The last time I wrote about female athletes using their body for exposure, I received many cogent responses both for and against my own position. One of the chief arguments in favor of Amanda Beard’s posing nude was that she was embracing the beauty and uniqueness of the female athlete’s form. I still don’t support this rationale, but I respect it and understand where its proponents are coming from. However, what I don’t understand is how a sports figure like Danica Patrick, who has the rare power to define how men and women view female athletes, could agree to participate in an ad like the one featured on GoDaddy.com and still have any self-respect for herself as a woman and as an athlete.
The GoDaddy.com ad that was barred from broadcast during the Super Bowl was meant to be a spoof and was by no means a subtle one, but apparently that’s their strong suit based on previous ads. I’m not going to recount the details because I’m sure you’ve either seen it or you’re going to go to the site now thanks to my free advertising, but suffice it to say that the commercial belittles and mocks women by utilizing a derogatory term for the female anatomy.
Gratefully, Fox had the decency not to air the commercial on broadcast television, but that didn’t necessarily lessen its reach. That same record-breaking audience went in record-breaking numbers to the website to see what the fuss was about.
In fairness, female athletes aren’t the only ones who sell their bodies. I recently opened an issue of the latest Vanity Fair and found a two-page ad featuring an underwear-clad David Beckham. While in many ways it’s no different from any provocative ad featuring a female athlete, the difference lies in the importance of the physique in defining these figures as athletes. When people talk about David Beckham, they’ll talk first about his skills, then about his appearance. When they talk about Danica Patrick, the first thing that pops to mind is attractiveness, not ability.
It doesn’t have to be this way, which is why her participation is so damaging. So few female athletes reach the status of household names, but those who do should see it as a chance to give back something more than entertainment on the track, field, court, etc. By accepting the offer from GoDaddy.com, Patrick condoned the notion that female athletes have to be sexy to be accepted, and while sexiness can be a powerful commodity, it does little to improve the lot of females in the sports world.
I’ve already established my position that it is the responsibility of athletes to be role models, but in this instance, I don’t think that’s limited to just girls. Certainly the message to young girls is not favorable, but what does this say to young boys as well? That it’s okay to objectify women, to speak pejoratively about them?
Maybe I should lighten up... maybe I should just see the commercial as some clever joke that will be swept away from public memory as quickly as the ticker tape in New York, but I can’t. Athletes can be sex symbols, but the problem lies in when their status as sex symbols takes precedence over their abilities as athletes.
1 comment:
Lol. Nobody talks about David Beckham, first, as an athlete. If he's a household name in America at all (outside that soccer movie with the limey chick from Pirates of the Caribbean), then it's for physical attractiveness the way Anna Kournikova is. And the litmus test is that most men who've heard the name David Beckham know him as a sex obect/commodity and couldn't tell you what position he plays, never mind who he plays for, if he put up Posh Spice as bet collateral.
And not to wax too argumentative, but for the sake of journalistic dialogue, for someone who only watched the Super Bowl as a diary exercise, you seem to be giving the advertising that funded the event a lot of credit it doesn't deserve.
I could empthaize with your venom if the belief-suspension of your sporting concentration or even regional enthusiasm had been violated by the flagrant chauvinism of an exploitative ad. But if it had aired on ESPN 2 at 3 AM you wouldn't have even known it'd been filmed.
You seem to take a disproportionate offense to an ancillary tentacle attached to a sport (Professional football) you don't even like. That would be like me baying at the moon and grousing about an erectile dysfunction pill commercial during the Figure Skating Finals. Why should I even be in a position to care?
And Danic whatever-her-name-is (I've already forgotten) got paid more money than you AND I will make in 2 - 3 years for that spot. So if anyone's to be condemned here (and maybe I mistook your thesis) it's her.
Also, how do you know "she condones the [...] etc."? If anything, Her stepping out of the car "showing beaver" mocks the legitimate, feminine Benedict Arnolds in our culture: the Paris Hiltons and Britney Spears.
They're the ones posing for paparazzi, accidentally-on-purpose, with no panties on with an impressionable pre-teen fanbase and ruining the credibility of successful, ambitious, task-driven women the world over.
I would contest that any woman with the foresight and sense of irony enough to throw that pun back in the face of the real demographic watching the game that night (Men 20 - 55)--for her to subvert their troglodyte snickering at such frat-tastic humor, she should be commended for pulling the curtain back on the true villains-- the girls who flash real beaver--as silly, airheaded punchlines.
These half-naked pop stars have a far more debilitating impact on young girls and women of fluctuating self-esteen than a NASCAR driver in a black, low-zippered, flame-retardant onesie.
Or maybe I'm giving her and her manager too much credit. Maybe I'm naive, but I think any woman who drives a car 200 mph is entitled to the benefit of the doubt when it comes to knowing something that I don't about balls and the male psyche, to say nothing of how easily it can be cuckholded to sell some product no one can remember.
Or she could be a gullible shrinking violet--another corporate pawn in a line of long-suffering victims of the patriarchical world order who doesn't know any better.
I kinda doubt it; but I wasn't there at the pitch.
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