My teammates were incensed when they were told to put their shirts back on. It was hot – God knows it can be sultry in Thailand, especially in the late afternoon – and they were working hard. What harm could running shirtless around the campus really do? It soon became a point of irreverent pride to run bare-chested in defiance of the edict. They weren’t going to sweat any more than was absolutely necessary to mollify anachronistic prudishness.

When asked for the reasoning behind his decision, Mr Vaughan responded that the decision was an attempt to respect Thai cultural norms that frown on shirtlessness. He added that “showing off” by going about topless distracted from sportsmanship. I agree with him, but I’d go further.

I have to admit, my teammates had a case. They were ambitiously shooting for gold (and they succeeded) and they didn’t need any more barriers thrown up in their way. All the same, they were wrong, and not only for the reason cited by the administration. In their shirtlessness, they were unconsciously guilty of a double standard that so often goes unnoticed in our society, and one that needs to be addressed.

Even in an age of unprecedented female empowerment and sexual liberalisation, gender still plays a dominant, if often subtle, role in our society. Our conceptions of the different roles the sexes should play manifests itself in such widely varying ways as the toys we give our children, our continued discomfort with the stay-at-home husband, and disparate standards in personal grooming to which we hold women in comparison to men. They’re so pervasive that you don’t have to be a bigot to fall prey to them; I’ll make the leap of faith and say that we all do, to varying degrees.  In most cultures, amongst these double standards are some relating to nudity.

If one of my teammates were to run around the school without a shirt, he might get a slap on the wrist and a warning if the wrong faculty member saw him. On the streets, it would be unlikely that anyone would give his shirtlessness a second thought. Now, if a student on the girl’s team were to go bare-chested on school grounds, I’d guess that she’d be lucky to get away with a suspension. Elsewhere, she’d likely be arrested on charges of “indecent exposure”.  She would be the subject of gossip, and “feminist” would be invoked as a dirty word to describe her. In some jurisdictions, she might even be forced to register as a sex offender. In the words of Jessica Blankenship, writing in The Atlantic, “the disparity in treatment of the genders appears to offer legal validation that a man’s view of a woman’s body is the only one that matters”.

I don’t see the school softening its stance on female toplessness in the near future, nor do I see the practice coming into the mainstream in my lifetime, if ever. However, I applaud the school on its decision to keep everyone’s shirts on, including males, though perhaps we don’t share the same reasoning. We may not be ready to accept barechestedness amongst women, but if we really want to subscribe to gender equality, something’s got to give. If our female classmates are made to cover up, so, too, should boys; it’s not an ideal solution, but it’s the best one we have available. So, gentlemen, I understand that it’s really, really hot here, but you’re not the only ones who are overheating – keep your shirts on.

David Hallengren