Interrogating inequalities in Sports Media: Examining gender representation in Sports Illustrated

I decided to look at Sports Illustrated and how they incorporate gender into their website and stories. The first thing I noticed when I visited their website is that they are promoting their swim suit magazine. The only women to even appear on the main page are super models in bikinis that are not even athletes. This surprised me because the winter olympics are going on and women are a significant part of the olympics, but there are only women being sexualized through advertisements on this website. In all the photos with men in them, the men are in action and are making "grunt faces" because they are in action. The headlining story is the USA mens hockey team, who plays Canada today. The tabs at the top of the website are also interesting to look at. They are all predominately sports that men play. It is not until you click the tab saying "more" that there are women sports like women's basketball and figure skating. 

Researchers at the University of Louisville found that of 716 Sports Illustrated magazines that came out between 2000 and 2011, 35 of them had women on them. This is only 4.9 percent (Jezebel.com). Sports Illustrated writes:

"Of the 35 covers including a female, only 18 (or 2.5 percent of all covers) featured a female as the primary or sole image. Three covers included females, but only as insets (small boxed image), or as part of a collage background of both male and female athletes" (Jezebel.com).

This is outrageous because women are not even featured as the main story and if so they are only used as models, not real athletes like the men. This has been happening for many many years and it is what our society likes and consumes, unfortunately. 

Citations: http://jezebel.com/sports-illustrated-loves-models-female-athletes-not-s-500138038