With the recent buzz of the United States women's national soccer team's 5-2 victory over Japan in the 2015 FIFA women's world cup over the summer, our nation has a front row seat to which can be a monumental change for women's athletics all over the country.  There is no doubt that millions of viewers were watching the championship rematch between the United Sates and Japan as Carli Lloyd clinched a hat trick, as well as scoring on a 50-yard shot, not to mention the overall strength and ability that the teamed showed.  This win opened the field to opportunities for soccer and women's athletics as a whole.  These increasing opportunities have the ability to greatly benefit women and girls.  According to "The Radical Potential of Women in Sports," an article written by Sena Christian, girls and women who participate in sports have been "shown to derive psychological, physiological and sociological benefits from their participation in sports" (26).  These benefits include higher levels of confidence and self-esteem, lower levels of depression, and a more positive body image according to the Women's Sports Foundation (26).  Along with those benefits, high school girls who participate in sports are less likely to have unwanted pregnancy, more likely to obtain better grades, and are more likely to graduate (26).  By participating in sports, girls learn that they have the ability to be strong and empowered, but it was not always like this.

Since the passage of Title IX in 1972, the number of girls and women participating in sports has increased (Christian 26).  Title IX of the United States Education Amendments of 1972 states that "no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance" (Barra 20).  In Allen Barra's article "Women Win Big with Title IX," Linda Jean Carpenter and R. Vivian Ascota, professors emerita at Brooklyn College, study the impact of Title IX on female athletes and women's sports (20).  Carpenter and Ascota note that in 1970, colleges under the National Collegiate Athletic Association offered, on average, fewer then three women's sports and had a total of 16,000 female intercollegiate athletes (20).  By 2014, the average had risen to 8.8 women's sports teams per school and more than 200,000 female participants (20).  Not only has there been an increase in intercollegiate female athletes, but also in the public school systems.  The number of high school girls participating in sports has risen from under 300,000 to 3.2 million from 1971 to 2011.  These increases have caused a ripple effect, "pushing more and better female athletes to college teams, which are in turn raising the talent level on U.S. national teams competing with the world's best" (20).  However, as more female athletes are pushed into the light of college sports and national teams, media can take over and diminish their ability on the court.  Media corrupts women's sports and female athletes through their lack of coverage and sexualization.

In current events, March Madness is by far one of the most exciting months for college athletes and students across the nation.  With the low ranked team beating the high ranked team to clinch an upset, the buzzer beater shot to win the game, and the students section going nuts after a Sports Center top 10 worthy dunk, the overall media coverage increases during this holiday that is March Madness.  However, there has been a noticeable lack of women's NCAA tournament coverage compared to men's.  Margaret Sullivan describes this imbalance that has been a problem for years in her article, "As NCAA Basketball Dominates Times Sports Section, What About the Women's Game?"  Pamela Seidenmen wrote to Times to describe her disappointment in women's coverage, as she states that on the sports page the top five articles were about the men's tournament, while there was a single article that summed up many games of the women's tournament in as little as 70 words (Sullivan).  There is no doubt that there is an immense amount of interest in the men's tournament compared to the women's.  Sullivan asked deputy sports editor, Sam Dolnick, to respond and he stated that "if our jobs is in large to gauge newsworthiness, then it wouldn't make sense to allocate the same resources to both tournaments" (Sullivan).  He goes on to further explain that "the NCAA tournament shouldn't be used as a barometer for our interest in women's sports in general," as there have been multiple times when the Times has covered women's tennis, the women's world cup, women's figure skating, and women's gymnastics (Sullivan).  However, if newsworthiness corresponds to interest, an increase and intense coverage of sports is one of the reasons that it is so popular to the public.  If the public begin to watch one more women's game than they already do, popularity will slowly increase, creating this "newsworthy" effect.  Not only is there a lack of media coverage in this current event, but there is an overall lack of coverage in magazines, social media, and television.

The lack of media coverage of women's sports can have an impact on girls and young women who participate in sports from grade school all the way up to professional sports.  According to Michael B. Salwen and Natalie Wood in their article, "Depictions of Female Athletes on Sports Illustrated Covers," news and magazine editors believe that sports new is more of interest to male readers, resulting in a neglect towards women's sports (Salwen, Wood).  In a study conducted by Salwen and Wood, a series of covers of Sports Illustrated were examined during four three-year intervals.  An immediate trend was seen as over the three decades only 4.4 percent of the covers featured a female athlete (Salwen, Wood).  Not only was this trend seen in news and magazines, but as in television airtime.  In "Dropping the Ball on Covering Women's Sports," Michael Messner found that airtime devoted to the feats of women athletes in 1999 went from a high of 9 percent to 1.6 percent in 2009 (Messner).  Messner also found that the popular "SportsCenter" was no different and less male-dominate as just 1.4 percent of its airtime was devoted to women's sports (Messner).  Messner states that, "for the millions of daughters and young women [professional or not] who spend hours participating and playing their sport  --  not to mention the millions of parents who schlep them to and from practice and attend their games  --  this hardly constitutes respect for, let alone validation of, their athletic ability" (Messner).  Their ability and success is being overshadowed by the immense amount of attention that is directed towards male athletes and men's sports.  Even when they do get their time in the light, female athletes are often sexualized.

