Abstract
Using an experimental methodology, the present study investigated college students’ attitudes toward media images of female athletes. We are particularly focused on how viewers perceive media images of female athletes that have both an appearance and athleticism focus, such as those found in ESPN’s The Body Issue. An aim of our study was to assess viewers’ attitudes toward these images that are not purely objectified, thereby contributing to the objectification literature and providing empirical data relevant to theorizing on the social impact of these images. U.S. college students (n = 563) viewed one of four types of images of the same athletes including: (a) sexualized athletes, (b) sexualized performance athletes (in which both athleticism and sexualization are present), (c) sport performance athletes (in which athletes are depicted playing their sport), or (d) non-sexualized athletes. They then rated the athletes’ competence, esteem, and sexual appeal. Overall, sexualized performance athletes were rated more positively than sexualized athletes, but less positively than sport performance athletes. These results have implications for advocacy efforts calling for more media coverage in which women are depicted as athletes rather than as sexual objects.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
American Psychological Association, Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. (2007). Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pi/wpo/sexualization.html.
Barnett, B. (2017). Girls gone web: Self-depictions of female athletes on personal websites. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 41, 97-123. https://doi.org/10.1177/0196859917691504.
Berinsky, A., Huber, G., & Lenz, G. (2012). Evaluating online labor markets for experimental research: Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk. Political Analysis, 20, 351-368. https://doi.org/10.1093/pan/.
Bissell, K. L., & Duke, A. M. (2007). Bump, set, spike: An analysis of commentary and camera angles of women's beach volleyball during the 2004 summer Olympics. Journal of Promotion Management, 13, 35-53. https://doi.org/10.1300/J057v13n01_04.
Bissell, K., & Smith, L. R. (2013). Let's (not) talk about sex: An analysis of the verbal and visual coverage of women's beach volleyball during the 2008 Olympic Games. Journal of Sports Media, 8, 1-30. https://doi.org/10.1353/jsm.2013.0011.
Brinkman, B. G., & Rickard, K. M. (2009). College students’ descriptions of everyday gender prejudice. Sex Roles, 61, 461-475. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-009-9643-3.
Brooks, C. M. (2001). Using sex appeal as a sport promotion strategy. Women in Sport & Physical Activity Journal, 10, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1123/wspaj.10.1.1.
Bruce, T. (2016). New rules for new times: Sportswomen and media representation in the third wave. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 74, 361-376. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0497-6.
Calogero, R. M., Tantleff-Dunn, S., & Thompson, J. K. (Eds.). (2011). Self-objectification in women: Causes, consequences, and counteractions. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Christie, J. C. (2018). BODY10 press kit. ESPN. Retrieved from https://espnpressroom.com/us/press-releases/2018/06/espn-the-magazines-10th-annual-body-issue-debuts-today-on-espn-com-hits-newsstands-friday/. Accessed 18 March 2020.
Clavio, G., & Eagleman, A. N. (2011). Gender and sexually suggestive images in sports blogs. Journal of Sport Management, 25, 295-304. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsm.25.4.295.
Collins, R. L. (2011). Content analysis of gender roles in media: Where are we now and where should we go? Sex Roles, 64, 290-298. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-010-9929-5.
Cooky, C., Messner, M. A., & Musto, M. (2015). “It’s dude time!” A quarter century of excluding women’s sports in televised news and highlight shows. Communication & Sport, 3, 261-287. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167479515588761.
Cranmer, G. A., Brann, M., & Bowman, N. D. (2014). Male athletes, female aesthetics: The continued ambivalence toward female athletes in ESPN's The Body Issue. International Journal of Sport Communication, 7, 145-165. https://doi.org/10.1123/IJSC.2014-0021.
Cranmer, G. A., Lancaster, A. L., & Harris, T. M. (2016). Shot in black and white: Visualized framing in ESPN’s the body issue. International Journal of Sport Communication, 9, 209-228. https://doi.org/10.1123/IJSC.2015-0126.
Dafferner, M., Campagna, J., & Rodgers, R. F. (2019). Making gains: Hypermuscularity and objectification of male and female Olympic athletes in sports illustrated across 60 years. Body Image, 29, 156-160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2019.04.001.
Daniels, E. A. (2009). Sex objects, athletes, and sexy athletes: How media representations of women athletes can impact adolescent girls and college women. Journal of Adolescent Research, 24, 399-422. https://doi.org/10.1177/0743558409336748.
