Absolutely not.

Stokke is an 18 year-old high school pole-vaulter with the kind of breath-taking natural beauty that inspired movie moguls of yore to walk up to young women they encountered in hotels and drug stores and proclaim, "I'm going to make you a star!" The crucial difference is that those women could say, "No." Nobody asked Stokke if she wanted the curse of celebrity, yet the sophomoric sports blog called WithLeather posted a photo of her that had appeared on a site devoted to high school track events. With Leather's Matt Ufford's comments weren't especially offensive (especially compared to the comments he received from his readers), but certainly suggestive in a leering way:

Hubba hubba and other grunting sounds…Miss Stokke is one of the best young pole vaulters in the country…So, that's why I'm honoring her with a post.  Because she's an exceptional athlete.  Yes. Oh, and if this YouTube interview is any indication, …she's unable to detect sarcasm.  Which is too bad, because missing sarcastic remarks ends our steamy, illicit romance before it's even begun…

But they were enough. Even though Ufford was forced to remove the photo from his blog (he didn't have permission from the photographer), soon it was popping up all over the web, and getting commentary from individuals several notches lower on the evolutionary scale, like this semi-literate blogger:

"Oh dear God! There isn't much sexier than a sex athlete lady and this is the proof…I really struggled about weather [sic.] I should post this or not seeing as how I want to do something like this for a living somday [sic.] but the scales were tipped in the favor of "yes" when I was reading the comments of that article and saw this…Miss Stokke apparently turned 18 less than 2 months ago according to WithLeather  this is why I love them I love High School seniors"

The Scoreboard will now take a 10 minute break while you take a shower .

****

Welcome back! All clean again? To continue…according to the Washington Post, Allison now finds herself recognized on the street and is afraid to go out alone. She has received offers from soft-porn magazines, and there is a website dedicated to her, with a slideshow of photos. There is a Stokke fan group on MySpace, with about 1,000 members; and message boards and chat rooms where hundreds of anonymous users post sexual fantasies about her. From the Post: "It was like becoming the victim of a crime, Stokke said. Her body had been stolen and turned into a public commodity, critiqued in fan forums devoted to everything from hip-hop to Hollywood."

The essence of ethics is not using people for personal ends, considering the impact of your actions on others, and applying empathy and sympathy before doing something that will cause another person discomfort, hardship, sadness or pain. Ufford didn't consider any of this; to him a thoughtful, sensitive A student who just wanted to live a normal life was only fodder for his blog, and no more human than a slab of prime beef. So he threw out her image to readers whose reaction was completely predictable. These are young men to whom "The Man Show" is high culture, pro wrestling is intellectually stimulating, and a wet T-shirt competition Nirvana. Ufford had to know what was in store for Allison Stokke. He just didn't care. Posting Stokke's picture, Ufford told the Post, was a "no-brainer."

He's got that right. But nothing else.

Unlike actors, models, professional celebrities like Paris Hilton and paid athletes, Stokke didn't ask or bargain for this attention. The Scoreboard generally agrees with those who have little sympathy for the complaints of millionaire public figures who simultaneously beg for public acclaim and then bemoan their lack of privacy. They made the bargain, and they are well compensated for their exposure. Moreover, the vast majority of them wanted it.

Indeed, if Allison Stokke was a different person, she too might revel in her sudden stardom. She might accept bookings on talk shows and reality shows, issue a calendar, and start her own website. She might sell autograph photos, and pose for magazines; get an agent and star in a horror film or a TV ad for Bally's Gym. The attention might have set her off on a completely different life path than the one she anticipated, as she exploited her fame and rode the wave of public obsession to wealth, notoriety and Beverly Hills. And then she might thank Matt Ufford.

The real Allison Stokke, however, does not want to be a sex symbol, a pin-up or a fold-out. So what WithLeather did to her world is exactly what sexual harassment laws prohibit doing to women in the workplace, which is to make it a hostile environment where attention is focused one's sexual attributes rather than one's achievements and abilities. There's no law against what Ufford did to Allison, but it is far worse than any workplace sexual harassment, for while one can always quit a hostile job, one can't escape one's life. For a little extra attention on a trivial blog, Matt Ufford diminished the quality of a young woman's life.

That's unethical. Yet it would have been so easy to avoid being unethical. All he had to do was have the respect and fairness to ask Allison's permission before sending her lovely image into the cyber-locker room to be drooled over. But that would have meant doing the right thing when she refused.