Gender, Masculinity, And Body Structure And How It Is Perceived By Society

In order to thoroughly understand sports media, it is critical to understand the way in which sports media impacts its consumers. Millington and Wilson (2010) explores the impact of sports media by focusing on its impact on a group of boys in a Vancouver High School. Millington and Wilson (2010) analyze the way in which sports media impacts ones’ activity in physical education and the way in which one interprets sports media. Through their research, Millington and Wilson (2010) found that young boys are equally susceptible to the impacts of both physical education and sports media. While the impacts may vary, both sports media and physical education promotes the importance of masculinity in sports and general society (Millington & Wilson, 2010).

Many people have written articles about their experience with athletics, especially with high school and college-level athletics. Because athletics are so often intertwined with these formative moments in one’s life, as well as with normative ideals of masculinity, they are ideal contexts in which to write about gender identity. Thomas Rogers’ essay “The College Hazing that Changed My Life,” originally published on Salon.com in 2011, and Joe Mackall’s essay “Words of my Youth” both deal with athletics as a way into discussing gender identity. Although the essays are very different, they both deal with a very similar theme: how difficult it is to develop a masculine identity, particularly within a sporting context, in a world that is increasingly accepting of different gender identities.

One of the main ways that guys bond and prove their manhood is through the institution of sports. “Guys like sports because it is the easiest way to choose ‘guy’ over ‘gay’—and make sure everyone gets the right idea about them.” (128) Sports play a very important role in solidifying male camaraderie because it allows men to talk to each other without having to disclose anything personal

High school, the best years of your life with everyday shaping and molding you from a feminine boy to becoming a respectable masculine adult, in truth its surviving everyday without being called a fag. In C.J. Pascoe’s ethnography she examines the dynamics of masculinity carefully exploring gender conformity that’s extracted from a collection of humiliations, fears and anxieties among high school boys. Within the eighteen months that Pascoe tediously studied the students of River High, she opened my mind to reminisce about my high school years. From the pep rallies in the gym to the weight room discussions, however, Pascoe’s research expressed a deeper meaning to the formation of gender

Society’s current structure of masculinity is unforgiving in form. It cuts out other forms of masculinity, it physically and mentally demanding, and its ill effects extend far beyond the men it infuses itself in. Yet what would we do if we were given other options for masculinity, ones that allowed for unique blends of attitudes and perceptions? Looking in to the lives of homeless men we can see the forced strategies which create new masculine codes created for the adaption against patriarchal pressures. They are made out of survival need to circumnavigate the painful mental and physical reality that is only made worse by harsh masculine standards. Yet these new masculinities hold out a form of hopefulness for society. They offer up new discussion to what it means to be a man, the potential for change, and what we can expect from changes in male identity over time. Using what we learn from the disadvantaged, we can hope to improve the lives of people, although the process will take time, effort, and careful mediation.

When you type in Female Athletes into a popular search engine like Google, the top hits are links that redirect to articles titled, “The Top 50 Hottest Athletes of 2016," “Unlimited List of Hottest Female Athletes In The World. In contrast, when you do the same for a Male Athlete you find articles about the “Best Male Athlete ESPY Award” and ‘Most Fit Male Athlete in Sports”. We see such a stark difference, even though they perform the same tasks. At an early age, parents tend to encourage the male child to participate in sports whereas they encourage the female child to join a dance or arts and crafts class instead. “You throw like a girl” is an expression that is often used, equating athleticism to masculinity rather than femininity (Hively

In today’s society, concepts of gender roles and body images plague the minds of young ladies and men of the millennial generation. These are enforced by popular culture in song, video and magazines that are published. These roles and images are seen by and influence the minds of mainly young girls but not more popularly seen, young men. Magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Vogue and Sports Illustrated flaunt slim women and very muscular men with “perfect” bodies and hair on their covers and give no thought to the readers and how it may influence their minds. Also, the artists of this generation also have a large influence on how young men and women see themselves and perceive their gender roles to be. These affect the minds of persons in ways such as they end up having a lower self-esteem as they cannot live up to societal image standards, young men and women tend to follow the gender roles that they see and young girls and boys ultimately turn to drastic measures to fulfil the body images that they feel they should obtain.

A sport is an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment. Sports originated in early history as males only, and was often used to see which male was more dominant. In today’s society sports have a different meaning and is played by both genders, but still holds a mentality of superiority. In this essay, I will be arguing the Social Constructs of Masculinity in Sports in the language and the actions used when performing these activities through both genders and how some actions are acceptable for one gender and not for the other. Using Laurel Richardson’s article Gender Stereotyping in the English Language, and X: A Fabulous Child’s Story by Lois Gould. The article and story will help distinguish the use of words in our society and how they are incorporated in sport and how the actions of a person that does not fit the social standard faces repercussions for their actions.

