The Australian has become embroiled in a sexism row after posting an image from the Australian Cricket Awards ceremony showing male player David Warner towering over Ellyse Perry who in fact was taller thanks to her heels.
Warner, who was named the country’s best cricketer, winning his third Allan Border medal, posed together with Perry – the best female player – after both athletes received their awards on Monday.
Perry, who took the Belinda Clark Award for the third time, donned the dark dress and high heel shoes for the ceremony, which made her several centimeters taller than Warner.
The Australian, which dedicated one if its articles to the award ceremony, posted a picture of the players in which Warner appeared taller than his female colleague.
The image, which didn’t go unnoticed by cricket fans, caused a sexism row, with many readers accusing the newspaper of sexism and promoting false gender stereotypes.
Social media users blamed the editors for deliberately photo editing the height difference making the man look taller than the woman.
“The Australian fixed the proper order of things, man towering over woman, very good,” one person wrote.
“Great to see that The Australian’s denial of objective facts extends to the existence of women taller than men,” another user added.
“Was he standing on sandpaper?” one more commenter asked.
“So her height changes when he takes his medal off?” another comment read.
Others spoke in defense of the editors, suggesting that they simply took two separate pictures and put them together without intending to offend anyone.
“Could be wrong, but my guess is they had embargoed info those 2 would win, got photos of each from red carpet at the start of the night & a designer made a P1 pointer for print deadline assuming ‘man taller than woman’? Not great perhaps but not a patriarchal conspiracy either?” a user tweeted.
“Does it really matter? It’s two different photos,” one more fan said.
“They’re two different pictures, though. See: facial expressions different, no medal and no necklace etc,” a person added.