Posted: Wed May 16, 2007 12:39 am
Sex Sells? Not So Fast...
Sex doesn't sell.
Jan Stevenson got naked in a bathtub of golf balls back in the 1980s, Brandi Chastain took off her clothes for Gear magazine before the 1999 World Cup, and swimmer Amanda Beard is going to be in Playboy next month. But according to a ground-breaking pilot study, none of that did -- or will do -- a single thing for women's sports. Sexy pictures don't make people more likely to read about women's sports, they don't make anyone more likely to attend a women's sporting event, and they sure don't drive any season-ticket sales.
Seriously -- sex doesn't sell women's sports?
"Well, no one would ever argue with the notion that sex sells," said professor Mary Jo Kane, the director of the Tucker Center for Research of Girls and Women in Sport, at the University of Minnesota, and the brain behind this stereotype-shaking study. "The question is -- what does it sell? It may in fact be that males will pick up Playboy when there's a picture of a naked female athlete, but is what they are consuming a woman athlete or some woman's body as an object of sexual desire?"
So far, the answer has been the latter. Yes, conventional wisdom has always said sex appeal -- in all parts of our culture -- is the greatest lure. The way to get a man to look at a female is if she's hot. You'll know Beard is an Olympian because she's in Playboy. Some attention is better than no attention, especially for a gender that gets between 6 and 8 percent of space in sports sections.
Since the dawn of newsprint, women athletes have been portrayed in ways that emphasize "femininity and sexualization over athletic competence," Kane said. During the 2000 Olympics, Marion Jones won five medals; Amy Acuff won none, yet she was photographed by American papers about 20 times more than Jones and Acuff graced the Playboy cover in Sept. 2004.
Research says that sort of coverage trivializes women and their sports. Now, Kane's research says playing into those portrayals is actually undermining women's sports. They're hurting because their core fan base is not into a bikini-clad Natalie Gulbis.
"They're actually offended by images of sex," Kane said. Females across the board are drawn to images of athletic competence. So are men, in the 35 to 55 age range, who think of their daughters. "They don't see," Kane said, "how a passive, sexualized pose is celebrating an athletic body. How do bare breasts increase respect for and interest in women sports?"
Of course there was a segment of the Tucker Center's focus groups that was into the hot shots -- males between 18-34. But those younger men openly told Kane they're just looking. Sure they've clicked on Anna Kournikova's endless online shots. And no, those pictures never compelled them to go watch her play. Turns out, that's the demographic most likely to dismiss women's athleticism, too, especially when it came to team sports such as basketball.
The Davie-Brown Index is a constantly-updated bible for brand marketers. It evaluates celebrities' appeal and relevance, and their influence on consumer buying behavior, by getting 1.5 million Americans to appraise famous people on eight different attributes. Female athletes are part of the 1,000-celebrity pool and guess what? This week, Michelle Kwan's ranked highest among them. Then comes Mary Lou Retton, Peggy Fleming, Chris Evert and then ... Kournikova. But the trust people have in the Russian starlet who never won a singles tournament is 10 points less than the trust they show in, say, Pat Summitt -- who's 22 spots below Kournikova on the overall DBI list. Dot Richardson is oodles more "appealing" than Kournikova -- or Maria Sharapova.
But here's the most telling thing on the index: there's not one active female athlete in the top 10. The top 15 has only three -- Sasha Cohen (11), Sharapova (12) and Michelle Wie (15). The most powerful female athlete endorsers are women who no longer play sports. What can that mean but that the active ones aren't positioning themselves the right way?
It's a given that attractiveness matters with women. Why did every story about the Democratic presidential debate include a bit about Hillary Clinton's outfit? Why did Donald Trump think the most biting insult he could give Rosie O'Donnell was to call her ugly? Why did I actually care how the mug shot at the top of this column looked?
But since when is attractiveness incompatible with competence? Maybe women's sports do need a little bit of sex appeal to get people to pay attention. But they also need athletes who transcend that sex appeal. We need women who not only make you look, but make you watch, too.
