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Journal of the Philosophy of Sport

ISSN: 0094-8705 (Print) 1543-2939 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rjps20

The naked truth: disability, sexual objectification, and the ESPN Body Issue

Charlene Weaving & Jessica Samson

To cite this article: Charlene Weaving & Jessica Samson (2018) The naked truth: disability, sexual objectification, and the ESPN Body Issue, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 45:1, 83-100, DOI: 10.1080/00948705.2018.1427592

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00948705.2018.1427592

Published online: 22 Jan 2018.

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Journal of the PhilosoPhy of sPort, 2018 Vol. 45, no. 1, 83–100 https://doi.org/10.1080/00948705.2018.1427592

The naked truth: disability, sexual objectification, and the ESPN Body Issue

Charlene Weaving and Jessica Samson

human Kinetics Department, st. francis Xavier university, antigonish, nova scotia, Canada

ABSTRACT We critically analyze four images of female Paralympians posing nude in ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue from the years 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2014. Past literature shows that media portrayals of female Paralympians emphasize esthetically pleasing bodies, able-bodied images and asexualization. Weaving’s continuum of sexual objectification was applied to assess the varying degrees of sexual objectification showcased within each image. From a feminist perspective, discourses of heteronormativity and ableism were applied to outline the concerns with female Paralympic representation in The Body Issue. We argue that by normalizing disability and sexual objectification, woman athletes are trivialized.

KEYWORDS Paralympic athletes; women; sexual objectification; the esPn Body issue

Background

There exists evidence that female athletes are often trivialized, marginalized, and objectified in the media due to the prevailing notion that ‘sex sells’ in sport (Hull, Smith, and Schmittel 2015 Jirasek, Zain Kohe, and Hurych 2013; Kane, Lavoi, and Fink 2013; Weaving 2012). However, there is a gap in the research analyzing sexual objectification and female athletes with physical disabilities such as Paralympians. Past research has mainly focused on the media’s ability to asexualize athletes with disabilities or de-emphasize their physical impairments in an attempt to ‘normalize’ the athlete and garner more widespread audience appeal (Buysse and Borcherding 2010; Thomas and Smith 2003).

We analyze ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue, which first featured athletes with physical disabilities in 2009. Although the magazine’s mission is to ‘celebrate and explore the athletic form through powerful images and interviews’1 it has received criticism for its controversial representations of female athletes that promote passive images and hypersexuality, which decrease credibility and

© 2018 iaPs

CONTACT Charlene Weaving [email protected]

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athleticism (Hull, Smith, and Schmittel 2015). ESPN created this special issue because of declining advertisement revenue. The first issue was a financial suc- cess that resulted in a 35% in sales (Clifford 2009). We will show that the issue does not actually adhere to its mission. According to journalist Gabrielle Moss of the Huffington Post,

… The Body Issue has been a magnet for controversy, as well – fielding criticisms that the magazine’s pictures undermine the achievements of athletes by shooting them in provocative (and often inactive) poses, and that the magazine’s portraits don’t depict the real variety of athletic bodies out there. (Moss 2015)

We speculate that ESPN may have been inspired to create a similar publication to the incredibly successful Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue (SISI). SISI is extremely popular, for example, in an average year, 70 million people view the special swimsuit issue, and it is consumed by more 18–34 aged males than the Super Bowl. Yearly, it reaps more than 40 million dollars (Estes 2014, 127). However, ESPN differs from SISI because The Body Issue features both male and female athletes nude, and attempts to present the special issue as solely about sport and the portrayal of powerful athletes. SISI, on the other hand, despite packaged as sport, focuses on the ‘swimsuit catalog’ model and predominately features female supermodels and occasionally, women athletes (Weaving 2016).

Hull and colleagues argue that men and women were represented in The Body Issue in alarmingly passive way, and very often with little or no association with their sport. Although there did not seem to be a tremendous difference in the frequency or manner in which male and female athletes were depicted, the pas- sivity of both groups of images did not serve to properly celebrate the function of athletic bodies, as the magazine’s mission statement suggests (Hull, Smith, and Schmittel 2015). Jirasek and colleagues (2013) argue that the objectification of athletes is a symptom of the ‘porno-ization’ of our culture, implying that the nude athletic form is valued more for hedonistic consumption than for artistic celebration. Additionally, Buysse and Borcherding (2010) argue that there is a lack of media coverage for the Paralympics and that the coverage is not equally based on ability nor gender, and athletic competency is seldom emphasized. According to Buysse and Borcherding, males with wheelchairs receive more coverage than athletes with any other disability, and the athlete’s impairment is often hidden or removed from the image. Purdue and Howe (2013) explored the obscurity of media coverage for athletes with more severe physical impairments within the Paralympics and interviewed former Paralympians. One interviewee explained the esthetic hierarchy of athletes as follows: wheelchair athletes at the top, then amputees, visually impaired, and cerebral palsy near the bottom (Purdue and Howe 2013).

