A woman who attended the 2024 College World Series is criticizing ESPN for focusing cameras on her eating ice cream and sexualizing the moment on their broadcast.
During Monday's national college baseball championship game between Tennessee and Texas A&M, one of ESPN's camera operators zoomed in on a woman and her friend eating ice cream. The clip ended up going viral thanks to people making explicit comments about the women licking the melting ice cream and comparing them to the "Hawk Tuah" girl.
It didn't help that the broadcasters added to the sexualization by commenting, "You gotta get it before it melts, it's liquid," and, "A night like tonight, you're working fast." One of the women, who goes by Annie J on TikTok, shared a video on her page calling out ESPN for twisting the innocent moment.
"It was a 20-second segment of just us eating ice cream or licking our ice cream," she said. "20 seconds dedicated to—with commentary—to just us eating our ice cream. We all knew what direction that video was gonna head in, and lo and behold the creeps of TikTok got a hold of it because we woke up getting compared to the 'Hawk Tuah' girl."
She continued, "It is so beyond evident that women are not welcome in the sports world. … But we just wanted to enjoy a baseball game, and it was 100 degrees, so God forbid we eat some ice cream. Then people sit back and wonder, 'Hmm, why don't women feel welcome in these environments?' ... Because what's funnier than a woman licking an ice cream cone or eating a hot dog, or something that can be overly sexualized? But ESPN can keep it vague enough and the ambiguity is what protects them, when they just open the door for fucking creeps like this to come in and do whatever they want with it."
Annie J added that ESPN should stop contributing to the ongoing issue of showing women and inserting sexuality into their broadcasts. She believes the network isn't promoting the idea that women can feel safe and welcome at sporting events, and that people should not "knowingly take videos of women in the crowds at sports games doing this shit."
