But, the female athletes involved in sports like weightlifting are overlooked regardless of their skill level. The rising commercial value of these athletes is being used to associate them to consumer brands, thus sanctioning them better economic status.
are highly objectified for their physical appearance. It is significant to note that the female athletes practicing traditional female sports like figure skating, gymnastic, swimming etc. This idea of the appeasement of the male gaze further categorises women athletes into “ appealing” or “ not appealing”, where falling into the first category gives them more media coverage but not for the right reasons. The media provides the male conscience with what is wanted or rather expected : beautifully proportionate and conditioned bodies posing in erotic ways. Therefore, the media tends to accentuate the aspects of their “ femaleness”, and target men as their audience. Even within this limited coverage, women are often objectified and the media tends to represent female athletes as women first and athletes second, since for women, being an athlete contradicts the conventional female gender role. Though the number of female participants in sports is substantial, women’s sports receive very little attention out of all sports coverage. Despite their ever-growing participation in recent times, the ratio of the media coverage of women compared to that of men is disproportionate.
This ‘ men’s world’ of sports, has a history of discrimination against women, where under the banner of “ frailty”, women were denied participation and were confined to the status of “ applauders” for the male athletes. The world of sports has been, for the most part, associated with male participation and the ideologies of power, masculinity and aggression.
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