More than 350 scholars gathered from all over the world for
the annual meeting of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS)
in New Orleans, which concluded on Saturday. The conference offered valuable
research for those concerned about the relationship between sports media and
society. Steve Bien-Aime, my colleague from the The John Curley Center for Sports Journalism, extensively
documented some of these discussions on this blog (see earlier posts here).
One main area of interest at NASSS is gender in mediated
sport. While much research has been done on representation
of female athletes, scholars have recognized the need to examine perceptions of female athletes about the
ways in which they are portrayed in the media. Researchers from the Tucker Center for Research on Girls
and Women in Sport took upon the task to explore how female athletes would
prefer to be shown in the media.
In the study titled "Exploring Elite Female Athletes'
Interpretations of Sport Media Photographs: A Window into the Construction of
Social Identity and 'Selling Sex' in Women's Sports,” Dr. Mary Jo Kane, Dr. Nicole LaVoi and Dr. Janet Fink (University
of Massachusetts-Amherst) identified four ways in which female athletes typically
appear in the media and asked female athletes to pick which representation they
would prefer. The four representations were:
(1)
A woman in an action shot, participating in her
sport (competency frame),
(2)
A woman with some symbol of her sport (such as holding
a ball in her hand), but outside of playing field (mixed message frame)
(3)
A woman completely outside of her playing field
with no indication of athletic participation (“sexy/classy lady” frame),
(4)
A soft pornographic image of a nearly or completely naked woman
The researchers found through focus groups with Division I
female athletes that most of them would prefer to be portrayed as the woman in
the (1) frame – playing their sport. Some of them wanted to pick two
representations as they identified with both the (1) frame and the (2) frame.
However, when the female athletes were asked which photo
would bring most attention to their sport, one-third of them said that it would
be the soft pornographic image. They picked this based upon the belief that hypersexualized
images were more marketable to a male audience.
Consistently with the Tucker Center’s previous research, Dr.
Kane and her colleagues contested the “sex
sells women’s sports” assumption, arguing that these hypersexualized,
soft pornographic images are counter-productive as they do not foster respect
for female athletes and women’s sports.
According to the study presented at NASSS, female athletes prefer
to see themselves portrayed in an athletically competent pose. Ultimately, Dr.
Kane and her colleagues argued, only these types of portrayals will lead to change in cultural perceptions about women’s sports.
For a summary of the “sex sells sex, not women’s sports”
argument, see our earlier blog
post. To see twitter updates from the conference, go to #NASSS12
@CurleyCenter.
-- Dunja Antunovic
1 comment:
This is a very interesting finding. It was surprising to see that although women athletes preferred photos showcasing their athletic abilities, they still give in to what the public conception of women athletes. It’s sad to see that they feel they have to be seen as sexualized in order to gain marketing attention from male audiences. It seems in today’s world that appears to be the case with male athletes as well. If we take a look at David Beckham, more times than not, he is shown in photos with little or no clothing and he is more popular today than ever. This definitely lends to the idea that “sex sells” with both male and female athletes.
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