It continues: Sexualization of Women in Sport

Another year, another Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. 

Another female athlete sexualized.

This year, Naomi Osaka is featured as the cover model. Osaka is a 4-time world majors tennis champion and a recent advocate for athletic mental health, as she dealt with the stress of high-level athletics and fame publically. 

I’m just going to raise my hand and say, “I don’t get it.” 

I don’t believe posing in passive and objectified ways is truly the honor we sell to our female athletes and, in turn, to the young men and women who admire them. 

When women reach the pinnacle of sport, they are offered a glamor shoot. They are presented with the opportunity to appear in images that do nothing to credit their talent, but objectify their bodies for the heterosexual male gaze. 

This misogynistic phenomenon is the message we give to our girls: appearance is greater than accomplishment. Climb the mountain, fight like hell, win against the odds, and we, as a society, will recognize you for your body. Your talents, efforts, work, and skill are second to your appearance. This is the sexualization of women in sport.

Objectification has always been a poorly disguised consolation prize for what our male athletes receive: to be represented by their abilities, thoughts, and actions.

To pretend that objectification is an honor, especially by a publication with a long-standing history of representing female athletes in passive, non-athletic and suggestive ways, is to gaslight our female athletes and ourselves.

While women have the right to show their bodies at their discretion, objectification is so glamorized that this path is sold to women under the false pretense of empowerment, when it’s really about other people using her body for profit. 

With our societal emphasis placed on female appearance, a revealing cover seems more like a prioritized marketing stop that coincides with the rise of our most talented and game-changing female athletes. What if we just … skipped that step? Would it alter or lessen her impact? If the answer is yes, there in lies the poison we’re feeding ourselves and our young athletes. 

The impact of it all comes down to the young men and women who admire these athletes and see these images normalized, leading to self-objectification. 

While the theme of Osaka’s swimsuit edition is packaged as the “Opening Eyes, Speaking Truths, and Changing Minds” issue, I fail to understand how objectifying her body is the best way to recognize her barrier-breaking accomplishments. 

I want to be clear that Osaka has done nothing wrong by posing for this magazine. The existence of the swimsuit edition, and the normalization of its mistreatment of female athletes, is the problem. This publication does not applaud the athleticism of the country’s best female athletes, but gazes at them with the same narrow view as presented in past swimsuit editions that don’t feature athletes, but rather models. It’s the same treatment to create the same images for the same audience.  It’s so unoriginal that it seems like it can’t still be happening, but the cycle continues.

So, I’m keeping my hand raised and will continue to say “not this” to the sexualization of women in sport.