18-year-old Alli­son Stokke became a vic­tim of unwanted inter­net pop­u­lar­ity. Appar­ently, Miss Stokke is one of the best pole vaulters the United States of Amer­ica have to offer. If some reports can be believed, she’s just a cou­ple of inches off the best high school girls mark. That makes her an excep­tional ath­lete, I guess.

Unfor­tu­nately, she’s quite beau­ti­ful too, as you can see on the pic­ture. This com­bi­na­tion has led to a relent­less inter­net atten­tion. In fact, it has led to a cult of some sorts. A quick search I did on Google just con­firmed that, even though it looks like the Stokkes got things some­what under con­trol as of lately. Some­times, igno­rance is bliss, they say. But that didn’t work out with poor Alli­son. Ignor­ing these events just didn’t work out. Fans turned her pic­ture into the back­ground pic­ture on their com­put­ers which felt like “becom­ing the vic­tim of a crime”, accord­ing to Miss Stokke.

Of course, most peo­ple want to become famous, a celebrity of some sorts. For Alli­son it’s only sports that mat­ters. Pole vault­ing, that is. She com­plained that “nobody really sees me”. I couldn’t agree more. Most peo­ple don’t care. All they see is a beau­ti­ful young woman with olive skin in a span­dex uni­form. Sadly, that’s all they need to start writ­ing about their sex­ual fan­tasies. It is demean­ing to be reduced to a sex object, espe­cially if you’re a promis­ing young ath­lete. I feel sorry for her, even though there are many oth­ers out there who share her plight.