The other week a video went viral on Facebook. At least it seemed to - several of my friends tagged me in a share, because the video fits into the whole premise of this blog.

The video's called 'Cover The Athlete', and if you haven't seen it, it's here:

The video overlays genuine questions asked of female athletes with reaction shots from male athletes, purportedly expressing shock and surprise that they're being asked about their appearance, as well as commentary also referring to appearance. (The makers of the video have said that none of the men's reaction shots are actually in response to being asked such questions - it's a clever bit of editing).

It's an effective bit of awareness-raising, and there's an accompanying website which asks supporters to tweet at a media organisation to ask them to cover the athlete, not her looks.

Now this is clearly a laudable campaign and one which I'm right behind. However there's a caveat. Go on to the website and there's a section highlighting 'the problem', with sourced examples of utterly egregious times when female athletes have been asked inane questions or where the media have made suggestions such as "give us a twirl". For the record, that particular one, highlighted in the video, was made by Ian Cohen of Channel 7/Tennis Australia to Eugenie Bouchard at the Australian Open in January this year.

In fact all but three of the CoverTheAthlete examples are from tennis. The other three are questions asked of American gymnast Gabrielle Douglas, commentary about the German women's football team, and an NBC headline about the beach volleyball competition at the London 2012 Olympics.

It would be good to have more examples from other sports, because I bet they're out there. That said, women's tennis is one of the few sports where the female players do actually get treated, to some extent, on a par with their male counterparts. They're not yet playing five-set matches in grand slams, but they do get paid the same amount. This remains a cause of huge controversy of course. While the likes of Andy Murray have suggested it's perfectly possible for women to play five-setters (thanks, Andy) some women, such as 2013 Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli, have publicly disagreed. (I plan to return to this topic in a later blog.)

Tennis is also one of the few sports where the top female players can hope to earn substantial amounts from prizes and sponsorship. In fact while Roger Federer leads the career prize money rankings with earnings of $90.94m (!!!!!) Serena Williams is the second-highest earning player ever, having earned $74.1m during her illustrious career. She just pips Rafael Nadal to third place, with Novak Djokovic in second with career earnings of $79.39m. Williams has also earned more than Federer this year, picking up over $10m compared to his $6.6m.

Quite apart from the fact that the leading players can earn this amount - figures which support entire national sports federations in some countries for several years - it shows that while female tennis players still play second fiddle to the men (the Guarneri to the men's Stradivarius) they're not in such a bad place compared to some sports.

But should that allow commentators to ask Bouchard and Williams to "twirl" and show off their short skirts at the end of a match? Absolutely not. Bouchard laughed off the incident back in January, saying it was "unexpected" and "funny". What she should have said was "it was ridiculous, and insulting".

Indeed I rather like Gabrielle Douglas's reaction to the "hair controversy" cited by CoverTheAthlete. At London 2012 the 16-year-old got flack on Twitter for her hair looking less than perfect. Her response: "Really?! I won two gold medals and made history and my hair is trending?”

Brief research of other articles about sexism in sport shows that tennis seems to be more prone to sexist comments than other sports. Whether this is because women's tennis just gets more coverage than other sports, or for other reasons, is unclear. Whatever the reality, I for one would welcome more responses like Douglas's. We all need to call out the media outlets which are treating female athletes in this way. The time is past when it's acceptable.