Athletes, Not Objects

“Do you know how to twerk?”

Norweigan soccer player Ada Hegerberg had just become the first woman to win FIFA’s Player of the Year Award, yet this was the question she was asked when she received the award.

Even the most hardworking and prominent female athletes in the sports industry, like Hegerberg, are looked at as objects of sexual desire by their male viewers, rather than the strong athletes they are. Despite advancements through the decades by female sports icons, the public hasn’t yet deemed female athletes “on par” with their male counterparts

From the unnecessarily revealing uniforms to the misogynistic comments, there’s a clear oversexualization of female athletes. And it needs to stop.

The sexualization isn’t only a matter of women athletes being objectified, but viewers use this sexual lens to de-legitimize their athletic ability and assume they’re not “real” players.

The top videos that come up when searching for “women’s football” on Google are from the Legends Football League, previously called the Lingerie Football League, featuring girls playing tackle football in lingerie uniforms instead of the pants, shoulder pads and jerseys men wear. Even with the change in league name, lingerie remains the uniform. 

Women should be able to participate in a sports league for the sake of playing the sport, rather than bringing in an audience of misogynists who only give female sports-players the time of day when their bodies are a focal point, and not the sport itself.

Female athletes like Alex Morgan and Simone Biles go through thousands of hours of practice and intense workouts to become competitive in more professional leagues, but male objectification minimizes their real accomplishments — diminishing these strong athletes to their bodies and potential sex appeal.

Along with minimizing their accomplishments, the sexual comments and generalizations damage their self-esteem and self-worth. They don’t want to be told that their uniform fits them great or compliments their figure out on the field, they want to hear that they bodied the defender or have a nice no-look assist. 

For young girls and teen athletes looking to follow in their role model’s footsteps, seeing that male audiences aren’t judging athletic ability, but physicality, can lead to the development of an unhealthy obsession with body image.

Young female athletes should get to look to the pros who dominate the field and admire their strength and independence without having to wonder if they’ll be seen as talented if they don’t have 6-pack abs or meet a certain weight — pressures added by the longstanding scrutiny placed on female athletes to meet beauty standards. 

Serena Williams is dubbed the most dominant tennis player of this time, yet she constantly receives hate for her “masculine” muscular body type. Her muscles and build shouldn’t be used as a reason to criticize or bring her down — they give her the strength to be one of the top athletes and tennis players in the world, and they should be celebrated.

The hyper-sexualization of female athletes isn’t a problem isolated to professional players in the WNBA or Olympic teams. Groups of students will attend East volleyball games and make comments on the tight spandex of girls’ uniforms. Meanwhile, when cheer and dance teams perform at games, the female performers wear short skirts and crop tops in the cold, while their male company are allowed pants and regular-fitted T-shirts.

Yes, there are cases in which male athletes are oversexualized as well, but no one attempts to delegitimize and diminish their athletic ability or standing as an athlete, or to say that it’s the only reason they’re watching them play the sport. Sure, Chiefs player Travis Kelce’s shirtless gym selfies get tens of thousands of likes, but Kansas City still flocks to see him play on Sundays because of his football abilities, not his body.

Yet when female athletes choose to be sexual, like when Megan Rapinoe did a nude photoshoot with Sports Illustrated, the media criticized her. Male viewers sexualize women for their every action, yet when women choose to display themselves sexually those same male viewers scrutinize and shame them, proving they see the display of body as something for the male gaze, rather than the choice of the woman.

Already, women’s sports receive 1.6% of airtime in sports news television in comparison to men’s 96.3%, according to a study by the Center for Feminist Research at the University of Southern California, and the airtime they do receive is bombarded with coverage highlighting the sexualization of the athletes rather than their skill. 

Comparing the photos from mens’ vs womens’ professional volleyball games reveals a clear difference: the men were photographed from the front to showcase their spiking or passing, while a majority of the women were photographed from behind or bending over before a serve.

In beach volleyball, the uniform for males is athletic shorts and an athletic shirt, while for women it’s similar to a sports bra and bikini bottom. Women’s beach volleyball receives more male viewers over other sports for this reason — they’re sexualized as objects rather than seen as the talented professional athletes they are.

It’s not just in volleyball. In many sports, like tennis or lacrosse, while the men’s teams’ uniforms consist of more loose fitting athletic shorts and shirts — whatever is easiest for them to play well in — women’s teams wear skirts in their uniforms and often more fitted tops while there’s no advantage to wearing skirts over shorts.

These revealing uniforms for women highlight this sexual objectification, often acting as display points while sports photographers overshare and exploit them — only deeming them an athlete to watch if their figure looks good in their uniform or if they can take pictures capturing them as models rather than athletes.

We see it in other forms too — even from coaches and peers. When girls miss a practice, it’s assumed they were too busy “doing their makeup” or “getting their hair done” rather than their completely valid excuses, unspecific to being a woman.

Femininity and athleticism aren’t mutually exclusive, but it’s time to stop treating female athletes like their worth as a competitor only comes from whether they can capture the attraction of male viewers. We need to view female athletes for what they are — strong, smart, resilient girls and women who have worked hard to become the athletes they are.