Gold Digging - I've Finally Snapped

In the mornings after I take my boys to school, I come home, get a nice cup of coffee and sit for a bit to read the news online.  This morning after reading an article I think I could have thrown my laptop against the wall... I snapped.  Why?  Nike's new women's t-shirt.

Joanna Douglas wrote the article I read and says "Was there not another more positive, inspiring phrase Nike could have printed on these women's tees? "Reach for the Gold," "Go for the Gold," or "Good as Gold," would have gotten the point across in Nike's trademark "Just Do It" sort of way. A gold digger is a woman out for a man's money. In this Olympic context, a phrase like "Gold Digging" implies you don't deserve or didn't earn your prize, and you went about obtaining it in a deceitful or unsportsmanlike way. The American women at the Olympics this year worked hard for their medals, and took home twice as many golds as their male counterparts."

Now, normally I could have seen this, rolled my eyes and just chalked it up to "shock" marketing.  But for Nike to come out with this after the Olympics just ending is appalling.  After these Olympics where if the US Women were their own country, they would have gotten like 4th in the medal count.  These Olympics where the US Women outnumbered the Men for the first time and dominated.

What finally made me snap was the fact that the coverage of women at the Olympics was laced with sexism and the focus of the women athletes was more on their appearance or their attire than their abilities.  Now, I know some will take issue with that comment, but when NBC came out with their creepy video called "Bodies in Motion" it validated all the frustration I was feeling about the media coverage of these athletes (female Olympians in general) who had trained so hard, sacrificed so much, represented their countries so well and deserved to be revered for their abilities and not just how their bikini bottoms rode up.  Greg Wyshynski of Fourth Place medal summed it up nicely.  "Bodies In Motion" was an online video produced by NBC in which women competing in various Olympic sports were featured in softcore, fetishist slow-motion highlights, while porn-tastic jazz music played on the soundtrack.  It looked like something a testosterone-filled teenager with a DVR would have spliced together for YouTube; instead, it was the official rights holder of the Olympics in the U.S. that produced it."

Thankfully, after much criticism, NBC pulled the video but to me the damage has been done.  What is it going to take for women athletes to be seen as ATHLETES and not objectified? 

Ok, rant over.  I usually don't do that but I have had enough.   Way to go Team USA women for making these Olympics the most successful for the US ever.  The majority of us were focusing on you and the sport and not your bodies in motion.