We argue that images of female Paralympic athletes showcased in the ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue involve varying degrees of sexual objectification. And further, the photographs reaffirm ableist ideologies and emphasize heter- onormativity. We apply Weaving’s (2012) continuum of sexual objectification.

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Weaving argues that when women athletes pose nude, their talent and skill are trivialized because they are objectified and are less likely to be viewed as body-subjects. Weaving concludes,

… it is problematic when, in order to be proud of one’s strong body, and be accepted, the most effective means to do so is to display oneself in a sexually objectifying manner with the primary purpose of titillating viewers. There ought to be less problematic ways to celebrate women Olympians. (2012, 246)

We extend this argument and apply it to the case of female Paralympians and The Body Issue. Weaving’s continuum implements considerations from both Nussbaum’s (1999) seven aspects of objectification and MacLeod’s (2002) sug- gestion that sexual objectification can occur to varying degrees, rather than accepting the notion of absolute objectification. Weaving also applies the sexually objectifying features identified in Duncan’s (1990) media analysis of female and male Olympians as criteria for her classification system. For Weaving, a ‘somewhat’ sexually objectified image occurs when the athlete hides her true size and muscularity by being in a submissive pose or positioned lower to the ground, either sitting or lying down. Such an image also involves elements of femininity like wearing makeup, jewelry, or styled hair (Weaving 2012). Somewhat sexually objectifying images also ‘involve an attempt to convey a sexual meaning, although to a much less obvious degree [than the highly sexu- ally objectified images]’ (Weaving 2012, 240). For example, a somewhat sexually objectified image might showcase the athlete with an ‘auto-erotic’ look or ‘come on look’ (intense eye contact, head tilted back and lips slightly parted) (Duncan 1990). On the opposite end of the continuum, a highly sexually objectified image puts explicit emphasis on the individual’s genital region, denying her agency, decontextualizing her as a body-subject and sexually provoke those viewing the image (Weaving 2012). A moderately sexually objectified image lies between the two ends of the continuum, with the main purpose to titillate prospective viewers (Weaving 2012).

Interestingly, The Body Issue was developed to showcase elite athletes posing nude or semi-nude and give viewers an opportunity to:

admire the vast potential of the human form. To unapologetically stand in awe of the athletes who’ve pushed their physiques to profound frontiers. To imagine how it would feel to inhabit those bodies, to leap and punch and throw like a god.2

We emphasize that we do not take ESPN’s word at face value. As previously established in the literature (Hull, Smith, and Schmittel 2015), The Body Issue is problematic because of how female athletes are portrayed. The issue does not celebrate and emphasize sexual objectification as overtly as does SISI, but we will make the case that ESPN Body Issue is problematic. Recent research by Sailors and Weaving (2017) is helpful here. Sailors and Weaving examine the nar- rative of mixed martial artist Ronda Rousey, and argue that her case represents gender transgressions as well as glamazionian ideals. They question if Rousey is autonomous in her decisions to pose nude or in body paint (for ESPN The Body

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Issue and SISI) or if her decisions to be part of such publications involve a false consciousness. Sailors and Weaving conclude that if Rousey accepts the fact that her sense of power from posing nude is the result of power relationships that symbolize that the partial identity of women is sex object, then she can auton- omously choose to pose nude in ESPN and SISI ‘providing certain conditions are met’ (11). For Sailors and Weaving, Rousey needs to engage in a self-reflective process of her identity and realize that that she can refuse to accept the per- sistent framing as a sex object. However, Rousey can also wish to accept the identification as a sex object and therefore act autonomously. Rousey is able to achieve this special state because of her extensive history of actions transgress- ing the societal imposed sex object identification. Consequently, in our analysis of the cases of Paralympians in The Body Issue, we argue that the athletes have acted autonomously in their decisions to pose for this issue. However, we do not think that all of the conditions proposed by Sailors and Weaving have been met in the samples we have included. Unlike the unique case of Rousey, the athletes that we review have not challenged the institutionalized sexism that engulfs sport. As Weaving (2012) argued regarding the examples of female Olympians who have posed nude, their empowerment is short-lived.

