A White House photo celebrating a champion women’s sports team has drawn backlash as a result of positioning of Donald Trump and a group of males, who overshadowed the feminine athletes by lining up in entrance of them.
The University of Georgia women’s tennis team was considered one of a number of collegiate groups to go to the White House on Tuesday to mark a latest NCAA championship win. In a photo shared by press aide Margo Martin, Donald Trump and 5 Georgia staffers and coaches took up the entrance row of a stage setup, with 11 ladies standing within the background on a riser.
The males standing alongside Trump have been, from left to proper: Georgia deputy athletic director Ford Williams, athletic director Josh Brooks, head coach Drake Bernstein, affiliate head coach Jarryd Chaplin and assistant coach Will Reynolds.
“A photo is worth a thousand words …” former tennis star Martina Navratilova wrote on X.
“Who approved this photo?” one commenter wrote. “Me when I definitely respect women’s sports teams: what if we put them behind us so you can barely see them,” one other said.
In a video shared by Martin, Trump approaches the group and shakes the fingers of the 5 males, however doesn’t do the identical to the ladies.
The Georgia team shared the photo on its official account later within the day, with the caption: “An honor to represent the University of Georgia at the White House today! @realDonaldTrump thanks for having us out!”
Georgia, who gained the NCAA Division I women’s tennis championship final May, have been amongst seven groups honored for his or her titles on the White House this week.
Championship groups throughout American sports have historically acquired invites from the president to go to the White House after their victories. Such visits have turn into fraught throughout the first and second Trump phrases.
Before 2019, no women’s championship team had made a solo visit to the White House beneath Trump. Some had participated in occasions celebrating males’s and women’s groups. Four of the groups honored at Tuesday’s occasion have been women’s sports groups, plus one mixed-gender rifle team.
Earlier this 12 months, the US women’s hockey team declined an invitation to go to the White House after successful gold on the Milano Cortina Olympics. The team cited scheduling and former commitments, however the resolution got here after Trump joked about needing to ask the women’s team while on a phone call with the gold-winning US males’s team. The males’s team visited the White House and attended the State of the Union as Trump’s friends.
Hilary Knight, the captain of the women’s team, later called Trump’s remark a “distasteful joke” that had overshadowed the Olympic success.
“We’re just focusing on celebrating the women in our room, the extraordinary efforts, and continue to celebrate three gold medals in program history as well as the double gold for both men’s and women’s at the same time. And really not detract from that with a distasteful joke,” Knight stated in February.
The picture at Tuesday’s occasion drew comparisons to earlier situations through which males have dominated images at occasions targeted on women’s points. In 2017, a photo of Trump signing an anti-abortion bill surrounded by eight male staffers within the Oval Office was met with outrage.
Trump in latest weeks has been accused of running a “misogynistic administration” after the departures of three ladies from a cupboard already dominated by males. Kristi Noem, the homeland safety secretary, and Pam Bondi, the legal professional basic, have been fired within the final two months; Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the labor secretary, introduced on Monday she had stepped down.
Noem and Bondi have been each changed by males in what was already the least diverse cabinet this century.
