Tweet
Allison Stokke (Sexy Model Or..?)
There is the Internet we might want, and then there is the Internet we've got.
The one we've got is dominated by the id, and the male id at that. It turns Allison Stokke, a first-rank high-school athlete from California who happens to be extremely attractive, into a widespread lust object, to the point where her dad, a lawyer, searches for postings about his daughter to look for illegal acts or a potential stalker.
It started with a sports blog that realizes writing about sports isn't enough to draw an audience. So it also posts pictures of what are reductively called "babes." In Stokke, who is also an athlete and 18, it hit the jackpot.
A photo of her at a track meet -- she is a state champion pole-vaulter with a college scholarship -- went up on the blog and spread like, well, like photos of starlets who deliberately pose enticingly to further their careers as lust objects. Much of it was what the observers no doubt saw as harmless, puppy-dog stuff, but much of it was more explicit, in lewd comments on message boards and the like.
All of it is unfair to Stokke, who compellingly laid out her feelings of violation and objectification in a Washington Post story today. But the Internet we've got isn't particularly concerned about the human aspect of the images it drools over. Maybe reading about Stokke's plight will move at least some people to think twice before forwarding a photo or posting a panting remark.
The Internet we might want, meanwhile, is a vast repository of knowledge and a means of connecting disparate people and showing off great work. That one is out there, too, but it's sometimes hard to hear and see it beneath all the lewdness and the sniggering.
Here's an example of it that I came across today, from another Allison, Canadian singer-songwriter Crowe:
Early this month, 18-year-old Allison Stokke walked into her high school track coach's office and asked if he knew any reliable media consultants. Stokke had tired of constant phone calls, of relentless Internet attention, of interview requests from Boston to Brazil.
In her high school track and field career, Stokke had won a 2004 California state pole vaulting title, broken five national records and earned a scholarship to the University of California, yet only track devotees had noticed. Then, in early May, she received e-mails from friends who warned that a year-old picture of Stokke idly adjusting her hair at a track meet in New York had been plastered across the Internet. She had more than 1,000 new messages on her MySpace page. A three-minute video of Stokke standing against a wall and analyzing her performance at another meet had been posted on YouTube and viewed 150,000 times.
"I just want to find some way to get this all under control," Stokke told her coach.
Early this month, 18-year-old Allison Stokke walked into her high school track coach's office and asked if he knew any reliable media consultants. Stokke had tired of constant phone calls, of relentless Internet attention, of interview requests from Boston to Brazil.
In her high school track and field career, Stokke had won a 2004 California state pole vaulting title, broken five national records and earned a scholarship to the University of California, yet only track devotees had noticed for a time.
Then, in early May, she received e-mails from friends who warned that a year-old picture of Stokke idly adjusting her hair at a track meet had been plastered across the Internet. She had more than 1,000 new messages on her MySpace page. A three-minute video of Stokke analyzing her performance at another meet had been posted on YouTube and viewed 150,000 times.
"I just want to find some way to get this all under control," Stokke told her coach.
Three weeks later, Stokke has decided that control is essentially beyond her grasp. Instead, she said, she has learned a distressing lesson in the unruly momentum of the Internet. A fan on a Cal football message board posted a picture of the attractive, athletic pole vaulter. A popular sports blogger in New York found the picture and posted it on his site. Dozens of other bloggers picked up the same image and spread it. Within days, hundreds of thousands of Internet users had searched for Stokke's picture and leered.
The wave of attention has steamrolled Stokke and her family in Newport Beach, Calif. She is recognized and stared at in coffee shops. She locks her doors and tries not to leave the house alone. Her father reads message boards for potential stalkers.
"We're keeping a watchful eye," Allan Stokke said. "We have to be smart and deal with it the best we can. It's not something that you can just make go away."
On May 8, blogger Matt Ufford received Stokke's picture in an e-mail from one of his readers, and he reacted on instinct. She was hot. She was 18. Readers of his sports blog -- heavy on comedy, opinion and sometimes sex --would love her.
The picture, taken by a track and field journalist, was part of a report on a California prep track website. The photo was hardly sexually explicit.
At 5-foot-7, Stokke has smooth, olive-coloured skin and toned muscles. In the photo, her vaulting pole rests on her right shoulder. Her right hand appears to be adjusting her ponytail. Her spandex uniform -- black shorts and a white tank top that are standard for a track athlete -- reveals a bare midriff.
Each month, Ufford's sports blog attracts almost one million visitors, 18- to 35-year-old males, with tongue-in-cheek items about the things they love: athletes and beautiful women. Stokke was a "no-brainer to write about,'' said Ufford, who posted her picture with a four-paragraph blurb: MEET POLE VAULTER ALLISON STOKKE ... HUBBA HUBBA AND OTHER GRUNTING SOUNDS.