Specifically, our argument is rooted in the sexual objectification of Paralympians who have been featured in the special issue. It is important to note that this magazine does not contain explicit photographs of athletes’ gen- ital regions, thus none of the following images are classified as highly sexually objectified. Despite the lack of highly sexually objectifying classifications, the images involve sexual objectification and ableist ideologies worthy of exami- nation. We begin the image analysis with first released edition of The Body Issue.

Sarah Reinertsen (2009)

Sarah Reinertsen was born in 1975 in the USA with proximal femoral focal defi- ciency (a congenital defect). From the time she could walk, Reinertsen used specialized leg braces to facilitate movement and maintain stability. When she was seven years old, her leg was amputated above the knee and she acquired a prosthesis (Jackson 2009). In 1992, when Reinertsen attempted to qualify for the Paralympics, the complex classification system was problematic, and there lacked the required number of female athletes with leg amputations to compete in Reinertsen’s event. Consequently, the organizing committee com- bined the female leg and arm amputee categories. This turn of events caused psychological distress among competitors with prosthetic legs who had to compete against athletes with both functioning legs (Reinertsen and Goldsher 2014). Reinertsen finished the race second to last and her Paralympic dream deteriorated as quickly as the race ended. Reinertsen eventually became the first female with a physical disability to attempt and finish the Ironman World Championship, and was the first woman with a physical disability to compete

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on the reality TV series the Amazing Race (Jackson 2009).3 In 2009, Reinertsen was featured in the first edition of ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue (see Figure 1).

In her ESPN cover, Reinertsen’s body position does not show her athletic potential and muscularity. Without acknowledging the magazine’s context, the ambiguity of the backdrop and passivity of the pose make it impossible to tell that Reinertsen is an elite Paralympian. This image is classified as somewhat sex- ually objectified because Reinertsen’s breasts and genitals are covered, although various feminine markers are present. For example, Reinertsen’s make-up is done and her hair is down and slightly rustled, covering her breasts. The pose makes her seem small and non-threatening; she is seated with her arms and legs are crossed, hiding her body in a position of submissiveness. Her intense gaze directed at the camera coupled with her slightly parted lips are representative of what Duncan (1990) coined as the ‘auto erotic’ or ‘come on look’. Additionally, the image emphasizes her already idyllic heterofemininity (thin, blonde, and consistent with societal ideals) by portraying her as passive, inert and inviting. Contrary to most research regarding the media representation of Paralympic athletes, Reinertsen’s prosthesis is not hidden, but rather is made a focal point of the image. We argue that this deviation from the norm is due to a combination

Figure 1. sarah reinertsen’s cover of 2009 esPn The Magazine’s Body Issue. note: Credit: sheryl nields/auGust.

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of factors. First, amputation is ranked at the top of the ‘esthetically pleasing’ athlete disability hierarchy, entailing both heteronormativity and the ability to convey a skillful, sport-specific athletic performance (Purdue and Howe 2013). Due to the relative ease with which consumers can de-emphasize Reinertsen’s disability in terms of athletic performance, Reinertsen is granted access to the symbolic capital reserved for elite able-bodied athletes (Purdue and Howe 2013). For example, Reinertsen’s disability can be de-emphasized and consequently she is treated like an able-bodied athlete with respect to media attention and is considered to fit societal ideals and norms more so than someone with a different disability. Following the release of the cover, the magazine released an interview on their website. The introduction reads as follows:

Focus on the right [non-prosthetic] leg. If you have the nerve …

When you look at Sarah Reinertsen, don’t pay attention to the mechanically con- structed leg that is partially responsible for making her famous – look at the ‘other’ one. The one you never noticed.

But it doesn’t stop there. It extends. Her arms, her hands, her feet, the arch in her back, her breasts, her butt. Yes, I wrote that. Because when discussing the body of this world-class athlete, it is necessary to accentuate the positive. And in Sarah’s case, the positive is all over her …

[Sarah] has struggled for years to find comfort in her body, and she has finally come to grips with the overwhelming fact that she might be one of the sexiest athletes in the world.

There are other athletes in ESPN The Mag’s ‘The Body Issue’ who will garner more attention for their athletic sex appeal … Many readers will overlook Sarah, missing the sexiness of the other leg hidden beneath the Ossur®-built leg on the cover … while her naked picture stares back at you. (Jackson 2009)

