Wimbledon coverage perpetuates sexism

This year's Wimbledon brought much excitement. Additionally to the close, grueling matches, the first few days built up surprises one after the other as the superstars such as Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams unexpectedly followed each other out of the tournament.

Wimbledon will most likely be remembered, once again, for these thrilling moments, and not the blatant sexism that appeared in media coverage upon the closure of the tournament.

The coverage of the men's and women's singles finals tells us two things about women: 1) they don't count, and 2) they are only allowed to succeed if they are attractive.

To Andy Murray's win in the men's singles finals over Novak Djokovic, the media in a number of countries, and multiple languages suggested that Murray ended Britain's 77 years of pain without a Wimbledon winner. Some of these headlines proclaimed "British champion ends 77 years of tennis hurt" (The Mirror), "Andy Murray credits home crowd after ending 77-year wait" (The Telegraph), and "Andy Murray wins Wimbledon, ends 77-year British drought" (USA Today).

These headlines make me wonder: What exactly are British women? Next door neighbors?

The articles fail to account for four British women who won singles titles in that 77-year period. An article on Buzzfeed credits Dorothy Round Little (1937), Angela Mortimer Barrett (1961), Ann Haydon-Jones (1969), and Virginia Wade (1977) for the wins. Thus, The Atlantic points out "Britain's last Wimbledon champ won 36 years ago, not 77."

One must give credit to outlets that at least specified in the article that Murray was the first "men's" champion after 77 years, but even in that case information about female players is missing.

Once again, we see a normalized pattern in sports media coverage that positions male athletes and men's sports as the only ones that really matter while failing to account for women's accomplishments. The women are, thus, rendered invisible.

But, considering the somewhat exceptional level of equality in men's and women's tennis, the women's Wimbledon champion, Marion Bartoli, also received some coverage. Except, according to some fans and even one media outlet, she was too ugly to win.

The Daily Mail reported that Bartoli received extensive criticism over her looks on Twitter.

Perhaps the most disturbing comment came from BBC radio commentator John Inverdale, who said:

"I just wonder if her dad, because he has obviously been the most influential person in her life...did say to her when she was 12, 13, 14 maybe 'listen you are never going to be, you know, a looker. You are never going to be somebody like a Sharapova, you're never going to be 5-foot-11, you're never going to be somebody with long legs, so you have to compensate for that."

BBC apologized after hundreds of complaints. Of course, they should.

Still, we are left with blatant sexism perpetuated by some of the most respectable media outlets.

But beyond sexism, the above give examples also contain misleading and even inaccurate information. And that is simply poor journalism.

-- Dunja Antunovic

Analysis of Sports Illustrated yields interesting data on portrayals of women athletes

A new study indicates that representation of women athletes is improving, but there’s a caveat to that point.

The University of Buffalo’s Kiera Duckworth analyzed Sports Illustrated issues during Olympic years and found that the majority of articles portrayed women athletes as “strong, competent athletes.” Her research was presented Thursday at the annual conference for the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport in New Orleans.

This is a positive signal for women’s sports because it is imperative that women athletes are recognized for their athletic prowess and not being sexualized.

However in her analysis of advertisements in the same issues, Duckworth found that there were differences in representation based on race. White women were portrayed as “the girl next door”, black females were shown predominately in a sporting context and Asian women were sexualized.

Taken together, Duckworth’s research indicates that the focus needs to be placed not just on journalists, but on advertising companies who also create societal representations of women athletes.

