The thing that frustrates me about Danica Patrick is that she doesn’t seem to spend a lot (or enough) time thinking about the fact that she’s a female and how doing those dumb GoDaddy ads affects other female athletes, and women, in general.
In this video interview (below) with ESPN The Magazine (she’s also on the cover of their first-ever “Women in Sports” issue, on newsstands Friday) she says she doesn’t care what I or anyone else thinks because she has fun doing those ads. I get that she doesn’t think of herself as a female driver that has to prove herself but as a driver that wants to succeed. I totally get that, but the thing that I never quite seem to ever hear her say is that she can see other people’s perspective on those dumb, risqué GoDaddy ads and what it does to women.
I get that her perspective seems to be one of “I’m a driver” and it begins and ends with that, which is cool because she clearly loves to race, this is what she was meant to do and she’s doing it. But it becomes boring and disappointing when you can’t see outside of that and acknowledge that there’s more to your story than just that.
She has this huge platform that she could use to empower & support women and young girls, but instead her indifference hurts them. It’s the whole reason why I’m indifferent to her.
To be clear, I know that she’s talented and can be very successful in NASCAR. Her ability to race isn’t something I question. I truly believe that she has the ability win some races at some point, but I personally find her inability to look beyond herself disheartening and extremely frustrating. I’ve also found that she never really takes the opportunity to even mention the many other female drivers in both NASCAR and IndyCar today, to just say that the thing that makes her so unique in racing isn’t becoming that unique anymore.