We have all heard the term "sex sells."  This trend proven to be true as Christia S. Brown discusses in her article "The Body "Issue"."  Instead of female athletes being recognized for their strength and athletic ability, they are often portrayed in a sexual way as seen in various magazines.  Brown discusses that they are in fact, rarely shown in an active state, participating in their sport (Brown).  In a recent study, Elizabeth Daniels, assistant professor of developmental psychology at Oregon State University, showed college-aged girls pictures of female athletes wearing bathing suits, pictures of performance athletes, and non-athletes (Brown).  Daniels discovered that "when girls saw female athletes engaged in their sport, they described their own bodies in terms of their physical abilities (such as "I am strong") instead of just their appearance," while the sexualized pictures of the female athletes created a negative body image towards their own appearance (Brown).  This wide spread sexualization of female athletes has caused their athletic ability to diminish.  According to Kate Fagan, as described in her article "Sex Sells? Trend May Be Changing," when a company wants to work with a male athlete, they usually have to qualify for one of the following boxes: seems trustworthy, possesses expertise, and looks attractive, but with women, there is typically only one box: attractiveness (Fagan).  However, Fagan believes that this trend may be changing towards talent sells.  Brittney Griner, for example, along with being the first openly gay athlete to sign with Nike, she has made it clear that she wants her brand to represent her authentic self, and not the ideal of what society wants her to be (Fagan).  With this concept in mind, young girls who are just starting out in sports will take note when they see a fierce competitor like soccer superstar Abby Wambach showing her take-no-prisoners attitude on the field as she demonstrates toughness and strength (Fagan).  However, unlike Griner and Wambach, some athletes hide in the shadows of strength and power as they fear their images as a "real" women, and turn to self-sexualization.

As female athletes try to break the mold of this trend that "sex sells," some athletes decide to take a backseat and keep their image feminine.  Much of a female athlete's self-sexualization is "motivated by the fear that women's intrusion into the masculine realm of sports is associated with lesbianism," according to the article "Cheering on Women and Girls in Sports: Using Title IX to Fight Gender Role Oppression," written by the Harvard Law Review (1632-1633).  Due to this fear, they want to assure their audience that they can and will maintain their femininity, even while playing male dominant sports like basketball and soccer (Cheering 1633).  In the article, "Tomboys, Dykes, and Girly Girls: Interrogating the Subjectivities of Adolescent Female Athletes," Natalie Adams, Alison Schmitke, and Amy Franklin tap into what a female body is supposed to be as described by Iris Young almost 25 years ago (20).  Young described how "the norms of femininity suppress the body potential of women.  We grow up learning that the feminine body is soft, not muscular, passive, incapable, vulnerable.  Our parents, teachers and friends suppress out natural urges to run, jump, risk, by cries that we should not act so boldly and move so daringly" (Adams, Schmitke, Franklin 20).  Even though some norms may have change over the 25 years, some people still haven't grasped this concept that female body's can be strong and muscular, yet feminine at the same time.  Women often struggle to be strong and empowered while still maintaining sexuality, causing this self-sexualization where "even when women themselves would like to emphasize their sexuality along with their strength, social norms and practices serve to emphasize the former at the expense of the latter" (Cheering 1633).  It seems as though female athletes can be one of the other, strong or sexual, resulting in self-sexualization.

It is important to notice that the media is corrupting female athletes through lack of coverage and sexualization because sports are beneficial to girls and young women.  When girls start to notice the lack of coverage and sexualization of their once role model, they will start to question if participating in their sport is really worth it if they wont get the same positive reinforcement about their sports success and accomplishments as boys do.  There is also the fear of media and social stigma, and if they will soon will be viewed as something that they are not.  Through the adolescent years, a young women's fear of being associated with lesbianism may be enough to push them out of the sport all together.  It is important that we create positive role models for young women to look up to throughout their sports career, whether it is someone like Abby Wambach or Shawn Johnson.  Soccer star Christie Rampone is lucky to have her two daughters surrounded by such positive role models as she discusses in an interview conducted about their story into the world of soccer that, "to see my 2 girls, especially being girls, the fact that their around so many amazing role models and they just have so much confidence and independence, and its truly inspiring them, especially as a female to be so empowered at such a young age and look up to these girls" (Christie).  Girls and young women need to be encouraged and be surrounded by positive role model to help them through their journey and to success.  It is important that these girls see women's sports in the media and to see an image of strong female athletes because then they will be empowered and find success in their sport.

There are many solutions that can be put into action to help the corruption of female athletes in the media.  As we know that interest corresponds to newsworthiness, if television networks and magazines and news start to cover one more women's sports competition than they already do, we can help increase the interest of women's sports hence increasing the amount of media coverage they get.  By increasing the coverage, women participating in sports form grade school through professional sports will notice that their ability and success is not taking a backset and being under looked.  They will realize that their accomplishments will be recognized, which in turns keeps them motivated to play the game that they love.  If we give female athletes just a little more attention than we already do, it can have a huge effect.  Another solution that can be put into action is simply showing female athletes as strong and empowered instead of sexualized.  This will not only encourage girls to become strong and work harder in their sport, but this will also help the viewers to understand that this is a strong female body, which can help them understand that it is ok to have this strong body, destroying the fear that female athletes will be associated with lesbianism, stopping self-sexualization.  If more girls and young women see a female athlete playing their associated sports in a magazine, it will encourage them to work harder, instead of worrying about their body image when looking at an image of a sexualized athlete.  We can also perform small action that will help this problem, like attending women's sporting events, purchase magazines that contain images of female athletes that portray them as strong and empowered, having girls and young women participate in sports, and lastly, show them what they can be capable of accomplishing.  Taking these small steps can slowly but surely help fight the corruption of female athletes in the media and encourage women all over the nation and world to participate in sports and be successful.  They have the ability to be the best in the world, so why not give them the support and encouragement they need to be number one in the world.

