Essay On Sexism In Sports

In the article “ Sure, These Women Are Winning Olympic Medals, but Are They Single?” Katie Rogers discusses the sexist gestures that are constantly made towards women that are competing in the Olympic Games. According to Rogers, men and women are treated very differently in the media. Men are praised for being the “fastest” or the “biggest”, while a women's athletic ability is overlooked with discussions about their marital status or age. While I do believe that sexism exist, I also think that that it can be easily misconscrewed as something it is not.
To begin, during the most recent Olympic Games in Rio there was a headline made that angered people. In Rogers article she briefly mentioned this occurrence by stating, “When Corey Cogdell-Unrein
Roger’s capitalized on this by mentioning that, “ a headline by The Bryan- College Station Eagle, a local newspaper,...made a silver medal victory by Michael Phelps the top headline of its Sports section, with a subheading about a world record set by Ledecky.” Once again, this seems more like a ploy to get people to buy their newspaper than an act to try to undermine woman. By using Phelps as their headline, they are much more likely to get people to talk then if they were to put Ledecky’s name in big letters. I mean we are talking about a person who has been the most highlighted and anticipated athlete at every Olympics he has been too. Not only that, but I think it is worth noting that he is also the most decorated Olympian of all time, opposed to an athlete who is just getting their start. At the end of the day, newspapers are dying and they are willing to do and say anything that is going to catch people’s
For example, news outlets are much more concerned with gathering revenue then they are attacking women. They also tend to use household names (regardless of their gender) as a ploy to gain more traffic to their website. Not only that, but the news is more likely to a capitalize on the higher ranking times to peak an audience’s interest. Lastly, making an erroneous comment, does not make someone a sexist. I think this types of things are important to address, because it is situations like these that take away from the actual sexist remarks that are made towards women and it makes others a lot less likely to take the real issues as