Images of Women in Sports

Images of Women in Sports

There is, of course, a huge difference between the ways women are typically supposed to act and what is expected from a typical athlete. Whereas women are expected to comply to their gender role prescribing passivity and compliance, athletes are connoted with an aggressive, competitive nature. Furthermore, society trains women to be ashamed of their bodies and supplies an unrealistic ideal body type and encourages restricting feminine clothing, whereas athletes must have a keen understanding and appreciation of their bodies. In this way, athletes are implicitly coded as male. Though women and men can both be great athletes, of course, gender roles limit the social image and expectations for individuals based on their sex. It is culturally impossible for a woman to be considered both fully athletic and fully feminine – or, in the words of a Bend It Like Beckham character – "There's a reason why Sporty Spice is the only one without a fella!" This is particularly problematic for films portraying women in sports. Mainstream cinema tends to glamorize women and portray them in ways that comply with their gender role. To at the same time depict them as athletic presents conflicts with their filmic image. As a result, films which feature a female athlete tend to compromise her athletic image and apologize for her gender-nonconformity and participation in sports in a variety of ways.

In all of the narrative films we watched for class that featured women in sports – Bend It Like Beckham, Girlfight, and Love and Basketball – there was a very clear heterosexual love interest interwoven for every female athlete. Though I am not purporting that straight women cannot be athletes or that they are compromising the...

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...ve in Diana's worth as a boxer. The images of both of these men is significant to the film's meaning. Neither of these men are at their peak, and clearly stand at a disadvantage to other, more ideal, athletic men they are surrounded by. They are, in effect, de-masculinized. This, perhaps, is their excuse for coaching women, and is has powerful meaning in terms of the theme of women in sports.

None of these devices were present in the film we watched featuring male athletes, Remember the Titans. Indeed, apologies are not necessary in a film that portrays men in sports – they are already being quite masculine and in accordance with their gender role simply by being an athlete. Women in sports, on the other hand, are immediately questionable due to their activities. They have to prove their inherent femininity, exactly because they are entering a male-defined field.