Let's take for example one of the most common sports magazines, Sports Illustrated. Kate Upton is on the cover of the 2013 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2013. What I find crazy with the entire swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated is that these featured models, in this specific example Kate Upton, are mostly well known actresses and models, not athletes. And all of these models features in this magazine special are women.
Why is it so common to see women being captured modeling passively and in such a light that portrays them in a different manner than what they are known for? While I do agree with Rowe's statement that all texts can be differentially interpreted, there are are some properties of photographs that evoke particular emotions and convey specific messages.
The image of Kate Upton in the Sports Illustrated 2013 magazine cover is a perfect example of "proto-sporting." According to Rowe, this concept simply means that models wear something skimpy that can be vaguely associated with sports or leisure. While this notion of "proto-sporting" still remains very common in today's media, more and more male athletes are starting to model their bodies.
"The gradual freeing up of fixed socio-sexual identities, the influence of feminism, and the increasingly overt sexualization of culture and commercialization of sexuality have resulted in a strengthening trend of openly sexualizing sportsmen." (Rowe)
Glamour's magazine article titled, Meet 4 Hot, Half-Naked Olympic 2012 Swimmers, invites teen girls who are reading this fashion magazine to gaze at these four athletes. Wait athletes in a fashion magazine? That doesn't match. Neither does the fact that these men are posing in speedos - which consist of barely any material, so this article really doesn't fit into a fashion magazine. What really gets me is the introduction to this article... "US Olympic swimming hopefuls Nathan Adrian, Brendan Hansen, Cullen Jones, and Ryan Lochte are used to parading around nearly naked. We're pretty sure you don't have a problem with that."
These two very different magazine features that I have shared with you (from Sports Illustrated and Glamour) represent the ways in which different audiences prefer viewing those of the opposite sex. Males, those who read Sports Illustrated, prefer to view women in posed positions, whereas women prefer to view men in action shots. It's very interesting how minimal clothing is very common when athletes, or models posing for a sports-related feature, are photographed. For those that may not be as into sports as others, these people tend to be women, a sexual aspect is incorporated in the representation in order to make sports more appealing. So while there are different ways of that displaying athletes, body-focused action shots are the primary type used to increase interest in the opposite sex. And hey, it works. Why? Because sex sells.
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