This introduction is problematic because it trivializes the value of Reinertsen’s athleticism through overt sexual objectification. The beginning of the blurb encourages readers to ignore her prosthesis, when the author suggests that only in doing so is it possible to appreciate the impressiveness of her athletic body. This is consistent with Thomas and Smith’s (2003) work regarding socie- ty’s fixation with minimizing the extent of disability and our related preoccu- pation with able-bodiedness. Within the description, there is a notable focus on Reinertsen’s sexually titillating body parts, such as her arched back, breasts and buttocks. In the closing sentence, Jackson contradicts his statement that Reinertsen might be ‘one of the sexiest athletes in the world’ by writing that she would most likely be overlooked in the magazine due to consumers’ inability to ignore her prosthetic leg. This introduction reads with the intention to hide Reinertsen’s disability and disconnect her from her identity as an athlete via sexually objectifying comments. Reinertsen’s athleticism was a focal point for neither the magazine cover nor the accompanying interview. Throughout the interview, the focus was repeatedly brought back to Reinertsen’s heterosexual attractiveness. For instance, Jackson asked questions such as:

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From a man’s standpoint, [your non-prosthetic leg is] beautiful … There’s a sex appeal to your whole body. I can see that. But what do you see when you look at your entire body? …What’s the next move for you? You’ve done kinda the nude thing on ESPN, so is it Maxim, FHM, is it … I know you’re not thinking of the Hef route? [referring to Playboy Magazine].

It is difficult to imagine a similarly structured interview with a male athlete. If the magazine’s mission is truly to bring the viewers’ attention to the featured ath- letes’ bodies accomplishing incredible feats, why should eroticizing the female athlete’s muscularity be of central interest? It would be more constructive to center the interview around Reinertsen’s athletic achievements in the face of social and physiological adversity than asking whether she plans on posing nude for even more provocative magazines in the future. Ultimately, Reinertsen justified her choice for posing nude by arguing that it was a form of newfound physical liberation and power after struggling her entire life to accept her body. Just as Weaving (2012) noted, it is necessary to question why elite female ath- letes must pose nude in sexually objectified positions with feminine markers to feel like role models or to experience empowerment. Interestingly, Reinertsen’s ESPN cover is a stark contrast to her cover in 2004 in Runner’s World magazine.4

In this cover, Reinertsen is actively engaged in her sport, dressed in ath- letic gear, and showcases her impressively muscular frame. She is featured on a running surface and is looking forward. Obviously, Runner’s World may have a different readership than the ESPN Body Issue, however, we think it is relevant to include in order to demonstrate the possibilities of authentic empowering photographs. We argue that dynamic, sport-specific images are much more effective in celebrating athletic form and function, particularly when compared to a seated photograph which softens the athlete’s muscularity and is sexually objectifying.

Esther Vergeer (2010)

Esther Vergeer was born in 1981 in the Netherlands. At the age of six, physicians discovered that a blood vessel defect at birth was resulting in internal hem- orrhaging surrounding Vergeer’s spinal cord (Holt and Hussain 2015). Vergeer became a four-time Paralympic athlete and seven-time Paralympic gold medalist in tennis (Vergeer 2016). Following a ten-year, 470-game winning streak, over 35 Grand Slam titles, 2 Laureus World Sports Awards and her Paralympic success, Vergeer retired in 2013. Post retirement, she spearheaded the Esther Vergeer Foundation, motivating children with physical disabilities to gain interest in adapted sport. In the image (see Figure 2), Vergeer is seated in a non-sport wheelchair, clutching her upper body and peering back past the frame of the photograph.

Vergeer’s femininity is emphasized with her blonde hair styled down and her face refined with make-up. Her wheelchair appears to serve more as a stationary

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seat than as a mode of active transportation, because the hands she uses in sport for manipulating her wheelchair and wielding her racquet are interlocked and cover her breasts. This photograph is set in what appears to be the patio back- yard of a house. It is crucial to acknowledge that the setting of the photograph does not allow viewers to determine Vergeer’s sport, since the shoot did not take place on a tennis court or with any related equipment like a racquet. It could be argued that her body position and face give viewers the impression that Vergeer is apprehensive or fearful. The context of the image gives no indication of Vergeer’s impressive athletic ability, although at the time of the photo-shoot, she was favored to resume a then seven-year winning streak in tennis.

Vergeer’s justification for posing nude centered on the necessity for athletes with disabilities to push boundaries in promoting awareness and acceptance of adapted sport. She explains, ‘the aim of the magazine is to show how different types of bodies can perform well in sport and I hope that my photos will get that message across’ (Holt and Hussain 2015). We argue that this photo does not allow viewers to appreciate her athletic body because of overt passivity and athletic decontextualization. The background, body positioning, heteronormative mark- ers and absence of sporting equipment work in unison to distract from Vergeer’s athletic competence. This representation of Vergeer, who has been referred to as ‘invincible’ and ‘the world’s most dominant athlete’, lends evidence to the claim that media images do not perpetuate female Paralympians as ‘serious athletes’ (Buysse and Borcherding 2010). Contrary to Vergeer’s desire for her images to expose viewers to the impressive sport performance of differently-abled bodies,

Figure 2. esther Vergeer posing for esPn: The Body Issue 2010. note: Credit: finlay MacKay/ trunk archive.

