Sex and Women's Golf (Guaranteed No Cheap Lesbian Jokes)

There's a new LPGA golf tournament this week in Kitchener-Waterloo, the Manulife Classic.  First of all, can we at least wait until an event has happened twice before we call it a classic?

But secondly, the ads for it have placed heavy emphasis on Michelle Wie.  Like a lot of people, it bugs me seeing the attention she gets.  Nothing personal against her, but they are publicising the sport using someone who has played three-and-a-half full seasons but won only two more tournaments than I have.  She's been the face of women's golf for years, despite the presence during that time of two exceptional superstars, Anika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa.  The odd thing is, it's not clear why.

It's not unprecedented in women's sports for the uber-successful household-name star to be an athlete who's far from the best.  Tennis's Anna Kournikova, being the obvious example: she famously won as many tennis tournaments as Wie has.  It's hard to imagine a worse role-model for girls: her looks made her the most popular player of her generation, far ahead of players who were actually good at their sport.

In her case, it seemed to be all about sex appeal.  But a few people asked the question, why her?  It seems obvious: she's an attractive woman in a society where sex sells.  But that can't be the whole story - beautiful women are a dime a dozen in our world.  The question is, why did young teen boys spend their minimum-wages on a copy of Maxim with her on the cover, when endless pictures of women are always a Google search away?

Furthermore, why hasn't it continued?  Maria Sharapova is at least as attractive, but with the bonus that she's actually a good player, and thus can be lusted-after guilt-free.  Wie is not unattractive either, but if this were just about sex, Paula Creamer would likely be the face of the LPGA (and look, she's won nine tournaments.)

This whole thing seems to be a symptom of that odd phenomena of modern society where fame is self-fulfilling.  Something arbitrary vaults a person into the spotlight and then they're there for as long as they want.  Why is Wie so well-known?  Because she's famous.  These are the first sports examples of the famous-for-being-famous concept.  In the same way Kournikova taught girls that it's more important to be hot than good, Wie is teaching us that it's more important to be famous than good.