Here in the U.K., we recently learned that security cameras are racist. But the seething hatred lurking behind seemingly neutral video technology does not end there. It turns out that even the cameras capturing our sporting events harbor distinctly retrograde attitudes. They’re more sexist than Austin Powers, baby!
Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, Olympic Broadcasting Services chief Yiannis Exarchos warned camera operators against the “unconscious bias” that leads broadcasters to film female athletes differently from men. “Women athletes are not there because they are more attractive or sexy or whatever,” he said. “They are there because they are elite athletes.”
The cameras aren’t the problem here. The real issue is our refusal to face up to what actually keeps people glued to their screens.
If you think this feminized moral panic won’t reach American shores, think again.
‘Raising the Bar’
The European Broadcasting Union and European Athletics recently released “Raising the Bar” — a 23-page guide proposing to clamp down on camera angles they claim sexualize female athletes in international sports.
Through a series of cartoon stills that look more like swimming pool warnings for toddlers, the booklet instructs camera operators to avoid low-angle cameras positioned around the starting blocks, tight zooms, lingering shots, and unnecessary slow-motion replays.
To understand why this matters to someone on a barstool in Ohio, it all comes down to international broadcasting rights. When American networks like NBC air the Olympics, they simply buy a master feed from bodies like OBS. Because OBS has adopted these sanitized framing rules, American viewers get whatever neutered footage passes the international purity test, whether they like it or not.
Is ‘sexy’ sexist?
No doubt the regulations were inspired, at least in part, by the shabby treatment of German sprinter Alica Schmidt, whose athletic achievements have consistently been overshadowed by the unwelcome label of “World’s Sexiest Athlete,” The indignities have piled up: runway modeling appearances, endorsement deals, and the onerous burden of maintaining a meticulously curated feed of casually glamorous photos for her 5.2 million Instagram followers.
Surely American fans would never place such crass emphasis on physical appearance over athletic accomplishment, you may think.
Think again.
In the states, even the sensibly aerodynamic uniform of an elite gymnast can prompt leers. Consider the case of LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne. Dunne was an accomplished college gymnast — an All-American whose LSU team won the 2024 national championship — but it was her extraordinary social media following that turned her into one of the biggest stars, and biggest earners, in college sports.
Once the NCAA began allowing athletes to profit from their name, image, and likeness in 2021, Dunne discovered that millions of followers had considerable market value. She signed major endorsement deals, reportedly earned millions during her college years, and could command six figures for a single sponsored social media post.
Naturally, this success also prompted solemn concern that people were paying altogether too much attention to what Dunne looked like. Sports media fretted about the sexualization of female athletes while running photographs of the photogenic gymnast whose ability to attract millions of eyeballs was the very reason advertisers were writing her checks.
Dunne herself seemed rather less conflicted. “I love doing social media and I enjoy being in the spotlight,” she has said.
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Chicks with clicks
There is something peculiar about this hand-wringing. Media outlets can simultaneously object to the attention paid to a beautiful female athlete and discover that photographs of that same beautiful female athlete are exceptionally useful for attracting readers.
I hate to break it to the puritans, but very few people watch women’s sports — especially men — purely for athletic ability. Take away the visual appeal, and viewership will collapse. You might as well put athletes in a burqa if the explicit goal is zero titillation.
Sponsors follow ratings. Ratings follow eyes. Eyes follow what millions of years of human evolution programmed us to notice. Talent is rare — but elite talent with sex appeal is a unicorn. Why not celebrate it?
Deny that fundamental reality, and watch the entire commercial edifice shrivel up and die. Like it or not, the audience for most major spectator sports still skews male, and denying visual reality doesn’t elevate women’s sports — it robs them of the paying audience that funds player contracts. Sports are an attention economy, not an affirmative action program.
‘Wrong’ attention
The cameras aren’t the problem here. The real issue is our refusal to face up to what actually keeps people glued to their screens. The same cultural sickness that turns every campus protest into a “Handmaid’s Tale” cosplay has infected women’s sports. When militant feminists campaigned to ban Formula 1 grid girls, they claimed to defend women’s liberty — but in reality, it eliminated well-paid jobs that many women valued, just to satisfy an ideological purity test.
Meanwhile, OnlyFans exploded, and Instagram fitness influencers monetized every angle. Radical feminism attacks traditional modesty, yet continues to frame women as eternal victims of “the male gaze.” The result is a bizarre cognitive dissonance: We celebrate sexualized women when it fits an empowerment narrative, but condemn men for reacting in predictable ways.
This isn’t about respect. It’s about control. If you control the image, you control the narrative. Beautiful, sculpted people who once drew eyes to screens are now treated as a problem to be solved. When the commentariat lobby for restricted camera guidelines, it feels less like athletic advocacy and more like institutional sour grapes. It makes you think: How many of the complainants cheering this on are the ones who, let’s face it, were never going to draw that particular gaze anyway?
Elsewhere, the internet’s seedier corners carry on as usual, because selective modesty is the latest grift. Ideologues demand sports coverage that pretends human attraction doesn’t exist, while the wider culture hyper-sexualizes everything else. Under this shibboleth, “equity” means no one is allowed to stand out — or receive the “wrong” kind of attention.
Traditional culture didn’t need such infantilizing guidance to appreciate physical strength and form without descending into vulgarity. Having removed those guardrails in the name of liberation, we now rely on micromanaged camera angles to police the very instincts their culture unleashed.
Broadcasters are killing off the one honest reason millions tune in to watch women’s sports — and when ratings inevitably collapse, broadcast revenues plummet, and the usual equal-pay complaints resurface, feminists will scratch their heads and wonder why women’s sports struggle for relevance.
Enjoy your socially engineered utopia in empty stadiums.
Attention economy, Female athletes, Livvy dunne, Radical feminism, Sexist, Sports media, Alica schmidt, Lifestyle, Culture, Television, Women’s sports, Europe, Letter from the uk
