"It is a brave, and truly progressive, woman who celebrates love and sex as it was in the fabled Age of Aquarius."
It’s been two years since the big-wave surfer, Eddie Invitee, Jaws shredder, and WSL commentator Felicity Palmateer amassed over 10 million views, 9500 comments and 56,000 shares on a TikTok post where she told surf fans she was in hozzy ‘cause she got all busted up during rough sex.
“Put your finger down if you got jackhammered so hard your ovary got twisted and now you’re in the emergency room about to undergo surgery to save your ovary,” said the thirty-two-year-old Western Australian.
That story had a queer end, as they say. Turned out ol Flick didn’t get hurt by D but was simply high on morphine after some other unspecified procedure.
Sex sells! Who knew!
A few years before that came Flick’s brave all nude movie, Skin Deep, a project three years in the making, with cinematography by the noted RED-slingers Rick Rifici and Dwayne Fetch
As I wrote at the time, “In this new era of puritanism where even the brush of a school bag upon the unlovely ass of a woman involves the cops, it is a brave, and truly progressive, woman who celebrates love and sex as it was in the fabled Age of Aquarius.“
Around that time, a carousel of ass shots appeared thrilling the mostly male fans in the commentary pane.
“HER BEAUTIFUL BODY, WIITH GOLDEN HAIR, IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CLOTHING IN THE WORLD,” wrote one.
“Don’t ever put your close on, you are an Angle,” wrote one literate fan.
Given everything that came before, it was a surprise when Felicity P joined the chorus of athletes putting the boot into the actor Sydney Sweeney after a provocative ad for the sports prediction app Novig appeared, the latest of goofy unrelated causes for white gals, following Georgie Floyd, BLM, Ukraine, Trans, Free Palestine and Lindsay Clancy.
The ad is a 60-second spot where Sweeney poses nude, covered only by sports equipment (basketballs, footballs, hoops), pretending to play various sports.
Water polo player Tilly Kearns, gymnast Gracie Kramer, sprinter Bree Rizzo, boxer Skye Nicolson, runner Mary McCarthy, swimmer Lani Pallister, and field hockey player Jocelyn Bartram have all piled on, plus the Female Athlete Project account.
Kearns went with “I absolutely fucking hate Sydney Sweeney’s new sports ad.”
The Female Athlete Project said “it’s incredible they could fit so much misogyny in 40 seconds.”
Bartram’s line was that Sweeney is “bringing female athletes down” while actual women in sport are still fighting for basic recognition and pay.
Felicity writes,
“The issue is that once again, women + sport = sexualising the woman to sell something. Women’s sport has fought for decades to have female athletes valued for what they can actually DO, rather than what they look like. That’s the conversation.”
A little push-back in the comments, which is interesting.
Nina Rosie Jones writes,
Once again, woman trying to put down woman it makes no sense that’s nice and be stronger together
Felicity P replies,
Supporting women doesn’t mean we have to blindly support everything another woman does. I’m not putting Sydney down, I’m criticising a campaign that plays into the sexualisation of women in sport. We can support women AND have important conversations about the things that continue to hold women’s sport back.
Where do you fall on the matter?
Do you think, like I, that sport is inherently sexualised, male, female or hybrid?
Or something else?