You know The New York Times‘s bias against US runner Lolo Jones for being a virgin and a Christian must be bad when even the Gawker sports site DeadSpin feels obliged to defend her. Excerpts:
The thrust of the article is that the attention the media has lavished on Jones is not commensurate with her achievement, and (this part is key) Lolo Jones is somehow at fault for that. Basically, that Lolo Jones is a #fraud.
The piece says that Jones’s popularity “was based not on achievement but on her exotic beauty and on a sad and cynical marketing campaign.” Jones, suggests the article, wants attention for herself and the products she endorses, and this desire sets her apart from other famous athletes…somehow.
The article situates Jones within centuries of struggle for acceptance of women athletes, and pretty explicitly calls her a traitor to her gender for garnering attention with sex appeal. The New York Times points out her pose for the ESPN The Magazine‘s Body Issue, three years ago, and her cover for Outside magazine, where Jones could be seen “seeming to wear a bathing suit made of nothing but strategically placed ribbon.” They link to the cover. It’s a big ribbon. At the same time, says the article, “she has proclaimed herself to be a 30-year-old virgin and a Christian,” as if the cover of Outside magazine was a close-up of her punctured hymen, or herESPN The Magazine pose showed her shooting up inside a flaming pentagram.
DeadSpin sums the NYT profile up like this:
In sum: Lolo Jones “proclaims herself” a virgin and a Christian, but has posed for two magazine covers over the course of three years that might be titillating if you don’t have the internet. As it has with many other athletes, the media has allocated attention to her because she’s more interesting than most of her peers. She’s comfortable talking about a troubled childhood in public; other athletes aren’t. She sent out a tweet which the Times edited and took out of context to make her look bad. She’s not as a good hurdler as she was four years ago.
DeadSpin titles its item, “What Did Lolo Jones Ever Do To The New York Times?” She reeks of Tebow, is what.
Brian 
Joe the Plutocrat 
Geoff Guth 
Charles Cosimano 
John E_o 
DS 
Mike W 
Mary Russell 
MH - Secular Misanthropist 
Monterey 
Andrea 
Uncle Vanya 
Steve Gibson 
David J. White 
L617 
Jay 
LaTonya 
The fact that she’s a virgin is nobody’s business, although if she said it in public, there is no reason it should not be briefly reported that she said it.
As with Tim Tebow, all those grown men, and the women who were so pleased to break down the doors of the locker room, tittering like fifth graders over the possibility that a professional football player might be a virgin, or a female Olymic athlete, is worthy of a small drop of contempt, but not much more.
The fact that a self-proclaimed family values Christian posed for not-quite-nude photos is a bit more fair game. Yes, I know that born-again Christians do it, supposedly only after they marry, and only with their spouse, but posing for the body issue could be a bit questionable as far as family values go. There is a lot of wiggle room for moral standards between the skimpy swim suit and the burkha.