Did Acuff Go Over Top With Her Calendar?

High jumper Amy Acuff, raised upright by conservative parents in Corpus Christi, Texas, and a distant relative of late Grand Ole Opry star Roy “The Great Speckled Bird” Acuff, goes off to L.A. and the next thing you know she’s as naked as a great speckled jaybird on a calendar.

She is not the only track and field athlete who shed her singlet, but she was the ring leader. She recruited 11 others for the photo shoot while they were in Los Angeles this spring for the Mt. SAC Relays and, if you believe her, she had more volunteers than the calendar had months.

With the Women’s World Cup attracting record-breaking crowds for women’s sports, women dominating attention at Wimbledon and the WNBA in its third season, we are seeing more women participating in high-level, highly marketed sports than ever before. We also are seeing more of some of the women.

Katarina Witt appeared in “Playboy” last December, a lead for figure skaters that was followed in their countries’ editions of the magazine by Germany’s Tanya Szewczenko and Russia’s Maria Butyrskaya. Boxer Mia St. John posed last weekend for the magazine and believes she might be on the October cover. Brandi Chastain of the U.S. women’s soccer team appeared in “Gear” magazine without wearing much of hers.

This trend is, depending on how you view it, either a giant step forward or a giant step backward for women athletes.

You will be relieved to learn that some of our greatest minds are studying the issue. Of the 80 or so people who had gone to the merchandise tent and paid $18 for the “2000 Calendar of Champions” by mid-afternoon Friday at the U.S. track and field championships, at least half were sportswriters. If they can figure out how to expense the item, they can figure out anything.

Asked during an interview in Eugene earlier that day about her motivation for the calendar, Acuff said, “We wanted to get our faces out there.”

Quite a bit more than that is out there.

Before I delve further, I should tell you that the calendar, according to colleagues who have seen it, is done artistically and tastefully. Five of the women did not bare their breasts for the black and white photographs. Acuff did, but hers are covered by paint resembling the U.S. flag. So far, the House of Representatives hasn’t voted for a law against that.

How bad can it be?

Acuff’s mom is selling it in the merchandise tent here.

If more exposure, so to speak, was one of Acuff’s agendas, she has succeeded.

Acuff, a 23-year-old UCLA premed graduate, is an outstanding high jumper. She is a two-time NCAA champion, a two-time USA Track & Field champion and a 1996 Olympian. She believes she can become the first woman to clear seven feet.

But, outside her sport, she was about as well known as any other woman high jumper. In other words, she was anonymous.

That began to change at this winter’s Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden, where she competed in a halter top made of fur. Then, at this spring’s Prefontaine meet here, she wore a flesh-colored suit, that, if you didn’t look closely, made it appear as if it was her birthday suit. That, with the exception of the paint and silk stockings, is precisely what she wore for the calendar.

Now, all of the media are chasing Amy. In a short advance article on this meet that appeared in Sports Illustrated, the author mentions only two women’s names. One, of course, is Marion Jones. The other is Acuff.

Or should I say the “slithery” Acuff? His word, not mine.

During a symposium Friday at the University of Oregon’s law school, titled “Women on Track: A Century-old Work in Progress,” the consensus of the panelists, including Acuff, was that the calendar does represent progress, if, for no other reason, because it inspired debate. When’s the last time you heard anyone debating any issue in women’s track and field?

The least convincing argument for it came from USATF’s president, Patricia Rico, who said, “Whether I agree with Amy’s calendar or not, I have to admit it’s something new that’s going to wake up the public.”

That is an indictment of the public, predominantly that portion of the male public that is still more interested in what women athletes look like under their uniforms instead of how they perform when they’re wearing them.

But, in pandering to that audience, aren’t Acuff and other women athletes who pose nude sending the wrong message to young girls?

There seem to be two ways for women athletes to become noticed today.

If you’re Mia Hamm, Lisa Leslie, Chamique Holdsclaw, Jackie Joyner-Kersee or Marion Jones, you become a superstar between the lines and attract a marketing machine to promote you outside of them.

If you’re Amy Acuff or Brandi Chastain, you get naked.

“I thought as women athletes we had reached the point where we didn’t have to use our bodies that way,” Joyner-Kersee told the Chicago Tribune.

I guess not.

There is, however, another message that the calendar sends. Acuff articulated it beautifully during the symposium and I would advise her in the future to focus on that one.

“When I was in high school, girls were afraid to go to the weight room because the perception was that they would lose their feminine qualities and start looking like men,” she said.

“This calendar should represent empowerment to women athletes because it shows that we can be glamorous and still perform at a high level. It’s a new ideal for the new millennium--fit, healthy, feminine women. It’s freeing.”

It’s also for a good cause. Half of the proceeds go to the women who posed for training expenses as they work toward the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, and half to the Florence Griffith Joyner Foundation.

But, before more women athletes decide to disrobe in public, I would warn them to proceed at their own risk. Although they are bound to attract attention, I can’t guarantee they’ll be respected in the morning.

Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.