To Those Of You Who Say Cal Girls Aren’t Hot…

Posted by: Avinash on Thursday, May 31st, 2007

We present to you Exhibit A. We’re not just talking about looks (and boy does she have them), because she also has far more. The girl in profile will tell you herself the remaining otherworldly characteristics she possesses.

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.

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.

See, this is the fascinating thing about the Internet. There are several ways to get singled out as an individual. Either you can slowly grovel your way into the limelight, like us, by working hard with little to show for it. Or you can do something patently idiotic like this, and get your twenty-five seconds of fame. Or you can just be hot and talented. Then things will just work out for themselves. It doesn’t hurt for your family to get an interview with the Washington Post to help limit her exposure, you know?

We can’t help it that we think she’s a beautiful woman. But at least she has her priorities in place. And to be fair, we’re attracted to her for her all-around talents. But she’ll have to learn to deal with the fact that she’s in an unfair world where her attraction will get as much attention as her accomplishments.

(By the way, Exhibits B and C are still being searched for. We’ll let you know when we find the gorgeous gals.)

Teen Tests Internet’s Lewd Track Record [Washington Post]
Allison Stokke in the Washington Post [Our Sturdy Golden Bear] (Image from here as well)

(We have a video interview from CBS. We don’t think this video is suggestive at all. And boy this girl loves pole vaulting.)

Any thoughts on this matter? Leave in the comments.



Topics: Celebrities, Internet, Sports, Students, UC Berkeley

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