Molly Miller, ‘pretty privilege’ and women’s basketball’s beauty trap | College basketball

IIn March 2025, the Arizona State women’s basketball team was looking for a coach who could end a drought that had seen them go without an NCAA Tournament appearance — or even a winning season — since 2019-20.

The choice fell on Molly Miller, a proven and successful head coach at Grand Canyon. Miller had led the Lopes to their first NCAA Tournament appearance and a 32-3 record in his final season with the team – a benchmark for the program and a significant accomplishment in the broader framework of college basketball. She quickly turned around Arizona State, leading them to a 24-11 record and a first NCAA Tournament appearance in six years. (Their season ended in the top four.)

But the talk around Miller’s hiring has extended beyond his credentials. Miller is blonde and petite, a conventionally “all-American” pretty woman. From there, the conversation got muddled. Fans focused on a common trope projected onto women in sports; the discussion shifted to her appearance, rather than the records she broke and the job she was hired to do.

A TikTok upon her nomination praised her as “one of the best basketball coaches to ever walk the Earth” before noting that she “is a beautiful woman…I hate to say it, but if you know anything about Arizona State, you go there because it’s beautiful. If you know, you know.”

Another TikTok, with over 300,000 views, appears when you type the name “Molly Miller” into the app. The caption reads: “Molly Miller isn’t going viral because of her coaching.”

In the video, user CFBChuck, who covers college sports on his page, catalogs his accomplishments before pivoting with a “but.” He adds: “Arizona State’s biggest selling point: big party school, beautiful women. » The comments section includes observations such as “she’s so hot” and “so she’s a DEI recruit, I understand.”

This is nothing new in basketball – and sports in general – where women have long been evaluated on their appearance, often as an assumed extension of their professional role. From the inception of the WNBA, where marketing campaigns pushed a “heterosexual girl next door” image mixed with overt sexualization, until today, the pattern has always been reductive. When Miller’s accomplishments are met with a “but…”, it suggests that merit alone is insufficient, that his accomplishments, however substantial, are measured by the narrow standard of physical attractiveness. Despite a career defined by tangible success, Miller’s worth is implicitly more tied to her looks than the impact she made.

A compliment here or there on Miller’s appearance isn’t surprising, but the larger picture tells a different story. Whether it’s a player like Paige Bueckers being targeted in sexualized montages on TikTok or stalked online, or a journalist like Taylor Rooks being remembered as if her relationship with NBA players existed solely because they found her attractive, the message is clear. These women are denied credit for their own professional merit, with their success instead repackaged as a performance for male consumption.

Misogyny, misogynoir, and objectification waste women’s time. Instead of thriving, organizations like the NCAA, WNBA, and NWSL are stymied by pervasive narratives that question women’s legitimacy. Online comments from men insisting that women should not demand higher salaries because their leagues would be less profitable or less entertaining illustrate this obstruction. Women are then trapped in a constant cycle of negotiation, explanation and self-validation. They must repeatedly demonstrate their skills rather than just doing their job.

This distraction is not accidental; it’s intentional. This reinforces a discourse that undermines and diminishes the legitimate place of women in sport, delaying the recognition of their full capacity to fulfill their role. Misogyny, in all its forms, is not simply a personal burden; it is a systemic structure designed to block progress, dilute power, and force women to defend their very existence, rather than allowing them to advance based on the merit of their work.

Rooks addressed this dynamic in a recent podcast with Lou Williams and Spank Horton. She was forced to assert that, despite the sexualized attention she receives, her appearance has not influenced her work — a statement prompted by repeated suggestions that she gets the “best interviews” with NBA players because of her “pretty privilege.”

The towers fought back. “Reducing someone’s skills, abilities or talent just because they look good to you really does a disservice to all the work they’ve done,” Rooks said. “And to think that all you need to be in this space is to be attractive is also incredibly disrespectful.”

Rooks is an Emmy nominee, hosted national coverage of the NFL and worked as a studio host on Amazon Prime, accomplishments she built from a career that began when she was 18. Fifteen years later, she’s still stuck battling the assumption that her looks dictated her success, forcing her to defend her legitimacy.

“What I always tell myself is people think I’m so good at this job, they must think I’m cheating — like, oh, she can only do that because she’s pretty,” she said on the podcast.

Rooks’ fight against legitimacy is a fight that Miller must also fight. While sections of the Internet debate her appearance, she brought a previously losing program back to the NCAA tournament — a feat that deserves the same viral energy the world gave her. And yet, the media coverage of this feat is not as viral as the videos lusting after her and diminishing her abilities.