I don’t think anyone would challenge the fact that there’s been an incredible amount of progress in women’s sports. Before Title IX passed, women made up 2 percent of college athletes and 7 percent of high school athletes. However nowadays, women incorporate approximately 43 percent of the college students that compete in sports and 41.5 percent of students partaking in high school sports. That number is mindboggling! It is a increase of more than 400 percent. Yet, the sports media is still having difficulty and challenges regarding this issue. The media coverage, no doubt, has a long way to go in order to cover the achievements of these female athletes objectively and fairly. It’s an extremely difficult task for female athletes to break down specific barriers, despite the progress they’ve made.
I found an example of this media bias recently involving an Australian tennis commentator Ian Cohen. He asked Canadian tennis star Eugenie Bouchard to twirl and show off her outfit. This was not a walking, runway or a red-carpet event that Bouchard was at. Actually, she had just finished crushing her competition in the Australian Open. During a press conference, Bouchard stated later, that she is fine being asked to twirl if they (the news media) ask guys to flex their muscles.
This is not funny or something to take lightly. It’s really unfortunate because, this certain instance with Bouchard is not a rare occurrence at all. In fact, many times often in media interviews, female athletes are asked about non-sport related topics, like who they are dating, what they are wearing or about their personal lives. Why? You don’t usually hear male athletes being asked those questions. It’s quite common nowadays in news headlines, for the focus of women’s sports to be on physical attractiveness. Even sports news commentators make female athlete’s appearances a focus. Some time back, Fox news held a debate about whether female Olympic athletes should wear makeup. Again, why are we debating this? Female athletes are subject to critiques and criticisms of their appearance, and more often than not words like “sexy” and “quite attractive” are attached to women in sports rather than words like “strong” or “fit.” Another great example of this is tennis player Maria Sharapova. She is certainly a key example of an athlete that receives much more media attention for her looks instead of her athletic abilities on the court. There is actually research that has indicted that commentators seldom report on Sharapova without also commenting on her appearance.
I absolutely understand that money follows the exposure and attention and it’s a fact that women’s tennis is arguably the most commercially popular and successful among all women’s sports, probably because it is an individual sport that draws a greater percentage of male followers than other women’s sports. Why do you think this is?
Let me present another scenario for you to ponder. Remember the amazing sprinter Marion Jones? How about Amy Acuff?
Prior to the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games Marion Jones planned on winning five gold medals. She even declared it publicly and with absolute certainty. Jones isn’t a model-like-thin individual. Instead, she’s a strong and muscular athlete. This very masculine look however, can be viewed by some as being unfeminine. She most definitely doesn’t fit the stereotypes of femininity.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone then to realize that during the U.S. media build-up towards the Sydney Olympic Games, the most photographed female athlete was not Marion Jones but Amy Acuff. Acuff is 6ft 2inches, blonde, part-time model, and a high jumper. She didn’t say anything about wanting to win a gold metal during the pre-Olympic media coverage. Instead she said she wanted to work on the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition: “Because people get a lot of attention for that.”
Herein validates my point that once again, this is a classic example of the fact that female athletes tend to gain media attention (at least as far as photographs are concerned) more for what they look like and not necessarily for their sporting talents and skills on the competitive fields of play.
This baseless emphasis on a female athlete’s appearance even extends to social media. In both the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games, Gabby Douglas was the subject of merciless criticism about her hair throughout social media. Her critics even jumped on Twitter to discuss in great detail, her hair, which she wore in a pulled-back bun. Their complaint was that it should have been styled better. Seriously? This young 16-year old gymnast won two gold medals in the Olympics. She got one gold medal for getting the highest combined score in all four events in women’s gymnastics and the media is concerned with her hair?
The cruel realty to all of this is that while the media’s gender bias toward female athletes might seem like a cultural norm to some, this portrayal of female athletes in the media has simply been enough for many to do something about it. Specifically, Naomi Lang, who is a 22-year-old native of Melbourne, Australia, and former member of the Radcliffe lightweight crew team at Harvard.
In 2016, she created the Femal Athlete Network (FAN) explicitly to fight widespread sexism in sports coverage. Her mission is to highlight real women from professional to amateur sports and share their passion for sports, along with a powerful image to match. She’s since launched a blog, an Instagram and Facebook. Everything contained in the FAN entries showcase the strength and resolve of women in sports, which includes college athletes, older women who compete and trans-female athletes. There is a terrific YouTube video that describes FAN and certainly something to check out if you are interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIwcxlrEKgU
The bottom is this, every 4 years the Olympics or a World Cup is held and once these games are over with will we see or hear about an incredible world champion, a record-breaking Olympic gold medalist? Team USA’s women’s gymnastics team that set records? Or maybe another USA Women’s Soccer Team winning a World Cup? And if we do hear about them, what exactly will we be watching and hearing? Are we still going to hear about their body shape, hair and marital status or their athleticism and accomplishments on the fields and courts?
rasaggie blog 