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Phil-Ken Six's avatar

What’s the problem? They won the genetic lottery on multiple fronts. Imagine if Anna Kounikova was playing tennis in this day and age. She never won a tournament and was making huge coin even pre-internet. Sound to me like the only problem is pure jealousy.

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Dave's avatar

I think that female basketball coach doesn't really understand the issue. This is a case of the Supreme's decision taking away the NCAAs ability to ban college athletes from earning in a variety of ways. For example, I was a college swimmer and the NCAA banned me from making money from swim clinics, swim instruction and even life guarding because it was using my sports skills as a "professional." We were read the rules on the first day of school. Of course, us swimmers ignored the rules because no one was enforcing our sport unlike football and basketball. But, you get the point, NCAA rules were unconstitutional and the Supreme's called them out.

FYI, social media is just another way for attractive women to sell their looks/bodies something they have been doing for a long time.

Finally, my son is in SLC, and LSU came to campus for a gymnastic meet. U of Utah has great crowd attendance for its women's gymnastic team on a regular basis. So, few tickets were available. Olivia Dunne is on the LSU team and he said high school boys were ringing around the stadium waiting to yell and scream at Dunne, but she was injured and didn't show up. Lots of disappointed adolescents...............

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Lawrence M Daniels's avatar

Speaking of the Utah gymnastics team, look up Kristina Baskett. Far better looking than Dunne (IMO) and she is actually a national champion to boot. And attendance for meets are literally the highest of any womens' sport and it's not even close, pre pandemic. Would be interesting to see the teams combined NIL value.

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Dave's avatar

Yea, on our campus tour when he was looking at the "U," we walked by the arena and they said it was regularly sold out at over 10,000 fans. My son and I looked at each other in disbelief. LOL

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Shirley G's avatar

Agree with your premise. And good on them for cashing in on what God gave them I guess.

All I know is if my daughter ever makes that stupid duck lip face in a selfie and adorns a tan that looks even more fake than that bad bad orange man, she’s spending the rest of her teen years in a convent.

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Mvturner's avatar

Agree but Kournikova did win tournaments. She was ranked #8 in the world in singles and #1 in doubles, where she won 2 grand slams.

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John Bingham's avatar

Important to recognize this. The idea that she was some kind of failure as a professional tennis player implies that only a small handful of people who win grand slam tournaments and reach the #1 ranking are a success. Kournikova didn't accomplish those things, but she was still a top professional for several years. She earned three and a half million dollars playing against top athletes in a competitive sport where her looks offered no competitive advantage. The fact that she never won a singles tournament is actually an aberration for someone who won as many matches as she did.

If she looked the same and was not successful enough to regularly qualify for and advance deep into grand slams, no one would have ever heard of her.

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Mvturner's avatar

Exactly. And if she looked like a 'normal' woman and performed exactly the same no one (other than tennis junkies) would have ever heard of her either.

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Kate's avatar

LOL, true. Nobody watches mixed doubles except those tennis junkies anyway.

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Phil-Ken Six's avatar

Fair enough - thank you for the clarification!

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IB Steve's avatar

Exactly!

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Tyler's avatar

I was a little baffled as to how Ethan could write this story and not give at least a passing nod to the Anna Kournikova controversy. I suppose Ethan is just a bit too young to have appreciated what was going on at that time.

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Dick WB Tracy's avatar

Don't forget Paige Spirinac, who couldn't even earn her card on the LPGA. But she is really selling her looks!

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Evan's avatar

I just check her instagram out for putting tips.

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Phil-Ken Six's avatar

Like reading Playboy for the articles in the old days? She does have quite the putting tips.

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publius_x's avatar

So your putts is what motivates you to look at her Instagram.

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Sgd427's avatar

Yup good example

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Elizabeth Shemesh's avatar

Lol I came here to say “What’s the problem?” and the first comment that came up was yours, saying exactly that.

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Arrbee's avatar

Anna came to my mind immediately as well. A middling professional women's tennis player who happened to be attractive and got more attention than the top women in the sport.

Like it or not, this is nothing new. There are women's professional golfers cashing in the same way. People can try to deny biology all they'd like; I wish them luck.

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Sunapeewolverine's avatar

Middling????

She was number 8 in the world in singles. While she never won a tournament she made the Wimbledon semis, she was ranked 1 in the world in mixed doubles, won a Grand Slam in mixed doubles.

She was a really high level talented player. Steffi Graff was winning everything at the time. The swimmers who lost to Micheal Phelps in the Olympics werent middling because they didnt win.

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Snarling Fifi's avatar

You're absolutely right. Neither are the gymnasts who are still losing to Simone Biles.

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Mark D. Hays's avatar

I'd be quite happy to finish in the top twenty of the Indy 500 year after year.

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Evan's avatar

Ji Young Ko is the number 1 ranked LPGA player. 50k followers on Instagram. Paige Spiranac can't even make the tour....3.7 million followers. I wonder why.

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Mark D.'s avatar

How about Lolo Jones, who once whined that people were calling her “the Anna Kournikova of track.” She later became the Anna K of bobsled ;)

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Skinny's avatar

The best of luck and how lucky are we to watch two of them, if we wish to!

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Snarling Fifi's avatar

Exactly. The biology not only of the people who are considered attractive, but also of what people _find_ attractive - most has to do with desirability based on ability to successfully reproduce.

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Mark D. Hays's avatar

Wow...what nonsense

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Snarling Fifi's avatar

How long have you been out of the loop -- er -- literature? This is well studied.

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Thunder Road's avatar

Not really though. Any reasonably young woman, however fat and ugly she might be, is very likely able to reproduce (for better or worse).

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Snarling Fifi's avatar

Yes really. How what we consider attractive relates to survival of the species has been well researched.

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Thunder Road's avatar

What of all those decidedly unattractive young women out there popping out kids left and right?

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Snarling Fifi's avatar

What you consider "decidedly unattractive" may not be in terms of a biological imperative. It has to go further than what one culture considers "beautiful." Wide hips, for example, facial symmetry, squared jaw in men. These things signal things other than "fuckability," which I interpret as the most superficial & most culturally malleable traits.

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Marshall Eubanks's avatar

You're missing the point, and honestly it's rather dense of you. "Boobs and butts", to quote the previous poster, are secondary sexual characteristics. This means they only occur after puberty, which means they are a reliable indicator of reproductive status, which means males are drawn to them. Your observation that what you consider to "unattractive" women are able to have children is wholy irrelevant to this point.

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Mark D. Hays's avatar

You guys are just jealous.

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Snarling Fifi's avatar

Oh brother. What, "people on TFP are just trying to hit on me"??

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Thunder Road's avatar

Lol. Rock on, good sir.

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HBI's avatar

Which is probably why I don't find these two particularly attractive. Boobs and butts are great indicators of being able to reproduce.

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Snarling Fifi's avatar

yes they are. and youth.

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YM's avatar

That's what the entire 'anti-beauty' movement boils down to.

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Thunder Road's avatar

You mean feminism?

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Reuven's avatar

Right! They're trying to normalize being a fat slob. I will not stand for that.

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L.K. Collins's avatar

Truth be told, most people cannot stand, period.

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publius_x's avatar

and now lots of "women" cannot have periods, either.

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User's avatar
Comment deleted
Jun 16, 2023
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publius_x's avatar

Whatever you call them, they can't do that, either.

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Pemulis_DMZ's avatar

Maybe once this income disparity is publicly recognized, I can stop being lectured online by gorgeous white women about how I need to check my privilege.

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