"I understand there are certain people who are put off immediately by the tone of my blog," Ufford said. "Every week, there's somebody who takes offence to something, but that's part of being a comedy writer. If nobody is complaining, it probably wasn't funny. You are hoping for some kind of feedback.''
By that measure, Ufford's post about Stokke created a landmark for success. He received a handful of angry e-mails, including one from the photographer who threatened to sue if his picture of Stokke remained on the blog. But Ufford also attracted a record number of visitors in May, and more than 20 message boards and 30 blogs copied or linked to Ufford's item.
Stokke tracked the spread of her image with dismay and disbelief. Two years earlier, a track fan posted her photo with a lewd comment on a message board, an image that disappeared after Stokke e-mailed the poster. But now, a search for her name in Yahoo! revealed almost 310,000 hits. "It's not like I could e-mail everybody on the Internet," Stokke said.
For the first week, Stokke kept the Internet attention from her parents. She focused on graduating with a grade-point average above 4.0, overcoming a knee injury and winning her second state title. But at track meets, twice as many photographers showed up to take her picture. The main office at Newport Harbor High School received dozens of requests for Stokke photo shoots, including one from a risque magazine in Brazil.
Stokke read on message boards that dozens of strangers had her picture as the background image on their computers. She felt violated. It was like becoming the victim of a crime, Stokke said. Her body had been stolen and turned into a public commodity, critiqued in fan forums devoted to everything from hip hop to Hollywood.
One evening in mid-May, Stokke gave her parents the Internet tour that she believed now defined her: the unofficial Allison Stokke fan page (www.allisonstokke.com), complete with a rolling photo slide show; the fan group on MySpace, with about 1,000 members; the message boards and chat forums where hundreds of anonymous users looked at Stokke's picture and posted sexual fantasies.
"All of it is like locker room talk," said Cindy Stokke, Allison's mom. "This kind of stuff has been going on for years. But now, locker room talk is just out there in the public. And all of us can read it, even her mother."
"Even if none of it is illegal, it just all feels really demeaning," Allison Stokke said. "I worked so hard for pole vaulting and all this other stuff, and it's almost like that doesn't matter. Nobody sees that. Nobody really sees ME .''
The one we've got is dominated by the id, and the male id at that. It turns Allison Stokke, a first-rank high-school athlete from California who happens to be extremely attractive, into a widespread lust object, to the point where her dad, a lawyer, searches for postings about his daughter to look for illegal acts or a potential stalker.
It started with a sports blog that realizes writing about sports isn't enough to draw an audience. So it also posts pictures of what are reductively called "babes." In Stokke, who is also an athlete and 18, it hit the jackpot.
A photo of her at a track meet -- she is a state champion pole-vaulter with a college scholarship -- went up on the blog and spread like, well, like photos of starlets who deliberately pose enticingly to further their careers as lust objects. Much of it was what the observers no doubt saw as harmless, puppy-dog stuff, but much of it was more explicit, in lewd comments on message boards and the like.
All of it is unfair to Stokke, who compellingly laid out her feelings of violation and objectification in a Washington Post story today. But the Internet we've got isn't particularly concerned about the human aspect of the images it drools over. Maybe reading about Stokke's plight will move at least some people to think twice before forwarding a photo or posting a panting remark.
The Internet we might want, meanwhile, is a vast repository of knowledge and a means of connecting disparate people and showing off great work. That one is out there, too, but it's sometimes hard to hear and see it beneath all the lewdness and the sniggering.
Here's an example of it that I came across today, from another Allison, Canadian singer-songwriter Crowe:
Early this month, 18-year-old Allison Stokke walked into her high school track coach's office and asked if he knew any reliable media consultants. Stokke had tired of constant phone calls, of relentless Internet attention, of interview requests from Boston to Brazil.
In her high school track and field career, Stokke had won a 2004 California state pole vaulting title, broken five national records and earned a scholarship to the University of California, yet only track devotees had noticed. Then, in early May, she received e-mails from friends who warned that a year-old picture of Stokke idly adjusting her hair at a track meet in New York had been plastered across the Internet. She had more than 1,000 new messages on her MySpace page. A three-minute video of Stokke standing against a wall and analyzing her performance at another meet had been posted on YouTube and viewed 150,000 times.
"I just want to find some way to get this all under control," Stokke told her coach.