Daniels, E. A. (2012). Sexy versus strong: What girls and women think of female athletes. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 33, 79-90. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2011.12.002.
Daniels, E. A. (2016). Sexiness on social media: The social costs of using a sexy profile photo. Sexuality, Media, & Society, (October-December), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1177/2374623816683522
Daniels, E. A. (2018). Sport media portrayals of female athletes and the effects of sexualization on girls. In N. M. LaVoi (Ed.), Developing physically active girls: A multidisciplinary evidence-based approach (pp. 177-189). Minneapolis: Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport.
Daniels, E. A., & LaVoi, N. M. (2013). Athletics as solution and problem: Sports participation for girls and the sexualization of women athletes. In E. L. Zurbriggen & T.-A. Roberts (Eds.), The sexualization of girls and girlhood: Causes, consequences, and resistance (pp. 63-83). New York: Oxford University Press.
Daniels, E. A., & Wartena, H. (2011). Athlete or sex symbol: What boys and men think of media representations of female athletes. Sex Roles, 65, 566-579. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-011-9959-7.
Davis, L. R. (1997). The swimsuit issue and sport: Hegemonic masculinity in sports Illustrated. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Downs, E., & Smith, S. L. (2010). Keeping abreast of hypersexuality: A video game character content analysis. Sex Roles, 62, 721-733. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-009-9637-1.
Everbach, T., & Mumah, J. (2014). “They never do this to men”: College women athletes’ responses to sexualized images of professional women athletes. Women in Sport & Physical Activity Journal, 22, 92-99. https://doi.org/10.1123/wspaj.2014-0020.
Fasoli, F., Durante, F., Mari, S., Zogmaister, C., & Volpato, C. (2018). Shades of sexualization: When sexualization becomes sexual objectification. Sex Roles, 78, 338-351. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-017-0808-1.
Fink, J. S. (2015). Female athletes, women's sport, and the sport media commercial complex: Have we really “come a long way, baby”? Sport Management Review, 18, 331-342. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smr.2014.05.001.
Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T. (1997). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21, 173-206. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1997.tb00108.x.
Frisby, C. M. (2017). Sacrificing dignity for publicity: Content analysis of female and male athletes on “Sports Illustrated” and “ESPN the Magazine” covers from 2012-2016. Advances in Journalism and Communication, 5, 120-135. https://doi.org/10.4236/ajc.2017.52007.
Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. (2017). Gender bias in advertising: Research, trends and new visual language. Retrieved from https://seejane.org/research-informs-empowers/gender-bias-advertising/. Accessed 16 Sept 2019.
Gervais, S. J., Bernard, P., Klein, O., & Allen, J. (2013). Toward a unified theory of objectification and dehumanization. In S. J. Gervais (Ed.), Objectification and (de)humanization: 60th Nebraska symposium on motivation (Vol. 60, pp. 1-23). New York: Springer Science + Business Media. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6959-9_1.
Glick, P., Larsen, S., Johnson, C., & Branstiter, H. (2005). Evaluations of sexy women in low- and high-status jobs. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 29, 389-395. https://doi.org/10.1111/pwqu.2005.29.issue-4.
Graff, K., Murnen, S., & Smolak, L. (2012). Too sexualized to be taken seriously? Perceptions of a girl in childlike vs. sexualizing clothing. Sex Roles, 66, 764-775. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-012-0145-3.
Gurung, R. A. R., & Chrouser, C. J. (2007). Predicting objectification: Do provocative clothing and observer characteristics matter? Sex Roles, 57, 91-99. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-53-219-z.
Halverson, H. (2017). The ESPN Body Issue normalizes sexual objectification. HuffPost. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-espn-body-issue-and-the-illusion-of-nudity-based_b_595fa8ade4b08f5c97d06902. Accessed 18 March 2020.
Harrison, L. A., & Secarea, A. M. (2010). College students’ attitudes toward the sexualization of professional women athletes. Journal of Sport Behavior, 33, 403-426.
Heflick, N. A., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2009). Objectifying Sarah Palin: Evidence that objectification causes women to be perceived as less competent and less fully human. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 598-601. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.02.008.
Heflick, N. A., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2014). Seeing eye to body: The literal objectification of women. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23, 225-229. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414531599.
