Women Portrayal In Media: Female Athletes
The evolution of the woman has come a long way since the beginning of the 20th century. Many women and supporters of the female empowerment movement have fought extremely hard to help women get the equal rights and respect that they deserve. However, the fighting has only just begun. With the advancement of media, new issues for females have developed. Now the fight is about how they are portrayed and perceived with the media. In my paper, I will primarily focus on how female athletes are covered in the media compared to the male counterpart.
In the documentary video, Media Coverage and Female Athletes, Maribel Lopez documents about how media portrays female athletes. The data gathered by Lopez shows the difference in portraying and perceiving of female and male athletes in the media. Research shows that people prefer seeing images of female athletes in competition performing their sport and are more likely to attend/watch that sport if they are portrayed in that way over a female athlete in sexy swimwear. Some may argue that female athletes have a choice to be portrayed in that light. While they could say no — the percentage of female athlete media coverage is ridiculously low. This means that for some athletes, they are faced with either getting some media coverage or no coverage at all. Some say that “sex sells” women’s sports, but in reality, it doesn’t. Whenever media outlets speak on male athletes, they tend to primarily focus on their talents; however, when it comes to the female counterpart, they tend to center their attention to their lifestyle and personal life.
In my research, I have gathered data from several issues and brands of sports-related magazines, sports-related television programs, and sports-related events. While looking through the covers of the magazine, there were not as many female athletes as there were male athletes. The magazine company always tend to put the spotlight on the male athletes with few acknowledgments to the female athletes. The same trend also happens to occur during events that are dedicated to athletes. Whenever the spotlight is placed on female athletes, it does not seem to focus on the sport they play, but more so on their bodily image.
The cover of a magazine is a prestige thing for many people, including athletes. There have been many people to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated Magazine, but only few of them have been women. In fact, women showed up on more covers of SI between 1954 and 1965 than they did between 2000 and 2011. Of the 35 covers including a female, only 18, or 2. 5 percent of all covers, featured a female as the primary or sole image. Women are usually pictured with a group of women or with a man (usually with the man in the forefront and the woman touching the man in a voluptuous manner). When it comes to photoshoots for the magazine cover, both genders are “sexualized”— in some form of fashion — but the females are overly sexualized. A typical magazine cover has a male posing with his team uniform on and a caption that states his achievements or praises his talented abilities. The standard magazine cover, in which a female is on it, would be her posing in a bikini with a seductive look in her eyes. In my research, I noted that older magazine covers of female athletes does not really feature the model’s name nor her sport, but titles of certain articles about males or healthy living.
Another thing I noticed in my research, women get asked questions that are irrelevant to their sport or accomplishments versus the male counterpart. When male athletes take an interview or undergo scrutiny online, it's usually focused on the game and their athletic abilities. Unfortunately, women find themselves having to answer questions on femininity, beauty and frivolous topics unrelated to matters of competition. This trend of interviewing has been slowly changing but it was very prominent in the beginning. In recent featured articles, female athletes are asked questions about how they feel towards their accomplishment and what they think will happen next in their career. An example of this happened with Maria Sharapova, a tennis player who receives more media attention about her looks rather than her athletic ability. Another example is with Anna Kournikova, who has yet to win a professional tennis tournament, although she was one of only six women ranked among the most important people in sports.
Furthermore, another thing I noticed while conducting my research was that female athletic competitions are rarely aired; especially on networks such as ESPN and TNT. Many sports related programming focuses on male competitions. The networks tend to not only show the male competitions but hire an all-male cast to talk about the competitions that air on television. Female athletes are rarely recognized on sports networks, which ultimately decreases the amount of media coverage for female athletes. Female sports are vaguely recognized; therefore, it limits the ability for female athletes to grace headlines of the media. Despite the growing level of participation by female athletes in competitive levels, coverage of women’s sports remains inferior to male sports across the media.
At any award show that recognizes athletes for their athletic abilities, female athletes are rarely nominated and barely get the win. Many categories are either catered towards male athletes or just simply dominated by male opponents. On the red carpet, women who play sports are interrogated over their hairstyles, motherhood and of course their game-time wardrobe. Female athletes are clearly getting tired of this double standard, just as their counterparts in the entertainment industry have started speaking out about sexist questions on the red carpet.
In conclusion, female athletes have always had it harder than males. Most of my research supports the fact that the media represents female athletes as sexualized and feminized objects. In order to gain the same amount of attention, females have to work twice as hard and accomplish twice as much. The research I conducted basically confirmed what was documented in the video. Female athletes are barely acknowledged in the media — especially in sport magazines and magazine covers. Female athletes will greatly receive any form of media coverage; no matter if it is good press or bad press. They feel as if any press is better than no press.
