Pole-vaulting is an amazing sport to watch. It is one of my favourite track and field events. Becoming accomplished at the sport takes a great deal of commitment, fitness, and training.
Allison Stokke is a young and talented American pole-vaulter.
Coincidentally, she’s hot enough to comfortably vacation on the surface of the Sun.
Cancun-Shmancun.
Allison received widespread internet fame and recognition, not due to her athleticism, but because of her sex appeal.
After a period of time, the hype surrounding Allison started to die down; even her Wikipedia page was removed and relocated under “List of Internet Phenomena“. Perhaps people realized the shallowness of their recognition.
Nope.
They realized that REAL Americans do bikini photo shoots dressed as Wonder Woman.
Meet Melanie Adams:
Another American pole-vaulter.
This trend of Athlete-turned-model is nothing new.
Danica Patrick competes in Nascar.
Neither Danica nor Motorola seem to mind the extra attention.
Maria Sharapova is a tennis player.
Nike is on board.
Allison Stokke is the only woman listed here that has not done numerous bikini photo shoots. A fact I consider with equal amounts respect and remorse.
I do not intend to demean any of the aforementioned women’s proficiency and accomplishment in their respective sport; though it can be agreed with certainty that their fame would be more modest (and non-existant in certain cases) without each athletes complementary cornea-melting abilities.
To a certain extent, Ms Patrick and Ms Sharapova have become household names. Normally, in the male-dominated world of sports, it takes the best of the best in a well televised event for a male name to become ubiquitous.
Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods are all prime examples of this concept. (My spell checker even corrected Gretsky to Gretzky).
As famed athletes continue to be trendsetters as well as a popular medium for promotional marketing, we notice that while male endorsement is more often based on accomplishment, female endorsement is unofficially mandated to be based on sex appeal. Through these observations we can question the ethics and adverse effects of such a reality.