If you haven’t seen tennis star Maria Sharapova’s new ad for Nike, get one of your kids to find it for you on the Internet.
The ad follows this statuesque and lovely winner of the U.S. Open as she makes her way from her hotel room to the court at Flushing Meadows in New York.
Along the way, hotel maids, doormen, cab drivers — even TV commentators John McEnroe and Patrick McEnroe up in the booth — sing “I Feel Pretty” from the musical West Side Story.
I won’t spoil the punch line — and it really has a lot of punch — but the ad has all the cool quotient that we have come to expect from Nike.
But the ad is being criticized because it focuses on Sharapova’s beauty instead of her athletic ability.
If you watch the ad — and if you have any sense of humor — you will understand that that criticism is wide of the mark.
But Sharapova also generated buzz by showing up for her U.S. Open night matches in, literally, “a little black dress.”
It looked like a cocktail dress — with a yoke encrusted with crystal beads and a plunging open back that was held together with what looked like a velvet ribbon.
The dress had an Audrey Hepburn quality to it. Sharapova says she is a fan of the actress.
It was the flip side — and a long way — from Anne White’s all-white unitard, a choice that mocked Wimbledon all-white rules in 1985.
I am not sure if the dress helped sell the U.S. Open or tennis or Nike apparel or Sharapova, who earns something like $19 million in endorsements.
But it certainly adds to our confusion about sex and sports.
We like our female athletes better if they are hot. We cheer louder for the sexy ones. We root harder for the pretty girls. Anna Kournikova’s tennis has never caught up with her looks, and we don’t mind.
But all that stuff is kind of subtle and off the radar screen until Serena Williams takes the court in a black leather one-piece that barely covers her behind. Then we get as flustered as a kid at a middle-school dance.
(The grunting adds a primal dimension, too. Sharapova grunts. I am not a guy, but a grunting woman in a skimpy black dress must make men feel as if their libido has been tossed in a Waring blender.)
Everything sells better with sex — cars, liquor, cigarettes, vacations, books, Sports Illustrated, TV, movies. But nothing goes with sex quite like sports. It is the meeting of two equals.
The point of Sharapova’s Nike ad is that pretty can be athletic, too. Or perhaps the point is, sex can be athletic, too.
It is understandable if you are confused.
