I just disagree when the child is posed sexually. I’ve seen pictures of minor girls with their butt cheeks hanging out of leotards or a video where they zoom in on the leg hole of the leotard. Paid marketing for leotard companies usually stays classier in my opinion. I can’t imagine some of the images I’ve seen encouraging sales to parents. The market the images I’ve seen seem to target is very scary to me. I’m sorry but I do judge that.
My daughter has done some work in the modeling/entertainment industry and her agent has told me how much the industry looks down on these things. Like you mentioned, it’s free marketing for the company. No paying models or photographers or editors.
IMO L.D. is the worst thing to happen to little gymnasts with stars in their eyes. They see her photo-shopped and inappropriate posing, and copy her. There is a rising 9th grader (that reps lots of leotard companies and other products) that has been posing like she's 25 and a swimsuit model since she was 12. There is a family-owned Leo company that allows their own daughters to post the most inappropriate posts while barely wearing clothes,, even their youngest who is not even a teenager yet. If the moms and dads don't see the issue here, and actually encourage it, it will only get worse. It is most surprising because after all the issues with USAG and the doctor, and demand for unitards or shorts instead of leotards, and more covering for the gymnasts, that the posts and posing on IG from young girls in leotards seems only to be getting more risqué than ever. It is disturbing, as the OP stated.
I think it's pretty disgusting too and I honestly don't understand how so many parents justify to themselves what they are doing to their own children. There is literally no reason a young child needs an instagram account anyway and then to post what they do to attract followers..
What gets me is if you say anything negative to them (the parents), they will talk about how we don't understand how hard they work to keep out or remove the bad people and that they take it very seriously. I mean it's not that hard.. don't post the pictures in the first place and you won't have these predators and icky people to keep out. And for what? free leotards and bragging rights mostly. First, the problem with a lot of these ambassadorships is that the parents really push their gymnasts into doing it. I have known quite a few brand ambassadors over the years, and in every case I am aware of, the parents orchestrate the entire thing. Even worse, their daughters don’t even want to do it but are given no choice.
I agree, I wouldn't personally put my daughter out there like that. I wish it wasn't a thing, but that's a bit naive statement there about college and NIL. There is a direct relationship between the size of NIL deals and the number of followers for the Olympic sports athletes (football/basketball are a whole different game). So gaining as many followers as possible before college is what folks want to do. Most NIL deals that I have seen for the average college gymnast are a couple hundred here or there to do a signing or poster. A few of the large SEC programs have decent NIL opportunities but even then those are maybe 5-10k. Also, there are so few scholarships available and costs are incurred that arent covered by scholarships.
My daughter has a full ride to a D1 program, and all expenses are paid by the university (tuition, room, board, books, stipend to cover incidentals, etc.). Also, many college gymnastics programs have NIL money for all the gymnasts on the team. (To be clear, it is my understanding that it is not orchestrated by program, but rather boosters.)
I wouldn't say that "most" gymnasts do this. Yes, that is a valuable tool when working on recruiting and I do not have a problem with that at all.
I think we are agreeing with each other. To clarify, the “most” refers to the fact that when upper level gymnasts post videos of their skills, “most” will gain more followers than brand ambassadors. I am arguing for gymnasts to wait, at least, until high school to post on social media and only for recruiting purposes. Of course, most girls don’t make it to the upper levels of gymnastics, or if they do, they aren’t looking to do gymnastics in college. However, this thread started by talking about young girls being brand ambassadors, not influencers. Brand ambassadors are not paid. As for influencers, there has only been a handful of gymnasts (Olivia Dunn, Whitney Bjerken) who have been able to acquire generational wealth from posting on social media about gymnastics.
technically Whitney didn't acquire that wealth. According to her interview with the NYT, her parents got the money until very recently.