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we believe that this image does not lend such justification. This photograph emphasizes Thomas and Smith analysis of athletes with disabilities and media coverage as ‘passive, weak and unathletic’ (2003, 178). Similar images of female Paralympians unintentionally reinforce stereotypical ableist ideologies in con- sumers (Thomas and Smith 2003), generating the opposite of what Vergeer intended.

The image differs from that of Reinertsen’s in that Vergeer’s photograph lacks Duncan’s ‘auto erotic’ or ‘come on look’ and exhibits more inherent vulnerability. We argue that this image falls lower on the continuum of sexual objectification than the previous image, but remains problematic due to its passivity, ambig- uous location, and perpetuation of ableist ideologies. If ESPN’s mission is to celebrate strong athletic bodies, they failed to do so in this image. Even though the image may not be highly sexually objectified, it is still problematic because of the body positioning (hiding muscularity and looking timid) and location (not on the playing surface, or a picturesque backdrop, instead a backyard deck). For Duncan, body positioning is key when examining objectification because the body can imply different meanings. Male athletes are commonly viewed as dominant and pose in strong positions whereas females, according to Duncan, are more commonly viewed in postures that suggest submission and downplay their impressive stature.

While Reinertsen’s prosthesis was easier for the viewers to de-emphasize in that its function was similar to that of a ‘normal’ leg, Vergeer’s wheelchair pre- sents more difficulty to hide the disability. As mentioned earlier, we maintain that media images of female Paralympic athletes have a higher degree of sexual objectification the more they emulate the perception of able-bodiedness. For instance, Gary Belsky (the former editor-in-chief ), wrote on Vergeer’s image, ‘If this were an attempt to be salacious, lascivious or pornographic in any way, we would hardly feature images of wheelchair-tennis players’ (Ohlmeyer 2010). His statement reaffirms that in the case the magazine were to sexualize athletes, there is no way that they would feature an athlete in a wheelchair. His opinion is consistent with the stereotypical perception that women with disabilities are perceived as ‘sexually alienated in wider society’ (Thomas and Smith 2003,168). We don’t suspect that Belksy is actually suggesting that women who are dis- abled cannot be portrayed as sex objects, rather, our concerns lie in that his statement reads that if the magazine were to include pornographic images they would not include a tennis player in a wheelchair. Likely, what he is get- ting at is that mainstream pornography like Playboy does not typically feature women in wheelchairs with tennis racquets. Regardless, our objective is not to defend Belsky, rather we think it is relevant to include his statement because it reinforces ableism and also emphasizes the complexity of sexual objectification and disability.

For the sake of comparison, we refer to another image of Vergeer, featured in an Adidas advertisement.5 Although she is stationary, this image does not

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showcase passivity nor vulnerability. Vergeer is shown clutching her wheels and racquet, which gives the impression that she is prepared for movement while simultaneously allowing the viewer to appreciate the extent of her impressive musculature. The advertisement portrays Vergeer in uniform, on a playing sur- face. Her sport involvement and specific discipline are evident to viewers. There is a much more obvious effort to represent Vergeer as an athlete. The contrast between the two images of Vergeer begs the consideration of whether the nudity featured in The Body Issue is necessary for the target audience to truly appreciate and imagine inhabiting the athletic bodies. If female athletes posing nude (with or without a disability) have no choice but to minimize their stature or take on less assertive poses to cover their sexual body parts, there then arises a notable contradiction between the goal and result of the images featured within The Body Issue. Some may argue that the passive positions adopted by the athletes are to hide potentially ‘titillating’ body parts. However, others claim that the more empowering the body position (i.e. in an active sport pose), the less overt sexual objectification:

if ESPN wants to be truly radical, it could take the revolutionary step of not treating women’s breasts as sex objects. Then we could just see breasts, and it would not be a problem … [Regardless,] ESPN has shot dynamic poses of female athletes before…they can handle it. (Suzanne 2014)

Elma (1997) argues that in 1987, Playboy showcased women in a wheelchair and promoted how they were liberating women with disabilities from the stigma of not being sexually attractive. However, for Elman,

… Pornographers have never promoted sexual liberation for women [emphasis in the original]. Their sexualization of women’s passivity and immobility, its fet- ishization and marketing, shows that such representations are entirely consistent with the central value of pornography. Pornography is just one embodiment of sexualized vulnerability. Focusing on disability, pornography provides a deeper analysis of this dimension in all pornography. (258)

Our point here is not to make any claims that ESPN’s The Body Issue resem- bles pornography. Rather, we think Elman’s work helps to show how sexual objectification of women with disabilities can involve fetishes. Moreover, ESPN packages their magazine as a celebration of athletic bodies and the crux is sport. However, we argue that the manner athletes with disabilities are photo- graphed can emphasize ableism. There may be opportunities for women ath- letes to showcase strong, powerful and muscular bodies, however, we don’t think ESPN Body Issue in its current form has that ability.

