Two weeks ago John Levesque of the Seattle PI had this article criticizing Sue Bird's spread in Dime Magazine and the WNBA's new sexualized marketing. I posted about the issue here and here.

(If you'd like to see some of the Dime photos, go here and click on Gallery.)

Now Wendy Carpenter at the Tacoma Trib has this article on the same issue. As journalism, this is a little derivative, but it gives Sue and others a chance to respond to Levesque.

Most of the justification offered by Bird, Penicheiro, and the ad people seems to be this: if it's controversial, that's fine, because anything that gets attention is good for the league. This might be called the Dennis Rodman response.

Sue also says this: "Females probably look at it as, 'Way to go, good job girl, keep doing your thing. And men are like 'Oh, you shouldn't use your looks and your body to get people's attention, you should use only your basketball abilities.'"

Well, that's fairly counterintuitive. Seems like men are more likely to go for the Dime Mag stuff than women are -- especially if you look at that magazine's typical product. But given Levesque's reaction (and mine), maybe there's something to her point.

Maybe men are reading too much Catherine MacKinnon.