'Best Booty Ever': Teen Spandex Volleyball Shorts | Why?

GNBV 14U Gold Finals
Hendrickson & Snipes v. Adishian & Le Blanc

Previously, we wrote a post about European teen handballers competing in (cheeky) bikinis and a post about the super short skirts of French ball girls and teen tennis players. 

Now the question is: Why do (most) [teen] beach volleyball players choose to compete in (cheeky) bikinis? 

Unlike in handball, it doesn't appear that wearing a (cheeky) bikinis is mandatory. For example, in the GNBV 14U Gold Finals (Nov 7, 2020), Hendrickson & Snipes choose to compete in (cheeky) bikinis, but Adishian & Le Blanc competed in (non-spandex) shorts.

As for indoor volleyball, (most) [teen] players compete in spandex volleyball shorts. Why?

Mandy MS posted "Why Are Volleyball Shorts so Short and Tight?" (APR 9, 2020) on How They Play. Mandy wrote that, due to the popularity of spandex, volleyball players switched from non-spandex shorts to spandex in the 1970s but not to sexualize nymphet volleyball players:

[Volleyball] didn't become a widespread college and high school level sport until the 70s after the NAIA and NCAA had introduced it as a varsity level sport.

As the synthetic material spandex became more popular in the late 1970s, many teams started switching over to spandex as part of their uniform. Both in the United States and internationally, women were wearing what was commonly referred to as "bun huggers" with greater frequency. 

Despite what many may have you believe. The shorts were not chosen with a desire to sexualize your daughters or to add sex appeal and spectators to the sport. The shorts were chosen for comfort and practicality.

Do you believe that the switch to spandex "bun huggers" was for for comfort and practicality and not to sexualize volleyball players? #rhetoricalquestion

Interestingly, Aeropostale sells the Best Booty Ever Solid Volleyball Shorts in the website's Girls Bottoms section. The teen volleyball shorts are described as: Booty Enhancing | Contoured seaming and feminine ruching on the back. 

St. Francis versus Palo Alto High School

But Mandy didn't explain why (some) [teen] volleyball players congratulate their teammates with a slap on their spandex "bun huggers". Take for example the 2011 St. Francis versus Palo Alto High School volleyball game where numbers 6, 13 and 14 seemed to be particularly fond of congratulating each other via checking, clasping, and clutching cheeks. 

But we do know why (some) [teen] volleyball players display their spandex "bun huggers" on TikTok. #likes #comments #follows

SLUT: A PLAY | Teens (Re)Claim Slut Status

On the cover of the book Slut: A Play and Guidebook for Combating Sexism and Sexual Violence, which was published by the Feminist Press of my alma mater, The City College of New York, Gloria Steinem opined: “SLUT is truthful, raw, and immediate! Experience this play and witness what American young women live with every day.

Playwright Katie Cappiello and Meg McInerney wrote in the book that during the sessions to develop the play at The Arts Effect All-Girl Theater Company in New York City, the word slut kept coming out of the mouths of the twenty East Coast high school students. For example: “I feel like a slut.”, “I was dressed all slutty.”, and “Haha. Oh my [G]od, you’re a dirty little slut!” 

Cappiello and McInerney wrote: “There’s an attempt being made by girls and young women across the country to reclaim the word. Being a “slut” means you’re sexy, fun, experimental, willing, popular, wanted, “fuckable” [...]”

Cappiello and McInerney shared that Slut: The Play is: “[...] authentic, nuanced, and hard-hitting.” And that: “[...] everything in this play is inspired by real events.”

(During the sessions about seven of the nymphets admitted that they had experienced sexual assault, which is probably inaccurate, because most victims of sexual assault don’t share their experiences. However, Cappiello and McInerney referenced a study that found that: “Eighty-one percent of kids and teens experience sexual harassment during middle school or high school years.”)

In the play, Joey (Winnifred Bonjean Alpart), a sixteen-year-old, was forcibly “fingered” in the back of a cab. “Luke is grabbing my other leg … Pulling my leg to the side, so my, um, legs would be more open [...] Then George all of a sudden really aggressively pulls my underwear to the side and jammed two of his fingers inside me [...] Then he (Luke) put two of his fingers in his mouth [...] and then he stuck his wet fingers in my vagina” 

However, Joey is “slut-shamed” for the incident, because an online picture of Joey suggested that she was giving George a lap dance in the back of the cab and a picture of her tasting fruit flavored condoms implied that she planned to give George and Luke “blow jobs”. Joey defended her raunchy behavior by proclaiming, “And we aren’t afraid to be sexual. If all that makes us sluts, then I guess we’re sluts.” 

Some motifs in the play, that’s set on the Upper East Side, are: cursing (e.g., “Ugh - fucking nasty.”), drinking (e.g., vodka), name-calling (e.g., “You don’t let a guy hook up with you when you have your period. Is she [thirteen-year-old Nadia Boyd] retarded? [...] Is she mentally challenged?”), raunchy teen behavior (e.g.,“[...] George once followed me into the bathroom and locked the door and wouldn’t let me out until I gave him a hand job. True story. I didn’t tell anyone. We ended up going out for, like, five months....”), rape (e.g., While visiting her brother, a college junior, Sylvie, a sixteen-year-old high school junior and virgin, shared, "The second night I was there, I was raped [...] College parties are fucking ridiculous, okay.”

SLUT Trailer 2018 from Katie Cappiello on Vimeo.

The actual text of Cappiello’s Slut: The Play wasn’t as revealing as some of the submissions in the chapter “Reality Check From Young Voices”. For example, Sonia, a fifteen-year-old sophomore from a small town in Pennsylvania shared: “We [My boyfriend and I] had been dating for a little over a month, when I asked him what he wanted for this sixteenth birthday. All he wanted from me was a blow job. [...] “Fine! I’ll give my boyfriend head because I’d rather that than him yell at me again.”

Fred, a thirteen-year-old, shared: “I started watching porn halfway through fifth grade. I had just begun middle school, and befriended a lot of kids in the seventh and eighth grade. Sometimes when I hung out with them they would make jokes about the porn they watched, referencing certain sites.”

Sixteen-year-old Clare wrote that her doorman “grabbed” her, “pulled” her into him, and “grabbed” her breast before he said, “I want a piece of this.” However, her neighbors paid his legal fees and opined that Clare was “[...] leading him on, or teasing him, or trying to ruin his life.”

And seventeen-year-old Danielle related: “I go to this typical Jewish summer camp, where promiscuous behavior is practically encouraged and cultivated [...] with no parental supervision, there are lots of sexual firsts for everyone [...] There is one girl in particular, Georgia, who is really petite and very pretty [...] Josh and another boy coerced - basically forced - Georgia to give them blow jobs, while others filmed it on their phones.”