Opinion: Stop Calling All Female Climbers “Influencers”

In 2019, four years before Eddie Bauer laid off their entire team of pro athletes, the brand wanted to add a female climber to their athlete roster. “One of their stipulations was that they had to have over 20,000 followers,” Katie Lambert, one of Eddie Bauer’s team members, told Climbing at the time. She suggested several climbers that she felt had potential, but there was one problem: her recommendations only had about 15,000 followers.

None of them got signed.

For better or worse, having a strong social media presence is nearly always a part of being a professional climber today. Sponsorship contracts frequently include stipulations on how often the athlete must post—and, when they do, which hashtags or branded accounts to add. Film budgets, which often comprise the majority of funding for expensive climbing trips, can also hinge on an athlete’s following and what social media deliverables they can produce.

Pro athletes have grumbled about this, but mostly accepted it. In an interview with EpicTV two years ago, Sasha DiGiulian summed up the sentiment that we find repeated by most pro climbers today: “Social media and athlete careers, unfortunately, are intermingled at this point.”

Male Athlete vs. Female Influencer

Despite this business reality of pro climbing, climbers still use the word “influencer” as an insult. I’ve heard “influencer” used in the abstract to imply someone who is unserious about their sport, only here for the likes and attention, and disrespectful of the craft. Hannah Morris, a climber who runs a successful YouTube channel about her climbing and training, commented on the trend last April in a video essay called “Is Social Media Ruining Rock Climbing?” “The word ‘influence’ carries a really negative connotation, and more so the word ‘influencer,’” she said, noting that she doesn’t consider herself a professional climber but still makes a living from videos. “It’s often said with a sense of embarrassment, a roll of the eye, or even a derogatory tone. I think that’s because influencers, viewed cynically, represent everything that’s wrong or backwards or kind of shitty about society.”

Conversely, “not an influencer” has become a compliment. Last year, in an Arc’teryx teaser for Ground Up, the documentary about Amity Warme’s free ascent of El Niño (5.13b/c; 2,500ft) on El Capitan, Alex Honnold praised Warme by calling her “the opposite of an Instagram influencer.” Although well-intended, the comment seemed deeply ironic coming from the most famous face in the climbing world, who makes much more money today from his presence than his performance. And, technically, it’s not even true. Warme posts frequently on social media to great success; her viral “Book of Hate” reel was viewed 50 million times on Instagram. Just like any athlete, she posts ads and plugs her brand deals. But what Honnold meant is that Warme is a serious climber. Her priority is performance, not visibility. His well-meaning language highlights an important stereotype: Women in climbing are often considered either serious athletes or influencers, but not both. This is the heart of the catch-22 that our sport has created for up-and-coming female climbers—or even established ones.

The word “influencer” has become a gendered slur. In the media,  I see almost exclusively female climbers being called “influencers.” Last year, in a profile of DiGiulian and her new HBO documentary, Condé Nast Traveler called DiGiulian “as much an influencer as she is an athlete, with almost 500k followers on Instagram.” When the same publication profiled Jimmy Chin for the launch of his MasterClass, he was never referred to as an influencer, even though Chin has 3.4 million Instagram followers and counting to DiGiulian’s half a million.

Another example is Brit Rock’s promotion of Anna Hazelnutt and Tom Randall’s 2023 film, Queen Lines, about both of them sending Once Upon a Time in the Southwest (E9 6a or 5.13b/c R). I still have a copy of Brit Rock’s email: “Instagram star Anna Hazelnutt is mentored by renowned Wide Boyz and Bridge Boys climber Tom Randall as she attempts her breakout climb, a precarious trad route in North Wales.” At the time, Hazelnutt had already climbed 5.14 sport and was mere days away from sending Prinzip Hoffnung (E9/10 or 5.13d/5.14a). For his part, Randall was—and still is—a successful YouTuber, with even more subscribers than Hazelnutt, as well as more followers on Instagram. Yet she was the Instagram star and he the prolific climber. (In response to the backlash, Brit Rock later changed the film description to call Hazelnutt an “up-and-coming tradster” instead of “Instagram star.”)

The trend extends into other mountain sports, too. When Caroline Gleich ran for U.S. Senate, Vox called her an influencer in their headline, even though she is a pro ski mountaineer and environmental advocate. Can you imagine Tommy Caldwell being called an influencer simply because he uses social media for his activism and brand obligations?

