Let's be honest: there is nothing anyone, male or female, can ever do that will prevent women from being viewed as sexual objects by men (and often by other women as well). It's "human nature". All we can do is fight the idea that women are "only" sexual objects. As long as we see them for all they are, there is no point in trying to eliminate the sexual object part.



But here is the thing...Danica is perhaps the female "athlete" that has done the best in an open class sporting event. Yes, perhaps she would have washed out if she was a man and didn't have the marketing ability she does, but she has managed to win once, right? What other woman has ever won any open class sporting event or place near the top like she often has?

The reason female athletes market themselves by their appearance is that they are competing in a lesser, limited, exclusive class for athletes that are not able to compete with the best athletes in the world in the open class. Logically most people want to watch the best performances in the world, and these do not take place in this women's only class. So the women need to do something to attract fans other than their fellow competitors or perhaps young girls who are amateur participants in the same sport. If they want to attract a larger audience, they can do so by stressing the grace and beauty angle of their performance: in other words, it may be slower, less powerful, whatever, but it is done with style and beauty and the athletes look great doing it. More people will watch this and thus the audience becomes big enough for the women to get paid even though their performance is such that they'd never get paid in the open class.

Let's take an example: from a performance standpoint, women's tennis probably lags behind men's as much as women's basketeball lags behind men's. But women's tennis tv ratings are similar to men's while no one watches the wnba. Why is that?