She shoots, she scores: Mediated constructions of contemporary female athletes in coverage of...

TRADITIONAL gender constructs long have been a staple of the mass media, which in turn are a primary, if not the primary, means by which those constructs are reified and articulated to the public today. The pervasiveness of rigidly defined gender norms in the media has been well documented in the literature over the last two decades, especially insofar as they are applied to women. In particular, women have been and continue to be, in large part, portrayed as subservient; dependent; other-defined and -oriented; and physically and mentally deficient, explicitly or implicitly in comparison with men (see, e.g., Modleski, 1984; Radway, 1984; Tuchman, 1978). A primary feature of these mediated representations is the objectification and sexualisation of women, particularly to the extent that they are fetishised and displayed, rendered as objects of the male gaze (e.g., Mayne, 1984; Mulvey, 1989; Wolf, 1991). Moreover, many critics note that the relatively recent advent of apparently feminist sensibilities in the contemporary media in fact camouflages subtle strategies that undermine those ideas, predicating them instead on patriarchal terms (e.g., Dow, 1992; Faludi, 1991; Shugart, Waggoner, & Hallstein, 2001).