A BREAST here. A bottom there. Golden-brown skin on a sandy beach. When a female athlete disrobes for a men's magazine, she makes a little money on the side. And, according to the popular assumption, it promotes the sport.
After all, women's athletics get only about 6 to 8 percent of the sports coverage in the US, according to Sports Illustrated magazine. Sex seems to sell just about everything else, so why can't it sell women's sports?
But according to a new pilot study by US professor Mary Jo Kane of the University of Minnesota, semi-nude photos of female athletes such as Anna Kournikova actually hurt women's athletics.
The core fan base - women of all ages and men between 35 and 55 - are "actually offended by images of sex," Kane told Sports Illustrated magazine last week.
In short, women's sports fans are drawn to the women's athletic ability - not their sexuality. Kane admitted that males between 18 and 34 liked the pictures, but these men are also from the group that tends to dismiss the athleticism of women.
In the US, women's sports operate in the shadow of male-dominated collegiate and professional sports. Professional women's leagues like the WNBA have struggled to find effective ways to market their product.
In 2001, the professional women's basketball league was fighting a decline in attendance. As a result, the Los Angeles Sparks club visited the lesbian Girl Bar in West Hollywood, igniting the team's "biggest wave of newspaper and talk-radio coverage of its five seasons," reported USA Today.
However, the move was controversial since many US professional women's leagues like the LPGA Tour (golf) and the discontinued WUSA (soccer) traditionally present their sporting events as being "family-friendly".
"Maybe women's sports do need a little bit of sex appeal to get people to pay attention," wrote Sports Illustrated columnist Aditi Kinkhabwala.
"But they also need athletes who transcend sex appeal. We need women who not only make you look, but make you watch, too."
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collegiate 学院的
disrobe 脱衣服
ignite 引发，点燃
lesbian 女同性恋
transcend 超越，胜过
BONUS POINTS
on the side: 另外，作为兼职
His tuition is so high that he has to get a job on the side to get money for meals. Otherwise, he might go hungry. 他的学费太高了，他不得不找兼职工作挣钱吃饭。不然他就得挨饿了。 |