Oksana Masters (2012)

Oksana Masters is a multi-sport Paralympic athlete originally from the Ukraine. Masters was born in 1989 with several birth defects to her limbs and organs, believed to be due to her exposure in utero to the radiation from the Chernobyl

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Nuclear Power Plant incident (Masters 2018). In 2012, Masters qualified for the Paralympic Games in London and won bronze with her partner Rob Jones, becoming the first ever US medalists in trunk and arms mixed double sculls (Masters teamUSA.org 2017). Following her success in London, Masters tried out skiing, and a mere 14 months later, she won a silver medal in 12 km Nordic, and won bronze in 5 km Nordic at the 2014 Paralympics in Sochi (Masters teamUSA. org 2017). In 2012, Masters was featured in ESPN (see Figure 3).

This image represents a third example of a photograph of female Paralympian where heterofemininity and able-bodied are emphasized in The Body Issue. Masters is seated outside on a wharf in an inactive pose, gazing intently at the camera with her face made up and her lips slightly parted. There is little indication that Masters is a Paralympic rowing medalist aside from the single paddle and lake positioned behind her in the photograph. There is also little indication that Masters has two above-the-knee amputations. At first glance, it appears that she is simply seated in a cross-legged position, with the front of her body turned away from the camera to capitalize on her muscular back and shoulders. Her right arm is placed on her right knee, seemingly to convey the illusion that Masters’ leg is simply draped over the edge of the wharf, leading to the water below. This image is problematic because Masters’ disability has been cleverly masked and femininity is the focal point of the image. The photograph represents passivity, lacks sport specificity, and fails to truly provide viewers with the opportunity to admire, according to ESPN, the ‘vast potential of the human form’6 for anything more than an impressive posture while seated. The aim of The Body Issue appears to be broadening the consideration of acceptable

Figure 3. oksana Masters in the 2012 edition of The Body Issue. note: Credit: Martin schoeller / auGust.

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sporting bodies in featuring female Paralympians, but does so by emphasizing dominant ability and gender roles but it does so by emphasizing dominant gender roles – one step forward and two steps backwards. One may counter7 that our position suggests that Paralympians, because of problematic sexual objectification, should not at all be included in the ESPN Body Issue. This is a tricky response because suggesting that women with a disability need more protection than other women (specifically able-bodied) further contributes to treating women with a disability paternalistically. Consequently, we do not propose that Paralympians should be banned from participating in the special issue, and instead endorse an educative approach regarding the many layers surrounding sexual objectification and Paralympians. Masters justified her deci- sion to pose nude:

[The Body Issue shoot] was an amazing opportunity for me and also for the adaptive community. When I first had my legs amputated, it was hard for me to be positive and feel pretty. Many people don’t know that someone with a disability can be strong and beautiful and successful as an athlete. (Ain 2012)

Here, Masters indicates how posing nude reinforces her identity as a female athlete with a physical disability, mentioning both having an impact on other individuals with physical disabilities and wanting to feel ‘pretty’. We argue that this image exemplifies Masters’ need to reduce tension caused by conflicting identities and can be classified as somewhat sexually objectifying.

The three images of female Paralympians described above convey appropri- ate performances of hetero-femininity to negate the tension caused by their ath- leticism, typically characterized by masculinity and aggression (Weaving 2012). However, this case is more unique because performances of femininity are fur- ther exacerbated by the need to combat the tensions characteristic of physical disability, usually resulting in these women being asexualized. Ultimately, such heteronormative representations lead to self-objectification and thus result in the trivialization of athletic ability (Weaving 2012). Despite efforts to maintain the integrity of the images of female athletes, it is difficult to believe that the magazine’s popularity can be attributed entirely to the target audience’s con- sumption of the images’ artistry. As argued by Jirasek and colleagues, there exists an unquenchable societal desire for sexualized sporting bodies in the media (2013). Although the images of athletes featured in The Body Issue are not portrayed as highly sexually objectifying as they are in SISI or Playboy, it could be argued that the highly sexually objectifying images within those magazines create additional desire for similar images. This may make it difficult for con- sumers to differentiate artistry from capitalist consumer desires of hyper-sexu- ally objectifying nudity. The images are additionally concerning because ESPN Magazine is popularized and widely accessible both on the internet and in stores. It is packaged as sport, but without the taboos and age restrictions that are associated with magazines like Playboy or FHM (Weaving 2012). After the release of Masters’ images, the website creator of Busted Coverage, Joe Kinsey8 wrote:

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Yep, there are more semi-naked ESPN Body Issue photos to peruse and as you can see, we have a legless chick getting naked. It’s a new world, people. If you can’t see the beauty in a legless woman, time to get with the times. She was, like, willing to get semi-naked for you guys. (2012)

Not only does this excerpt reduce Masters to a ‘legless chick getting naked’, but it is also indicative that she was doing the shoot for males, just to be perceived as ‘pretty’. Posing nude may be inherently problematic in Western society when attempting to convey artistry due to this overwhelming desire to sexualize sport and female athletes for hedonistic consumption (Jirasek, Zain Kohe, and Hurych 2013).

Amy Purdy (2014)

Amy Purdy, a world class snowboarder and Paralympic bronze medalist, was born in 1979 in the USA (Purdy and Burford 2015). In June of 1999, Purdy was induced into a coma, was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis and had both legs amputated. Purdy was on the reality television series The Amazing Race, and finished in second place on the television show Dancing with the Stars in 2014 (Purdy and Burford 2015). Also in 2014, Purdy posed for The Body Issue. See Figure 4 below.

Figure 4. amy Purdy in the 2014 edition of The Body Issue. note: Credit: Paola Kudacki/ trunk archive.

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Purdy dangles from a hoop by supporting her body weight with one arm. Her long hair is swept back by artificial wind; her prosthetics have pointed toes, and are painted with nail polish which emphasizes femininity. Her gaze is directed to the viewer with her lips semi-parted. Although Purdy showcases athleticism in the image, she is neither an acrobat nor a gymnast, but rather a world class Paralympic snowboarder. Purdy explained that when she was a contestant on Dancing with the Stars, she learned to use her body ‘in a different way versus really athletic … like creating pretty lines and stuff and that’s what I wanted to do for the [ESPN] shoot’ (Access Hollywood 2014). Rather than celebrate and be affiliated with snowboarding, Purdy chose to emphasize the skills she acquired following a six-month experience on Dancing with the Stars. This decision could be indicative of the tension between fitting ideals and self-identifying as an elite athlete, particularly in a male-dominated action sport like snowboarding. Following the shoot, Purdy reflected, ‘What I love about my body, especially right now, is just how strong it is. I’ve felt that contrast of it being as weak and vulnerable as it could be … I’m so proud of how healthy I am’ (Access Hollywood 2014). After the magazine’s release, she also indicated that she desired to do ‘a really pretty shoot’ (Access Hollywood 2014). It is relevant to note that it seems that Purdy could showcase ‘healthy’ better in an acrobatic/gymnastic position rather than in a photograph celebrating her athleticism in snowboarding. It doesn’t appear as though many male athletes in the ESPN Body Issue are pho- tographed participating in other activities other than their sport.

We argue that this image is somewhat sexually objectifying because although it aims to convey strength in that she is in an athletic pose, the overall message of the image is that Purdy can detach herself from her athleticism to deliver a seductive gaze to the audience. Purdy’s physical disability, although not hidden, is easily justified and de-emphasized. In this specific case, it is also feminized and barely differentiable from the leg of a ballerina or gymnast. We argue that when female Paralympians are sexually objectified they are no longer celebrated as body-subjects and instead are decontextualized. They are often captured in athletically disengaged images which render them non-compatible with sport and decreases agency (Weaving 2012).

Context of the magazine

It is crucial to our argument to also refer to the context surrounding the images in the ESPN Body Issue. The advertisements within the issue, regardless of the year, target young-to-middle-aged heterosexual male audience. In 2014, every clothing and shoe advertisement in the magazine targeted males; for example, one advertisement shows a man wearing sunglasses surrounded by female arms who undress him, with the caption ‘Be the star in stripes’. More examples characteristic of the advertisements in the magazine include Captain Morgan ads featuring a scantily clad female ‘pirate’ with the caption ‘Marisa Miller: First

