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Who is Danica Patrick?

I used to be a big fan of auto racing. Mainly drag racing, but also formula one, Group 5 endurance racing and CanAm. I stopped paying close attention by the time I was 15, but can recite you all sorts of drivers, races and stats from the 60s and 70s. And so to Danica Patrick.

I keep seeing news items for Danica Patrick. They are of a few broad types. One is her role as advertising model for GoDaddy.com, another announcements of her achievements as 'the first woman driver to do X', sometimes about her modeling, or that she has been voted the sexiest driver by Maxim. There are no items about Patrick winning the Sprint Cup, or about her competitive abilities, or her career winnings.

Because there aren't any.

I really want to be in a business where I can be famous and well paid and yet accomplish nothing. Danica Patrick is famous as a driver the same way Anna Kournikova is famous as a tennis player. For her body, not her driving or athletic achievements.

Some people celebrate Patrick as an inspiration to female race car drivers. I have a hard time seeing it that way. As I see it, she is a great example of sexism, of a woman being valued for looking 'hot' in a Nomex suit (Everyone is hot in a Nomex suit, btw), for promotional value. Danica Patrick is no different from every other woman who has used her body to make money. ANY woman who ahs used her body to make money. She is a model who drives a race car, an actress who runs a food network show. Everybody is watching just to see Danica hop out of her car and shake long hair out of her helmet.

But as a racer she is ranked....#62. No one can even name the top 20, let alone #62.

She is a rolling advertisement for GoDaddy. More importantly, she is a model for everything that women should NOT aspire to be. She is unaccomplished, uses her body for profit, a sex object, and has notoriety rather than achievement. She is all about seeming to be rather than being.

I'm just interested in the race and the cars, thank you. I admire the winners and the strivers, not the flashy advertisers. And I couldn't care less about the hairstyle of my driver, any more than I care about the hairstyle or sex of my doctor.

Danica Patrick is an unsuccessful driver. Period.

Ted

Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 3, 2014 at 11:43 AM

    The analogy between Danica Patrick and Anna Kournikova is just, with the caveat that in Kournikova's case, a string of injuries and a bad back forced her to retire from the professional circuit at only 21 years of age. (Despite early retirement, Kournikova did manage to crack the top 10 in the world in singles play, and as a doubles player with Martina Hingis, ranked #1 in the world more than once, which included two Grand Slam wins at the Australian Open.)

    But yes, Kournikova was celebrated far more for her body than for any athletic achievement: in 2008, five years after she retired, she was still the most searched athlete on the internet!

    -D-

    ReplyDelete

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