In my research for this op-ed, I couldn’t find a single instance of a male pro climber being referred to as an influencer in a magazine or a blog. Unfortunately, that matches my experience in real-life conversations. But where did this double standard come from?

Nasty origins

Before Instagram launched in 2010, pro climbing had different rules. “Magazines were the gatekeepers for the news,” wrote former Climbing editor Matt Samet in a GearJunkie article about Instagram and climbing. “If you weren’t a Big Name Sponsored Climber at a Big Name Area being photographed by a Big Name Photographer who had contacts at the magazines, it almost didn’t matter how compelling your story was. You weren’t getting any print.”

Throughout the 2010s, social media both democratized the industry—allowing everyone to self-publicize and build an audience outside of the magazines—and increased pressure on pro athletes to not just send hard, but create content.

In a 2021 interview with Climbing, Beth Rodden said that adjusting to the social media shift felt unnatural. “I’m really uncomfortable talking about my climbing achievements,” she said. For the past two decades, she’d learned, “If you did, then you’re going to get shit-talked at the cafeteria in Yosemite Lodge.” In DiGiulian’s movie, Here to Climb, Lynn Hill expressed the same sentiment, but recognized that DiGiulian was part of the “social media” generation that adapted quickly to new rules.

But one man, in particular, made “influencing” a gendered issue. In the most sexist and condescending article that I’ve ever read, which I honestly can’t believe is still alive on the Internet, former Rock and Ice editor Andrew Bisharat asks the question, “Athlete or Model: What Is Sierra Blair-Coyle?”

Blair, who has since dropped the -Coyle, is an Arizona-based former competition climber and member of the Team USA climbing roster from 2010 to 2018. She drew particular ire from Bisharat because of her success on social media. In his 2015 crash out over the fact that she was both sponsored and pretty, Bisharat ridiculed Blair’s use of “hieroglyphic” emojis and hashtags, repeatedly expressed bewilderment at the fact that she hosted a weekly Ask-Me-Anything on her blog, and lamented that she had “only” climbed two outdoor V9s—despite the fact that he knew she was focusing on indoor competition climbing at the time. (Blair has now sent multiple V12s.)

“[Blair] appears to be genetically devoid of any physical imperfections and incapable of writing anything provocative or negative,” he wrote. “In her photos … she is usually smiling and happy, wearing a cute outfit and doing something that vaguely resembles rock climbing.”

Can you imagine someone saying this about a male climber?

During one of her open Q&As, Bisharat asked Blair point-blank if she was an athlete or a model. She answered his question: “Both.” Most people would move on at that point. But Bisharat refused to accept her answer. Instead, he described her as a new subclass of athlete: an “Athlete Model.” I reached out to Bisharat to ask if he still believes this exists. He told me that “Athlete Model” was his placeholder word back then for what we now call “influencer.”

But back to his 2015 essay: He explained that “Athlete Models” are over-idolized—and they’re mostly female. “I can only think of one male Athlete Model in the climbing world,” he wrote. “If the goal is lucrative sponsorship, then it appears that there are now two ways to achieve this end: You can work hard to become one of the best athletes in the world at your sport, or you can generate a large social-media following by looking good. …”

To be fair, Bisharat did spot a trend: having a strong social media presence was, in 2015, becoming a serious advantage for up-and-coming pro athletes. For the first time, brands were prioritizing audience reach and storytelling skills in addition to ticking hard routes. It’s easy to imagine the Instagram-shy old guard resenting anyone able to adapt.

But where Bisharat goes wrong is by asserting that posing for product ads and being incredible at your sport are two separate paths—and implying that anyone attractive with a strong following must have chosen the former one. They’re not mutually exclusive. In fact, pro athletes have a much easier time making content than amateurs because they can often hire photographers with their brand support. It’s much easier, after all, to just focus on your climbing if someone else is in charge of making the content. More importantly, the deep sexism extant in Bisharat’s essay is that Blair’s attractiveness and upbeat personality imply a lack of ambition and focus. That stereotype, in particular, is something most female athletes have experienced. It’s time for our community to eliminate it.

Last year, on Honnold’s Climbing Gold podcast, Blair recounted how she didn’t just stumble into sponsorships; at eight years old, she went climbing for the first time and told her mom that she wanted to be a professional climber. She started reaching out to sponsors at age 10. After making finals at Junior Nationals when she was 14, she pursued competition performance with a relentless focus, using social media as a way to support her climbing.

