LSU gymnast Olivia Dunne has revealed that her strong reply to a New York Times hit piece against her earned her a spot in a recent Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition.
Dunne says that her willingness to clap back at the Times for accusing her of setting women’s sports back because she is a pretty, petite, blond girl who makes millions in endorsement deals impressed the sports magazine and caused SI editors to reach out to her.
Olivia Dunne attends the 2023 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue release party at Hard Rock Hotel New York on May 18, 2023, in New York City. (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit)
The saga began in Nov. of last year when Dunne was contacted by the New York Times for what she was led to believe was a piece on her success leveraging NIL deals to become one of the highest-paid influencers in sports.
With her 7.6 million members on TikTok and 4.2 million on Instagram, Dunne is one of the most well-known college athletes on social media, and she has been hired to endorse dozens of products. Indeed, just this week, she admitted that she was once paid $500,000 for a single product post.
“[The New York Times] wrote a hit piece about me,” Dunne said on the Full Send Podcast, according to Fox News. “It was complete BS. I mean, they called me on the phone in November, and they told me that they were going to write about my accomplishments and stuff, and I was like, ‘OK, for sure. That’s awesome. The New York Times. That’s huge.’”
But when the writer called her for the interview, he said he asked his questions couched in strange wording.
Olivia “Livvy” Dunne attends as Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Celebrates the 2023 Issue Release with Swimsuit Island at The Guitar Hotel at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on May 20, 2023 in Hollywood, Florida. (Alberto Tamargo/Getty Images for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit)
“The interviewer called me, and he was asking me very odd questions. It was worded quite weird,” she said. “He was like, ‘So, how does it feel to be a small petite blonde gymnast doing so well with NIL.’ I was just like, ‘Why does it matter that I’m petite and blonde.’ You can just ask me about NIL without you having to use these weird ways of saying it.”
Dunne also said she felt it was inappropriate for the paper to feature her in her LSU leotard uniform with the headline “Sex Sells,” as if she was wearing something other than her normal school-issued uniform.
So, Dunne quickly wrote a reply to the Times refuting their sexist hit piece, and that strongly-worded reply, she says, caught the eye of Sports Illustrated.
Olivia Dunne of LSU warms up on the uneven bars during a gymnastics meet against Auburn at Neville Arena on February 10, 2023, in Auburn, Alabama. (Stew Milne/Getty Images)
“I guess it caught Sports Illustrated’s attention, and then they were like, ‘We loved that you clapped back at The New York Times since they’re so major,’” Dunne exclaimed.
Dunne has one more year in college but won’t apologize for being a beautiful woman.
“You can’t control how you look and I feel like a girl is not responsible for a boy’s bad behavior, especially if you’re in a leotard,” she exclaimed. “Because I knew that if the roles were reversed and let’s say they went into the football facility and took a picture of one of the boys without a shirt on, they would never put a giant headline, ‘Sex Sells.’ They just wouldn’t. It’s because I’m standing there in a leotard.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston