Sex symbol or sports star?

Whether it’s a high-waisted tennis skirt or a low cut sports bra, sportswomen in the 21st century have become accustomed to having their sportswear scrutinised.

But with women’s sport rarely making the headlines, should women athletes be grateful for the publicity? Or is it unfair to disregard success on the field and replace it with breasts, bums and bare legs?

Regardless of what’s moral, sex sells.

Anna Kournikova is a perfect example. She wasn’t by any means the greatest of tennis players, but she managed to receive huge sponsorship deals. Why? Well because she was sexy and prepared to pose half naked.

Needless to say her professional tennis career did not last long. But it didn’t matter because she earned herself more money doing photo shoots than she ever did serving aces.

But it’s not only the less than average athletes getting their kit off.

World and Olympic cycling champion Victoria Pendleton is one of the latest women athletes to succumb to the ‘lad mag’ photo shoot.

Last year she posed for FHM in what the magazine described as ‘sporty’ lingerie. The underwear was black with a leather-like to sheen to it. Hardly ‘sporty’ if you compare it to the style the Victoria wears in the velodrome.

So why did the 29-year-old champion decide to do it? Unlike Kournikova, Pendleton had achieved everything she possibly could in her chosen sport.

More than likely it was for the publicity. Possibly encouraged by her sponsors, the photo shoot, put her name (and body) back in the public eye, almost a year after her success in Beijing.

It’s a fact that men make up the majority of sporting audiences, so if modelling in underwear will make a man recognise Victoria the next time they see her in a helmet and a pair of glasses on Sky Sports News, then all the better for the sport’s profile and the sponsor’s.

For many sportswomen however, who don’t fancy swapping their sportswear for underwear, the sex appeal necessity attached to women’s sport must be frustrating.

Take cricket for example. While cricket fans all over the country celebrated England reclaiming the Ashes from Australia last summer, England’s women’s team was giving their urn a polish, as it had been sitting on the mantel piece for four years.

But for the players of the women’s cricket team, who have so far refused to take off their whites, there has been very little publicity.

The point is the England women’s cricket captain, Charlotte Edwards, is one of the most successful captains in English Sport, but so far she is not even a household name.

Within four months she led her side to victory in the 50-over World Cup, the World Twenty20 title and the Ashes. Had her male counterpart, Andrew Strauss, guided a team to as much success, he would quite possibly have been hailed a hero.

So what if the women’s cricket squad decided to take the sex appeal route and start using their bodies in a slightly different way?

For many people, turning sports stars into sex symbols is demeaning to women but if stripping off a few layers gets sportswomen in the media, can we really blame them?

After all, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

Female First

Georgina Farrer