Remember when NFL fans were complaining about seeing too many shots of Taylor Swift enjoying the game? We said at the time that was kind of a BS complaint. Why? Because there’s so much downtime during games, there’s TONS of shots of the crowd. The cameras look for anything remotely interesting to fill the time. Sometimes that’s wild fanatics in facepaint, sometimes it’s wholesome shots of parents taking their kids to their first games… And oh so often it’s just random creeping on girls.
Yes, sadly it’s expected these days — we’d be shocked to learn cameramen weren’t given the directive to search for attractive women, as often as it happens…
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Well, this young woman was NOT happy about it! After being filmed by ESPN while watching the College World Series game, a girl going by the name Annie posted a TikTok video about how annoying it was to wake up and learn you’re being sexualized by weirdos in the comments. She complained:
“It was a 20-second segment of just us eating out ice cream… licking our ice cream. 20 seconds dedicated to — with commentary — just us eating our ice cream. We all knew! We all knew what direction that video was gonna head in. And lo and behold, the creeps of TikTok got a hold of it because we woke up getting compared to the Hawk Tuah girl. No shade to her, girl do whatever.”
Ah, yes. The Hawk Tuah girl, for those who managed to miss the viral sensation, was one of those man-on-the-street interviews in which women were asked:
“What’s one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time?”
This girl responded:
“You gotta give ’em that hawk tuah and spit on that thang!”
And everyone has gone nuts for it. She even got an agent! No joke!
But that was a woman consenting to answering a question about a sex act. This is just a girl trying to enjoy her GD cold treat and getting creeped on relentlessly thanks to ESPN’s weirdly voyeuristic cameras.
Annie continued:
“When I tell you the comment section of that video is absolutely repulsing… To know that there are people who have families in their profiles and their profile photos just smiling away with the kids that they’re raising. Feel bad for them and their dad.”
She actually posted a whole Part 2 video just to share some more of the gross comments. You can watch that one, set to Taylor Swift‘s Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me, HERE.
Anyway, she went on a righteous diatribe about the whole practice and how it hurts girls who are interested in sports, saying:
“I didn’t want to just come on here and rage, but it is so beyond evident that women are not welcome in the sports world.”
She explained she was annoyed she felt she had to justify why she was there, which was that she and her friend love baseball:
“We just wanted to enjoy a baseball game. And it was 100 degrees so god forbid we eat some ice cream. Then people sit back and wonder, why women don’t feel welcome in these environments. It’s crazy. It’s like we can’t sit and eat our food in peace.”
She said she’d earlier had a hot dog, the traditional baseball stadium treat — and she purposely hid while eating that because of the threat of this happening! Oh, and also the fact she and her friend were there the entire game and weren’t filmed just being fans… not until they were licking ice cream. ESPN knew what they were doing, in other words.
@.anniej4 Replying to @a we choose the bear ❤️ @ESPN #mcws #collegeworldseries #hawktuah #womeninsports
Annie mentioned the tons of comments she’d seen about ESPN doing this “every single sporting event,” and she’s not wrong. And she pointed out how the network gets to keep their hands clean because technically they didn’t say anything sexual:
“Because what’s funnier than a woman licking an ice cream cone or eating a hotdog or something that can be overly sexualized? But ESPN can keep it vague enough and the ambiguity is what protects them. When they just open the door for f**king creeps like this to come in and do whatever they want with it.”
So what’s the solution here? No, not a lawsuit, as some commenters suggested — entering the stadium, you give up any expectation of privacy. But maybe ESPN could give their camera operators different instructions? Annie suggested they “just do better” and “don’t knowingly take videos of women in the crowds” they know that are likely to be “sexualized.” She flipped off ESPN and begged:
“Stop contributing to the issue and stop making sports a place where women don’t feel safe and welcome.”
What do YOU think, Perezcious sports fans??
[Image via Annie/TikTok.]