‘Acceptable Bodies’: Deconstructing the Finnish Media Coverage of the 2004 Olympic Games

  • Pirkko Markula
Chapter
Part of the Global Culture and Sport book series (GCS)

Abstract

Feminist sport studies scholars have examined the ideological construction of feminine identity in the Olympic media by comparing the coverage of women athletes in ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ sports. Feminist interest in this classification stems from the idea that in the current male-dominated culture of sport, it is more acceptable for women to participate in ‘feminine’ sports. Female participants in ‘masculine’ sports will be marginalised in the media coverage because they challenge the existing gender order in sport. At the same time, increased coverage of women in ‘masculine’ sports indicates resistant change to the ideological construction of sport. In this chapter, I analyse whether feminist research can challenge the current structure behind women’s sport media representation through readings of feminine and masculine sports. I use Jacques Derrida’s affirmative deconstruction to map the logic of sport classification in feminist sport studies. My discussion is based on two strategies (Patton, 2003): first, I trace the history of the concept of ‘acceptable sport’ in feminist sport studies; and second, I examine possibilities for changing theoretical understandings of women’s sport participation in contemporary society. To illustrate my discussion, I examine the types of sports in which women were represented in a Finnish newspaper during the Athens Olympic Games, 2004.

Keywords

Female Athlete College Woman Olympic Game Gender Typing Gender Schema 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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© Pirkko Markula 2009

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  • Pirkko Markula

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