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I’ve been wanting to write a blog about this topic for awhile and a recent interview given by my colleague and the Director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport Professor Mary Jo Kane on the Edge of Sports Radio with Dave Zirin provided me with a perfect opportunity!

In the interview with Zirin she discusses research, conducted with Heather Maxwell (Ph.D.), in which their findings refute the idea that sex sells women’s sports. Kane also discusses how the notion of “sex sells” is related to depictions of motherhood and female athletes—like the magazine covers of Sheryl Swoopes and Candace Parker pictured here, homophobia and Pat Griffin’s idea of The Glass Closet, and her thoughts on the Women’s Final Four sport media coverage. (Note: Motherhood and elite female athletes is a popular blog topic lately..see Maria Hardin’s blog and the Pretty Tough blog)

I also think Kane’s interview helps us think through why some female athletes feel it is important to “have it all” (i.e., be sexy, feminine, AND athletic)…which I’ve touched upon in a previous blog about social media.

The interview is less than 5 minutes and well worth your while to hear one of the leading experts on sport media, Title IX, gender, and women’s sports talk critically and share cutting edge research.

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• OpEd
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There are 2 comments on this post. Join the discussion!

anngaff says:

That interview with Professor Kane was so interesting! Are her findings from the research study published on the Tucker Center's website? Finally we have actual data to support the negative impact of using sexuality to promote women's sports. I hate it when anyone (though especially a male) says "well, sex sells" when I express disgust over a female athlete choosing to strip down for a not-so-tasteful magazine and demean herself, as if we have no better choice to promote ourselves.

Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 1:02pm EDT

robm says:

I find the interview interesting, though I also find plenty of fault with it. (I was unable to post a longer comment here, so I've submitted one to the One Sport Voice blog). I will mention one thing now, the 'research' is based merely on focus groups, not an altogether ideal way to collect data (see: http://faculty.chass.ncsu.edu/garson/PA765/focusgroups.htm).

Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 1:17pm EDT

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