Media Representatin of Women in Sport

Major canvas Current society is built upon classs and constructions that argon predetermined by previous generations views. peerless of the close appreciate historical constructions is the patriarchal theory, that the pistillate is subservient to the antheral. However, this construction of gender power is slowly equalising, with the rise of womens liberationist groups in the latter part of the 20th century giving reason for this occurring. Nevertheless, gender battles argon chill out occurring, speci solelyy in the gaudy labor, which remains male reign.Female genetic mutation has been given much eminence over their uproar in the past decade, but is finding in a male controlled industry it is difficult for women to fulfill help from governing bodies. Female gambol is marginalised compared to male sport, self-aggrandizingly receivable to the sexualisation of the athletic supporters themselves. professionally they are receiving very(prenominal) little media wield age in comparison to males and in an dilettante sense effeminates are being stereotyped as a upshot of the images of athletic sexualised women displayed in magazines such as Zoo, Sports Illustrated and Alpha.The media has evolved womanish sport into sexually appealing entertainment and doesnt give the sports that wel go far not been sexualised, enough coverage. (Maria Sharapova Bikini) The media have constructed their own image of what a female athlete ultimately looks like by posting images in their magazines, characteristics favoured in visual media are those commonly associated with feminine beauty, such as smiling, unblemished spit out, slender and mouth physique, and long blonde hair (Schell n. d. ).Maria Sharapova pictured below is the perfect example, and heretofore though she isnt the number one female lawn tennis player and hasnt been for some time, she is still one of the most popular and most followed players in the womens circuit, she was the highest compensab le female athlete in the world come 2006, earning much from endorsements than prize money (Carr 2006). We make up ones mind in Australia the sexualisation of sports like Netball, where women in the ANZ Championship wear skin tight, short dresses to play, making it appealing to male audiences.We often face at the Australian Open, similar duration dresses or skirts that leave little to the imagination. Venus Williams sent the media into frenzy in 2010 with her skin colour underclothes visible as soon as she moved around the court, to which she designed herself (Eurosport 2010). Tennis uniforms are bonny a fashion statement more and more every year, which is always judged by the media when someone wears something even slightly risky or sexy.Anna Kournikova was the pioneer in making tennis sexy with her risque photographs in the magazine Sports Illustrated (Cover pictured below). Former tennis player and feminist rights activist Billie Jean King gave a response to the Anna Kourniko va Sport illustrated photographs with this, It doesnt bother me at all if some of the guys come out to watch womens tennis because they want to see a beautiful woman. Who could hold that against Anna?Still, its unfortunate when others with a high skill work out weart win the endorsements. Sure, the well behaved-looking guys baffle more endorsements, but the difference in mens sports is that the ugly ones get their share, alike. (Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles 2000) In America, sexploitation is taken to another level at a professional level, particularly in the sports of wrestling and in the gridiron league lingerie football League.In these competitions, females wear very little, going refine to the bare minimum. Pictured below is an image of the Lingerie Football League, clearly the uniforms (Lingerie Football League 2009)(Anna Kournikova 2000) leave little to be desired, but are used to entertain to a male dominated audience. These sports are both considered to be female sports in their own right, but we also see the sexualisation of women in male sports, particularly in professional sides in the form of cheerleaders.Cheerleaders provide entertainment during the sporting breaks, which we often see during breaks in male sports, providing a view of females in general as sexual objects and inferior to the male athletes. So from our perspective it is clear that the media has constructed a view that the amateur female athlete must be sexy in order to be able to succeed, we dont represent in magazines or see photographs of less attractive female athletes, they have excluded them for what in their mind is profound reason, sex sells.However it is creating an unrealistic image of the perfect female athlete, they are not judged by how good they are at hitting, catching, shooting, running or jumping, but by how much they can get paid for taking their clothes off. (Caple, Greenwood Lumby 2010) Another cause for concern over female sport is that profes sionally they are not getting anywhere near enough media coverage and money as their male counterparts. The media cover male sport in far more depth in fact a train in 2006 by South Australian Premiers Council for Women found just 4. per cent of coverage was or so female sport () and on Foxtel approximately 10 per cent was about female sport (Senate Standing Committees on Environment, Communications and the Arts 2006). The chart below shows the volume of news coverage that all the different sports meet, which not surprisingly shows Tennis as being pretty much the main female sport that is being covered, with very little else in comparison to male sport, even horses gain more exposure than females.So part females are being splayed all over the magazines in compromising poses and clothing, they receive very little coverage of them competing within their sports. So even though the Australian womens limpid team at the 2004 Olympic games secured more medals than their male counterpa rts. The womens hockey team, the Hockeyroos have frequently dominated international competition, winning Olympic gold and international championships on many occasions.The Australian womens netball team has won eight of eleven world championships(Senate Standing Committees on Environment, Communications and the Arts 2006), we still dont see these teams play, other than at major sporting competitions like the Olympic and Commonwealth games. The wish of exposure can be hurtful to professional female athletes, in an interview with former Australian netball player explains her pain, I went very close to an emotional breakdown Ellis said, describing a time when she was struggling to mingle her work as a solicitor, a marriage and the daily demands of club training and competing for Australia. (Magnay 2006) So while professional male sportsman have sport as their only profession earning a large salary in doing so, most women who compete at the top levels of their sports dont actually rec eive any payment for their services, or if they