Sexualization Of Women In Sports Essay

In the article “I Won, I’m Sorry”, Mariah Burton Nelson has portrayed the images of female athletes in a way as what our society looks at these athletes. Even though female athletes are strong enough to play sport, skillful enough to win other male athletes, and passionate enough to devote themselves to sport, female athletes find it hard to overcome our society’s norms about gender roles. Furthermore, despite the fact that a large number of women have been contributing themselves to sports, only a small number of female athletes are represented in the media coverage since people don’t look at their real talents and skills; however, they look for the femininity in each female athletes such as how they dress in a march, how they show their charming

While participation of women in sports has increased, the media representation of women in sports remains problematic. Even the most talented elite female athletes like Michelle Kwan and Monica Seles are portrayed in a sexual fashion, as a way of deemphasizing their athleticism and neutralizing any possible threat they might seem to pose to male viewers. Very few male athletes are portrayed in such an objectified manner; they are portrayed as competitors first and foremost, not as personalities. Also, the media coverage of athletes is disproportionately focused on male athletes. The coverage of female athletes tends to stress individualized female sports where women can be sexualized like tennis and figure skating, versus competitive team sports like basketball and soccer.

When women decide to participate in sports traditionally for men such as bodybuilding, they risk the chance of being socially stereotyped as lesbians, or simply viewed as "less feminine" then say women figure skaters. For example, Venus Williams is seen as criticized for being very masculine in build and judged on that by her performance. The media has commented on how well she plays, and has compared her to men in her sport. She receives fewer endorsements than many other tennis players do because of her looks (but mainly due to her race).

The ideal images of female athletes presented in the films for this class have had a strong connection to the images of ideal women in society in general. Like the ideal image of women, there are many variations of the ideal image of female athletes. While Dare to Compete tracked the evolution of the role of the real female athletes, the feature films we watched presented varying views of the ideal female athlete, which has been different in different times and places.

While scrolling on EPSN, which stands for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, website going through over fifty articles and videos on the main page, I could not help but notice that there were only two videos pertaining to females in sports, which were Mixed Martial Artist Ronda Rousey, who is recovering from a fight and the Connecticut Huskies basketball team, who are currently ranked one in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Ranking. There is a lack of spotlight on women athletes in the media pertaining to their skills or just acknowledging that women have an existence in sports, whether it’s televised or on social media. Diana Nyad, Michael A. Messner, and Cheryl Cooky research led them to finding that when it comes to broadcasting women do not receive as much coverage as men (2010:69). As of 2015, “women receive less than one percent of coverage on ESPN’s SportsCenter and Fox Sports 1’s Fox Sports Live” (Billings and Young 2015:4). However,

A female athlete couldn’t just be talented, she also had to be a “beauty queen” (p. 346) so that men could find some inkling of pleasure. This idea ensured that the women did not lose the sexual nature of their bodies by training too hard and looking too “mannish.” Sports games became half sport and half beauty pageant, which forced all athletes to shed any stereotypically homosexual appearances in order to put on a show and gain public acceptance. The idea of the “athlete as a beauty queen” (p. 346) is still present today in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Although many of the models are not athletes, all of them are featured in revealing swimsuits showing off their fit, toned bodies. According to the magazine and its readers, that athletic-while-still-presenting-starchly-feminine look is what men are looking for in a

Sexism has played its part in many different work environments for quite some time. It especially raises big conversation, and an ongoing problem in the sports industry. Not only does it affect the women who work in the industry, but also homosexuals, and minorities. For so long sexism has been a topic of discussion, but no real attempts at change have been made. If there was more protection for woman and players who work in sports, it could help to get women more involved in the field, establish rules that will protect people from sexism, and diminish some of the controversy between the two opposing sexes.

In the article, Sexism In Pro Sports, Mario Godinez states, “Media often times portrays women in a sexualized way. They wear skimpy clothes to attract attention, and this makes them seem ditzy, instead of strong and athletic.” If men and women athletes played in the same league the media would be

One way in which female sport is ‘negated’ is the way in which females are sometimes referred to by the media as “girls” no matter their age and are also constantly described in terms of their physical appearance and the way in which their emotions and their emotional responses are highlighted more than in male sports. One other way in which the media influence gender participation in sport is by the use of images of athletes which could be seen as a form of propaganda. As the ‘Learn’ handout states, “Dominant masculine images are highly compatible with sport”7. The majority of images in the sports sections of papers are of males, partly because the papers occasionally turn a blind eye to female achievement or simply put it in a small box in the corner of a page but also because they believe seeing more images of male athletes in papers is what the public want. Subsequently, females across the nation have fewer role models to look up to from the female world meaning they will be less motivated to actively participate in a sport because they have very few or even no idols to look up to.

Growing up I loved sports; playing and watching. However I was told at a young age that sports were for boys. I was told girls didn’t know anything about sports, they just watched because they liked athletes. That frustrated me to the point where I felt I couldn’t join sports because I would be judged. Being told sports was a “man’s thing” led me to think there was something wrong with me. The media portrayed males as the dominate sex in sports, and girls involved we there to “sex it up”. It made me feel that others objectified women and they were pigs for doing so. I thought my community and society was wrong for objectifying women. I thought I was too young to make a difference.

Over the last twenty years the respect for female athletes has increased but why is it not shown in the media coverage? Mass media has become one of the most powerful institutional forces that communicated information and helps shape the values that are apart of the modern culture. Media coverage of sports is one of the most popular news coverage, having many television stations, articles, magazines and news reports. The media coverage of sports is primarily a male-dominated institution that lacks coverage and representation of women. The relation of women in sports points out main issues that are the amount of coverage that they receive and how they are represented as athletes.

who has had to grow up surrounded either by a group of rowdy, older brothers or

As Dave Zirin, said in the article “Why I’m Done Defending Women’s Sports”, “Every damn Women’s World Cup, every NCAA women’s final, every Olympics, women’s sports again go on a media trial that would make the old judges of Salem blush.” (Zirin, 2015) This quote goes on, but the main point is that it is tiring and embarrassing that this is still a topic female athletes have to deal with. Having to prove that they are good enough to get more media time or equal pay. These athletes all work hard for the same positions a man plays, even though he doesn’t have to try as hard because there are more opportunities available for him to become a professional athlete. A male athlete can get paid millions and on top of that get many sponsorships, unlike female athletes who may get paid $3-7 thousand and if they are lucky they may get sponsored by big brands like Gatorade, Nike, Monster Milk, or even

But even today women athletes are not on equal footing with men. Women are not permitted to be masculine, they can be athletes but they need to keep their femininity intact. Even a great athlete like Babe Didrickson was forced to change her image to suit our culture's sense of what a woman should be. And while a women may be given endorsements she is expected to look a certain way we she does them. She may sweat on the field or the court but not on camera.

As women, we’ve come a long way in pushing past society’s judgements, or so I thought. Within the Olympic Games, women are still not seen as equals with our male competitors but rather criticized on body image rather than talent and dedication. In the past, women were seen strictly as a reproductive purpose in life, and although now we are seen as much more, our bodies still seem to hold the most priority over everything else we have to offer. Even in things like when a woman can lift twice the weight of her own body over her head, or break world records in swimming at the budding age of seventeen we seem to be