The official uniforms of the ball kids In the world of tennis, recent years have moved away from the short skirts and shirts showing the navel that we were used to seeing. Lately, the professionals wore long t-shirts and knee-length pants.

This has changed at the Madrid Tennis Open, when Lacoste has been in charge of designing the official uniform. The first days the ball girls once again wore short white pleated skirts and crop-top T-shirts with a long T-shirt.

The sports organization of the event, which has responsibility for this type of issue, had agreed with this brand proposal, but The Association for Women in Sports Professional has denounced this uniform and they planned to send a letter of protest to those responsible for the tournament.

Its spokesperson, Pilar Calvo, declared that “it was a feminized way of treating girls compared to boys who do not dress like that. In the end, it is a form of sexist violence that is so widespread that people, because people don’t even notice it.”.

In addition, he added that a tournament as important as this “is a public showcase. Lacoste also dresses boys and girls and men’s models and they don’t go like that.”

It seems that the organization has echoed these statements and in the final that took place on Sunday, May 7, We have been able to see the ball girls with a completely different uniform.

In the match that Carlos Alcaraz played against Struff, those in charge of collecting the balls during the minutes that the match lasted, no longer wore their previous skirts.

The new uniform consisted in high-waisted sports pants, which reached below the knees, and a strappy, V-neck top that cut right at the waist. With this change of clothing, the ball girls no longer showed their navel or legs as they did with the previous uniform.

But the most important thing is that this uniform I equated them with their male counterparts, fleeing from the sexualization of clothing designed by Lacoste. A gesture that has been applauded on social networks.

Other controversies

In 2021, in Norway, The European Federation fined the handball athletes for refusing to wear a bikini and put on the shorts that boys of the same category wore.

The issue of uniforms in sports was questioned for the first time in 2006, when the Secretary of Equality, Soledad Murillo, received a barrage of criticism from the Sports sections of the radio stations with the largest audience.

The criticism came because Murillo requested similar attire for both men and women at tennis competitions, since they performed the same function on the track and it made no sense for them to wear different clothes.

After the progress and the change of uniform in these competitions, this year the Madrid Tennis Open has once again faced the same problem as it did years ago. Fortunately, they seem to have listened to the criticism and, although in the last game, they have offered the ball girls a more appropriate and egalitarian uniform.

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