Oversexed or undersexed, it’s hard to be a female reporter

As an English-speaking female who doesn’t watch TV Azteca and knows only the basics about the world of football, the first time I heard of sports reporter Ines Sainz was last night, when the story of lewd sexual remarks directed at her by New York Jets players broke on Yahoo! News.

(Note: Yahoo! is my mother’s home page, not mine. I was on her computer… don’t judge.)

Little did I know, this bombshell Latina journalist has been a lesser-known gem in the realm of “hot sports reporters” (alongside A-listers Erin Andrews and Rachel Nichols) for some time. She’s a gorgeous, sexy woman, and she has no qualms about flaunting it: Along with her form-fitting and often suggestive outfits, Sainz has been noted in the past for exhibiting somewhat matching behavior during interviews, including measuring player’s biceps with a tape measure.

A quick Google search for her name pulls up hundreds of photos of Sainz scantily clad (she’s also done several bikini shoots), and at the time of this post, she was the search engine’s 39th most popular image search.

Sainz herself admitted that she was surprised at the way the story blew up. Infuriated women everywhere came forth and clucked their piece — either they were outraged that Sainz had been shown such disrespect and applauded her for being both a professional reporter

and simultaneously a real woman, or they lambasted her for exploiting her sexuality in a field where women have worked so hard over the past several decades to be respected as equals.

The only thing anyone can seem to agree on is that no professional should ever have to feel that sort of icky, vulgar discomfort while they’re trying to do their job — and even then, the debate rages on about whether or not reporters should be allowed in locker rooms in the first place.

We can all agree that the comments made by some of the players and staff toward Sainz were out of line and disgusting. The individuals who made those remarks are probably aware by now that those thoughtless moments are the ones that seriously hurt the reputation of their team and of the NFL as a whole.

When news of this unfortunate incident broke, I was reminded of how damn difficult it can be to be taken seriously as a female reporter — especially a young one. These two-day media frenzies over how much cleavage a sports reporter shows just set us back. The facts regarding leaked nude photos of Erin Andrews were appalling, but the media chaos that surrounded it was almost as grotesque. But she’s a professional; she handled it with grace and dignity, and her career remained unscathed.

This past summer, I was warned by one of my editors (who turned out to be one of the best mentors and smartest people I’ve ever met) that because I was a rookie female reporter (and not even out of college yet), I was going to have to work much harder for people to take me seriously. Initially I shrugged it off. I’d been reporting for more than two years (mostly at the college level) and I felt like my aggressively focused and professional nature forced people to take me seriously.

Of course I was wrong, and I learned that the hard way when an interview subject who didn’t like how the final story turned out sent a letter to the paper, ranting about my immaturity, sexuality and the way I had “obviously flirted” with another one of the people I was interviewing.

As I sat in my editor’s office reading that letter and biting back tears and expletives, I was hit by the occasional glass-ceiling type feeling of “I hate being a woman and life’s not fair.” But my editors supported and backed me completely. “Men are pigs,” one said as he handed me a box of tissues. When I told them what actually happened and that I had felt uncomfortable at the interview, they made me promise to tell them the next time.

As a result, I’ve been warned. I will never again be off my guard. I obviously didn’t do anything close to flirting with that interviewee, but I immediately learned to dial down my sugary-polite-sweetness that sometimes accompanies the nervousness I feel when going to interview someone. But the goal is to concentrate on not letting that change who I am as a person… I personally couldn’t pull off the skin tight outfits and strappy heels that Sainz wears everyday as she marches out onto the field with her camera crew (I would fall on my face), and I don’t feel that they’re necessarily appropriate, but I certainly defend the fact that we can be women and also be reporters — cops and courts, science, government, school and yes, sports reporters.

We can be respected and treated fairly, be ourselves, and look good while doing it. Newsrooms and interviews clearly are not the place for provocative behavior, but as women, we shouldn’t hide our identities and try to appear sexless just so we’ll be taken seriously.

In my opinion, Sainz has hurt her credibility, but that has more to do with her antics and outfits than her looks. And while gorgeous women like Erin Andrews are appreciated for their beauty, they are valued for their ratings because they’re professional, hard-working and they know what they’re talking about.