You’re walking up the ladder on your way to the diving board. With shaky legs you step out onto the end. All eyes are on you, awaiting a spectacle a flips and twists with a big splashy finish. But all you can think about is the tiny amount of clothing you’re wearing.
When you think about sports uniforms you think of pads, helmets, jerseys — a complete outfit. But you don’t think about a swimsuit being a uniform. For swimmers and divers, though, that skimpy piece of fabric is all they have to wear.
Even though the less amount of material these athletes have on, the more aerodynamic and fast they are in the water, it’s easy for people to become uncomfortable with how much skin they’re showing. We’ve all seen the “swimsuit body” posts and ideals spread around the internet, and with summer quickly approaching everyone is trying the achieve that perfect body image.
So while everyone is worrying about wearing a swimsuit on the beach and people maybe catching a glance of them as they dash towards the waves, no one thinks about how athletes such as divers feel about having all eyes on them in a swimsuit.
But I think it’s important to remember that it doesn’t matter what other people think. The point of marching up to the diving board and jumping off isn’t how you look in your suit while you do it, it’s how good your performance is.
Society needs to stop putting so much shame on not having what the media portrays as the perfect body and put more emphasis on having a healthy body. Divers are so incredibly fit and have to push themselves to maintain a most healthy standard to continue being able to compete in the sport they love.
Bodies come in all shapes and sizes and that’s perfectly fine. So what does it matter what the swimsuit looks like on? All that matters is that the divers are going out there in front of everyone and proving their practice is paying off.
No one wants to discuss how they feel about putting their body on display for hundreds on spectators to see, they want to talk about their scores and the hard work and dedication they put into their dive.
So next time you’re watching a diving meet, or even just stepping out to the pool yourself this summer, keep in mind that every body is a swimsuit body. All you need is the suit.