The Playboy Athlete. Part 1
She shoots … she scores … she rips off her clothes with abandon and poses with a sultry look. Her bedroom eyes beckon and her carefully arranged, “roll-in-the-hay” hair tumbles over her toned shoulders. Who is this sexy seductress spread bare on the centerfold pages of Playboy? Her name is Gabby, and she loves sun, sand, and volleyball. She’s trying to learn how to play golf, she tells the magazine. Is Gabby a starving student—a girl who’s scraping along, looking for some extra cash? Is she just another “Playmate of the Month,” an extra blond trophy added to Hugh Hefner’s collection?
No. Gabby is Gabrielle Reece, professional volleyball player worth millions in endorsements and a well-known female athlete. When Reece agreed to pose completely nude for Playboy, a shocked sports community asked “Why?” Why would a strong, independent woman who serves as a role model for countless young women decide to bare all for the granddaddy of all nudey magazines? Why would she decide to objectify women as she did? Why would she compromise her dignity and reputation as a professional by completely sexualizing her image?
“I don’t think of the images as sexual,” Reece is quoted as saying. “They’re more a statement that a woman can be really powerful, really feminine, really natural and really confident and just put it out there. No big deal. I’m not trying to say, check me out.” Really?
Right now, female athletes who choose to pose nude for Playboy, semi-nude for other magazines such as Sports Illustrated, or barely clothed for posters, advertisements, and calendars all seem to be assuming such an attitude. I’m not sexualizing and compromising my image, they say. I’m not betraying or confusing my young fans. I’m not taking women a step backwards, I’m taking them a step forwards. I’m showing that women can be strong, successful, and sexual.
Professional female athletes have every “right” to pose nude in Playboy and other such magazines. However, ladies, let’s tell it like it is. Photographs of sexy, shaven, nude female athletes sprawled in various positions are not purely artistic works celebrating the human form or the power of the athlete as a finely tuned machine. I believe this is porn, pure and simple. Ms. Reece, please respect your young fans enough to explain what you’re doing with truthfulness in motives.
In the pithy words of Leanne Moss, Editor-in-Chief of online Sports+Fitness Channel, “There she [Reece]is, dyed-blond hair and naked as a jaybird, in a 12-page photo spread that reveals everything, including a nicely done bikini wax. Come on, posing nude is one thing, but did she have to show them everything?”
to be continued…