Heflick, N., Goldenberg, J., Cooper, D., & Puvia, E. (2011). From women to objects: Appearance focus, target gender, and perceptions of warmth, morality, and competence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 572-581. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2010.12.020.
Heywood, L., & Dworkin, S. L. (2003). Built to win: The female athlete as cultural icon. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.
Holland, E., Koval, P., Stratemeyer, M., Thomson, F., & Haslam, N. (2017). Sexual objectification in women's daily lives: A smartphone ecological momentary assessment study. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56, 314-333. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12152.
Hull, K., Smith, L. R., & Schmittel, A. (2015). Form or function? An examination of ESPN magazine's “Body Issue”. Visual Communication Quarterly, 22, 106-117. https://doi.org/10.1080/15551393.2015.1042159.
Jerald, M. C., Ward, L. M., Moss, L., Thomas, K., & Fletcher, K. D. (2017). Subordinates, sex objects, or sapphires? Investigating contributions of media use to Black students’ femininity ideologies and stereotypes about Black women. Journal of Black Psychology, 43, 608-635. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095798416665967.
Johnson, V., & Gurung, R. (2011). Defusing the objectification of women by other women: The role of competence. Sex Roles, 65, 177-188. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-011-0006-5.
Kane, M. J., & Maxwell, H. D. (2011). Expanding the boundaries of sport media research: Using critical theory to explore consumer responses to representations of women's sports. Journal of Sport Management, 25, 202-216. https://doi.org/10.1123/jsm.25.3.202.
Kane, M. J., LaVoi, N. M., & Fink, J. S. (2013). Exploring elite female athlete’s interpretations of sport media images: A window into the construction of social identity and “selling sex” in women’s sports. Communication & Sport, 1, 269-298. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167479512473585.
Kim, K., & Sagas, M. (2014). Athletic or sexy? A comparison of female athletes and fashion models in Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues. Gender Issues, 31, 123-141. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-014-9121-2.
Knight, J. L., & Giuliano, T. A. (2001). He’s a Laker; She’s a “looker”: The consequences of gender-stereotypical portrayals of male and female athletes by the print media. Sex Roles, 45, 217-229. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013553811620.
Linder, J. R., & Daniels, E. A. (2018). Sexy vs. sporty: The effects of viewing media images of athletes on self-objectification in college students. Sex Roles, 78, 27-39. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-017-0774-7.
Loughnan, S., & Pacilli, M. G. (2014). Seeing (and treating) others as sexual objects: Toward a more complete mapping of sexual objectification. TPM-Testing, Psychometrics, Methodology in Applied Psychology, 21, 309-325. https://doi.org/10.4473/TPM21.3.6.
Loughnan, S., Haslam, N., Murnane, T., Vaes, J., Reynolds, C., & Suitner, C. (2010). Objectification leads to depersonalization: The denial of mind and moral concern to objectified others. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 709-717. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.755.
McCabe, J., Fairchild, E., Grauerholz, L., Pescosolido, B. A., & Tope, D. (2011). Gender in twentieth-century children’s books: Patterns of disparity in titles and central characters. Gender & Society, 25, 197-226. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243211398358.
Moradi, B. (2011). Objectification theory: Areas of promise and refinement. The Counseling Psychologist, 39, 153-163. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000010384279.
Moradi, B., & Huang, Y. (2008). Objectification theory and psychology of women: A decade of advances and future directions. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 32, 377-398. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2008.00452.x.
Musto, M., Cooky, C., & Messner, M. A. (2017). “From fizzle to sizzle!”: Televised sports news and the production of gender-bland sexism. Gender & Society, 31, 573-596. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243217726056.
Nezlek, J. B., Krohn, W., Wilson, D., & Maruskin, L. (2015). Gender differences in reactions to the sexualization of athletes. Journal of Social Psychology, 155, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2014.959883.
Roberts, T.-A., Calogero, R. M., & Gervais, S. J. (2018). Objectification theory: Continuing contributions to feminist psychology. In C. B. Travis & J. W. White (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of women: History, theory, and battlegrounds (Vol. 1, pp. 249-271). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Romney, M., & Johnson, R. G. (2019). The ball game is for the boys: The visual framing of female athletes on national sports networks’ Instagram account. Communication & Sport. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167479519836731.
