Essay On Female Athletes

Are elite female athletes recognised for their ability or sexuality?

Women have traditionally been considered as fragile and unable to perform the tasks that a man could. Understanding this, women were never considered to be apart of sports or activities that may involve the two qualities strength, stamina. A number of studies (Harris, 2005; Messner, Duncan & Jenson, 1993; Vincent, 2004; Rowe and Brown, 1994) discovered that in relation to female athletes most media coverage was for their looks rather than their athletic ability and skills. However the men were evaluated on the skill of the sport while women became the object to observe. Compared to the pictures taken of men and women, the men’s pose’s were more athletic were as the women’s picture would be focused on a sexual pose. As an example of this in 2007 the members of the Australian women’s world cup soccer team posed naked for a men’s magazine and in 2011 the German national soccer world cup women’s team posed naked in playboy, both teams stated that they

According to the NCAA, female athletes are more likely to develop eating disorders than male athletes. Athletes are supposed to watch what they eat and have a strict diet and fitness scheduled because they have to fit the image of the fit beautiful women. Athletes must deal with “competitive thinness” issues and tend to make unhealthy body comparisons in both the sport and societal environments (Thompson & Sherman, 2010). With female athletes uniforms being the way they are, their bodies are on display for the crowd and media which means they are constantly being judged by others and themselves as well as being compared to the other athletes who may not even have the same body types. How is it fair that both male and female perform the same sport but because male sports is more popular the females have to strip