-- Steve Bien-Aimé

The media and UConn's winning streak: Another take

I've been reading -- with great interest -- the commentary around the UConn women's basketball team, which will very likely tonight break the longest winning streak in D-I basketball (set by the UCLA men's team under John Wooden).
Much of the commentary isn't on UConn's winning record, but is instead on what to make of coverage of UConn's phenomenal streak. If you've been paying attention to the story, you know that UConn coach Geno Auriemma himself weighed in on the coverage in a news conference after the team's game on Sunday.
He, along with others including sports columnist Christine Brennan and others who study women's sports coverage blame sports media for not giving the story more attention.
I certainly understand this argument. We have scores and scores of research that tells us two things: that institutions covering sports are dominated by men; and that women's sports don't get nearly the attention that men's sports get.
But behind the blame on sports journalists, editors and producers is this assumption: That somehow, those who cover sports are different from those who follow sports. They're "out of touch" with what we (sports fans, Americans, whatever) really want.
In short, it's the (cliched) "build it and they will come" assumption, mixed with imagery of an (evil) wizard behind the curtain pulling the strings contrary to the wishes of the hordes of consumers who would have it otherwise. It reminds me of the title of a book: Why TV Is Not Our Fault, which essentially argues that viewers have little influence over what they watch. It's someone else's fault.
No doubt, there are serious issues of political economy and masculine hegemony/power in the sports/media complex, to borrow the academic concepts that underpin these "media=bad" arguments.
But I'm convinced that at the end of the day, blaming the media for lack of coverage or for the wrong kind of coverage is failing to see the bigger problem.
It really is us. (Gulp.) It is our fault.
What I mean is this: The problem is embedded in the way we see women, men, and gender roles. It's in the way we define sports. It's in the small things we take for granted as "normal" in our everyday lives about the performance of gender. (Women wear skirts, men don't. Etc.) And in what all of these small things say about bodies and power.
These norms aren't without consequence.
They result in a culture that is less interested in women's sports as spectator activities because of the ways these performances challenge our everyday gendered lives.
Those who go to work for media are products of that culture. They aren't so different from the rest of us.
Not that things can't or won't change. But they happen slowly. Forty years out from Title IX is like 40 days in the big scheme of things. We're talking about a generation --maybe two, I think. Beyond our lifetimes to see real change.
In the meantime: I like what Megan Hueter,in her blog "Because I Played Sports," said about the UConn streak. She talked about the power of community and about the way progressive sports fans have found ways to connect, to create media, and to celebrate women's sports.
The real changes in our connection and celebration of women's sports won't start with big media -- they'll start with us.

-- Marie Hardin

The sports beat: How much has it really changed?

The latest issue of Nieman Reports looks at the beat structure in news reporting and includes a special focus on sports departments. In a piece about the influence of new media on sports reporting, Curley Center Director Malcolm Moran writes that "competitive pressures are rewriting the rules" by challenging traditional practice in regard to verifying sources and ensuring accuracy. Lindsay Jones, a beat writer for The Denver Post, talks about how she aims to adhere to high journalistic standards even as she races to be the first on the story -- with her thumbs on her phone keypad -- via Twitter.
Not all has changed, however. In a story I wrote about the beat structure in sports departments, I argue that the infinite news hole created by new media hasn't really expanded coverage of women's sports, mostly because beat structures in sports departments haven't changed to allow it. In other words, the technologies may be new, and the challenges to reporters to get the story fast may be more intense, but the types of sports covered and the types of stories consumers get from media sources haven't really changed that much.
The bottom line: It'll take a lot more than technology to see substantive changes in sports media content.
--Marie Hardin

Glitter, Bronzer and Power

The New York Times Magazine recently posted a stunning visual piece on women’s tennis that features a video gallery of the world’s top players hitting a ball in slow motion. In some ways, the piece takes us a step forward in depictions of female athletes. Rather than simply showing them smiling while holding a racket, we see these women hitting the ball with incredible force --muscles rippling and all, an image only enhanced by the extreme slow motion video.

However, with the exception of seeing these athletes in actual “action,” the piece is more a re-tread on the old theme of emphasizing beauty over athleticism when depicting female athletes. Taken in its full context, the piece unfortunately minimizes the displays of exertion and maximizes sexuality and beauty.

For instance, Serena Williams, arguably the most powerful woman in tennis today, is seen smacking an unseen ball with ferocious intensity. However, that ball explodes in an avalanche of glitter in front of Williams, who is wearing a sequined dress, body glitter and flowing hair. Like Williams, many of the players are wearing body glitter or bronzer while wearing nightclub-style dresses, several not-so-subtle markers of femininity.

