A Short Note on Media Coverage and Sexualization of Female Athletes

It’s no secret to anyone that women don’t receive a lot of sports coverage most of the year. With the focus firmly on football, men’s basketball, and baseball there isn’t much room for female athletes in mainstream media coverage. Every two years the Olympics provide a welcome respite from this, but not without a cost. During the summer and winter Olympics our televisions are filled with images of hundreds of athletes from all over the world battling it out in a wide variety of sports and, for once, we get approximately equal coverage of the ladies and the men. The difference in the coverage lies in the types of sports covered, specifically those most covered in prime-time.

When I watch prime-time coverage of men’s sports during the Olympics it varies between almost all sports represented, but when women are allowed coverage it tends to be in sports that offer a much more sexualized view of women’s bodies like gymnastic, figure skating, and beach volleyball. Let me be clear: I love all three of those sports and athletes in all Olympic sports are astoundingly talented, but the unbalanced coverage is hard to miss. In addition to watching these sports where the phrase “the fewer the clothes, the better” seems to hold true, I’d like to see a little bit more of women’s biathlon or women’s archery during the 8 to 10 pm hours.

It’s simple really. All I want is equal representation in Olympic prime-time coverage. I don’t think that that is so difficult and I anticipate it will happen slowly over the next few decades whether we realize it or not because that is the nature of the Olympics. We love to see our athletes, all of them, compete and news outlets will get that message. You won’t lose me, at least, if you show a little less beach volleyball and a little more table tennis.

Hillary Clinton Is Not a Planet: The Dangers of Objectifying America's Most Powerful Woman

Disclaimer: This isn't about television. I just felt the need to address it.

I keep a March 2011 issue of Newsweek on my desk. It’s devoted almost entirely to “150 Women Who Shake the World” and features countless stories about what women around the globe are doing to improve the lives of women and children everywhere. Among those women is Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of State. A photo of her, in all the dignity and authority of the office she held, is featured on the cover bearing the title “Hillary’s War: How she’s shattering glass ceilings everywhere.” It’s hardly a remarkable cover, but for me it’s a remarkable magazine issue. I still keep it for two reasons. One is for the inspiration I can find by flipping through the stories of all 150 amazing women, but the more important reason is to remind me that, like former Secretary Clinton and these women, I am the subject of my own story.

In recent weeks, a spate of interesting magazine covers has made headlines. If you have been paying a lot of attention to the news, you probably know that I’m referring to TIME’s portrayal of Hillary Clinton as apantsuit-clad leg crushing a tiny man with a high heel and New York Times Magazine’s depiction of the same woman as a planet. Of course, these representations of one of the world’s most powerful women were offensive on a few levels. Whether you love Clinton or hate her, you have to acknowledge that this trend is disturbing. For me the issue boils down to the fact that in each instance Secretary Clinton was portrayed as an object rather than a person. This is objectification of women at its worst. Objectification of women has long been documented as detrimental to women’s self-perception and confidence. Furthermore, the objectification of women in political roles leads to the perception that they are more incompetent and less human, a phenomenon documented by Nathan Heflick and Jamie Goldenberg in their case study of Sarah Palin in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The case of Hillary Clinton’s most recent magazine cover representations serves to point out that this objectification is not always sexual as it often was in the case of Palin. Objectification is so dangerous because it tells us that women are not subjects, or actors, but objects to be acted upon. By repeatedly portraying Hillary Clinton as an object rather than a subject, the media is making her less threatening and formidable as a candidate and less human.

The real problem with magazine covers like TIME’s and the New York Times Magazine’s is not simply that it is offensive to Hillary Clinton to be portrayed as a planet, but that it is dangerous to all women to see each other portrayed as things instead of people. I hope as the 2016 presidential race closes in on us that we will see fewer magazines like those and more like that of my treasured copy of Newsweek where women are just women, not things. 

Notes: 

The article about the objectification of Sarah Palin can be found using this citation: 

Heflick, Nathan A, and Jamie L. Goldenberg. "Objectifying Sarah Palin: Evidence That Objectification Causes Women to Be Perceived As Less Competent and Less Fully Human." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 45.3 (2009): 598-601. Print.