How Does Media Influence The Sexualization Of Women

Casey Harmon
Mrs. Bynarowicz
AP Literature and Composition
5 December 2014
Media Representation and Sexualization of Female Athletes Through Visual, Verbal, and Written Commentary Six time U.S. Open champion. Highest-earning woman athlete of all time. Currently ranked No. 1 in the world. Posed naked on the cover of a magazine and in a bikini for several others, downsized to nothing more than a sexy body. This is the sad reality of this star tennis player, Serena Wiliams, along with many other female athletes in the world today. Sexualization and minimization of female athletes and women’s sports in mass media is an unfortunate trend that continues to occur in the sports world. Especially in sports like tennis and volleyball, the accomplishments
In the same way that people who are brainwashed believe what they are brainwashed to, sports viewers respond to and eventually make a reality of what they are subjected to. The cultivation theory, a theory stating that television shapes the concepts of social reality, originally proposed by George Gerbner and Larry Ross in the Journal of Communication in 1976, has proven that “viewers begin to perceive what is true in the television world as what is true in the real world” (Tanner 8). This means that because sports viewers are constantly subjected to sexualization and minimization of female athletes, they are more likely to think of these athletes as sex objects and unimportant in the world of sports. The same goes for magazines, photo shoot spreads, written commentary, and even radio. Agenda building also has a part in this, as “coverage denotes importance,” therefore the more prominence an athlete or sporting event receives, the more an audience views it as being important (tanner 8). Interestingly, Linda K. Fuller has a different response. In her book, she states that there are three common responses of spectators in sports: females are inferior to males, females are equal with males, and females are superior to males. The first response is clear from the cultivation theory, as well as, in general, from younger males. The second response, that
Guest speaker at USC Annenberg’s Institute of Sports, Media, and Society’s second annual USC Conference on Sports Mary Jo Kane and her team conducted a study where she presented a panel of 4 pictures to various female athletes and asked them a series of questions. The first picture represented athletic competence-- on court, in action image with emphasis on athleticism. The second represented a mixed message—off court, posed image with athletic marker but emphasis placed on femininity. The third image represented sexy/classy lady—off court, posed image with no athletic marker, in fashionable attire. The last and final image represented soft pornography—off court, posed image that emphasizes sexual objectification. Four specific images were shown to each athlete (See Image 2.1) The four questions that each athlete was asked were the