Female Athletes and Media Coverage
Daria Besa
Cleveland State University
HPR 250 Section 501
Professor Martensen
April 15, 2023
Female Athletes and Media Coverage
As a generation of technological advancement, we are surrounded by the media no matter where we are. Whether it be print media, television, public broadcasting, websites, or social media networks such as Twitter, YouTube, or Instagram, it is everywhere. The sports world is filled with technology to capture every moment and achievements of the athletes have made in the game, but this is not very accurate for women’s sports and female athletes. Although there is camera equipment for the memorable moments for the athletes individually and as well as a team, they do
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The youth girls would have an influence and leadership while seeing how female athletes compete on a daily basis (Carter-Francique & Richardson 2016). To begin with, today young girl athletes look up to strong and successful professional athletes such as Women National Basketball Association (WNBA) star Candice Parker, Alex Morgan of United States Women’s National soccer team (USWNT), gymnast Simone Biles, tennis star Serena Williams, and pro wrestler Ronda Rousey. By observing how these women compete at a professional level, it provides the young generation of girls with encouragement of knowing they can move up to that level too, but the media plays a role in that inspiration. Since the greatest women athletes get an inadequate amount of media coverage they receive on television, it is difficult for the young athletes to continuously watch who they look up to. Therefore, it is much harder for girls to see notable achievements on a daily basis. Alex Morgan stated that her and three other athletes including Sue Bird, Simone Manuel, Chole Kim, were given the chance to make a commerce platform called Togethxr to engage with their supporters (McCaskill, 2022). This allowed them to put out content about their sports career to help inspire young individuals and create their own media coverage for them too. By exposing young girls to the remarkable accomplishments for these star female athletes, they would be motivated to continue to participate in the sports they love and eventually be as good or even better than those already successful. The younger generation of girl athletes look up to pro athletes as role models so by showing them in the media is