Oh, It’s Tuesday: Does Sex Sell Tennis?

This is a cross-post with Deep Into Sports

When not looking at you coquettishly on the beach in her bikini, Maria Sharapova likes to play a little game called tennis.

So apparently, the officials at Wimbledon have admitted to taking looks into consideration when making court assignments at Wimbledon. This “sex sells” practice isn’t so surprising, as much that a group would actually admit to doing this in the 21st century.

And while I agree with many of the points in this Jezebel article decrying the sexualizing of women sports, as far as tennis goes, I can’t agree that this is a feminist issue, b/c in my opinion, sex is also selling men’s tennis.

I mean, c’mon, who from my generation doesn’t remember when Andre Agassi burst onto the pop culture radar in the early 90s with a commercial series for the Canon Rebel EOS camera? He rocked a mullet and wasn’t afraid to take his shirt off or wear neon pink shorts — hey, what was sexy in the 90s isn’t so much now, but trust me, Andre definitely moved Wimbledon tickets back in the day.

Homely Nadal poses for New York magazine in a cover photo that focuses mostly on his tennis skills

Andre eventually lost all his mulletastic hair, got creakier, got married (twice!), stopped taking his shirt off and lo and behold, we needed a new Wimbledon sex peddlers stars.

Now we’ve got Federer and Nadal. Both extremely talented players, and I’m sure their rarely-cited sex appeal didn’t attract any new eyes to Wimbledon. Their legions of female fans are a testament to their skill, not their looks, right? Oh, wait…

So while I agree that sex perhaps shouldn’t be used to sell tennis. I don’t think this is a women-only phenomenon. In fact, if men were suddenly allowed to play shirtless at Wimbledon, I’d be interested to see how many of them would do so. After all, sex does sell, whether you’re a man or a woman. And those ad deals won’t be attracted with skill alone.

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