Sports Bras

One particularly hot day during cross country practice my freshman year, I turned around from getting a drink of water to see that most of my teammates were taking their shirts off. I was wearing a black shirt, and my older sister told me that I should take it off or else I would get really hot. I remembered that in middle school we were not allowed to run in our sports bras, so I felt weird about stripping down and left my shirt on. (Now that I think about it, why was the administration sexualizing middle school girls in the first place?!) Boy was it hot with that black shirt on! I'm not saying that taking your shirt off makes a huge difference, but it does make you feel better seeing as the wind can reach your skin and your shirt is not soaking up all of your sweat and making you feel like you just got out of a pool. I didn't realize this at first though, and it took me about a week before I gave in and decided to give my sports bra a try; it was a refreshing decision.

The boys run with their shirts off all the time in the summer, and those summer Iowa days can be very hot and humid; running 10 miles is not fun even without the heat to contend with. It only seems fair to me now that girls should be allowed to run in their sports bras if the temperatures permit, because it can feel so much better and allow runners to put forth a higher level of effort than they otherwise may have been able to. 

Sports bras are not that scandalize, they cover girls up more than bikinis do. I am no longer embarrassed to wear a sports bra to run because I know that it will make me feel a lot stronger on my run than I would feel otherwise. I will admit that I do not run in my sports bra unless it is a certain temperature or humidity where I feel like I need to, and I don’t take my shirt off if I am running by myself (but that is an entirely different topic). That is just what I am comfortable with. To put this another way, if someone wants to use the typical “school code” justification to oppose girls running in their sports bras, the only thing that would be "distracting" to guys while I run is the fact that my face looks so contorted that I look like a dying cow. Girls should be able to do whatever will allow them to train the best each day so that they can become the best athletes they can be!