Sex appeal – an alternative to talent?

Play-the-game-Magazine-2002.qxd
11-06-2003
11:43
Side 14
Sex appeal
– an alternative to talent?
Sport is big business. In the fight for sponsorship and
media coverage, female athletes are increasingly selling
their sexuality, while the media plays along
By Marlene Jensen
Is
a strong woman an attractive woman? And is a strong woman interesting? The American athlete Marion Jones won five gold medals at the Olympic
Games in Sydney. But even though she
was certainly the most successful female
athlete at the games, she was not the
most photographed. That honour went
to Amy Acuff, the American high jumper and part time model, who won nothing. Amy Acuff has since claimed that
her goal was not so much to win medals,
but to be featured on the cover of Sports
Illustrated. In an interview with the magazine Rolling Stone, she said 'I wanted
to demonstrate that female athletes can
be competitive, ambitious and successful and still retain their feminine qualities.' Acuff's implication appears to be
that competitiveness, drive and success
are not 'natural' female qualities – unlike
the ability to appear half naked in magazines!
Despite never winning a Grand Slam
tournament (she won Australian Open
in double with Martina Hingis in 1999,
though never a title in single!), Anna
Kournikova is the most photographed
sportswoman of modern times. Lindsay
Davenport has achieved this feat on numerous occasions, but for every picture
of Davenport, 20 of Kournikova are
published. A quick search on the Internet reveals the extent of the two players'
respective popularity. While a search on
Lindsay Davenport's name gives 92,100
hits, Anna Kournikova gives 491,000.
»Anna Kournikova's profile is built
around her sexuality,« says Alina Bernstein, an Israeli sociologist and anthropologist based at Leicester University. »It
is her body and her looks that get her attention – not her performances.«
Alina Bernstein, who is the introductory speaker in a debate entitled The
Kournikova Syndrome, believes that to
Play the game 2002
a large extent, Kournikova herself orchestrates the type of media coverage
she is subjected to. This is evident by the
way she poses for the cameras. »Anna
Kournikova is not necessarily a victim
of the media,« she says. »Not only is she
sexy, she is also very powerful. Without
her cooperation, the media would not
have been able to create the image
which she has today.«
Sex symbols
»The media has a huge influence on
sport because an overwhelmingly large
proportion of the public experience
sport through the media,« continues
Bernstein. »Although the media considers itself to be reflecting what is important in sport, it neglects female athletes.
Their underrepresentation gives the impression that they either don't exist or
they are of very little value.« Alina
Bernstein adds that this lack of coverage
is partly to blame for the fact that many
sportswomen have difficulty finding
sponsors.
»Women did beat men at their own
game in the media's coverage of last
year's Wimbledon tennis tournament,«
she continues. »The women's doubles final, for example, attracted more US TV
viewers than the men's singles final'.
However, she adds that this boom in popularity was not caused by a fresh enthusiasm for women's tennis – rather, by
the 'attractiveness' of the female players
on show.
»Appearance is important, but not at
any price,« she adds.
Despite the tendency for women to attract more media coverage as a result,
Bernstein believes that by being portrayed as sex symbols, they are being
symbolically degraded. As one example,
she cites the different methods in which
sports commentators refer to women and
14
Search for Anna Kournikova on one Internet search engine and
you will be presented with 491,000 hits and links to homepages
across the world. You can purchase her pin up calendar, watch
the video she recently made with her new boyfriend Ricky Iglecias
and even be lucky enough to contract a computer virus named
after her. The pop band 'Binge' has a song about Kournikova
currently featuring in the Lycos Top Ten Video chart.
Play-the-game-Magazine-2002.qxd
11-06-2003
11:43
Side 15
“
This initiative is the only of its kind worldwide. It is a very
important project if we want to preserve values in sport
Sandro Donati, Head of Research, CONI, Italy
”
PHOTO: POLFOTO
»Sport has become business
at the highest
level – if you
cannot provide
the right goods
you have to
produce something else to
sell,« says
Gertrud Pfister
from the
University of
Copenhagen
Smart business
woman, seductive
babe or sharp tennis
player? Anna
Kournikova knows
how to win the
media without
any major victories
at the tennis field
Starting
the Day
With Sport
Many Vietnamese workers participate in some form of sporting
activity at four or five o' clock in
the morning. Thúy Há Nguén,
a sports journalist on the English
Language Vietnam News, is no
exception
men. »An investigation showed that women were referred to by their Christian
name 53% of the time. This compared to
just eight percent of men,« she points out.
For Thúy Há Nguén, starting the day with a game of bad-
Beauty for Sale
lack playing partners – her mother, father, brother, neig-
»Beauty is not something we are or we
have – it's something we make or create.
And the media has a powerful role in determining the 'attractiveness' of athletes,«
says Professor Gertrud Pfister of Copenhagen University. »Over half the media's
coverage of sportswomen concerns their
appearance, not their performance.«
Like Alina Bernstein, Gertrud Pfister
believes that the media portrays sportswomen as the vulnerable sex, and that
many women willingly play their part
in the process. To emphasise her point
she shows overhead projections displaying pictures of half-naked women –
amongst them badminton star Camilla
Martin from her photo session for the
cover of men's magazine 'M'. Gertrud
Pfister adds that the female athlete who
poses most in the media was, and still is,
Anna Kournikova.
»Anna Kournikova is for sale,« says
Gertrud Pfister. »On the Internet there is
no limit to what you can buy – Anna
Kournikova books, pin-up calendars,
and much, much more. She has become
the object of collective voyeurism.«
hbours and friends all follow the same routine.
minton is as natural as brushing her teeth. In fact, half an
hour in the badminton court is generally the first thing she
does after finishing her bathroom duties. And she does not
Similar morning schedules exist for many thousands of Vietnamese, who take over Hanoi's parks early in the morning
»Media present
female athletes
as sterotype
sex symbols«
says Alina
Bernstein,
media
researcher
from Tel Aviv
to warm themselves up before starting work. »Exercise is an
excellent start for a long, deskbound working day in front of
the computer,« says Thúy Há Nguén.
Despite the fact that she is a competent badminton
player, she rarely plays in tournaments. The same applies to
tennis, which once in a while replaces badminton as her preferred morning exercise. On the tennis court she plays with
three or four friends – but, as with badminton, they do not
play structured matches. When the points are not counted,
there can be no winners nor losers.
Thúy Há Nguén has previously been a member of a tennis club, but as membership entailed playing matches, her
involvement was short-llived She prefers to play for her own
health and well being.
In fact, sports results only begin to matter when she arrives
at the editorial desk of the Vietnam News in central Hanoi.
Here, she helps to produce four daily pages of results and reports focusing on both national and international sport. Such a
task demands sports journalists are at the peak of their form.
khr
15
Play the game 2002