To Whom It May Concern,
My name is Abbie Christiansen. I
am currently an undergraduate student studying Human Development in Provo, Utah
at Brigham Young University. This semester I am enrolled in a Media, Family and
Human Development course as part of the curriculum for my major. The semester
is coming to an end, but in this class we have learned about all kinds of media
ranging from literature to music to movies, and how they affect us and in turn
how they can affect the family unit. This course has been very eye opening and
brings into perspective just how much we use the media, especially in America,
without even realizing it.
As part of our curriculum we
discussed magazines and this magazine, Sports Illustrated, obviously came up
specifically. There are not many magazines that are still circulated strongly
or well-known because of new forms of media, but Sports Illustrated is one that
has lasted. My family personally is a big sports family. I have grown up my
whole life loving to play and watch sports. We do have a subscription to your
magazine and for the most part I find it enjoyable, entertaining and informative.
There
are however, some major concerns regarding your magazine. These relate directly
to women. In a study done by Fink & Kensicki in 2002, “An imperceptible
difference: visual and textual constructions of femininity in Sports Illustrated
and Sports Illustrated for Women,” they found some shocking statistics of
photos in your magazine, Sports Illustrated. They found that only 10% of total
photos in the magazine were of female athletes. Of this 10%, 34% were female
athletes in action and 55% were of female athletes in non-sport settings.
Finally, 5% of these photos were sexually
suggestive/pornographic. Those statistics are only out of the 10% of the total
photos, where males dominate the other 90%. Males are shown in action in 66% of
the photos, 23% in non-sport settings and 0% in sexually suggestive/pornographic
photos.
This shows that there are still
huge stereotypes in portrayals of women in athletics. First, that they even get
any attention at all and secondly that their attention is pointed somewhere beside
their athletic ability. This is true in many forms of media. Many smart, successful
women are belittled and seen only for their sense of fashion or how their body
type and shape. This is sadly true of women in your magazine as well, not only
of the swimsuit models, but of strong, talented athletic women. They are
sexualized instead of truly realized for their talent.
Obviously the swimsuit issue of
Sports Illustrated is the best example of sexualizing and stereotyping women.
While I would love for it to happen, I am not suggesting you total ban the
swimsuit issue. I know, unfortunately and grotesquely, that it has become part
of our culture. I know there would be great uproar over the matter, but I do
think there are other ways to better demonstrate female athletes in other
issues. If there is an issue dedicated purely to the sexualizing of women, why
not an entire issue dedicated to women as athletes and their accomplishments as
such? There needs to be more representation of women in your magazine, and that
needs to be positive representation. There have been many improvements in the
way of giving women a voice, but that voice is still skewed and misrepresented.
Please, do what you can to help this issue and give women more and increasingly
positive portrayals and advertisements.
Sincerely,
Abbie Christiansen