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Mate; Welcome to the Captain’s world’, and Axe advertisements with the tag line ‘Make your skin irresistible to touch’. The Axe ad showcases a female in lingerie straddling a man who just used the Axe body wash. Other products frequently advertised comprised of chewing tobacco, trucks, fantasy football leagues, mus- cle-building supplements, and men’s razors. These advertisements contribute to the sexual objectification of the images of female athletes within the magazine because they emphasize how the magazine should be consumed, and women are often showcased as sexual objects. This begs the question posed by Weaving (2016) regarding the Sports Illustrate Swimsuit Issue:

can we really admire a woman’s athleticism (and athletic body) as symbols of female agency in a magazine which, through the overall context of posed pictures and product endorsements, perpetuates messages of treating and viewing women primarily as sexual objects? (391)

Conclusion

We applied Weaving’s continuum of sexual objectification to account for the varying degrees of objectification of images featuring four Paralympic athletes showcased in ESPN Magazine’s Body Issue. The analyzed images were problem- atic because they reaffirmed ableist and sexist ideologies, and de-emphasized the disabilities of the athletes featured, capitalizing on hyperfeminine ideals. All female Paralympic athletes analyzed were conventionally attractive, young women with impairments that allowed them to perform sport at a high skill level, perched at the top of the ‘esthetically-pleasing’ athlete hierarchy. We refer to a feminist critique regarding female Paralympian representation in The Body Issue: ‘It’s telling that except for their visible disabilities, they are the pinnacle of female attractiveness: white, thin, long-haired, conventionally attractive, usu- ally in graceful, feminine poses, almost always smiling at the camera. They’re inviting, not defiant’ (Suzanne 2014).9 Although it is commendable that ESPN features female athletes with disabilities in the magazine, they have created a narrow scope of what it looks like to be a female Paralympian. As Purdue and Howe (2013) cautioned when directing media attention solely to less impaired, more visually pleasing athletes, these images serve to diminish the credibility of female Paralympians (or aspiring female athletes) with more severe, less esthet- ically pleasing impairments.

In perpetuating the notion that posing nude is empowering, female athletes conform to masculinist ideals which implies that femininity and heterosexuality are of more value than athleticism. Physical disabilities complicate the societal need to sexualize female athletes, thus it can be argued that higher levels of sexual objectification correlate positively with the consumer’s ability to de-em- phasize the disability in question. Each of the images analyzed portrayed the female Paralympians with the use of femininity markers and in passive, non- sport specific poses. These factors in combination contributed to the overall

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trivialization of the skill, talent, activism, and journey that each athlete possessed to achieve their status as an elite Paralympic athlete. We argued that in each case, it is more effective to incorporate dynamic, sport-specific images that challenge viewers to acknowledge the function of a skilled athlete, rather than focus on the athlete as a mere body.

Although it is important that female Paralympians have increased media attention, we conclude that overall the ESPN’s Body Issue is the lesser of evils when compared to the extent of sexual objectification of female athletes featured in SISI, Maxim, or Playboy. However, it is still necessary that we take precaution in the representation of Paralympic athletes. By sexualizing female Paralympians, their identities both as athletes and as individuals with disabilities are detached. Finally, we believe that more action-based images of female Paralympic athletes with a wider scope of disability are necessary to bring attention, interest, and social acceptance to Paralympic and adapted sport.

Notes

1. See ESPN website: http://espnmediazone.com/us/media-kits/espn-magazine- body-issue-2016/.

2. See ESPN website: http://espnmediazone.com/us/media-kits/espn-magazine- body-issue-2016/.

3. She became a world record-holder for multiple racing championships, marathons and triathlons, and won several awards for her activist work with disability sport and prostheses, including a 2006 ESPN ESPY for Best Female Athlete with a Disability.

4. See the Runner’s World cover: http://www.alwaystri.com/wp-content/ uploads/2012/07/Runners-World-Cover.jpg.

5. See Adidas advertisement: http://estaticos03.marca.com/imagenes/2010/12/09/ tenis/1291892307_0.jpg.

6. See ESPN website: http://espnmediazone.com/us/media-kits/espn-magazine- body-issue-2016/.

7. We thank one of the reviewers for acknowledging this counter argument. 8. Joe Kinsey created this website in 2007. According to the website,

Busted Coverage is a leading sports news, entertainment and social media destination for all sports fans, reaching over one million unique visitors per month. We focus on sports entertainment, game coverage, action off the court and the athlete real estate market.

See https://bustedcoverage.com/about/ 9. This quote is from the blog Culturally Disoriented. For more information about

the blog please see the ‘about’ section https://culturallydisoriented.wordpress. com/about/. The author of the blog, ‘Suzanne’ provides a feminist analysis of pop culture.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to acknowledge the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback. We also acknowledge Paul Gaffney for his incredible assistance throughout the publication process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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