“She has a look that international judges love.”
So says NBC’s Elfi Schlegel whenever gymnast Viktoria Komova competes on the gymnasium floor. But since when did the sport become about “looks”? Aren’t we here to watch and admire her level of talent and performance? These are the kinds of questions John St. creatives Jessica Schnurr and Hannah Smit are asking the media with an outside-of-work project that asks the press to #CoverTheAthlete. They’re asking to put a time out on “sexist commentary and inappropriate interview questions female athletes receive today,” such as the one mentioned above.
And there’s plenty more where that came from. Schnurr and Smit have sourced a handful of commentary and questions they found on the web, including “Give us a twirl! Tell us about your outfit,” (yes, we’re speechless too) and then turned the table on them and edited a video with clips of male athletes seemingly (but not really) flabbergasted by similar statements directed at them. The creatives say that the media is trivializing a woman’s accomplishments and is asking others to demand that they stop, and immediately. They’ve created a website as a hub for the video (which was edited by Chris Murphy from Relish, with music donated by Grayson Matthews), and they’re asking people to tweet at major and local news networks to #CoverTheAthlete.
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From Stimulant. You just read about a “Passion Project,” a weird and wonderful thing keeping creatives busy when they’re not hard at work in the agency world. Have your own side project like the one above? Read about more Passion Projects on Stimulant, then email Jen Horn with your passion for the chance to be featured.