Source: Written by Aditi Kinkhabwala, Sports Illustrated
Sex doesn't sell.
Jan Stevenson got naked in a bathtub of golf balls back in the 1980s, Brandi Chastain took off her clothes for Gear magazine before the 1999 World Cup, and swimmer Amanda Beard is going to be in Playboy next month. But according to a ground-breaking pilot study, none of that did -- or will do -- a single thing for women's sports. Sexy pictures don't make people more likely to read about women's sports, they don't make anyone more likely to attend a women's sporting event, and they sure don't drive any season-ticket sales.
Seriously -- sex doesn't sell women's sports?
"Well, no one would ever argue with the notion that sex sells," said professor Mary Jo Kane, the director of the Tucker Center for Research of Girls and Women in Sport, at the University of Minnesota, and the brain behind this stereotype-shaking study. "The question is -- what does it sell? It may in fact be that males will pick up Playboy when there's a picture of a naked female athlete, but is what they are consuming a woman athlete or some woman's body as an object of sexual desire?"
So far, the answer has been the latter. Yes, conventional wisdom has always said sex appeal -- in all parts of our culture -- is the greatest lure. The way to get a man to look at a female is if she's hot. You'll know Beard is an Olympian because she's in Playboy. Some attention is better than no attention, especially for a gender that gets between 6 and 8 percent of space in sports sections.
Since the dawn of newsprint, women athletes have been portrayed in ways that emphasize "femininity and sexualization over athletic competence," Kane said. During the 2000 Olympics, Marion Jones won five medals; Amy Acuff won none, yet she was photographed by American papers about 20 times more than Jones and Acuff graced the Playboy cover in Sept. 2004.
Research says that sort of coverage trivializes women and their sports. Now, Kane's research says playing into those portrayals is actually undermining women's sports. They're hurting because their core fan base is not into a bikini-clad Natalie Gulbis.
"They're actually offended by images of sex," Kane said. Females across the board are drawn to images of athletic competence. So are men, in the 35 to 55 age range, who think of their daughters. "They don't see," Kane said, "how a passive, sexualized pose is celebrating an athletic body. How do bare breasts increase respect for and interest in women sports?"
Of course there was a segment of the Tucker Center's focus groups that was into the hot shots -- males between 18-34. But those younger men openly told Kane they're just looking. Sure they've clicked on Anna Kournikova's endless online shots. And no, those pictures never compelled them to go watch her play. Turns out, that's the demographic most likely to dismiss women's athleticism, too, especially when it came to team sports such as basketball.
The Davie-Brown Index is a constantly-updated bible for brand marketers. It evaluates celebrities' appeal and relevance, and their influence on consumer buying behavior, by getting 1.5 million Americans to appraise famous people on eight different attributes. Female athletes are part of the 1,000-celebrity pool and guess what? This week, Michelle Kwan's ranked highest among them. Then comes Mary Lou Retton, Peggy Fleming, Chris Evert and then ... Kournikova. But the trust people have in the Russian starlet who never won a singles tournament is 10 points less than the trust they show in, say, Pat Summitt -- who's 22 spots below Kournikova on the overall DBI list. Dot Richardson is oodles more "appealing" than Kournikova -- or Maria Sharapova.
But here's the most telling thing on the index: there's not one active female athlete in the top 10. The top 15 has only three -- Sasha Cohen (11), Sharapova (12) and Michelle Wie (15). The most powerful female athlete endorsers are women who no longer play sports. What can that mean but that the active ones aren't positioning themselves the right way?
It's a given that attractiveness matters with women. Why did every story about the Democratic presidential debate include a bit about Hillary Clinton's outfit? Why did Donald Trump think the most biting insult he could give Rosie O'Donnell was to call her ugly? Why did I actually care how the mug shot at the top of this column looked?
But since when is attractiveness incompatible with competence? Maybe women's sports do need a little bit of sex appeal to get people to pay attention. But they also need athletes who transcend that sex appeal. We need women who not only make you look, but make you watch, too.
Source: Written by Aditi Kinkhabwala, Sports Illustrated