I am not talking about the pole in strip clubs, but about pole vaulting, one of track and field's most celebrated sports. But here in Newport Beach, CA, this story is also about one Allison Stokke who is barely 18 and a senior at Newport Harbor High School, until recently recognized for setting the U.S. record of her class at 12'8". However, her abilities in pole vaulting have been elevated to new heights along with her good looks and natural beauty as a side story for a displayed disadvantage of shameful proportions by the crazed Internet community, and the YouTube generation lately.
Earlier this month blogger Matt Ufford of WithLeather.com, a sports blog complete with comedy, opinion and sometimes sex, posted a picture of Stokke. Hardly one of sexually explicit proportions (i.e. Antonella Barba.) But at 5 feet 7, and with smooth, olive-colored skin and toned muscles, according to Ufford, 'she was hot and she was 18.' And now she's getting unwanted attention from 'fans' all around the world undoubtedly interested in her 'pole vaulting' abilities.
Here's an excerpt from the Washington Post story entitled, 'Teen Tests Internet's Lewd Track Record' for the rest of the story:
Stokke read on message boards that dozens of anonymous strangers had turned her picture into the background image on their computers. She felt violated. It was like becoming the victim of a crime, Stokke said. Her body had been stolen and turned into a public commodity, critiqued in fan forums devoted to everything from hip-hop to Hollywood.After dinner one evening in mid-May, Stokke asked her parents to gather around the computer. She gave them the Internet tour that she believed now defined her: to the unofficial Allison Stokke fan page, complete with a rolling slideshow of 12 pictures; to the fan group on MySpace, with about 1,000 members; to the message boards and chat forums where hundreds of anonymous users looked at Stokke's picture and posted sexual fantasies.
"All of it is like locker room talk," said Cindy Stokke, Allison's mom. "This kind of stuff has been going on for years. But now, locker room talk is just out there in the public. And all of us can read it, even her mother."
An impostor created a fake profile of Stokke on Facebook, a social networking site intended mainly for college students. Stokke's classmates at Newport Harbor High School started receiving Facebook messages that seemed to be from Stokke -- except she typed in Southern jargon and listed her interests as only "BOYS!!!!"
Last week, Stokke wrote a complaint letter to Facebook, and it immediately took down the fake profile. She hasn't contacted any other Web sites, she said. Allan Stokke, a defense attorney, studied California's statutes so he would know if he saw or read anything about his daughter that went beyond distasteful to illegal.
"Even if none of it is illegal, it just all feels really demeaning," Allison Stokke said. "I worked so hard for pole vaulting and all this other stuff, and it's almost like that doesn't matter. Nobody sees that. Nobody really sees me."
An apparent victim, or a case of circumstantial development as a result of the obsession with our inner dark side as a society.
You decide!
I referred to some of this phenomenon in my previous post 'Getting Naked.'
Here are some more of Allison's pictures from her own posting.
What makes this post more interesting is that Allison's dad, Allan Stokke, is the attorney partner of one of my clients. I don't think he's out to intentionally get this kind of publicity for his daughter as some bloggers have suggested.