Sailors, P. R., Teetzel, S., & Weaving, C. (2012). No net gain: A critique of media representations of women's Olympic beach volleyball. Feminist Media Studies, 12, 468-472. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2012.698093.
Schooler, D. (2015). The woman next to me: Pairing powerful and objectifying representations of women. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 15, 198-212. https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12070.
Shaffer, J. P. (1995). Multiple hypothesis testing. Annual Review of Psychology, 46, 561-584. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ps.46.020195.003021.
Sherry, E., Osborne, A., & Nicholson, M. (2016). Images of sports women: A review. Sex Roles, 74, 299-309. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0493-x.
Smallwood, R. R., Brown, N. A., & Billings, A. C. (2014). Female bodies on display: Attitudes regarding female athlete photos in Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue and ESPN: The Magazine’s Body Issue. Journal of Sports Media, 9, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1353/jsm.2014.0005.
Smith, L. R., & Sanderson, J. (2015). I’m going to Instagram it!: An analysis of athlete self-presentation on Instagram. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 59, 342-358. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2015.1029125.
Smith, S. L., Choueiti, M., Prescott, A., & Pieper, K. (2012). Gender roles & occupations: A look at character attributes and job-related aspirations in film and television. Retrieved from https://seejane.org/wp-content/uploads/key-findings-gender-roles-2013.pdf. Accessed 16 Sept 2019.
Swim, J. K., Hyers, L. L., Cohen, L. L., & Ferguson, M. J. (2001). Everyday sexism: Evidence for its incidence, nature, and psychological impact from three daily diary studies. The Journal of Social Issues, 57, 31-53. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.0020.
Szymanski, D. M., Carr, E. R., & Moffitt, L. B. (2011). Sexual objectification of women: Clinical implications and training considerations. The Counseling Psychologist, 39, 107-126. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000010378450.
Tolman, D. L. (2013). It’s bad for us too: How the sexualization of girls impacts the sexuality of boys, men, and women. In E. L. Zurbriggen & T.-A. Roberts (Eds.), The sexualization of girls and girlhood: Causes, consequences, and resistance (pp. 84-106). New York: Oxford University Press.
Ward, L. M. (2016). Media and sexualization: State of empirical research, 1995-2015. The Journal of Sex Research (Annual Review of Sex Research), 53, 560-577. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2016.1142496.
Ward, L. M., & Aubrey, J. S. (2017). Watching gender: How stereotypes in movies and on TV impact kids’ development. San Francisco: Common Sense Media.
Wasike, B. (2017). Jocks versus jockettes: An analysis of the visual portrayal of male and female cover models on sports magazines. Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884917716818
Weaving, C., & Samson, J. (2018). The naked truth: Disability, sexual objectification, and the ESPN Body Issue. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 45, 83-100. https://doi.org/10.1080/00948705.2018.1427592.
Weber, J. D., & Carini, R. M. (2013). Where are the female athletes in Sports Illustrated? A content analysis of covers (2000-2011). International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 48, 196-203. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690211434230.
Wirtz, J. G., Sparks, J. V., & Zimbres, T. M. (2018). The effect of exposure to sexual appeals in advertisements on memory, attitude, and purchase intention: A meta-analytic review. International Journal of Advertising, 37, 168-198. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2017.1334996.
Wookey, M., Graves, N., & Butler, J. C. (2009). Effects of a sexy appearance on perceived competence of women. Journal of Social Psychology, 149, 116-118. https://doi.org/10.3200/SOCP.149.1.116-118.
Wright, K. B. (2005). Researching internet-based populations: Advantages and disadvantages of online survey research, online questionnaire authoring software packages, and web survey services. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(3), Article JCMC1034. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2005.tb00259.x.
Acknowledgements
We thank Kylie Lousberg for her invaluable work on this project, including her help with the experimental stimuli and data collection. An earlier version of this project was presented at the 2018 Gender Development Research Conference, San Francisco, CA.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
The study was approved by the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs’ Institutional Review Board to ensure that ethical standards were followed. Specifically, before agreeing to participate in the study, participants were informed of their rights as research participants including the right to withdraw from the study at any time with no penalty and to skip any survey questions they preferred not to answer.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Daniels, E.A., Hood, A., LaVoi, N.M. et al. Sexualized and Athletic: Viewers’ Attitudes toward Sexualized Performance Images of Female Athletes. Sex Roles 84, 112–124 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-020-01152-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-020-01152-y