She was 21 when Bisharat’s article came out. “It was awful for me,” she says on the podcast. “I was just being put into a conversation I didn’t walk into or have anything to do with. I got to be the one that got to deal with people saying I suck at climbing and I only have sponsors because I’m blonde and wear short shorts. It was really hard and made me feel like a lot of people didn’t like me and didn’t respect me. I felt like a joke every time I showed up somewhere. It was just a hellacious time for me personally.”

When I emailed Bisharat earlier this week, I asked him what minimum grade (on either the YDS or V-scale) Blair would have to send in order to earn his respect as a legitimate athlete instead of an “Athlete Model.” I also asked which pro climbers today were not “Athlete Models,” and whether he still held all the views espoused in his essay. Did he think he owed Blair an apology?

“I think everyone understands today that people can be really good at social media and really good at climbing, and that both paths are viable ways to achieve a ‘pro climber dream,’” Bisharat replied, declining to answer my questions. He explained that he was remarking more on a trend than on an individual person, despite the title of his piece.

Just call us “Athletes”

So why does it matter that female climbers get criticized more for using social media, and that they’re often called “influencers” instead of athletes?

In climbing, compensation is directly tied to one’s image. Companies have started to distinguish between their athlete teams and influencer teams in a clever attempt to get the best of both worlds: maintaining the exclusive nature for their athlete team, while benefitting from the video skills of talented content creators. In reality, however, this effectively functions as an A team and a B team, with corresponding tiers of pay.

A few years ago, I was offered an influencer position, but denied an athlete one, at a company that made products I liked and was using. “But I’m an athlete,” I told them, plainly confused. I was living out of my car, dedicating my life to climbing, and actively projecting my hardest route yet. My biggest life priority for the season was to send the proj. Work, sleep, social media, and everything else came after. Plus, I had already ticked harder routes than some of the brand’s sponsored “athletes.”

It didn’t matter; they had seen some of my climbing videos, where I’d cut together send footage with breezy or dramatic songs, and thought of me more as an influencer. I ended up taking the deal—free gear was free gear, after all, and it helped my climbing. While I didn’t think I automatically deserved top-tier sponsorship at the time, I still walked away with the concern that I was unintentionally starting to become known more for my climbing content than my accomplishments. Even if most of my videos were send footage, I considered not posting them and keeping my audience small until I was hitting higher grades. I’d send some serious testpieces in the fall, I told myself. Until then, I’d steer clear of any content that didn’t scream “professional athlete.”

Men don’t need to do this. And they certainly don’t need to worry about letting one or two non-climbing posts define them. Jordan Cannon, for one, can post bathtub selfies and pose in formal wear without fielding a horde of critical comments. Honnold can model nude for the ESPN Body Issue without anyone questioning his dedication to athletic performance. But when DiGiulian appears in an ad for a lingerie company, she gets accused of sexualizing her body in a way that only men, apparently, are allowed to do.

When we call female athletes “influencers,” we trap them in a catch-22: they need to build a strong audience to chase a professional athlete career, but in doing so, they’ll lose the respect of the old guard; if they minimize social media use and dodge the “influencer” allegations, they’ll also give up major opportunities to make a living from their climbing. In reality, this is just a perception issue. It’s completely possible to send hard and post engaging content at the same time. But unless we stop judging women for marketing their own careers, we’ll be holding them back from accessing the same kind of professional opportunities and compensation as men.

The simple takeaway? If you’re interacting with female climbers, just call them climbers or athletes. Athletes with a strong audience. Climbers that run successful YouTube channels. Athletes with big commercial partners. Up-and-coming climbers that are great at personal marketing. When you sit down with a female climber for a podcast, don’t dismiss her as an influencer in the description or name her episode after her blonde hair. Treat her as an athlete with an audience until proven otherwise—until she says otherwise.

If you’re going to call someone an influencer or social media star, stop and check what they call themselves—and verify that they actually care more about their content creation than their climbing performance. You’ll likely be wrong. That girl who just posted a cute selfie? She’s been grinding on her first 5.14 every weekend after work for three months. That woman who just released four hilarious gym videos to popular audios? She’s deep in a six-month training program to build up to her second V10. Regardless of whether she’s breaking world records or just starting out, it’s more likely that a woman is building an audience on social media to support her climbing dreams than vice versa. So call her an athlete and respect her goals—even if she posts about them on Instagram.

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