Olympics coverage has always been different from what you would see from any of the big North American sports leagues. The build up surrounding any playoffs– be it NHL, NBA, or NFL– usually has to do with storylines from the season and are centered around how it affects a team’s or player’s chances of winning a championship.

The Olympics, however, includes something most Americans don’t generally watch—women’s sports. The resulting coverage is an interesting product manufactured by the media where they desperately try to play to the interests of the fans.

Leading up to the games, fans are inundated with propaganda meant to make everyone believe that all the girls competing are 9s and 10s when they are mostly 7s at best (because why would we watch 7s? That’s what college is for.)

The marketing efforts to objectify all female athletes before competition has been pretty effective despite the fact that no matter how much airbrushing goes into every one of these athletes’ glamour shots, there will still be another nine pictures on Google images of them in all their unfiltered glory. Blah, no thanks.

I prefer to split up my objects of adoration into very distinct categories, in this case “Girls I want to be like” and “Girls I want to look like.” Combining the two creates the illusion that a girl can have it all, and if there’s anything I’ve learned as female in society, it’s that such a thing simply can’t exist or else what could we be told we need to buy to be “better”? I don’t even want to think about how that would compound issues given the current state of the economy.

Thankfully, today there was a complete reverse of trend as pictures and video of Bar Refaeli playing sports were posted for everyone’s viewing pleasure. Her fake tennis is definitely more tolerable than the fake modeling that has been going on, even if she didn’t have an opponent or actually make contact with the ball at any point.

Refaeli managed to do what was most important, which is remind us of where our standards used to be only weeks ago. Women shouldn’t believe that their talent or personality are enough to get away with looking like a Kerri Walsh or Misty May-Treanor, even with photoshop, because that would mean giving up on America’s dream for them. I can only hope this can help us to all regain our focus and realign our goals to hit the unrealistic expectations we would otherwise strive for were it not an Olympic year.