do, they definitely couldnt live of it, so majority of them have prevalent day jobs, which in itself would be stressful, but in conjunction with family, training and games, they must lead exceedingly demanding lives, which hardly seems reasonable.The inability of female sport to be fully professional and given similar or equal coverage in the media leaves the representation of women very much being subservient in a male dominated industry. The representation of the ultimate female athlete projected as a result of the sexualisation that has occurred in higher level sport today has created a flow on effect into the amateur level of sport. Solmon et al. (2003) found that college-aged women who perceive a sport as gender-neutral are more confident about participating than are women who identify a sport as masculine. (Hardin and Greer 2009, 207) Which is a direct result from media exposure, they see sports on television almost every day r ecognize that it is a male sport as the athletes are male and then deem it too masculine to try.There is also the issue of sexual activity discrimination when a female becomes involved with sport because we see the masculine sports on television, any interlocking in such by a female has become deemed as homosexual, constructed by our culture and media, so when a female is called a dyke or lesbian in a derogatory manner, she may alter her actions and dress to be more feminine, downplay her athletic talents, or avoid sport altogether(Schell n. d. ).This has become a common problem with womens amateur sport, particularly sports that are deemed to be too masculine for women to try such as cricket (Burroughs, Seebohm and Ashburn 1995, 29) and Australian Rules football (Hillier 2006, 18) that in that location is an automatic stereotype of being homosexual. The social construction that female participants are labelled as homosexual in male dominated sports is a media formed fallacy. Th e reason why this has occurred is that in past societies, homosexuality was frowned upon and when a female athlete is found to be a lesbian, then the media reveals it to the world, the stereotype builds.This happened to the Australian womens cricket team in the opposite fashion when it was reported that female cricketer, Denise Annetts, had been dropped from the Australian team and had alleged that her sacking was due to her heterosexual preference and marital status. ( Burroughs, Seebohm and Ashburn 1995, 29) This built the reputation than womens cricket still holds to this day. Nowadays there has been a movement towards helping womens sport grow more. There have been the new Australian digital television channels which allowed channel Ten to show Netball during the day on their channel One.ABC still broadcast lawn bowls and womens Basketball fairly often, and just this year, channel golf-club started broadcasting female Twenty20 cricket that was played before the mens game. So th ere has been overture in the coverage regard, however women across the globe are still victims of sexploitation, which is undermining the coverage solution because we are still able to receive the medias representation of females in sport as marginalised and subservient to a male industry. Until this is solved and females stand up against this, then there is little chance they have in improving their image in the sporting industry.Reference List Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles. 2000. Sportsletter. 12 (1,2) 2009. Quoted in Messner 2002, 100. Anna Kournikova. Image. 2000. http//sportsillustrated. cnn. com/vault/cover/toc/9744/index. htm (accessed May 20, 2011). Australia. Senate Standing Committees on Environment, Communications and the Arts. 2006. About time Women in sport and recreation in Australia. Volume 1. Canberra Senate Printing Unit. Burroughs, A. , L. Seebohm, and L. Ashburn. 1995. Sporting Traditions. The Journal of the Australian society for Sports History 12 (1) 29. Google. www. google. om. au (accessed 21 May 2011). Caple, H. , K, Greenwood and C, Lumby. Image. 2010. http//www. ausport. gov. au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/356209/Towards_a_Level_Playing_Field_LR. pdf (accessed May 20, 2011) Carr, J. 2006. Maria Sharapova has become the sports most marketable icon. http//mariasharapova. wetpaint. com/page/Endorsements (accessed May 20, 2011). Eurosport. 2010. Australian Open Cheeky Venus fit shocks crowd. http//uk. eurosport. yahoo. com/24012010/58/australian-open-cheeky-venus-outfit-shocks-crowd. hypertext mark-up language (accessed May 23, 2011). Hardin, M. , J. D. Greer. 2009.The Influence of Gender-Role Socialization, Media Use and Sports Participation on Perceptions of Gender-Appropriate Sports. Journal of Sport style 32 (2) 207. Questia. www. questia. com (accessed 19 May 2011). Hillier, L. 2006. Safe Spaces The upside of the image problem for same sex attracted youthful women playing Australian Rules football. International J ournal of Football Studies 8 (2) 18. Google. www. google. com. au (accessed 21 May 2011). Lingerie Football League. Image. 2009. http//www. stuff. co. nz/sport/2834471/New-Lingerie-Football-League-under-debate (accessed May 20, 2011). Magnay, J. 2006.Women deserve sporting chance Ellis. http//www. smh. com. au/news/sport/women-deserve-sporting-chance-ellis/2006/08/02/1154198205721. html (accessed 20 May 2011). Maria Sharapova Bikini. Image. n. d. http//www. dailybum. com/ (accessed May 20, 2011). Messner, M. 2002. Taking the Field Women, Men and Sports. Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press. Schell, B. n. d. (Dis)Empowering Images? Media Representations of Women in Sport. http//www. womenssportsfoundation. org/ subject matter/Articles/Issues/Media-and-Publicity/D/DisEmpowering-ImagesMedia-Representations-of-Women-in-Sport. aspx (accessed May 20, 2011).Short look into Essay Reflection What strengths and weaknesses did you identify in your Short Research Essay? My short research essay was not quite as good as what I had hoped, the topic Sexual Abuse in Sport With a focus on the AFL was too narrow, it was not a smart decision to give myself such a small focus, which basically narrowed myself down to Australian texts only, which wasnt easy. I did find a fair arrange of resources, but perhaps didnt utilise them as much, and just relied on my own theory. The need to rely on stereotypes and overuse of emotive language also hampered my essay.How did you use the tutors feedback to improve your work for the Major Essay? I firstly acknowledged the fact that my essay used too much emotive language and do it a conscious focus to not try and use it so much, to what effect I am not sure, it is a habit in my writing that needs fixing for the future. I also rewrote my unharmed essay, broadening the topic to women in sport, which meant I could find an array of sources. I also have modify up my analysis and hopefully the referencing has improved. All in all I believe tha t this essay is a far improvement on the short research essay.