Early this month, 18-year-old Allison Stokke walked into her high school track coach's office and asked if he knew any reliable media consultants. Stokke had tired of constant phone calls, of relentless Internet attention, of interview requests from Boston to Brazil.
In her high school track and field career, Stokke had won a 2004 California state pole vaulting title, broken five national records and earned a scholarship to the University of California, yet only track devotees had noticed for a time.
Then, in early May, she received e-mails from friends who warned that a year-old picture of Stokke idly adjusting her hair at a track meet had been plastered across the Internet. She had more than 1,000 new messages on her MySpace page. A three-minute video of Stokke analyzing her performance at another meet had been posted on YouTube and viewed 150,000 times.
"I just want to find some way to get this all under control," Stokke told her coach.
Three weeks later, Stokke has decided that control is essentially beyond her grasp. Instead, she said, she has learned a distressing lesson in the unruly momentum of the Internet. A fan on a Cal football message board posted a picture of the attractive, athletic pole vaulter. A popular sports blogger in New York found the picture and posted it on his site. Dozens of other bloggers picked up the same image and spread it. Within days, hundreds of thousands of Internet users had searched for Stokke's picture and leered.
The wave of attention has steamrolled Stokke and her family in Newport Beach, Calif. She is recognized and stared at in coffee shops. She locks her doors and tries not to leave the house alone. Her father reads message boards for potential stalkers.
"We're keeping a watchful eye," Allan Stokke said. "We have to be smart and deal with it the best we can. It's not something that you can just make go away."
On May 8, blogger Matt Ufford received Stokke's picture in an e-mail from one of his readers, and he reacted on instinct. She was hot. She was 18. Readers of his sports blog -- heavy on comedy, opinion and sometimes sex --would love her.
The picture, taken by a track and field journalist, was part of a report on a California prep track website. The photo was hardly sexually explicit.
At 5-foot-7, Stokke has smooth, olive-coloured skin and toned muscles. In the photo, her vaulting pole rests on her right shoulder. Her right hand appears to be adjusting her ponytail. Her spandex uniform -- black shorts and a white tank top that are standard for a track athlete -- reveals a bare midriff.
Each month, Ufford's sports blog attracts almost one million visitors, 18- to 35-year-old males, with tongue-in-cheek items about the things they love: athletes and beautiful women. Stokke was a "no-brainer to write about,'' said Ufford, who posted her picture with a four-paragraph blurb: MEET POLE VAULTER ALLISON STOKKE ... HUBBA HUBBA AND OTHER GRUNTING SOUNDS.
"I understand there are certain people who are put off immediately by the tone of my blog," Ufford said. "Every week, there's somebody who takes offence to something, but that's part of being a comedy writer. If nobody is complaining, it probably wasn't funny. You are hoping for some kind of feedback.''
By that measure, Ufford's post about Stokke created a landmark for success. He received a handful of angry e-mails, including one from the photographer who threatened to sue if his picture of Stokke remained on the blog. But Ufford also attracted a record number of visitors in May, and more than 20 message boards and 30 blogs copied or linked to Ufford's item.
Stokke tracked the spread of her image with dismay and disbelief. Two years earlier, a track fan posted her photo with a lewd comment on a message board, an image that disappeared after Stokke e-mailed the poster. But now, a search for her name in Yahoo! revealed almost 310,000 hits. "It's not like I could e-mail everybody on the Internet," Stokke said.
For the first week, Stokke kept the Internet attention from her parents. She focused on graduating with a grade-point average above 4.0, overcoming a knee injury and winning her second state title. But at track meets, twice as many photographers showed up to take her picture. The main office at Newport Harbor High School received dozens of requests for Stokke photo shoots, including one from a risque magazine in Brazil.
Stokke read on message boards that dozens of strangers had her picture as the background image on their computers. She felt violated. It was like becoming the victim of a crime, Stokke said. Her body had been stolen and turned into a public commodity, critiqued in fan forums devoted to everything from hip hop to Hollywood.
One evening in mid-May, Stokke gave her parents the Internet tour that she believed now defined her: the unofficial Allison Stokke fan page (www.allisonstokke.com), complete with a rolling photo slide show; the fan group on MySpace, with about 1,000 members; the message boards and chat forums where hundreds of anonymous users looked at Stokke's picture and posted sexual fantasies.
"All of it is like locker room talk," said Cindy Stokke, Allison's mom. "This kind of stuff has been going on for years. But now, locker room talk is just out there in the public. And all of us can read it, even her mother."
"Even if none of it is illegal, it just all feels really demeaning," Allison Stokke said. "I worked so hard for pole vaulting and all this other stuff, and it's almost like that doesn't matter. Nobody sees that. Nobody really sees ME .''