Interrogating Inequalities in Sports Media: Examining Gender Representation in ESPN Magazine Covers

I examined ESPN Magazine's covers for the year of 2012. I chose this year because this was the year my dad and I had free subscriptions to the magazine, and I definitely did not notice or care about the gender representation on the covers whenever we received them in the mail. During the 2012 year, ESPN Magazine had 29 different covers total. I went through all of them and counted how many men and women were deemed worthy of being on the cover of the magazine. Some covers featured more than one person, with one cover featuring eight people total. After going through all the covers, this is what I found:

- A combined total of 40 men were featured on ESPN Magazine covers in 2012.
- 10 women were on the cover.

Also:

- Most men were photographed with the no-smile intense game face, and if they did not have the intense look, they were featured with another man and both were smiling.
- Three of the women featured were on the cover basically naked, for ESPN Magazine's "The Body Issue"
- All women except one were on the covers with big smiles on their faces.

Just by looking at these simple observations, it already seems like the ESPN Magazine covers reflect what we value in American society. We value male athletes much more than female athletes. The men on the covers of 2012 were mostly portrayed with intense, masculine looks on their faces. Men were featured as individuals and as well as with members of their own team or other teams (there was one cover that had eight members of a football team, and various covers featuring pairs of athletes: Jeremy Lin and James Harden, Lebron and Carmelo). Many of the females that made it onto the cover were placed in "supporting" athletic roles. Five of the women featured were cheerleaders surrounding a basketball player, and one woman was on the cover not as an athlete, but she had on a cleavage-baring shirt and her arms were wrapped around a baseball player. Not only does American society promote a higher value on male athletes, but it also places and portrays females as only worthy of being "support" to male-dominated sports and male athletes.

The time where ESPN Magazine put the most women on their covers was during their "The Body Issue" series, where they had covers with naked athletes on them. They did feature naked male athletes, but 30% of the women featured on covers during 2012 were featured during these issues. For two of these shots, the sport that the female athlete played was not even mentioned or pictured on the cover (for the other one, she was shown holding a basketball). Even when female athletes were selected to be on the covers, they were selected for their bodies, not for their great athletic ability. For a male to land a spot on the cover, he just has to be a great athlete. But for the females, it seems like they have to be aesthetically pleasing as well.

Not only is the coverage between athletes of both genders unequal, but the reasons and ways the females were portrayed on the covers of 2012 convey that women have greater value in society when they are beautiful and have great bodies, and that seems to be worth more than their athletic ability. There was one cover that stood out however: ESPN featured NASCAR racer Danika Patrick, fully clothed, with an intense game-face look on. She is the only female portrayed this way that year. I read the cover, and the main idea discussed in this issue of the magazine was "what we talk about when we talk about women in sports," and in this issue of ESPN Magazine, the "underpaid, second class" status of female athletes is discussed. The cover labels Danika as "strong, sexy, smart, fierce." An article explains the phenomenon that we talk about women in sports in an unequal way when compared to male athletes, but I find this ironic because the cover choices that ESPN had that year definitely do not reflect their efforts to be more inclusive towards female athletes. Even the magazine that discusses this issue falls into the trap of being a participant.

I believe that when male athletes are portrayed as intense-looking, with their game face on and their sporting equipment in their hands (whether it's a football, baseball bat, a basketball, etc), it conveys a serious atmosphere: these athletes look very serious and look like they take their sports very seriously, so therefore we should also take them seriously. The women however, were on the covers naked, or scandalously clothed, and always smiling and laughing. This reflects the less serious nature of how we see women in sports. The only woman not featured in this way was on the cover because this was the exact issue being discussed. This shows that society definitely acknowledges that there is some disconnect and equality in regards to gender, but we do not feel the need to change this.

ESPN The Magazine 2012 Covers. (2012, May 19). http://espn.go.com/espn/photos/gallery/_/id/9170047/image/5/espn-magazine-2012-covers-espn. magazine-2012-covers Retrieved October 9, 2014.