AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
Sure deck your lower limbs in pants, my sweeting, you look divine as you advance but have you seen yourself retreating?
Ogden Nash’s lines are a gentle example of the niggles over female clothing in the fashion war waged ever since women escaped corsets and took to sport.
Cycling gave us bloomers and jodhpurs allowed us to ride horseback astride in what has been a long march to freedom and practicality. It took until 2023 for women to be allowed to wear dark underwear under their tennis whites at Wimbledon for instance. Mainstream Fashion wasn’t immune either from outraged comment, the glimpse of stocking was something shocking to quote Cole Porter’s lyrics, during the brief window when mini- skirts had arrived and tights hadn’t yet dawned. Opposition to the revealing mini was so strong that a society for the protection of the mini was formed by wearers in Britain.
You might think that by this stage that anything goes. But no! As Saturday’s show down, or should that be short down, the Leinster semi-final showed the war isn’t over yet. The Kilkenny Camogie team showed up in shorts for their match to protest they should be allowed a choice between shorts or skorts. They had to change into the hybrid skorts they are obliged to wear in accordance with Camogie Association rule 6b, when officials threatened to abandon the match. Kilkenny had made their point though and went on to win 4-11 to 2-12 against Dublin.
Afterwards Fine Gael Spokesperson on Sport, Senator Evanne Ni Chuilinn said: “As recently as last week, the Gaelic Players’ Association (GPA) informed the Camogie Association that 83% of players find skorts uncomfortable and inappropriate.”
Incredibly, the skort rule was upheld in 2024 at the Camogie Association’s congress, although the option to wear shorts was proposed as long ago as 1959 and players invariably wear shorts for practice games.
It goes to show how fractious the fault lines can become when sport, rules and concerns over ‘feminine modesty’ intersect. Although far from protecting modesty players have said that wearing skorts have led to them being ‘exposed’ on social media images on the internet. In other women’s sports like hockey and women’s football players wear shorts.
The controversy comes at a time when sport is losing numbers and girls are being encouraged to play sports. But having to wear skorts for camogie can be a disincentive, “It’s just not appropriate,” believes former Cork Camogie Captain Anna Geary commenting on RTE Prime Time. “Players who have tried so hard don’t want to be mired in controversy. They want their voices to be heard and to have a choice, as they aren’t comfortable or confident wearing a skort.”
Skorts sound an uncomfortable arrangement, to me it seems like wearing an apron over culottes while gardening, impractical in front and indecent seen from the rear when bending.
The Camogie Association made a concession to consider allowing both shorts and skorts at next year’s annual congress rather than wait until 2027 and word went out to referees not to send players off if they wore shorts. Matters have escalated though, Cork players announced that they intended to wear shorts last weekend in the Munster finals against Waterford and in another flip flop the Camogie Association have called a special congress on May 22 to discuss and vote the skorts/ shorts issue.
Then, incredibly, Munster’s Camogie Council cancelled the championship match just 16 hours beforehand, putting the kybosh on players’ months of training and preparation and creating Trump like confusion and uncertainty. This Taliban-like policing of covering up women’s anatomy is hardly in the interests of the players or the game the council are meant to represent. So what was the cancellation about? An out of date Victorian dress code or officialdom insisting on petty authority?
If the members of the association and the council were politicians, they would get a resounding vote of no confidence. Let’s hope that later this month that common sense prevails and that there is a decision in favour of allowing shorts, so that the association can stop skirting around the skort issue.
If the Association stop skirting the issue the option to wear shorts could come into effect from May 25.
