As the Brits would say from across the pond—it’s about bloody time! Wimbledon has changed its all-white dress code requirement, giving “female players the freedom to wear dark-colored undershorts, a response to concerns about forcing women to wear all-white even while on their period.”
Just how strict was this all-white requirement? In 2017, “Venus Williams was asked to change mid-match, during a break for rain, because of her fuchsia bra straps.”
Wimbledon’s strict code reads “white does not include off white or cream” continuing with “a single trim of colour around the neckline and around the cuff of the sleeves is acceptable but must be no wider than one centimetre.”
The rules now contain an asterisk, which permits female players, a small exception to “wear solid, mid/dark-coloured undershorts provided they are no longer than their shorts or skirt.”
While this issue has only been discussed openly in the past “few years, the fear of bleeding onto one’s tennis whites is nothing new,” writes NPR. But for Black athletes, this is especially concerning, when taking into account that “period trauma affects Black menstruators disproportionately…experiencing this potentially more intense pain and heavier bleeding than their peers.”
This rule was officially announced at the end of last year, but it didn’t go into effect until this year’s tournament. All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club chief executive Sally Bolton stated that “the tournament was ‘committed to supporting the players and listening to their feedback as to how they can perform that their best,’” adding “It is our hope that this rule adjustment will help players focus purely on their performance.”
Players like American tennis phenom Coco Gauff have spoken publicly “about the anxiety from being forced to wear white and have concerns about appearance while menstruating during play.” Gauff is happily embracing the rule change, telling Sky News, “I think it’s going to relieve a lot of stress for me, and other girls in the locker room, for sure.”
Still today, Wimbledon remains an outlier with respect to their rigid rules. But things are trending backwards, akin to the recent landmark reversal rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court. According to tennis historian Chris Bowers, “both men’s and women’s restrictions at Wimbledon have got so much stricter since the 80s.” The dress code “changed from predominantly white to almost all white…they became a lot stricter in the 90s and have carried it on for the last few decades,” reports BBC. “[The strict white dress code is] all part of the Wimbledon brand that we buy into and associate as much with.”
But Wimbledon isn’t the only tournament with a strict code. After the GOAT Serena Williams wore a Wakanda-inspired black catsuit when she won “the French Open in 2018 – her first grand slam match since giving birth. She was banned from wearing it at future tournaments.” When this occurred, one sports analyst said, “What this is really about is the policing of women’s bodies and, in particular, the way in which Black women’s bodies are othered, sexualized and dehumanized.”