WNBA needs post-ups, not pinups

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Wednesday, May 28, 2003

WNBA needs post-ups, not pinups
'There's no reason to hide it'

By JOHN LEVESQUE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Why will I watch a women's game and pronounce a certain player "cute" and be OK with that, but wonder about the sexualization of these same players when their images are used in promotional pieces?

I've had crushes on certain female athletes since I started noticing female athletes -- probably the reason I didn't get to cover Annika Sorenstam at the Colonial last week. And yet the notion of using women's looks to promote women's sports makes me queasy, and uneasy that I'm not the only one being used here.

Does this make me two-faced? (And, if so, do I have a future as a player's agent?)

Or did I somehow miss the Bob Cousy pinup posters when I was a kid?

The 2003 ad campaign for the Women's National Basketball Association features eight of its marquee players in a glitz-and-glam ad showing them as more than one-dimensional, pony-tailed basketballers. This idea of selling with sex appeal is about as cutting edge as burlap suspenders, but nothing succeeds like sex.


		Dime Magazine
	Seattle Storm star guard Sue Bird was called "possibly the perfect woman" by Dime magazine.

Which apparently explains why Sue Bird of the Seattle Storm also appears in the summer issue of Dime, a hoops magazine, looking all sexy and come-hithery in high heels and an Allen Iverson jersey.

In a related development, the WNBA team uniforms this season feature cropped, untucked tops so fans can get a glimpse of midriff when the players reach for the stars. Don't know about you, but the chance of seeing Lauren Jackson's navel as she cleans the glass has me all a-tingle.

I have a hard time seeing this as progress. While my inner guy, the guy who admits to preferring Jackson in the skintight catsuit favored by her Australian league, is pumping his fist in exultation over a sexier WNBA, my inner pundit is pounding fist against forehead at the sheer wrong-headedness of it all.

Think about it. Does the NBA feel the need to pose Iverson or Tim Duncan in tight black leather next to a Dodge Prowler to sell tickets, as the WNBA spot does with Ticha Penicheiro of the Sacramento Monarchs? Will the Sonics' Ray Allen look at the camera and declare, "I'm not as sweet as you think I am," as the Storm's spaghetti-strapped Bird does in the WNBA ad?


	Dime Magazine

Doubtful. The NBA is an established league that knows most of its fans would still show up if the home team's squad of synchronized dancers were elderly men in business suits. The WNBA, still using NBA-furnished training wheels at age 7, is anything but established. It lost two franchises after last season. Two others changed cities. The league is keen to prove that a professional basketball enterprise can exist as more than a subsidized women's auxiliary on the sports landscape.

Yet in the Dime magazine piece, Bird says: "It doesn't really matter to me why people come out to the games. If they come out to watch the basketball, then that's great. If they're coming out to look at the players or the funny-colored ball or whatever other reason, that's fine too. Whatever draws fans is good."

It doesn't help that the magazine hails Bird as "possibly the perfect woman ... and the best reason we've seen for us to pay attention to women's basketball."


		Dime Magazine

This insult to those who have gone before, such as Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes, isn't Bird's fault. But she may want to give more careful consideration to her off-court promotional activities.

"It's no lie that sex sells," she says in the Dime interview. " ... But, like I said, whatever draws fans is a good thing. We have some beautiful women in the league. Look at Lisa Leslie. If she had never picked up a basketball when she was little, she'd still be out there today as a model. There's no reason to hide it."

No reason at all. But flaunting it, especially when "it" has nothing to do with basketball, will never win the WNBA a corps of true fans, just a gaggle of gawkers who get Sports Illustrated mainly for the swimsuit issue. Curiously, it's the opposite of what Sorenstam did last week in professional golf. Instead of seeing how a woman measures up to men on the same playing field, the WNBA is creating an entirely different -- and irrelevant -- playing field.

This isn't to suggest a team of WNBA all-stars should take on a contingent from the NBA to drum up interest. Where a golfer plays against the course, a WNBA player would have to hold her own against a tree. Not exactly a fair fight. But some sort of fan-building exhibition -- say, a 3-point shooting contest -- would do more to enhance the league's integrity than a bunch of sexy photos. (This week's LPGA tour event, the Kellogg-Keebler Classic, reports an increase of 50 percent in ticket sales and twice the usual number of media-credential requests.)

The cheesecake lover will be disappointed for a time. But gorging on dessert before the main course is out of the oven is very bad form.

P-I columnist John Levesque can be reached at 206-448-8330 or johnlevesque@seattlepi.com