Last year, Pole Dancing was touted by some supporters as a possible Olympic sport. This sounds ridiculous, but is it really that different from the way the media portrayed the female beach volleyball players last year in the Beijing Games? Seriously, the women wore extremely skimpy bikinis and were the opening "act" on NBC almost every single night. Since when has beach volleyball been the most important sport at the Olympics? The answer is clear: since the bikinis got tinier. 

Sexism has permeated more than just beach volleyball. Recently, there was a huge hoopla about the women at Wimbledon, which had some racial undertones. The "more beautiful" women were placed at center court, so they could be easily seen. Strangely enough, a majority of these women were blonde-haired and blue-eyed, outraging many women's groups. The Williams sisters, who have dominated the game for many years, were not placed in the center court. This is insulting for two reasons: first, they are arguably among the best players in the entire sport, and secondly, it may have been racially based.

While I understand that it is nice to admire a woman, should a woman's appearance take precedence over the sport?  Pole dancing will realistically not be included in the Olympics, which is nice, but should we be turning in to watch track and field events because the women are also basically just wearing bikinis? Is it really because sex sells?

While watching the Beijing Olympics, I also noticed that much more camera time was given to the blonde-haired blue eyed athletes than their African-American counterparts. When will the media face up to the fact that the United States is a multi-cultural society and that there are multiple aspects of beauty to consider? I'm not saying that the blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls aren't beautiful, just that others should be equally represented.

Not only were more spokesmodels for products blonde-haired and blue-eyed, the cameras in the track-and-field races often zoned in on certain women not only because they were American, but because they were nice to look at. How do I know this? A majority of the women I saw were not favored to win the races. While it is nice to represent everybody, I usually like to focus on the best athletes at a sporting competition and I don't really see the necessity for a woman to wear a bikini in a race.