After the U.S. Open Tennis Championships this year, Serena Williams was asked why she wasn’t smiling during a press conference after she just won her match against sister Venus Williams.
The video went viral because of William’s perfect response. “It’s 11:30,” she said. “To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t want to be here. I just want to be in bed right now. I have to wake up early to practice.”
Sadly, this video is only the tip of the iceberg that represents all of the sexist sports media coverage of female athletes.
Besides the absurd question Serena Williams was asked after she just won a championship tennis match, how else are female athletes being marginalized compared to male athletes?
According to a study by University of Southern California sociologist Mike Messner and Purdue University sociologist Cheryl Cooky, women only made up 4 percent of sports news in 2009. ESPN’s Ticker exhibited the same, dedicating 96.4 percent of the information along the bottom of the screen to men’s sports. Even more disturbing was the finding that less than 2 percent of women’s sports made coverage in all network news and ESPN.
3.1 million women play an interscholastic sport in close comparison to the 4.4 million high school boys who play a sport, but networks covered 60 stories of men’s NCAA basketball during March Madness in 2009 and zero stories on any women’s sport. The problem isn’t that there just aren’t that many female athletes or sports, but there is a radically clear gender bias in sports media coverage.
Not only are female athletes underrepresented in sports media, but when and if they are represented, they’re being hypersexualized and feminized. Camera angles are used to sexualize them, for example, by focusing on tennis players’ legs and gymnasts’ crotches and often played in slow-motion.
Men on the other hand are viewed from a lower angle looking upward at them to create a more powerful shot.
Then there are the completely ignorant, sexist questions female athletes are constantly being asked.
A new campaign called Cover the Athlete recently gained attention on the internet with their video of male athlete’s reactions inserted right after real questions female athletes are asked. Questions such as, “How has your weight gain affected your mobility?”, “Can you give us a twirl and tell us about your outfit?”, “He really does have the kind of body international judges love” and “Get ready to see some great biceps, tiny tanks and more” are just a few golden moments from this video.
Reactions from the Internet were all met with laughter at the thought and reactions of male athletes being asked these questions. Which begs the question — why in the world are women asked these questions when it’s absolutely hysterical for men to be asked them? Women are playing the same sports and winning the same as men.
Gender bias has been so embedded into sports media commentators that a hierarchy of naming and gender marking has taken place. Gender marking refers to the assumption that when a commentator announces a Final Four basketball tournament it is a men’s tournament, because it wasn’t specified as “the women’s.” The hierarchy of naming refers to men being called men and referred to by their last names and women being called girls and referred to by their first names.
How long is it going to take for sports media to recognize that femininity isn’t below masculinity? These women are fierce. They are capable, they are strong and they deserve to be treated as such.
prhurst@indiana.edu
@IDSPeyton
