Women in Sports

Now that women playing sports is more accepted, the media portrays women in these sports in various ways. If you watch your local news station they have a sports section, but they usually do not say much about women’s sports. They occasionally say how well the Fever, Indianapolis’s women’s basketball team, played or their season record. They do not get as much media attention as they should. On the contrary, Danica Patrick receives extreme amounts of attention. When I googled Danica, she was in numerous pictures that you might see in Maxim or other similar magazines. She’s usually publicized as being sexy, yet this has nothing to do with her racing abilities. Another example of a famous women’s athlete is Maria Sharapova. She is one of the top women’s tennis players, and her sexiness is also played up in the media. She has numerous commercials and picture adds that have her with tennis accessories but she is in a sexy pose or playing with the camera.
Women’s sports do not receive as much media attention as they should, but I understand why they do not as well. I never watch women’s basketball because I find it extremely boring, along with tennis, and women’s hockey. The media does not want to put sports on air if no one is going to watch it. If they put a women’s basketball game on at prime time when a men’s team was playing many viewers would be aggravated and in turn the station would lose ratings. The media is not being sexist against female athletes, they just need to keep their ratings up. As for playing up the sexual image of female athletes, it helps to gain more viewers’ attention to women’s sports when they are physically attractive.