Female Athlete Stereotypes

A stereotype is a widely known exaggerated image of a specific person or thing based on their appearance, sexual orientation, religion or they’re everyday life. Stereotypes are often false and shine that person or thing in a bad light. Stereotypes are often given to a person or thing based on first glance. Athletes have many stereotypes associated with them. Athletes play a lot of sports

Stereotypes are a form of prejudice everyone will once experience in their lifetime. Stereotypes are centered around an individual's race, gender, social class, religion, and age. They have been known to be elements people use to make judgments and subjectify people to one key feature. As Gordon Allport states, “ To state the matter technically, a noun abstracts from a concrete reality some one features and assembles different concrete realities only with respect to this one feature”(364). Mr.Allport’s words can be summed up to say stereotypes have been used as key fundamentals to associate one feature or aspect of a person with a group that represents it, typically in an unfavorable way.

A "stereotype" is a social perception of an individual in terms of group membership or physical attributes. Stereotypes are generalizations made about a group and then attributed to all members of that group.

I have always been fascinated by sports especially basketball and football, so I am one of those people that almost know so much that it is weird. Now, the NBA is a league dominated by men in every aspect. I started to watch the NBA around the age of 12, and through all my years of watching the game I became accustomed to only seeing men in the NBA. It has been like this until, Becky Hammon was brought upon the Spurs’ coaching staff on Aug 5, 2014; Becky will be the first female to be full-time paid assistant on a coaching staff. Becky will be the second female to be brought on coaching staff, first was Lisa Boyer (volunteer assistant) with the Cavilers from 2001-02.As I read through the articles to gain more information about Becky I realized; there was hype around Becky for becoming a trailblazer for women in male sports.

Stereotypes can generally be defined as fixed images or a set of characteristics that we attach to a certain group of people or things, and they impact our society in many ways (Stereotypes). For example, in an interview with Guy Raz from NPR, Jamila Lyiscott says that “And so when someone calls me articulate, it's not

Females have endured countless years of sexism within sports that should be immediately stopped. While many people feel they aren’t being sexist towards female athletes, they indeed are because when they use phrases like “Playing like a girl”, it is almost always used in a negative connotation. Young girls are taught that “Playing like a girl” is something to be ashamed of. Image, a frustrated middle school boys coach calling a

Society believes that males and females have to act certain ways. They believe that males and females are expected to do specific gender roles and stereotypes that have already been established. Males in western society are expected to be independent, strong and athletic individuals whereas they expect females to be quiet, respectful and attractive nurturers. Typically when these norms are being violated, people start to question everything, they would ask questions like “Is that a girl who scored the goal?” or “Is that a boy on the tennis court?” This paper will further look into stereotypes about females, stereotypes about females in sports as well as the LGBTQ community participating in sports. Furthermore, this will explain the relation

Female athletes are weak. Female athletes are lesbians. Female athletes showboat too much. These are stereotypes female athletes hear on a day to day basis. Stereotypes are a horrible thing. My stereotype which is an athletic girl basically is just one of the many I can be but this one definitely my main one. People say things like athletic girls are weak and all they do is like to exercise. It is so unfair to make judgements about people like this. How is it fair to assume that I’m weak because I’m a girl athlete. Pretty much I’m getting compared to male athletes because they're supposed to be strong muscle men but since I’m the opposite gender. I must have the opposite qualities according to people who stereotype. I’ve even heard before girl athletes only exercise in their free time to become as strong as a male. Making assumptions like this makes absolutely no sense because there is no real answer or factualness behind it. Stereotypes are just created because

These couple of screens presented above shows an improper, incapable, clumsy and a complainer. These are few characteristics that follow the female stereotypes. The placements of their hands are tight & close to the core of the body, while the wrist are flicked over thus created a droopy, dainty, delicate image; which connotes to femininity. The body language seen in this section has connotations of weakness and therefore imply that playing sports “like a girl” is equivalent in an improper way. Thus creating a negative stereotype of female in sport; affecting their perspective

Many athletes are stereotyped by gender because the commentators are the ones speaking to the public while the public get familiarized to these stereotypes. Many commentators comment very stereotypical comments but to the public it is not very shocking due to the multitude of times it has occurred which they have grown familiar to. One of such was by a commentator , Colin Murray said during the Olympics that “the ultimate athlete would have ‘the stamina of Mo [Farah], the speed of [Usain] Bolt, the leap of [Greg] Rutherford and the bottom of Jess Ennis’” (Stanistreet). To a professional female athlete this was a very gender stereotyped comment due to the fact that only one of the four athletes mentioned was a woman and that the provocative part of the athlete, the butt, was given to a female athlete as the ultimate athlete. Through a study on the NCAA National Championship Games for men and women basketball, they have discovered that the commentators constantly mark the women's game repeating phrases like, “ ‘...some of the best women's college basketball teams..’, ‘...is a legend in women's basketball...’, and ‘...this NCAA women's semifinal is brought to you by ... ’” (Messner and Duncan).

They are thought of just because that they are women that they can’t play sports. There was a journal article written by Murray called “Corporate Sponsorship for Women’s Sports.” It covers many different things such as how a corporation should appropriately propose a sponsorship and how that sponsorship will do good for the person receiving it. Also it talks about programs that are set aside for student athletes. However, the main part talked about stereotypes places on women, and the media coverage of them. She says, “The pervasive stereotype of women in sports is that ‘men do while women watch,’ The media reinforce this stereotype by portraying female athletes as over glamorized, over- feminized, and too emotional to deal with success and failure on the playing field” (Murray 74). She is saying that the media takes women sports and throws stereotypes on them such as being too pretty, or too dramatic when in reality they are there just to play the sport not be pretty. Murray later came up with a solution on how to lower these stereotypes which would be by increasing the media coverage of these women. This journal article is yet another heavy example as to how the media portrayal and how they showcase women is degrading compared to how they show

Gender stereotypes have long been a contentious issue in sport. Sport requires participants to be competitive, courageous, determined, muscular, powerful and strong. These

In modern world we are surrounded by stereotypes as people constantly judge and receive ideas about groups of individuals or whole societies. Stereotypes could be any thought or belief that is adopted about specific individual but intended to represent the entire group, that could or could not be accurate (Wikipedia, n.d.). Little et al. define stereotypes as oversimplified ideas about groups of people that could be based on race, gender, age, sexual orientation, etc (2014).

Stereotypes are a part of our everyday life. We hear stereotypes every day and everywhere. Sometimes we can find ourselves in a situation where we make stereotypes for a large group of people, not just a single person. Every person, young or old, is labelled with either positive or negative stereotypes just by being part of a culture. Stereotyping is a way that people group each other, or by others grouping you.

Stereotypes can be defined as judgements that people make about other without knowing them personally, and stereotypes impact our society in many ways. For example, in an interview with Guy Raz from NPR, Jamila Lyiscott says that “you have this lens where you're looking at yourself through the lens of other people the way that they're looking at you” (Raz, Guy, and Jamila Lyiscott). In this quote