Why are female athletes portrayed as sex objects and what
has it lead to? This portrayal of female athlete as sex objects has proven to
increase the marketability of women in sports but takes away the performances of
the women as elite athletes.
Swimmer Jenny
Thompson and Volleyball player Gabrielle Reece are two women athletes who have
posed nude for playboy. Many young girls who look up to these athletes and
admire them can get the wrong idea of what it is to be an accomplished female
elite athlete. Young girls might think that the only women who can succeed as
an athlete is those women who portray the ideal feminine athleticism or
represent society traditional notions of women role in sport as passive,
non-competitive, weak and emotional (Griffen 1998).
Image of Gabrielle Reece in playboy.
Daniels & Wartena (2011) have found that adolescent boys are responding to these media campaigns by objectifying female athletes, and in turn resulted in the involvement from adolescent girls in school sport dropping significantly. Much research has been demonstrated on younger adolescent girls who view elite athletic women as role models. However, they also are aware of the objectification present in a sexualized way in which the athletes are portrayed (Daniels, 2009). Because they are pushed between the pressures of having an athletic body, but are also made to be self-conscious when playing sport, this leads to girls to monitor their own bodies by developing disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia (Daniels, 2009). Strategies need to put into place to restrict and monitor the advertisements being produced in the media to reduce this and add value.
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