"If we are ugly then nobody will be interested. They wouldn't listen to the result, they would just say: 'Uggh, she is so horrible.'” That is the view of Yelena Isinbayeva, a Russian sporting legend and self-styled sex symbol. If the pole vaulter was playing at Wimbledon this week then it is hard to imagine her doing so without a dental floss bikini and blue movie grunting.

"Every girl on the track has a duty to be nice-looking and womanly,” she maintains. “I remember a very famous athlete said that we had to be athletes or women. I don't agree. Why do we have to be an athlete and have a man's body and be ugly? Why can we only be beautiful outside sport?"

Therein lies the rub. Or the rubbish. Depending on your view. When The Times this week billed a tennis match as 'The Battle of the Babes' it led to a veritable orgy of handwringing (no euphemism there). In one corner, armed with a crate of Stella, a pair of binoculars and some faded copies of Razzle were the chauvinists. In the other, equipped with a cup of Ovaltine, a set of blinkers and a well-thumbed first edition of The Female Eunuch, were the tennis fans.

So the questions fester. Does sex have a part to play in tennis? Should reports restrain from mentioning words like "babe", "pin-up" and "thigh"? Does it demean a woman to talk of beauty and should any backhanded compliment restrict itself to, er, backhanders?

The fact is sex sells. The players know that and the media agrees. That does not make it right, but it is life. The cult of David Beckham is largely based upon image. You could make a credible case for Gary Neville being a more pivotal player for Manchester United during their shared era, but he was more likely to make the front page of Grouters Weekly than The Face.

That, of course, is a comment dripping in prejudice, but if you are allowed to talk of a sports star's lissom beauty then why can't you mention those who are down the other end of the scale. To refrain from doing so is a sort of discrimination. It swings both ways, which, for the hard of reading, is not a sexual comment at all. The truth is we can talk about Anna Kournikova because beauty is skin deep. Ugly, as Dorothy Parker said, goes clean to the bone.

It is often suggested that the problem with focusing on looks is that this is the preserve of men. Certainly, I remember seeing a phalanx of middle-aged men disappear down a maelstrom of dribble when Maria Sharapova made the ill-judged move of entering the press room at Wimbledon a few years ago. However, women are just as base and shallow and fixated on a nice pair of buttocks as men. Tim Henman's entire Wimbledon career was effectively a HRT patch. Even if some of those Oxford housewives wanted to take him home and give him a slice of Victoria sponge (no euphemism there either), they were not concentrating on his volleying prowess.

Footballers are forever hunted by scantily-clad women who are more impressed by their looks, money and kudos than their efforts in tracking back at Stoke City. And I know a motorcyclist who says he was sent a full suitcase of women's lingerie.

Amid the cranks and crankshafts, a sports star is made up of three things. One is his or her ability at a given sport. The second is personality. The third is physical appearance. When all three merge to winning effect you have a legend such as Muhammad Ali. Trite and horrible and diabolical as it may seem, Ali would not have been as loved had he looked like Sonny Liston or Joe Frazier.

The flipside of this equation is Kournikova received an inordinate amount of criticism for being average during her career merely because she had, forgive me Germaine, above-average looks.

Which brings us back to that other Russian star who opened this piece. Isinbayeva believes it's is just as offensive to demand an athlete refrain from being a sex symbol as it is to cast her as one. And, remember, the human race loves surface fluff. That is why Tom Cruise is a bigger movie star than Sid James. Looks are frowned upon by many because they require no effort, but they are part of the whole. If they were not, tennis players would not wear make-up and their skirts might be a decent length. And, anyway, who says you can't cavort around Centre Court like a Max Mosley fantasy and still be post-feminist.

Wimbledon, shock horror, has been wrapped up in sex for years. But if it is just us men lusting after Chris Evert and Gabriela Sabatini then more fool the women who are missing out on appreciating some of the world's most perfectly-formed bodies. Beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder, but also the thigh of the guy holding his balls.