Letter Assignment

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