It’s funny how female athletes are supposed to be females before they are athletes. They could be the highest-scoring athlete of the century, have won hundreds of national and international trophies, have enough talent and potential to blow a blue whale’s mind, yet that’s not enough to get them in the spotlight. Do you know what is? Their looks.
40% of all athletes are women, but media representation accounts for only 4% of them - and too often the amount of attention their beauty and looks receive overshadows the coverage of their skills. In media interviews, non-sport-related topics take the frontline. A women athlete is much more likely to be asked who she is dating, what she is wearing, or simply about her personal life; rather than the actual reason as to why she was called for an interview.
This problem, however, is not only restricted to interviews. From having nude pictures leaked and splashed over the front pages of men’s magazines, to being criticized for how you styled your hair, when you just walked away with a gold medal (as was the case of Gabby Douglas in the 2012 Olympics) - female athletes have to bear it all.
And since for most athletes, their careers hang upon how much recognition they get, naturally many female athletes are lured into this cycle of objectification. These athletes volunteer to portray themselves as ‘feminine’. In 2007, the Australian Women’s Football World Cup team posed naked for a men’s magazine. In 2011, the German National Football Team did the same. All of them thought this was actually empowering for women since it promoted the game. Well, it didn't.
The damage caused by this is more than many think it is. Not only is this immensely offending and disrespectful to these athletes, but by constantly talking just about their looks and their bodies, the attention that should have been given to their achievements is shifted to how beautiful they look. And when this happens, that is the second when male athletes, and only male athletes, are the ones who are considered talented and strong, even when that is far from the truth.
What this also means is that the female athletes who do not conform to these 'feminine' standards of beauty are criticized, humiliated, or not even given attention, until and unless they are considered a supernatural deity in their individual sports. All of this hurts the careers of so many deserving athletes, for the mere reason that they were born or choose to identify as a woman.
But the impacts do not end here. When young girls look at their screens and see that it’s going to be their looks, rather than their skills that make them successful, that’s when they start focusing more on their looks than their skills. A little girl who wants to be a football star when she grows up, instead of being out juggling footballs, practicing dusk and dawn, she is more likely to be shut inside her room, staring at the mirror, wondering why she doesn’t look like any of the famous football stars? This is also what drives many female athletes and little girls to try to conform to these standards by objectifying and sexualizing themselves, through eating disorders and plastic surgery (a choice that is coerced) or to not enter the world of sports itself.
This vicious cycle of objectification is as hard to escape, as it is to live through, yet it is still thrust upon each and every single one of the female athletes. We don’t want that to happen anymore. And the first step towards changing that is acknowledging that the media coverage that female athletes receive is demeaning and misogynistic, This single step can go a long way. Another step to be taken includes fair media coverage - of all sports, whether considered ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’; whether the female athlete is what society considers a perfect Barbie Doll or not. And this increased coverage that they receive should focus on their achievements, and their talent rather than their looks.
Calling out misogynistic sports commentators or rules is another way to go. Challenging the dress-code is another (in sports like beach volleyball, women are forced to wear extremely revealing clothes, that many athletes feel uncomfortable with.) Changing the front page of magazines from images of female athletes in suggestive poses to those of them killing it in the field. And just as an audience, watching female sports because of the talented young women, and the tons of skills and potential they have rather than because they’re wearing little skirts.
It is no doubt that female athletes have come a long way, are producing remarkable athletic accomplishments, and are no less than their male counterparts. It is now our duty to ensure that we help in removing the needless barriers set there by our patriarchal society, and do justice to these superb young women. It is now our duty to stop the tradition of media making female athletes ‘feminine’ athletes.