Examining Female Athletes' Media Attitudes and Experiences

Examining Female Athletes’ Media Attitudes and Experiences 1 Olympians Uncensored: Examining Female Athletes’ Media Attitudes and Experiences Rachel L. Berkal University of Michigan Examining Female Athletes’ Media Attitudes and Experiences 2 I would like to thank my faculty advisors, Scott W. Campbell and Amanda D. Lotz, for guiding me through this research project. Their time, energy, and unwavering support greatly contributed to the creation, execution, and completion of this thesis. To all of the female athletes, young and old – Be fierce. Stay true to yourself. Examining Female Athletes’ Media Attitudes and Experiences 3 Take a moment and think to yourself. Have you heard of Anna Kournikova? How about Serena Williams or Lindsey Vonn? Heard of them? Chances are you have a visual and could tell me a little about each woman, perhaps whom they are dating or what products they endorse. But what about Sue Bird, a basketball player who won a gold medal for Team USA in the 2012 London Olympics? I am willing to bet you have never heard her name before. This is the way it goes for women’s sports. A handful of select athletes receive a ton of media exposure and appear in all sorts of publications from Teen People to Maxim, while the rest remain unidentified and unknown to the general public. More recently, sexualizing images of sportswomen, such as those that appear in Playboy and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, have become more prevalent within the media sphere. But before we can examine the current state of female athletics in the media, we must first look at where women’s sports began. On June 23, 1972, Congress passed the Higher Education Act, including a provision known as Title IX, which prohibited sex discrimination in educational and federally funded programs. For young girls and women, this ensured they would become more equitable in an arena that had previously belonged to men: athletics (Boutilier & SanGiovanni, 1983). Title IX celebrated its fortieth anniversary this past June and many would argue that women in sport have made significant strides over these past forty years. Every four years, women of all ages cherish, celebrate, and anticipate the moment they will watch their favorite female athlete or team compete at the Olympic games. Whether it is soccer, basketball, gymnastics, or tennis, many women look to professional female athletes as role models and inspiration to achieve their own goals. The most recent Games marked some very important milestones for women in sport. The 2012 Summer Olympics was the first time every participating country was represented by at least one female athlete and the first time Team Examining Female Athletes’ Media Attitudes and Experiences 4 USA was comprised of more female than male athletes (Hecht, 2012). But despite the apparent strides sportswomen have made over the past few decades, it is evident that being a female athlete is a complex and difficult role to fulfill. After the 2008 Olympics, Caster Semenya, a track and field gold medalist from South Africa, was forced to undergo a gender test in order to verify her biological sex as a woman. Doubts regarding her gender were attributed to her perceived masculine characteristics including her deep voice, strong stature, facial features, and sensational athletic abilities. During this controversy, feminists all over the world expressed outrage that a young woman was ambushed and her sex questioned because she did not meet traditional standards for femininity. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Olympic athletes such as Alex Morgan (soccer) and Natalie Coughlin (swimming) posed for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, while Rhonda Rousey (MMA fighting) and Natasha Hastings (track & field) posed nude for ESPN Magazine’s Body Issue. It would seem, female athletes are either not feminine enough, or forced to extreme lengths to accentuate and display their femininity for the world to see. The complex nature of being a female athlete in the public eye is an area of great interest to feminist and media scholars alike. Specifically, scholars concern themselves with how the media depicts female athletes. Numerous studies explore the differences in the representations of female and male athletes through textual and discourse analysis. In general, these studies have found that sportswomen are underrepresented, over sexualized, and depicted through traditional ideas of femininity and stereotypical gender roles. Research shows that these portrayals of female athletes undermine feminine athleticism, thereby constructing female athletes as less capable and inferior to male athletes (Bernstein, 2002; Kane & Greendorfer, 1994). Examining Female Athletes’ Media Attitudes and Experiences 5 More recently, scholars in this field suggest that these negative representations still exist in our media sphere today. Now forty years since the turning point of female participation in athletics, one would hope that sportswomen enjoy the same respect and appreciation as male athletes. However, this is not the case and these problematic representations deserve an explanation. But in order to understand why these media images persist, it is necessary to examine the dynamics behind the construction of these representations, a relatively unexplored dimension of research relating to gender and sports media. Speaking directly to the athletes provides an opportunity for further insight into the production of the media images of female athletes. This research examines the relationship and communication between female athletes and the media industry, in order to help explain why narrow media representations of sportswomen still exist and what contributes to the creation of these images. In her study, Bernstein (2002) justifies the importance of studying female athletes in the media: “The main reason is that the mass media – which are an essential feature of modern social life – preserve, transmit, and create important cultural information” (Bernstein, 2002, p. 416). If the media contributes to how society thinks and feels about female athletics so significantly, it is necessary to evaluate how the media portrays and constructs the representations of these athletes. In order to understand why sexualizing images and problematic representations exist, this study will utilize interviews with Olympic athletes to uncover the processes that take place when a professional female athlete participates in the media. Rarely do audiences or researchers ask questions such as, what motivates these women to participate in certain media opportunities or what are they trying to achieve through their participation? Existing research analyzes the current media representations of female athletes and hypothesizes their effects on audiences. Examining Female Athletes’ Media Attitudes and Experiences 6 However, by speaking to the athletes, this study pushes beyond the existence of these representations and aims to unravel how and why these images are constructed in the first place. Literature Review Testimony from the athletes Much of the existing literature on women in sport relies on textual analysis to identify how the media represents female athletes. Since the passage of Title IX four decades ago, female participation in athletics has been a topic of great interest to feminist and media scholars, and at this point, the problematic nature of media representations of female athletes has been well documented. Very few studies utilize methods that allow the researcher to speak to the very athletes whom appear in the media, leaving a considerable amount of potential research unexplored. For the purposes of this study, it is imperative to have a thorough understanding of the previous testimony from professional, collegiate, and amateur female athletes regarding their participation in sports, their lifestyle as athletes, and how, if applicable, the media influences this lifestyle. Various studies utilizing interviews or focus groups with female athletes identify three major themes emerging from discussions on being a female athlete in contemporary society: battling femininity and masculinity, recognizing a difference between athletes and “normal” girls/women, and the importance of performing a strong athletic identity. For centuries, American women have been faced with societal expectations for their behavior and appearance (Bordo, 1993 in Krane et al., 2004). Femininity is the concept used to describe these standards. In the present day, slender, dainty bodies, along with a demure and agreeable demeanor characterize femininity. Women who deviate from traditional ideas of femininity are constructed as social outcasts who violate cultural norms (Blinde & Taub, 1992 in Examining Female Athletes’ Media Attitudes and Experiences 7 Krane et al., 2004). Many female athletes attest to the difficulties of upholding these expectations (Krane et al., 2004). When asked about their athleticism and femininity, most college athletes discussed their femininity in opposition of their athleticism and agreed that athleticism was more closely in line with traditionally masculine characteristics (Krane et al., 2004). Muscularity was the driving factor of these opposing forces. Due to their intense training, many female athletes build large muscles and acquire significant strength, which is the antithesis of the celebrated feminine physique (Krane et al., 2004). The athletes agreed that their muscularity made them feel unfeminine and more like men than women (Krane et al., 2004). Despite the way these

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