Margaret Carlisle Duncan

SEPARATING THE MEN FROM THE GIRLS: The Gendered Language of Televised Sports

This research compares and analyzes the verbal commentary of televised coverage of two womens and mens athletic events: the “final four” of the womens and mens 1989 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball tournaments and the womens and mens singles, womens and mens doubles, and the mixed-doubles matches of the 1989 U.S. Open tennis tournament. Although we found less overtly sexist commentary than has been observed in past research, we did find two categories of difference: (1) gender marking and (2) a “hierarchy of naming” by gender and, to a certain extent, by race. These differences are described and analyzed in light of feminist analyses of gendered language. It is concluded that televised sports commentary contributes to the construction of gender and racial hierarchies by marking womens sports and women athletes as “other,” by infantilizing women athletes (and, to a certain extent, male athletes of color), and by framing the accomplishments of women athletes ambivalently.

THE POLITICS OF WOMEN'S BODY IMAGES AND PRACTICES: FOUCAULT, THE PANOPTICON, AND SHAPE MAGAZINE

This study demonstrates how the metaphor of the panopticon, a particular prison structure that renders prisoners self-monitoring, offers a useful way of understanding the mechanisms that inculcate an unrealistic body ideal in women. Foucaults notion of panopticism and a critical approach are used to show how textual mechanisms in two issues of Shape magazine—a womens fitness glossy—invite a continual self-conscious body monitoring in women. An analysis of two panoptic mechanisms, “The Efficacy of Initiative” and “Feeling Good Means Looking Good,” is supplemented with a discussion of Foucaults notion of confession/shame, and specific features of Shapes discourse are analyzed for their panoptic content.

Silence, Sports Bras, And Wrestling Porn Women in Televised Sports News and Highlights Shows

This study of televised sports news on three network affiliates and ESPN’s SportsCenter extends and expands on earlier studies in 1990 and 1994 to examine the quality and quantity of televised coverage of women’s sports.The dominant finding over the decade spanned by the three studies is the lack of change. Women’s sports are still “missing in action” on the nightly news, and are even less visible on SportsCenter. Textual analysis revealed some change over the decade, but mostly showed continued gender asymmetries in televised sports news and highlight shows: (a) the choice to devote a considerable proportion of the already-thin coverage of women’s sports to humorous feature stories on nonserious women’s sports, and (b) the (often humorous) sexual objectification of athlete women and nonathlete women. The authors conclude with a discussion of how and why television has continued to cautiously follow, rather than lead or promote, the growth in girls’ and women’s sports.

Sports knowledge is power: Reinforcing masculine privilege through fantasy sport league participation

As of August 2003, 15.2 million American adults participated in fantasy sports. Fantasy sport allows online participants to assume the roles of owners, managers, and coaches of professional teams, building franchises and experiencing every phase of the process (i.e., drafting athletes, trading players, signing free agents, submitting lineups). Despite its great popularity, there is a paucity of research investigating fantasy sports. Taking a pro-feminist approach, the current study examines the appeals and experiences of participants and the audience to whom fantasy sport leagues are directed. Using personal observations, textual analysis, and focus group responses of three male fantasy leaguers, the current study indicates that fantasy sports reinforce hegemonic ideologies in sport spectatorship, emphasizing authority, sports knowledge, competition, male-bonding, and traditional gender roles.

THE DISCOURSE OF EMPOWERMENT Foucault, Marcuse, and Women's Fitness Texts

Through the methodology of textual analysis, this study discusses how womens fitness magazine texts equate physical health with beauty and how this equation is achieved. Michel Foucaults ideas on power and discipline and Herbert Marcuses ideas on co-optation are employed to inform the research. The study discusses how texts often use empowerment, or feminist, ideology to convey to readers that exercise and fitness pursuits, when used to achieve physical change that improve a readers physical attractiveness, are ways to empower themselves in all aspects of life. By co-opting feminist ideals, fitness texts encourage readers to concentrate on their physical selves, specifically physical beauty, not health, at the expense of achieving true physical health and gains in the social arena.

Televising international sport: race, ethnicity, and nationalistic bias.

This study used both qualitative and quantitative analyses to discern whether the narratives, metaphors, framing devices, and production practices in televised international athletic events differed by the race, ethnicity, or nationality of athletes. About 340 hours of videotapes of 7 televised international athletic events were used to study key aspects of production: (a) commentator descriptions of 161 athletes in 31 competitions, (b) 30 personal interviews drawn from 3 of the events under study, and (c) 5 opening and closing segments that commonly unify themes and metaphors and that produce the look of an event. Six major findings include the following: (a) efforts were made to provide fair treatment of athletes, (b) the treatment of race and ethnicity varied across productions, (c) little evidence of negative representations of Black athletes, (d) representations of Asian athletes drew on cultural stereotypes, (e) representations of Latino-Hispanic athletes were mixed, and (f) nationalistic bias was evident.

The Mediation of Spectator Sport

Abstract This study employs the theory of “media logic” and the method of hermeneutical criticism to demonstrate some effects of a major social institution, television, on the “text” of experiencing spectator sports. The study finds that the medium of television makes spectator sports into an experience which incorporates narrative, intimacy, commodification, and rigid time segmentation. The conventions imposed by television on spectator sports are presented here as powerfully affecting the meanings which televised sports have for their audiences.

Optimal experience: Women, work, and flow

Paid work outside the home is becoming the norm for the majority of women in America. Men have traditionally devoted most of their energies to work and have derived from it the main support for their personal identities. How do women experience work? Are they also able to find productive activities in the workplace meaningful and rewarding, or does socialization into the feminine homemaker role prevent women from deriving the same kind of satisfaction from work that men occasionally get from their jobs? Despite the extensive research on the relationship between work and general quality of life (Spreitzer & Snyder 1974; Pryor & Reeves 1982), on job satisfaction (Wilensky 1960; Dubin, Champoux, & Porter 1975), and on leisure satisfaction (Kando & Summers 1971; Noe 1971; Neulinger & Raps 1972; Bacon 1975; Kabanoff 1980), few studies have incorporated working women in their sample. (For recent notable exceptions see Berk & Berk 1979; and Walshok 1979.) This neglect is particularly unfortunate in that 52.2% of all women and 54% of married women with young children now work outside the home. Participation in the labor force is increasingly required for economic survival (Hesse 1979; Walshok 1979; Mansfield 1982). Of all working women, 77% are now single, divorced, or are married to men with incomes under

Women, work, and leisure: The days of our lives

15,000 (Mansfield 1982). As these findings suggest, then, women now represent a major sector of the labor force.

A hermeneutic of spectator sport: the 1976 and 1984 Olympic Games.

Abstract Utilizing a qualitative research methodology, this study attempts to identify and understand the experience of enjoyment (or lack thereof) within the work and nonwork (i.e., family, leisure) spheres of working women. Specifically, the study attempts to identify the contexts in which professional and blue‐collar women experience flow (Csikszentmihalyi 1975) or its antithesis (i.e., anti‐flow) which can be characterized by boredom, frustration, and anxiety. In addition, the study examines the nature and the meanings of these experiences within the work/nonwork lives of these women. Findings of this study suggest that professional women tended to experience flow in both work and nonworking settings, while the blue‐collar women tended to experience flow only in their nonwork (i.e., home, leisure) spheres. Both groups experienced some degree of anti‐flow when they performed tasks which were repetitious, tedious, and simplistic, regardless of the setting. While such tasks constituted a very small part ...