How do you feel about Candace Parker's C-cup being referenced in this lede?

Which is fair, and why I said we'd agree to disagree on that topic. I didn't take it to nearly the level everyone else seems to, so maybe I just have a different way of seeing things.

Whether ANYONE should be marketed on their looks is a valid topic. Saying this is a shame because she's a woman is as sexist as anything else.

 

There you go. Was that so hard?

I think you're wrong, but at least you finally had an opinion that didn't invoke any of your high-powered friends.

 

Forget the reference to C cups. The whole lede is too fawning. That's the embarrassing part.

 

can't go through the whole thread. read the first page and the fourth and feel that's probably enough. but, just to add, frankly, I don't even think she's beautiful. she's not unattractive, but doesn't stand out to me in the least.

anyway, back to your banter.

 

Here's what I wrote three page back...

 

This. It was a badly written lead from an author more enamored with her writing than the subject she was writing about.

 

I guess here's where my anti-feminism slant comes in: I think you'd get the usual hooting and hollering on here from the normal Feminism suspects, and you'd get it from the pro-chick feminism groups. But it wouldn't offend me any more or any less (or annoy me, 21 ) if a girl or a guy or a Martian wrote it.

The story is about marketing a good-looking talented woman who they hope will cross over barriers. I don't understand how talking about her in a physical way in some way doesn't fit with that angle.

 

I'm against using them in a story that would have been fine otherwise. That's the journalist in me talking.

As for breasts in real life, I absolutely love them. Treasure them, you might say. That's the man in me talking.

 

Years ago a football writer made an admiring observation about a running back's "tightly bunched buttocks." I took it out. The writer didn't mean anything more than he might mean while assessing the build of a thoroughbred horse, but I figured if I left it in, he'd never, ever, ever be able to walk into an NFL locker room, ever, ever again. (Hey, Man! Why you checkin' out my ASS?) It's just unintentionally and needlessly scuzzy-sounding. (If he'd gotten poetic about the player's forearms, no prob.) Same with the C cups. There's a photo. Readers interested in assessing the heft of Parker's mammaries don't need anyone's assistance. (Could have graphics dept. point red arrows right at 'em.)

 

I see nothing wrong with the writer referring to Parker's breasts. She's writing for grownups, and grownups, even the ones who read ESPNmag, ought to be able to handle a brief mention of boobs without reducing Parker to some sexual fantasy. The real problem here is how over-written the lede is. It's just a bunch of fancy throat-clearing. The writer seems a lot more interested in showing off her writerly cleverness than in telling us anything interesting about Parker. You get to the end of all that verbiage and all she's really told you is that Parker's pretty and seems to be a perfectly nice person. Great, but we already knew that.

 

I'm sure that is, in part, because Martina doesn't have the looks of Jenny Finch, Candace Parker or Mia Hamm.

The lede on this story was just going for detail and descriptiveness -- even if it was over-the-top -- by including the cup size.

I still think both the "endless legs" and "C cup" references are more a nod, certainly an overt one, but still a nod, to her gender -- than anything else.

Sure, the descriptions are part of the stereotypical supposed "ideal" woman. But it could also almost be expected, and is needed, because, let's face it, Parker is the new face/promotional machine of the Women's National Basketball Assn., not the National Basketball Assn. It's just part of the angle, for better or for worse.

In principle, it's no different than if you're covering, say, the Paralympics. If you're doing that, there's just no getting around references to the athletes' disabilities, even if the athletes insist that they're "able," not "dis-abled," and would prefer to be seen simply as athletes, and not handicapped athletes.

Likewise, if it weren't for the fact that Parker was such an athlete and a woman, we might not be writing about her at all.

Or, if we were, it would be just the standard player feature. And that certainly wouldn't do much to specifically connect with or promote the WNBA, bring in any new fans, or cross any barriers in any way that would have any long-term impact.

 

I think some of you are giving a little too much credit for literary intent. Glock is a good writer. But ... she was GQ's sex columnist for a time ... she knows what she's doing. Certainly trying to pander to a mostly male audience. (I have a friend who was a sex writer for a women's mag. Extremely smart lady. But wrote with that audience in mind.) She's playing the audience. No literary merit to the C cups.

BTW: Wall Street Journal hed in the 1990s on a biz story about Victoria's Secret -- Tempest in a C Cup