Thanks to Su Steenberg, Bath University's International Student Experience Project Officer for this blog post:<\/p>\n
Trashy\u2019, \u2018Disgraceful\u2019, \u2018Sexist\u2019\u2026<\/p>\n
What am I referring to?\u00a0 You must know.\u00a0 It been on the news every day.\u00a0 It\u2019s been on television for over a week. No? If you do an online search for ATP, you\u2019ll find many pages about this year\u2019s World Tour.\u00a0 You\u2019ll read a lot about Roger Federer not reaching the finals.\u00a0 I\u2019m not a tennis fan, I haven\u2019t been following this tournament, I haven\u2019t watched it on telly and I haven\u2019t read about it but even I know about poor Roger.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not what I\u2019m referring to. If you do an online search for ATP 2017 Draw, after the top 3 articles you will find just 4 items on what has been described as \u2018uncomfortable viewing\u2019, \u2018shameful\u2019, \u2018awful\u2019.\u00a0 On Nov 5th<\/sup>, 7 of the world\u2019s top ranked under 21 male tennis players were asked to pick a female model to find out which round robin group they would play in.\u00a0 How did they find out?\u00a0 My personal top 3 methods:<\/p>\n I happened to watch the news the following morning when this was being reported.\u00a0 It infuriated me and I wanted to know more.\u00a0 But by the time I came home that evening it wasn\u2019t widely reported. It wasn\u2019t as newsworthy as Roger Federer losing a match.<\/p>\n It was claimed there was an outcry and as a result both ATP and Red Bull, the organisers, issued an apology.\u00a0 The most interesting thing about the apology was their statement that the intention was to integrate Milan's rich heritage as one of the fashion capitals of the world. 7 young professional women had to partially, provocatively, de-robe not just in front of 7 talented young men but to a live and televised audience.\u00a0 What did it have to do with tennis, with Milan, with fashion?<\/p>\n If there was an outcry, then what has happened since this \u2018shocking\u2019 event?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 A few people used a few adjectives (noted above), it was reported on television for a few hours and a half a dozen articles were written by the mainstream media. What happened to the young men and women in the audience and those who watched on television?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 Was it just a bit of fun, not a big deal?<\/p>\n For me, as a woman and mother, as a professional who works with young people in that age group, it was all the above adjectives and more.\u00a0 Appalling and unacceptable come to mind. There is undeniable research proving that there is a link between sexist attitudes and sexual objectification and sexual harassment and assault. The ATP tagline for this year\u2019s Next Gen tour was The Future is Now.\u00a0 They need to seriously consider #NEVEROK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thanks to Su Steenberg, Bath University's International Student Experience Project Officer for this blog post: Trashy\u2019, \u2018Disgraceful\u2019, \u2018Sexist\u2019\u2026 What am I referring to?\u00a0 You must know.\u00a0 It been on the news every day.\u00a0 It\u2019s been on television for over a...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1011,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sd4Poz-67","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/never-ok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/never-ok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/never-ok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/never-ok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1011"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/never-ok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/never-ok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/never-ok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/never-ok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/never-ok\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n