. Women, including my pregnant mother, began running in droves, in shorts. Women wore shorts because they were most comfortable and practical. Perhaps also, in the wake of the feminist movement, women were fighting to be taken seriously and to breakdown the gender roles society forced men and women to play by.

The “skirt culture” of running bothers me most because it is gendering an activity and a sport that does not need to be gendered. Just as girls are gendered to play with dolls and boys play with trucks, women who run feel they need to be feminine and pretty when they run. Writer Kristen Armstrong says about a friend, who designed and popularized the running skirt, “Her motivation has never been just to look pretty, but to look pretty while kicking butt.”

Women like to look pretty. We like to look pretty partly because we are told we need to be attractive to get a man, get a job, a raise, to be successful. When I run, it is one of the only times I don’t worry about being pretty or feminine; it a release of the everyday pressures of life and of beauty. I am sweaty, puffing and panting, with mud splashes on my shins and dirty hair. Even when I pass someone, a fellow runner, I don’t worry about what I look or what she looks like. You nod and smile; saying “isn’t this hellish/great/exhausting/euphoric.”

Armstrong continues, “…some people aren’t thrilled with the idea. They seem to think that women who run in skirts aren’t serious athletes…The same people probably insist that women need to be in pantsuits to be taken seriously in the workplace. But I believe that a woman in even more powerful when she feels pretty. Besides…it’s nice to have clothing that reflects our multitasking lives; it performs on the track and looks presentable when you roll directly into the supermarket or elementary school.”

Sigh. Venus Williams won Wimbledon this month in a skirt. Last year, after she campaigned (and won) equal prize money for women at the stuffy all-boys club of Wimbledon, she won Wimbledon and equal prize money. In shorts. Like Venus, women in modern society have the choice to wear skirts, shorts, or pants (or skorts! Or Gaucho pants!) in athletics, in the boardroom, classroom, or shopping. Call it a success of feminism.

I reject Armstrong’s assertion that a woman is more powerful when she feels pretty. When Hillary Clinton was at the Iowa caucus, I bet she ironed her pantsuit and put on some lipstick, but I believe that she cared to talk more about health care than who does her hair. Clinton was, in fact, criticized for her pantsuits; called “mannish” by Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Clinton said she favored pantsuits so that photographers could not snap pictures up her skirt. Call it a success of our patriarchal culture.

I’ll continue to run in shorts. I’ll continue to play tennis in a skirt. I’ll continue to wear pants or skirts in my every day life. I love that I have the choice to do what I want. But when I run, my legs pound on the dirt and I am strong. And that is pretty, pretty powerful.