Perhaps most troubling is the way several of the athletes’ bodies are literally chopped up, with the camera focusing only on their legs, abs or breasts. For example, viewers see Samantha Stosur’s face for only a split second as the camera zooms into her breasts as she hits the ball, her head literally cut out of the frame. The video of Victoria Azarenka starts at her shoes and slowly pans up her legs, bare stomach and breasts, mimicking the way a film director might shoot a scene to indicate a man “checking out” a woman. The image of her hitting the ball happens only at the very end, and even then her long, loose and untied hair flows around her face in an image closer to what we might see in Sports Illustrated swimsuit than at Wimbledon. In fact, nearly all the women have loose, untied and flowing hair, another common feminine marker.

Even the title of the piece – “The Beauty of Power” – hints at the discomfort we have at a cultural level of associating women with raw physical power. By labeling these images as not just “power” images, but “beautiful images of power,” viewers are reminded that the players are beautiful [read: feminine] and thus “normal women” despite the displays of muscles and exertion.

In these ways, the players are offered as objects of sexual desire, and presented to the viewer from the perspective of the heterosexual male gaze. By doing so, the focus is put on the women’s sexuality rather than on the displays of strength that the camera also captures. Ultimately, despite the video of female athletes in action, the piece is an overall disappointment, especially given the potential it had to present the physical power and athleticism of the women’s tennis elite.

--Erin Whiteside

Why the apathy about women's sports coverage?

In a column published this morning, longtime journalist Eric Deggens addresses the lack of attention paid to a new study that empirically verifies what women's sports fans have suspected: Despite Title IX and the soaring numbers of girls and women participating in sports, mainstream coverage of women's sports continues to diminish.
Deggens rightly points out that the study has generally been greeted with apathy. He also rightly points out that media organizations have an obligation, based on their responsibility to address what he calls "an essential journalism failure," to provide fair, plentiful coverage of women's sports.
Of course, he's right.
I suggest, however, that blame the lack of women's sports coverage cannot be placed solely on journalistic organizations. Deggens seems to dismiss what he called "insulting rationalizations" for the lack of coverage, including "this is what the sports audience wants."
Unfortunately, because of the role (entertainment) and the values (masculinity) that we've placed on spectator sports as a culture, sports coverage -- even though considered "news" in many respects(on newscasts, in newspapers)-- tends to be much more audience driven. The powerful, unquestioned association of sports with masculine values has a negative impact on the potential of women's sports fandom to flourish on a mass scale.
In other words, lack of women's sports coverage a cultural problem -- not one that can be blamed solely on media organizations.
The solution is not as easy as "build it, and they will come." Fans won't come in the numbers media organizations see as sustainable until we, as a culture, move away from adhering to gender norms that make the sidelining of women in sports seem "common-sense" -- drawing nothing more than a yawn when it is pointed out to us.
-- M. Hardin

Women in the Tiger affair: 'Usual suspects'?

Robin Givhan of The Washington Post, in a column today, points out the stark differences in the way Tiger Woods and the women who have been involved in the story of his affair have been considered in coverage.
She writes: "While Woods is being portrayed as complicated and troubled, the women are merely types... The golfer has been called a dog, a liar and worse. But he still gets the benefit of being perceived as an individual."
Givhan suggests that the way the women in the Woods' story have been characterized -- as simply "waitress" or "model" (it doesn't take much modeling experience for women, including his wife, to get this label) -- has been done with a "kind of wink and a nod."
It's as though mere mention of these types of jobs -- commonly associated with women -- are enough to indicate a low moral fiber. As Givhan writes, "For the women connected to Woods, their fairly mundane 9-to-5 gigs serve as a smoking gun of bad behavior."
Evidence of Givhan's observation -- the way these women have become objects in the hand-wringing about Woods ("What do we do about Tiger?") is evident in the celebrity press and the mainstream sports press.
An example of an especially troubling storyline is the suggestion that the women with whom Tiger has been involved "set women back" as a group. Would anyone argue that Woods represents all athletes, much less all men? It's a ridiculous assertion and a lazy, ill-informed broad brush with which to approach this story.