Silly Little Country

Tennis nipples - Canada is finding itself short on relevance these days

The Toronto Star published a major expose in their Saturday edition last weekend. Read it soon - no doubt the link will expire. It turns out the Women's Tennis Association hopes to get attendance because its players are attractive young women. Yikes!

The article is about the upcoming women's tennis tournament in Toronto - every two years the WTA holds a tournament here in Toronto. I go every second year. I also go to the men's tournament every other year. The Star is now concerned about how the tournament is promoted. Hint - young healthy athletic women. Possible males in audience. Well, maybe females too.

Well, I thought I understood it - but the quotations baffle me no end.

One quotation in the article is this:

"I don't see the sporting necessity of having Maria Sharapova's breasts falling out of her top," fumes Richard Powers, professor of sports marketing at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. "Boy, oh, boy, what are they selling here? I don't think it's in good taste."

He "fumes"! Now they have me really interested - "falling out of her top". What could this all mean? BTW I don't see the sporting necessity of Sharapova wearing any clothes at all. We could return to the ancient Greek competitive ideal, at least in a summer as hot as this.

But let us get on the subject of the article.

Meanwhile, what's this controversy about her bosom?"I would say that it was something that we missed," concedes Stacey Allaster, director of the Toronto tournament, one of the top summer sporting draws in the city. "It's a shot of Maria hitting a serve."But it is not Sharapova's punishing serve that draws the viewer's gaze in this particular image. It isn't her tennis racquet, either.The picture in question appears in a large-format, four-page brochure promoting this year's edition of the annual Rogers Cup tournament. Allaster says the decision to use that image was an honest mistake."It's the nature of that Nike dress," she says, deftly slipping the name of the manufacturer into a telephone interview. "It's low-cut. It's something that we missed."

OK now I am getting really interested. In the end we are told they altered the photograph for later use. What could the images have been? Two photographs are included with the article.

One I will align left, and one, the 'corrected' one, right. Now I know you, dear reader, will find the change more quickly than I did, because I was doing it in a printed paper populated with the Star's usual random smudges and I mistook the difference on Saturday for a smudge. All I can say is, "Huh? This is worth reporting?".

Moreover - what's up there is not low-cut! Does nobody recall Chris Evert's apparently bra-less US Open? And what is with this poor U of T prof imagining Sharapova's breasts falling out of her top? Huh? Huh? And where is the serve? She is not serving.

My guess is that this was an inane article of no value written that at least made sense, that was later edited because of the controversial nature of the subject, but that the pictures were changed and many other things occurred. As it stands it is an inane article that makes no sense. Star quality indeed.

In any case, I know I am looking forward to spending a good part of Friday being astonished and delighted by young women (well, much younger than I) engaged in amazing physical activity, scantily attired, running all over a court, and playing tennis far better than I ever have. And next year I plan to watch the men.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 7:48 PM