Welcome USA Today readers!
Amanda Beard will be appearing nude in a Playboy near you.
Who is Amanda Beard? She is an 7-time medal winning swimmer and Olympic athlete.
Obviously, Ms. Beard feels the exposure (insert your own joke here) will help her career and bank account. But the nay-sayers are out; posing sexily is seen as bad for women’s sports. Does Amanda have an obligation to promote women’s sports, or is it OK just to promote her (naked) self?
Sports Illustrated writer Aditi Kinkhabwala takes up the issue here. Money quote “Sexy pictures don’t make people more likely to read about women’s sports, they don’t make anyone more likely to attend a women’s sporting event, and they sure don’t drive any season-ticket sales.”
But Kinkhabwala’s point is compromised by her platform; when I read her story online the ad next to it was for one of Sport Illustrated’s many Swimsuit edition products. Also unaddressed was why Beard needs to put her obligations to some amorphous larger group (women, women’s swimming, women’s sports) ahead of her own personal interest.
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