Europe Finally Protects Women on the Track - From Freikörperkultur to Camera Chastity

Europe has not always regarded the visible human body as an administrative emergency. Germany developed an entire tradition around the idea that nudity need not be sexual at all. From the late nineteenth-century Lebensreform movement through the beaches and holiday camps of the twentieth century, Freikörperkultur treated the ordinary body as something natural, communal and fundamentally unremarkable.

With the growing influence of imported cultural norms, the naturist tradition has been weakening for years. Younger generations report considerably greater discomfort with public nudity than their grandparents. Smartphones, social media, permanent photography and increasingly artificial body standards all receive part of the blame.

Finally, now, the European Broadcasting Union and European Athletics have therefore published Raising the Bar, a 23-page guide explaining how female athletes should be filmed without creating “compromising” or “unflattering” images. The recommendations cover high jump, pole vault, horizontal jumps and running, complete with diagrams, approved perspectives and red crosses over views that modern Europe has determined the public should no longer encounter without institutional supervision.

This is exceptionally accommodating and forward-thinking.

Liberation Through Camera Avoidance

The genius of the arrangement is that it reconciles every modern European principle at once.

Women retain complete freedom of clothing.

Broadcasters retain complete editorial independence.

Viewers retain complete access to the competition.

They will simply receive approved perspectives selected to prevent them from seeing certain ordinary consequences of the clothes, movements and physical positions involved.

The document does not mention Islam, Muslim audiences or religious modesty. There is no evidence in the publication proving that religious accommodation motivated it.

The World Is Learning

Europe did not invent the broader campaign.

The International Olympic Committee published global portrayal guidelines in 2018 and updated them in 2021 and 2024, advising Olympic organisations and media partners to avoid objectifying or sexualised imagery and to concentrate on sporting performance rather than appearance.

At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Olympic Broadcasting Services was already trying to reduce overly sexualised images of women.

The international motorcycling federation has also adapted the IOC’s portrayal approach for its own global sport, while UN Women and the IOC continue distributing wider guidance on gender-sensitive sports coverage.

Australia and New Zealand have meanwhile been measuring how female athletes are portrayed in their national media.

Fortunately, viewers no longer need to concern themselves with whether a competitor qualifies for the female category. World Athletics has already introduced biological eligibility testing for elite international competition. The matter is settled privately through cheek swabs and blood samples, as every intimate question should be in an enlightened society. Once the athlete reaches the stadium, the European Broadcasting Union can ensure that the audience sees as little potentially informative anatomy as possible.

The future of female emancipation has arrived - it is standing just outside the frame.

Europeans (like this redaction) who still insist that the naked body is natural may kindly retreat to a designated beach in Greece or Croatia, where this obsolete cultural habit can continue at a safe distance from televised civilisation.