A few days ago, women's hoops blogger Stacey Geyer had some good thoughts on the LJ photos. Geyer has no problem with what LJ did.

She says that this is OK because it was LJ's individual choice. By contrast, she says that some of the league's official marketing photos in the past were more troubling because they were the product of mandate.

I think Stacey's partly right. My instincts are the same as hers: I'm not troubled by LJ's shoot. I was more troubled by some other things, eg Sue Bird's "This Is Who I Am" shots last year (even though those weren't nude). It's a little complicated to figure out the explanation for those intuitions, but Stacey is on to something when she says that it's different when it's part of official league marketing.

But appealling to individual choice only gets you so far. Sue's initial decision to do the spanking bet was her individual choice (not mandated or encouraged by the league), but it was still degrading.

Individual choices don't occur in a vacuum; they are always a product of various pressures and influences. People can only make choices, moreover, among the available options. If subject to different influences, or given different options, people would make different choices. Even if someone makes a "voluntary" individual choice, we might think that it's a bad choice for whatever reason, and we might seek to change the mix of influences or the range of options so others don't make the same choice.

That's why consent-based theories (of politics, feminism, sexuality, or anything else) often aren't thick enough to give a satisfying analysis of issues like this.