Danica's overexposure.

• Author: Zirin, Dave
• Position: Edge of Sports - Column

It has been quite a year for Danica Patrick. She became the first woman to win an Indy Car race, coming in first at the Indy Japan 300 on April 20. She also became the first race car driver to pose for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

The good people at SI never thought to give us Richard Petty in a Speedo, but Danica, bent over in a white ruffled bikini, must for some reason have seemed like a winner. In accomplishing this dubious double play, Patrick has revived a debate as old as Sonja Henie skating figure eights at the 1928 Olympics: Does sex sell--or perhaps more aptly phrased, does sexism sell--women's sports? Does objectifying women athletes, highlighting their bodies over their skill, putting them in swimsuits or on the covers of yuppie porn like Maxim or Stuff , actually increase the interest and fan base of women's sports? The debate has always had Faustian overtones: Is it worth turning proud women athletes into frat house cheesecake if it's for the greater good, the greater exposure, of the games themselves?

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Thanks to Mary Kane, this is no longer a moral question. The sports sociologist from the University of Minnesota has produced a far-reaching study that shows sex certainly does sell, but alas, it sells only magazines, not sports. Kane and her research team showed a series of images of women athletes putting their bodies on display for a wide-ranging focus group of men and women and found out a very basic truth: "It alienates the core of the fan base that's already there. Women, both aged eighteen to thirty-four, and thirty-five to fifty-five, are put off by these images. And older males, fathers with daughters, taking their daughters to sporting events to see their favorite female athletes, are deeply offended by these images."

As for the young men excited to see Danica in leather, spread out on a car: "They want to buy the magazines but they didn't want to consume the sports," Kane says. In the end, she feels the research is unequivocal: "Does it increase the interest in women's...