Monday, July 11, 2011

The Final Score: Athletes, billboards and the right kind of exposure

By MICO HALILI - GMA News

It's an excited huddle. People gather around a glossy calendar, one that features the rugby-playing Philippine Volcanoes, like castaways urgently studying a map out of the forgotten island. The gigantic billboards along Guadalupe are down. But the buzz over Volcanoes and Azkals in skimpy underwear increases. I observe this small crowd analyzing every calendar page like they're scientists from NASA. What is the significance of slipping national rugby or football players into bikini briefs? What is the garterized, half-naked truth about athletes, briefs and billboards?

It's a good thing. I think. Commuters spot the billboards and they grow curious. More curious about the Philippine Volcanoes and the Philippine Azkals. More curious about the difference between rugby, the adhesive, and rugby, the sport. More curious about the difference between calling football "football" and not soccer. More curious about how much Photoshop was used. More curious about how minimal cloth was employed. More curious about national sports teams. More curious about national athletes. More curious about national sports.

There are two end goals. To sell underwear. To promote sports. Who's to say which is more important than the other. By effectively selling underwear, a brand effectively promotes a sport, a team, an athlete. By effectively promoting a sport on a mammoth billboard greeting every enthusiastic, uneasy, unaffected, ecstatic, offended, enamored driver or passenger on EDSA, an athlete sells underwear. And then people talk. Excitedly. And people react. Differently.

Are there too many briefs on billboards along EDSA? Yes. Is there not enough lingerie on billboards along EDSA, the way things used to be? Yes. When too much male skin is exposed, people complain. When too much female skin is exposed, people complain too. What's the right amount of exposure then? One brief for every bra? If, instead of male rugby players, female beach volleyball players are on massive billboards wearing daring underwear designed to slow down traffic, how will local government officials react? Will such billboards go down just as quickly? Will their calendars sell just as briskly?

What about national athletes unwilling to strip down? What about Efren "Bata" Reyes? What about the Philippine Lady Azkals a.k.a. Malditas? Should they sport underwear to dutifully promote football too? Should our Olympic athletes for London 2012 brace for this kind of exposure? To have this much attention by wearing so little?

If we condemn this new, risqué way of promoting sports, we might be branded as prudes. If we celebrate the proliferation of billboards depicting athletes in all their underwear glory, we might be branded as pervs. There are other, creative ways of marketing national teams. Yet "brief billboards" work. They make us talk. They make us argue. They make a person who recently bought the Bench Philippine Volcanoes calendar ask me about rugby (true story). They make national teams a hot topic anew. They make people think about national sports. They make people think about national pride. That's what you think about when you see the billboards, right?

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