Sunday, October 16, 2011

Sports and the gendered bodies: Google search

There is not exactly one picture that captures the gendered bodies idea so I'm going to post a few pictures and explain my process behind this idea. First off I did a general sports image search in google and it came up with icons but if people were in the pictures it was mostly basketball teams or male sport teams. Then I typed in women in sports and got this image...


I don't know where she plays sports or who she is... but it doesn't look like she is playing a sport at least not in this picture. Then I google'd men in sports and got this image...(and may I add that there were still girls in bikins on this page)
I got a quarterback, and a bunch of sports apparel, so a lot of less nude women. I then decided to go one step further in my search and looked for specific people. I searched Danica Patrick (Women NASCAR driver)
Well she is near a car.... but I don't think they drive in that kind of apparel. Basically all of her pictures were something like this. Then I searched a male figure, Aaron Rodgers (Quarterback of the Superbowl champions, the Green Bay Packers)
All of his pictures were like this.
Gender bodies; the males are all "strong bodies" and women are pretty much all shown as dainty "weak bodies" not that the women's bodies aren't strong and in shape but they are inferior to men bodies; to make a more general statement, men sports are better then women's. All of the male photos are action photos, they are doing their sport in uniform and have an aggressive look on their face. While the women are in sexy poses and the least amount of clothing. I can make a lot of connections from this, one really important one is something we repeatedly talk about it class, women are always portrayed as sexual objects, in the Adam and Eve picture Robin showed in class the women (Eve) who was painted as a taunting sexual object while the man (Adam) seeks her. That is interesting because in the painting it seems as if the women (in my opinion) has more leverage, she is the one with the power here; however, current day the objects (women) are looked down upon and have a lack of power. Stuart Hall states "The use of classification as a system of power... via gender... assumption that you can predict whole ranges of behavior, opportunities and aspirations." While we as a culture classify what is a strong and weak body we also set stereotypes and standards for athletes men and women alike. Our culture still adds to a gender barrier dating back to Adam and Eve, women are inferior. The politics behind this give men the upper-hand everywhere, not just sports. Our culture still faces gender discrimination, the signifier, men signifies strength, power, wealth whereas women on the other hand signify sexuality, need for men, innocence and weakness. I've found from this google search that our culture really views men in a more respectable manner, (not that you can't find pictures of half-naked or completely naked men) women are shown more often in a sexual manner then men.

1 comment:

  1. What I found most interesting is the approach you took for your post. Simply searching for certain pictures to see what pops up is a perfect way to see history just repeats itself. I agree and it is sad to say that women are still inferior to men and generally women will be looked at in a sexual manner first and then possibly can be taken seriously but a part of me feels as though this problem is something that is continually reinforced and not much has been done to revert it. As soon as we come to a point when women do not feel obliged to dress up, put make up, walk daintily and act inferior to men then we might find a change in our culture to seem more possible.

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