It’s halftime at a Toronto Raptors game. The North Side Crew dance team runs out onto the court ready to perform. They’re all wearing their Toronto Raptors merch. The men wear black striped sweatpants and Raptors jerseys. The women wear red shorts and red sports bras with the Raptors logo. They’re barely covered. Imagine a young dancer watching. She sees these women doing what she loves. She sees them wearing barely anything and she notices that she doesn’t look like that. Then, that little girl might begin to think something is wrong with her own body. She might wonder why the women aren’t wearing as much clothing as the men. And so do I.
Why are women’s bodies more exposed while men perform the same role in more clothing? This shows a clear inequality in costuming.
With the NBA regular season starting Oct. 20, there needs to be a change.
Basketball isn’t a place where women should be sexualized. The Toronto Raptors oversexualize their female dancers through costuming and it risks damaging young girls’ self-image.
There’s already a stigma towards women who enjoy watching sports. I can’t count how many times I’ve been asked by a man “Name every player on the team” when I mention that I enjoy sports. Or when I was asked to name the starting lineup when I said I liked watching the Raptors. By the way, the starting lineup can change from game to game.
At the time I didn’t understand why I had to prove that I enjoyed watching sports. It seems like these dancers are being valued more on their appearance than their skill.
An easy solution would be to have the dancers dress the same. It’s not hard to have the male dancers wear shorts too. Or the opposite, have the women dancers wear sweatpants while the men wear sweatpants too.
Some female dancers have been sexualized from the beginning of their careers. A 2023 study by the University of Toronto said “dancers reported that their identity as women sometimes led to sexualization through costuming and makeup.” That same study found that costuming was designed to show off the bodies of young women, leaving them feeling “basically naked.”
These dancers shouldn’t be subjected to sexualization. They should be able to pursue their careers without facing different expectations about how much of their bodies they want to display.
A study by York University published in 2023 found that young girl dancers look up to dancers in the media and are eager to imitate what they see. That raises questions about the example set by teams such as the North Side Crew. “Some girl dancers internalize a sense of themselves as being primarily valuable for their appearances while others can suffer from low self-esteem, feeling like they will never measure up to unrealistic standards of sexualized self-presentation,” wrote Lisa Sandlos.
Research suggests that body image pressures go beyond dancers. Female celebrities usually represent the shining example of attractiveness for women and girls. “As current beauty ideals emphasize thinness for women, it has been argued that this constant presentation of celebrities reinforces an unachievable thin ideal and leads to increased body dissatisfaction,” said a 2021 study from Flinders University in Australia that looked at the celebrity impact on body image.
Young girls may see these women as celebrities. They see them show off their thin bodies. The emphasis on their appearance can pressure these girls to look a certain way and damage their self-image in the process.
But it’s not just the Toronto Raptors. A quick search on Instagram will yield hundreds of posts from other NBA dance teams, such as the Laker Girls, Brooklynettes and Chicago Luvabulls, all wearing provocative clothing showing their thin physiques.
However, the Knicks City Dancers offer an alternative, with costumes that include blue or orange athletic dresses. To me, those outfits put more emphasis on their dancing than their bodies.
Toronto should take a page out of the Knicks City Dancers’ book. Or they could just have the men and women wear the same thing. They are over-sexualizing women in an area where there is no need and risk damaging confidence in young girls. The focus should be on the dancing, not what they’re wearing.