Over the course of time, sports have come to signify masculinity; athletics such as football and basketball easily having come to deem where one fits in terms of societal norms regarding gendered bodies. One could argue that sports, in a modern context, have come to be synonymous with the idea of athletic and/or muscular bodies, which are those that are not regarded as the bodies of ideologically feminine ones given the intense and high pressure nature. In “Sports and Male Domination: The Female Athlete as Contested Ideological Terrain” written by Michael A. Messner in 1988 sheds light on the idea that traditional images of femininity have come to solidify male privilege through the construction and naturalization of gendered characteristics regarding women such as weakness, fragility and dependency .

How is gender and gender roles socially constructed? Soulliere states that gender is a cultural creation that is frequently developed by and represented through popular cultural media such as advertisements, music, sports, and entertainment television (Soulliere 2006). The article “Wrestling with Masculinity: Messages about Manhood in the WWE” by Danielle M. Soulliere (2006), examines messages about manhood revealed by televised professional wrestling (Soulliere 1). Messages concerning masculinity and manhood were investigated and compared to the cultural version of masculinity (Soulliere 2006). Soulliere’s research proves that the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) depicts messages, which supports the dominant hegemonic form of masculinity (Soulliere 2006). To further grasp and understand Soulliere’s hypothesis, we must first examine her research methods and outcomes.

Introduction: Masculinity is traditionally considered to be a characteristic of a male due to the fact that they possess qualities such as activeness, competitiveness, and strength which are typically appropriate to a man. This has changed over the years due to the fact that females are now taking part in a lot of functions that used to strictly only be available for males to take part in. for example, when the Olympics were first created in Athens and a women was caught watching the men competing in any events she had to be executed. These days however women are taking part in a lot more activities that males are known for, such as exercising and competing in sports. It seems that they are gradually coming out and being just as athletic as men.

In another research, Bryson (1987) found that sports have always been a construction of hegemonic masculinity. A sport such as football receives attention and is linked with masculinity where the use of force, violence or aggression can be seen. Women who attempt to do sport are merely challenging the hegemonic masculinity is already in place.

Although, athletes are the role models the boys grow up playing sports but when they do not perform in an excellent or right way they are chided as girls in a away to help them perform better. The language that is in the media attributes and reinforces the dominant discourse that males are stronger than females. (Public research group, 2010). In addition, men are expected to have healthy strong bodies and simultaneously on the other hand isolate and seclude themselves from females as to not care how they look. Men that are obese are subjected through oppression as a result of the factor that they do not fit in the masculine stereotype of a muscle built body. Furthermore, young boys are taught this early and consequently reproduce this discourse to discriminate others in school that do not fit in to Western culture's ideology of masculinity. This discrimination of the obese instills a fear on the youth that to be fat is not ideal and is therefore seen in revulsion and hatred. Nevertheless, the discourse implies that genetics do not play a role and that every male can get this perfect body of masculinity in a sense. Therefore, a man would need to endure the journey for how ever long it takes to achieve this. In contrary, this is not the truth a man may go the gym everyday for a number of years and never achieve this form of masculinity because for their body type and genetics is impossible. Moreover, the stereotypes against overweight men at a first glance

Dominant groups in society often set up normative ideas about bodies, genders and sexualities in order to preserve the societal hierarchy that greatly benefits them. White, cisgender, heterosexual males are often at the top of this hierarchy and are the active perpetrators of their imposed rigid standards. Categories are created by these dominant groups to exercise their control and those who do not fit or refuse to categorize themselves are punished, either metaphorically or literally. In the sports realm, these norms are ubiquitous. However, in this paper, I argue that sports can both uphold and challenge these normative ideas about bodies, genders, and sexualities through normalized practices it normalizes that are considered to be different from the outside world. Sex-tests and gender policies in sports competitions uphold the idea that there is a biological difference in genders and rigidly implement the gender-binary. On the other hand, the practice of contact sports and the use of locker rooms as a voyeuristic experience challenge normative ideas about bodies, genders and sexualities. These practices are standard in the sphere of sports a

There are many repercussions that are projected upon both men and women when they enter into a sport that typically isn’t thought of as gender appropriate. Some of those cultural and social stigmatisms may be abandonment by your peers, and friends questions regarding your sexuality, and even in some cases criticism as to how you are living your life. In some cases, it may lead to you not being accepted by either group, theone whose norems you are not following, of as well as the one with whom you are trying to get involved. This paper will address all of these issues and how these seemingly negative situations can, will, and are, leading to growth. It will also discuss how this is a situation where repercussions are