Sports Illustrated Magazine Analysis

Out of all the magazines that have a huge impact on young female athletes you would think Sports Illustrated and ESPN Body Issue would portray their female athletes better and a little more. These two magazines have continually exposed women in ways not many would agree on. Certain women have been put into passive poses, for example, Olympic skier Lyndsey Vonn, featured on the February 8th, 2010 Sports Illustrated Edition. She was put in what some people called it a “sexually provocative pose”. A male counter part, AJ Kitt was put into a similar pose but his shot was an action shot while hers was a still version. The Body Issue has countlessly positioned females in poses that have no direct correlation to their sport and many wonder why. The
However, there has been an uproar concerning this so called “duty” the Sports Illustrated magazine has. A study done by the Department of Sociology at the University of Louisville found that out of the 716 Regular Sports Illustrated magazines, not the Women’s edition had published only 35 female athletes between 2000 and 2011. That’s 4.9% and that’s is absolutely crazy to think. To add to that, of all the women featured on the front cover of Sports Illustrated Women’s Edition, majority of them are models. Why would models need to be placed on the front cover of a Sports Illustrated Magazine! They have nothing to do with the world of sports. It depicts females and it continues to show the underrepresentation of how females are supposed to look. If one thinks of a model, they think of someone with little body fat percentage and someone who may starve themselves for a
Mass media is one of the most influential agents in society that glorifies the masculinity and muscular image of sports (Jones, Murrell, & Jackson, 1999). Media may not purposefully marginalize or trivialize women’s sports, but there are many evidences documenting that media favored and emphasized men’s sports and masculinity (Cooky, Messner & Hextrum, 2013). If female sports had received any significant media coverage, the representation was often flooded with sexism, racism, homophobia, and ageism (Pye & Stroud, 2011; Fisher, Withycombe, & Prewitt, 2010). It’s unfortunate that as a leading publication with quality journalism, Sports Illustrated hasn’t improved its record and its support on female athletes. They have the opportunity to change the history of women in sports but rather continue to choose models and male athletes as the basis of their