Masculinity And Sports Analysis

When I think of an athlete’s body I envision, strong toned arms, sleek slender back, hard rock abs and chiseled legs but is this standard for all athlete’s men and women alike? Society as we know it has a strong hold on social roles and social norms for men and women that includes the way one should look, sound and how his/hers body type should be this ideological thinking has even seeped its way into the sports world. Men used sports as an arena to display their strength and agility as a way to justify their masculinity, dominance and power not only over their opponent but over women as well. In the book “Out of Play: Critical Essays on Gender and Sport”, Michael Messner describes the crisis of masculinity and how and why sports ultimately

Since the days of slavery, the fascination with the black male and female figure has always been there even to the point of creating the theory of “black athletic superiority”. In a 2010 article, author Ian Kerr examines the notion that blacks are more superior in sports due to their genetic determinism, biological variability and environmental features but concluded that “Race is not a legitimate biological category and, as a social construct, does not influence sports or sports performance in the myriad of biological ways” (Kerr,2010). Blacks tend to gravitate and dominate sports for other reasons that have nothing to do with any superhuman powers that many were once led to believe. According, to a 2016 article, Blacks tend to dominate sports such as basketball and/or football for other factors that include blacks use their athletic talents as a way out of the ghetto as they are often not afforded the same wide range of employment opportunities, also white athletes stray away from positions that are dominated by black athletes even if they are good if not better than a black athlete (Mixon, 2016). This article proved that blacks just like women had to work their way into

Not every woman who plays basketball will look like your typical player some may uphold the usual women figure while others may choose to portray a male dominated figure and that goes for any race. While especially now in sports like basketball, soccer, and football where men were always seen as heterosexual, god-like beings are they are no longer living up to that stereotype. They are expressing themselves differently from the way they dress, the way they speak all the way to their sexual orientation not to say that it is good for their careers but they are breaking barriers of the normative athletic figure and this is for men, women, black, white, etc. and for any sport across the