I have a shocking and incredible news flash for you – people love attractive female athletes. I know that some female athletes have complained in the past that they don’t like to be objectified or seen as sex objects, but deep down they know it’s unavoidable. That’s why so many other female athletes embrace it. But that won’t stop people from acting like we’re the bad guys for posting some videos, pictures, and GIFs of an attractive girl, despite the fact that we also pointed out that she’s incredible at her sport.
Enter The Daily Mail, which picked up the story of Australian hurdler Michelle Jenneke, who has absolutely shattered Internet records for becoming an instant sensation. Not since Allison Stokke have we seen someone become this amazingly popular and cherished in a matter of hours. From the moment we posted her video on Wednesday, the footage of Michelle dancing before she won the second heat of the Women’s 100 metres hurdles at the 14th IAAF World Junior Championships redefined viral.
And hey, look at us, we’re famous now. For being perverts, or something.
According to Bleacher Report, a sports blog titled With Leather originally posted unedited, live-stream footage of her warm up dance.
With Leather was unapologetic about drawing attention to Miss Jenneke’s warm-up dance, releasing its own super slow-motion cut, which has created an online storm.
It’s nice to get that kind of recognition from a classy, mainstream media source that currently features an article about Antonio Banderas’ new sexy girlfriend prominently underneath news about the shooting in Colorado. And it looks like the Huffington Post had some words about us, too.
According to Bleacher Report, the sports blog “With Leather” originally posted raw, live-stream footage of the 19-year-old’s pre-race routine, but it was taken down and replaced with an “overt celebration of Jenneke and her dancing and running presented in gratuitous slow motion, and with an awful song over it.”
With Leather was rather unapologetic about sexualizing Jenneke’s warm-up dance, releasing its own super slow-motion cut.
Whoa, I think I just experienced déjà vu.
First of all, we didn’t release any of our own videos. We should have, but we didn’t. Second, we’d like to thank the HuffPo for at least linking to us. I don’t know if we were the first to post that video, and I don’t really care. Other sites posted it hours after us and took full credit, so good for them, and we apologize if we’ve stolen their pervert thunder. I know there’s one media mogul out there who hates when people rip off his videos, so I hope we didn’t upset him. I’m just going to urge the HuffPo and Daily Mail to figure out which one of them rewrote the other one’s story and then kindly suggest they both bite my mushy blogger butt.
UPDATE: Yahoo! wrote about us, too.
According to Bleacher Report, sports blog With Leather posted raw, live-stream footage of Jenneke’s prerace routine, then went back and edited it with an “overt celebration of Jenneke and her dancing and running presented in gratuitous slow motion, and with an awful song over it.”
But then, that’s just their opinion.
Again, 1) We didn’t go back and edit anything. And 2) What’s just our opinion? Or is that Bleacher Report’s opinion? What does Bleacher Report even have to do with this? They don’t have some cosmic power of confirmation that we posted the video. We posted it. It’s on our site. Oh and 3) Are we being trolled with these horrendously transparent re-writes?