Redirecting the Gaze

I read an interesting post on the Sports, Media & Society blog that began by talking about the positive coverage of the women's NCAA tournament game between the UCONN Huskies and the Baylor Bears. A story about the game even grabbed a headline spot on CNN's mobile page. Apparently near the end of this CNN story there was a quote from a UCONN player commenting on the enormous size of 6'8" Baylor center Brittney Griner. The quote was out of place and held no real meaning to the basis of the story. It is for this reason that the blog post related this comment about Griner to the never-ending saga of female athletes' images in the media.

Generally, in the media, female athletes are viewed in very different ways than male athletes. The media often will focus on the looks of female athletes, especially off the court/playing field where women can be shown wearing revealing dresses, tight workout clothes, or even with their children. All of these visuals create the idea of femininity. It's this idea that our society has that women must fit into several categories at once. Sure they can be athletes, but they still have to be sexy too. And they better still want to have a family, otherwise it is unnatural. Our society along with the sport media is still plagued by these ideas.

These ideas of what a woman should be and how we look at them got me thinking back to the Messner reading. In his writing Messner talked about his experiences watching children interact and discover the differences between what it means to be a boy and girl. So if the media expects women to be all these things (strong, sexy, motherly), it must mean that these attitudes are learned and adopted by women at some point. Although I suspect it is not necessarily at one single point in time, but rather a gradual "learning" process throughout the adolescence of young girls. Through the media, as well as the actions and experiences of adults around them, many girls today are subconsciously taught that they must fit these molds if they want to be accepted. There are many negative effects to this way of thinking, too many to go on about, but specifically this way we have of looking at women as female first and athlete second is almost sickening. The media will overlook a female athlete's accomplishments to dehumanize them and force them to become nothing more than a body. Hopefully one day things will change and players like Brittney Griner can be recognized more for their athletic achievements than their aesthetic appeal.