Media Construction Of Female Athletes’ Femininity

Female athletes have made remarkable achievements,relying on their good physical and psychological quality,and gaining a foothold in the stadium domain dominated by traditional male temperament,which challenges the constraints of gender behavior by the inherent binary opposite gender temperament norms,and arouses the discussion on female athletes’ gender temperament.Media is an important subject reflecting the social gender temperament and its construction of female athletes’ gender temperament deeply affects the image and social cognition of female athletes.By analyzing the construction of female athletes’ femininity in the cover report of Sports Illustrated,this study discusses media construction of female athletes’ femininity,and analyzes and reflects the specific behavior of Sports Illustrated to explore the driving force behind it.This study in the United States Sports Illustrated cover female athletes since founded in 1954 as the research sample,on the basis of female temperament related theory,using the content of the quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis of the text as the research methods,analysis of the Sports Illustrated pages related to the cover image and text report to female athletes to the construction of gender temperament.The research finds that Sports Illustrated’s construction of female athletes’ femininity has contradictory characteristics.Although female athletes are recognized as professional and dominant in the professional field,they still emphasize traditional feminine elements through the media and are constructed as ordinary women conforming to the norms of western femininity.Such a contradictory shaping limits the interpretation of the significance of women’s participation in sports activities and the display of women’s own sports ability.This study hopes to help the social audience better understand the development of female sports and the public role value of female athletes,and also hopes to guide female athletes to abandon the concept of "ideal image" and become brave,healthy and confident women.