There are also many precedents of athletes challenging the dress-code, I can think of Serena Williams at French Tennis Open.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/16/sport/serena-williams-ico...
Many other social activities which you may not call sport have dress codes too. On the top of my head, I can think of Bridge or Snooker. Nothing really fundamentally peculiar with Chess. I don't blame Carlsen for asking to review the rules though.
Moreover, in the examples you give clothes also serve a practical use within the game itself, except maybe golf not as significantly. But golf is also another peculiar case of a sport and one that carries different traditions. Eg esp for BJJ I would say clothes are important part of the game in ways that it is not for chess.
I agree that FIDE’s dress code is prob more similar to dress code of social activities like bridge. But I would also expect some people to get confused over how strict these are from time to time, and ppl certainly do not become grandmasters by memorising dress code rules. This has happened before anyway and ppl did not think it was an intentional act of activism to dress in shorts either [0].
[0] https://www.chess.com/news/view/dress-code-incident-at-world...
Maybe it's stupid that it's this strict, but many of these “sports” (or whatever you want to call them) have a dress code.
Chess's is definitely not stricter than (e.g.) snooker's.
For me though, I think a good test is that if you can play it via long-term correspondence, it isn't a sport or any sort of athletic activity. I don't feel like gatekeeping sport as strenuous physical activity, but there surely has to be at least some somatic component.
I recall when Kenya (?) wanted to play with sleeveless jerseys in the FIFA World Cup, similar to have like they have in basketball. That did not work out - they had to add sleeves in short order.
EDIT: It was Cameroon in the Africa Cup. Link: https://www.puma-catchup.com/africa-cup-perfect-stage-scanda...
Not having huge variations in uniforms for team sports seems to make some sense to me (you can't have everyone wearing a different color...) for something like tennis or chess I can't see how it matters much.
All the other bluster about tradition and standards or whatever else is all just covering fire to exclusionary policy. Whether that be race based, gender based, class based or otherwise, it's a basis for excluding or removing those outside your group who can't or won't bend to your requirements.
The one and only exception I know of to this is safety dress codes, like loose long hair or garments around certain machinery that could catch those. The rest can go to hell.
If a White professional sumo wrestler insisted on Speedos or boardshorts as a protest against discriminatory Japanese garb, would he be a freedom fighter, in your view? A disrespectful buffoon in mine.
May I suggest you visit Wikipedia maybe?
Some weddings are explicit, sure. And that's a couple's choice, to exclude some of their friends and family.
That is incorrect. They do have a list of don’ts. See 3b and 3d.
https://www.fide.com/images/stories/NEWS_2013/FIDE/Proposal_...
Some organisations have a great deal of cultural inertia
If I start a club that requires all members to wear red trousers, then people who hate red trousers won't join, while people who love them will join in great numbers.
Members who are ambivalent about red trousers won't feel comfortable enforcing the rules, so they won't take the junior positions of power that lead to senior positions of power.
I'm pretty sure this is why London still have some private members' clubs that will insist on all men wearing a tie.
True democracy should be present in all organizations, guided by compassion for all its members and the communities they affect.
It's time to retire the 'old guard'.
Double denim?
Otherwise you get comedy like this at a Magic the Gathering tournament. (warning lots of plumbers crack)
The picture you've shared is at least two decades old at this point. And people showing their asscracks can also happen with suits, especially if someone is not used to wearing a suit often (e.g. it's not perfectly fit to their body shape).
On top of that if organizers are hoarding hundreds of people in what looks like a multi-purpose location on the cheapest chairs/tables possible, then why should these people who need to sit and concentrate for many hours be forced to do it in expensive/rarely-used clothing.
citation needed
But my question was precisely why is the minimum so high? Sure, maybe don’t allow someone to play naked or with a t-shirt stamped with gore or racist imagery. But jeans? Come on. Looking at the rules, I wonder if they’d also, for example, prevent a man from playing in a skirt that would otherwise be acceptable for a woman.
https://www.fide.com/images/stories/NEWS_2013/FIDE/Proposal_...
Those sorts of people are always superfluous inefficiencies that gum up progress. The sooner we remove them from positions of influence, the sooner we can begin making this world a better place for one and all.
> Those deviations "may, in particular, include appropriate jeans matching the jacket", the new rules state.
> (…)
> "Special assistants" will be on hand to help judges decide whether players' outfits are acceptable, according to Mr Dvorkovich.
This whole saga is so unbelievably stupid. What’s the deal with the overly strict dress code in the first place?