Page 170 - Sport Culture and the Media

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tennis tournaments on the international circuit gained rather less income
and attention (Evans 2001; Miller 2001; Brookes 2002). A content analysis of
two British tabloid newspapers around Wimbledon fortnight found that female-
related articles/photographs accounted for only 5.9 per cent of total sports
coverage and discourses of masculinity/femininity were highly traditional – which
is to say patriarchal (Harris and Clayton 2002). The study found that Kournikova
appeared in over a third of all coverage of women, two-thirds of which was
outside the immediate context of tennis. These statistics are even more remark-
able given her familiar early exit from the tournament. When sportswomen
explicitly play the role of soft pornographic subject on the covers of sports
magazines, in newspapers, calendars, posters and publicity shots (in Kourniko-
va’s case, no London ‘tube’ traveller could have avoided her lingerie-clad image
during the media-sampled Wimbledon tournament mentioned above), intense
debates quickly ensue. These hinge mostly on traditional feminist condemnations
of sexual objectification as opposed to a more pragmatic and libertarian
approach (some of it postmodern or post-feminist) that emphasizes individual
choice and agency (Davis 1997; Schaffer and Smith 2000b).
Probably the best known example of the overt photographic sexualization of
the sporting female body (perhaps more accurately described as the sexualized
presentation of the female body in a sports-licensed context) has been the
annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue that has secured much attention (much
of it negative) since its first appearance in 1964. Laurel Davis’s (1997) book
length study of the production, meaning and reception of the swimsuit issue
considers the extent to which sport is male dominated and a sports magazine
like Sports Illustrated is a de facto men’s magazine akin to early Esquire and
Playboy. The swimsuit issue sells about 5 million copies compared with its
regular 3.3 million sales, an increase of over 50 per cent and a tenfold increase
on newsstand sales (Davis 1997: 17). It can be safely assumed that this large
‘spike’ in readership is not caused by a short-lived, annual upsurge of interest in
sport. Davis explains its success using Connell’s (1987) concept of ‘hegemonic
masculinity’ (briefly described in Chapter 3), seeing in the swimsuit issue a
malign alliance of consumer capitalism and the reproduction of a range of
power relations:

The problem with Sports Illustrated’s practice of securing a large audience
of men by creating an atmosphere of hegemonic masculinity is that on the
way to the bank it tramples over women, gays/lesbians, people of colour,
and people from the (post)colonialized world. Hegemonic masculinity
itself is defined as the antithesis of these others, and thus is built on the
backs of these others.
(Davis 1997: 120)