Photo: Epueo | Wikimedia Commons
"We saw this as an opportunity to feel more comfortable in our body,” says Sarah Voss, one of the first German gymnasts to wear a unitard. While female gymnasts have been wearing leotards at the Olympics since 1956, they aren’t necessarily comfortable and do little to encourage women in conservative cultures to participate in gymnastics. Then there’s the concern about wearing a leotard when you’re having your period or about to get one, which is not unique to gymnastics. Marina Nekrasova of Azerbaijan is believed to be the first artistic gymnast to wear a unitard, at the Baku World Cup in 2019. Two years later, Voss and two teammates, Kim Bui and Elisabeth Seitz, wore them at the European championships, and the entire German team has been wearing them ever since. Voss hopes companies will begin mass-producing them as they do leotards.
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