Burlington, VT -
We couldn’t take it anymore. The incessant, inane, and cliched chatter on U. S. television track and field coverage of Allyson Felix’s baby every time she raced or didn’t race was too much to bear. Announcers would drone on about Felix’s child as if she was the first woman - or even female track star - to give birth. We are big fans of hers, but the unending talk of her baby turned us away from her.
The baby was never the real story, however, which had much more to do with Nike turning against Felix in 2018 and 2019 when she was pregnant and after her first child was born. This has long been standard treatment of women athletes by their corporate sponsors when they become pregnant. No chance the commercial networks would ever tell that story.
Felix told the story instead, using her enormous global appeal to confront Nike’s sexist, old-school policies. It seems Nike wanted to cut her compensation by 70 percent until she returned to full form on the track. Felix mounted a PR campaign complete with a powerful New York Times’ op-ed piece.
“If we have children,” she wrote in May 2019, “we risk pay cuts from our sponsors during pregnancy and afterward. It’s one example of a sports industry where the rules are still mostly made for and by men.” She continued, “What I’m not willing to accept is the enduring status quo around maternity. I asked Nike to contractually guarantee that I wouldn’t be punished if I didn’t perform at my best in the months surrounding childbirth. I wanted to set a new standard. If I, one of Nike’s most widely marketed athletes, couldn’t secure these protections, who could? Nike declined.”Now that’s the kind of baby talk that matters.
