Paige Spiranac hasn’t forgotten the grief she received as a rising golf influencer — and how those who came up after her derisively vowed they wouldn’t “oversexualize” as she did.
Spiranac, 30, briefly competed as a professional before entering her current career, and she has spent much of the past decade building an enormous social media presence and leveraging it for marketing, a podcast and an ambassadorship with the PointsBet sportsbook.
Last year, she was the cover model on Maxim’s “Hot 100” list.
She joined “Straight Fire with Jason McIntyre” this week and was asked if there is a community of influencers or if the women’s golf scene was more of a “mean girls” situation.
“I stick to myself. I’m very introverted. I just kind of keep my head down, do my work, and get done with it. But if any of the young girls reach out to me I am more than willing to give advice,” Spiranac said.
“I think I’m a little bit more guarded because of all of the hate that I have received from women in the industry, so I’m kind of hesitant to reach out or want to collaborate because I’ve been burned in the past, but if any of them reach out I’m always willing to lend a helping hand.”
How has she been burned?
“When I first got into the industry and when I was trying to play professionally a lot of the LPGA players did not like me and were very outspoken towards that, and as well as a lot of influencers who came up behind me, they were saying that they didn’t want to take the path that I was taking, they weren’t going to ‘oversexualize’ themselves, and they turned around and do the exact same thing,” Spiranac revealed.
“Sometimes there’s just not a level of respect for everything that I’ve been through, and if I didn’t do this then they wouldn’t even be doing this now. They wouldn’t even have a job without all the hardships that I’ve faced and the path I paved for them.”
