Ashley Harkleroad, first Tennis Star in Playboy…Good or bad?
UPDATE: Now with PICTURES.
“15-Love”, “Deuces”, “Strokes”…Let the tennis puns begin!
Ashley Harkleroad, who is most recently known for losing to Serena Williams in the French Open on Sunday, has decided to disrobe for the most popular men’s magazine of all-time, Playboy. She will appear in the August issue of the magazine, and made her announcement after her match with Williams. From USA Today,
“I thought about it, and it was something that I did,” Harkleroad said after the match. “I’m proud of my body. I was representing a female athlete’s body.”
The 23-year-old noted other athletes who have appeared in the magazine, including Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard and former volleyball player Gabrielle Reese.
“I’ll be the first tennis player ever. That’s kind of cool,” Harkleroad said.
What can you really say about this? Playboy always brings up interesting discussions because of the morality and ethics issues, i.e. “that woman is exploiting herself to get ahead”, etc. But on its face, how different is Playboy than any other endorsement deal? It is an athlete selling themselves as a commodity for some business and the athlete and the business get some sort of benefit; the business hopefully gets their product sold and the athlete gets compensation from the business and notoriety from their appearance.
So in the end, is Playboy the right decision for the female athlete? It all depends. From a business standpoint, it obviously works (how many people knew about Harkleroad before her decision to pose in Playboy?) and if the athlete can get over any internal issues they might have, then who are we to judge?
USA Today: Tennis’ Harkleroad to be in ‘Playboy’ Magazine
This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Fringe Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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VERY, VERY good.
The reason that it isn’t getting as much traction as one may originally think is because, as you said, she is not a pioneer in posing for Playboy. Beard stole the show by being the first. Harkleroad is merely a follower. If you want to get your name in the paper these days, you have to be Gilbert Arenas, who was a trendsetter in having a blog or pull a Chris Bosh who had a brilliant video campaign to become an All Star.
@Darren Amanda Beard wasn’t the first. She was following footsteps as well. What helps is if you already have some semblance of publicity prior, so that when people hear about the story, they recognize the name and are interested to see the pictorial. That’s the reason why Playboy pays those gobs of money to have celebrities pose.
I think it’s just now seen as less of a newsworthy item if a female athlete poses for Playboy since it’s been done before. Also she wasn’t very well-known before the article, like you said.
Anna Kournikova is one of the sexiest russian tennis players i have ever seen. Russian tennis players are really pretty eh.`-: