Manhood In The Film 'Not Just A Game'

Gender classification is a predominant topic within today’s sports and is most broadly understood through the portrayals of sports media. Through overt and covert ways, sports media has continued to promote a masculine representation of sports (Millington & Wilson, 2010; Messener, Duncan, & Jensen, 1993). By understanding the way in which sports media portrays sports, one can recognize how masculinity has dominated the world of sports. With the aid of two unique studies of sports media, this paper will critique the way in which media has effected the gendered depiction of sports.

While participation of women in sports has increased, the media representation of women in sports remains problematic. Even the most talented elite female athletes like Michelle Kwan and Monica Seles are portrayed in a sexual fashion, as a way of deemphasizing their athleticism and neutralizing any possible threat they might seem to pose to male viewers. Very few male athletes are portrayed in such an objectified manner; they are portrayed as competitors first and foremost, not as personalities. Also, the media coverage of athletes is disproportionately focused on male athletes. The coverage of female athletes tends to stress individualized female sports where women can be sexualized like tennis and figure skating, versus competitive team sports like basketball and soccer.

Gender inequality in professional tennis is a real and alarming issue, from the pay gap between mens' and womens' tennis players to the low media coverage of women's professional tennis. This issue even goes as far as how differently tennis commentators discuss and analyze mens tennis as opposed to how they discuss and analyze womens tennis. When commentators discuss men's tennis they solely focus on the skill of the players, but when they discuss women's tennis they place more importance on the appearance of the female players, rather than their skill. This instance of gender inequality in professional tennis is further exacerbated by the differences in advertisements for male tennis players and female tennis players. The advertisements involving male tennis players display their athleticism and tennis abilities, whereas the advertisements including female tennis players are appearance-focused, with the females often wearing little clothing. This is corroborated by the popular belief that focusing on the physical appearance of female athletes is the only way in which generating money from women's professional sports is distinctly possible (Fink, 2015, p. 338). Female professional tennis players train just as hard as the men do, thus the gender inequality that exists in the sport is not necessarily a result of how women perform on the court. It is rather a result of how society perceives women playing in professional sports overall, which the mass media is partially to blame

This article talked about the daunting unequal media coverage in sports of male sports teams in comparison to females.They researched the true differentiations of coverage between men and women sports. The actual percentage difference of coverage of male vs female sports discovered in their research truly is unfathomable. Men’s sports receive 96.3% of the airtime, women’s sports 1.6% and gender neutral topics were 2.1%. When you think back about twenty years ago and the coverage of media people tend to think that America is generally trending positively forward, however that is not the case for the coverage of women's athletics. It has actually gone down since then. Although on the scarce occasion that they are feature in the news, more often than not they are conveyed in the stereotypical way: as wives, girlfriends, or mothers. When media is highlighting these aspects instead of their talent, hard work or success it takes away from their image as an athlete and it demonstrating that it is acceptable to do so in society. However if male athlete achieved equal success and he was a father, that

Within sport, as throughout society, gender differences exist. The socially constructed phenomenon of gender dictates a dichotomous system whereby females are feminine and males are masculine. Focusing on females specifically, society determines the feminine traits and roles ascribed to this gender. Being domesticated, slender, passive and heterosexual are a part of the desirable appearance that society has formed surrounding femininity (Wolf, 1991). On the other side of the dichotomy is the masculine realm that sport plays into. Sport is fuelled by muscle, power and aggressiveness, which are behaviours and images associated to masculinity. Sport therefore, defies all existing female gender ideals. It would be assumed that females have no place within this institution due to the gender clash. However, female athletes do exist, and many are very successful. For this to work, sport has established and reinforced the social constructions of gender that exist in society. Female athletes are viewed as inferior and are pushed into gender appropriate sports. Furthermore, they are often labeled as masculine until they can prove otherwise, and so great attempts are made to reassert femininity. The stigma associated to being masculine or homosexual for female athletes is so great that many have become irrationally fearful of this label. The sexualisation of the female body and overt displays of heterosexuality are used in

It is also believed that female athletes become objectified in the media as an “attempt to limit female power, thereby reinforcing hegemonic masculinity” (Pederson,2002). Mass media and sports are one of the most commanding hegemonic social institutions and there is a strong link between athleticism and masculinity. It is due to this hegemonic masculinity that women, in many ways are considered inferior to men and treated as if they have no place of their own in sports, where only male power dominates.

The purpose of this research is to bring attention to the lack of women’s sports coverage in the media and show how male sports have taken priority over women’s sports.

Before I conducted this media analysis about women in sports and sport broadcasting, I hypothesized the obvious - that more male sports would be in the media, and that there would be more male sports broadcasters as well. Through my observations I did find that the sports arena and sports broadcasting sphere are male dominated. However, I also found that although there are not many stories about women, there has been a steady progression and magazines like Sports Illustrated are becoming bold enough to highlight women athletes in a magazine that is targeted towards a male audience. Although women still have a long way to go, they are making some headway into the male-dominated sports arena.

According to my classmate Angelina, “young kids want to learn to learn to play the game.” According to my classmate Brianna, “ it's only boys on TV.” Without women’s sports less and less girls will be interested in sports. When it comes to sports women can beat the men. In a marathon the women’s times were five minutes faster. This proves that women’s sports on TV is another way to play the

Sport has been one of the most important socio-cultural learning experiences for males and females. Sports provide an amazing release for people of all ages. People are requested and welcomed to play sports at any age. Sometimes there are many limitations due to personal reasons that restrain people from participating in sport such as money, peer pressure, location, etc. For the last century males are expected to be strong, independent, and athletic. Male athletes masculinity symbolizes an image of physical health, and sexual virility throughout their bodies as well. Nowadays, women’s participation in sports is becoming popular but it is still overshadowed by men’s. According to the Women’s Sport Foundation before the title IX “given equal athletic opportunities, women will rush to fill them; the remaining discrepancies in sports participation rates are the result of continuing discrimination in access to those opportunities” (“ Title IX Myths and Fact”). Under the title IX, female has the playing field been. Women now can participate in many sports, which were only played by men before. However, the main reason that female usually do not participate is due to gender inequity. Some of people believe that the inequity in sports has not changed over the years, especially opportunities and benefits. Although sports provide opportunities for both males and females, female participating in sports generally have less opportunities to

The amount of articles and news headlines that women are featured in is vastly unequal to that of men. Women only featured 3% of all articles in our local media source compared to men at 92%, in some instances animals featured as equal to that of the women. This is largely due to that women sports simply do not generate as much interest as men sports. The stereotype is that women are portrayed for their beauty, sex appeal and support roles rather than their sporting capabilities or skill level. The media does not recognise that female sports are as physically demanding and do require the amount of skill as that of men.

December 11th,1995 was a much different time compared to today. After deciding to explore the New York Times sports archives I discovered that articles have drastically changed over twenty years. It was extremely surprising when comparing the number of articles written daily in 1995 in relation to how many are written on a daily basis today. Twenty-one stories were covered on December 11th twenty years ago compared to the astonishing 155 written on December 11th, 2014. Out of the twenty-one stories not one had any reference to females within any sport; all twenty-one of the articles were directed toward male professional sport. The majority of the articles were tailored towards Football, Basketball and Baseball, all mainstream sports. The

There has been a change in the way certain gender sports were viewed when women/men attempted to challenge the boundaries. Gymnastics for example began as an all-male sport. It was believed that women did not have the build nor strength to compete in this sport. In 1928 were women allowed to compete in the Olympics in

With the rise of feminism, gender inequality has been quite the topic in todays time. With the wanting of equal rights and treatment it has been pointed out as per which all places males have the hegemonic overview and women are the oppressed; one of the areas where its unequal in gender is in sport. This paper will examine and break down the issues regarding sex and gender biases within sports in modern day media and how it can be resolved.

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.