Monday, July 27, 2009

Comments

My conclusion after comments from the presentation, on the blog and from my own research is, first, not only women are misrepresented. But, no matter what level of athlete or what kind of athlete there will alwys be some kind of comment on your looks or sexiness if you are an female athlete. That is what is why I want to write about womens miss representation. Men are already acknowledge good athletes and it may be a plus for the commentators to acknowledge if he is good lookoing, it is not the base of any coverage like it is whit Sharopova or harkelroad...
Good example:


This video is as the pictures I showed in class focused on the passive movement whereas men considered hot are depicted whit more action shots when they are pursuing their sport. Example:



This video is a tribute to Beckham... showing his ACTUAL playing... Not him in boxers during his famous underwear commercials. The two are held separate unlike Sharopova's case.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Planning ahead

As the presentation is almost done! I now need to get the length and structure on my paper. Preparing for the presentation has helped me figuring out what I want to focus on the most and what my point of view is. I still don't have a solution for the problem though.
The sources I found help me look at the amount of time women and men are represented and also the quality of the representation. Not only have women only 6% of the time on air on big sport channels in the US, the way they are represented is degrading and more focused on their appearance than on their performance.
I am also looking at the way women are represented in Magazines where they are also not valued through their performance, but the readers are shown a down to earth, heterosexual "normal" woman when an athlete is covered. Men, on the other hand, are more often pictured with their result board next to them, saying how fast they are or how many people they tackled or home runs they've made and the report is more often about their actual sport, not about their homey private life as good husbands which is the case of the women.
Furthermore I am looking on a article where they looked at college kids attitudes toward sports. If their attitudes had traditional gender views of sports eventhough they've grown up during the title IX era and they had. So I want to talk about if it is the audience who shape the media or the media shapes the audience.
So I have some different thoughts going on but it all has the same base in women's coverage in sports and I think I can have a good thread running through my essay if I connect them in the right way.

Getting back to the question how I should solve it...
Possible solutions I can think of:
To force equal coverage time between women and men upon sport channels and magazines. But does that conflict with freedom of speech?

A respected award for journalists who makes fare and interesting coverage on women athletes like the Pulitzer prize. Both individually and whole newspaper or TV channel too make it more desirable to cover it. With better coverage the numbers watching will go up too.

Michel Messner, a pioneer in these studies who has been writing and researching hte subject for a long time, suggest in one his articles that what is really takes is a new way of feminism to fight the issue and from people to not accept this kind of coverage. I agree but how would you argue for that and have a possible plan to make that happen?

Sunday, July 12, 2009

My Choice

So after I've looked at articles I find it easier to make a clear thesis and easier to find good resources if I choose females representation in media. My project discusses why the representation of females are both very time limited in comparison to men and also very degrading. Women are often not acknowledge as athletes but instead from the basis of their appearance. While men are covered depending on, goals, tackles and home runs, women's sports are covered if their clothes are short and sexy enough and a good locking female (by that, a not so muscular and intimidating female) are more likely to be covered than a opponent with muscular and other NON socially accepted appearances, even though she might be a better player. If you're a girl and you wanna do sports.. you better work on your model career too it seems like!

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