During the time I’ve been talking about representation in cycling media, there is one topic I have not been able to touch on, self representation in media. Women today face enormous amounts of images and opinions from different media sources, usually portraying what the so-called ‘feminine’ female should be like. For decades, women have based their worth and identity based on the images and opinions of the media that has created restrictive cultural and global standards of what it means for women to represent themselves, both in action and on social media.
While women on social media out number men, they have the power to change the rules of the representation. Ever since the popularization of Instagram, the social impact of self representation has had a massive influence in how women perceive themselves in media. For athletes there’s no underestimating the power of social media. An instant connection with fans, they’re able to convey messages, control how they’re represented and grow a supporter base that bypasses the traditional media who formerly held that link.
For women in sport, it’s proven to be even more valuable. They are no longer forced to rely on articles in print and stories on television as an assessment of their “news value”, but can connect directly with fans – their likes, follows and hashtags of support sending a clear message to companies, marketers and broadcasters of what viewers and fans want to see.
Yet this new medium comes at a cost and has the potential to set back women in sport, tearing up the inroads made by female sporting pioneers.
Before social media, the connection between athlete and fan was controlled by traditional media. Television news, newspapers, magazines and radio decided whether to run a story, how the athlete was portrayed and what parts of their interview to use. Admittedly for a long time traditional media did this badly, athletes were exploited, sexualised and even trivialised but slowly the tide turned and female athletes began to be represented in the right way, with a focus on sport not sex. Journalists, editors, directors and the like had so much power as to how women in sport were conveyed to the public.
And now that power is in the athletes’ hands. But there’s a dark side of social media.
The more followers an athlete has, the greater their perceived worth and value. Marketers and companies will often look at an athlete’s social media as an assessment of their popularity and potential brand reach. Followers can replace medals when determining whether to support or sponsor an athlete. It’s a destructive tool that can backfire on the professionalism of women’s sports. An athlete’s ability and performance isn’t used as a measure of success, instead the power of visual mediums like Instagram and Facebook are used as the measure, with the focus on what they look like.
But the dangerous truth is followers don’t always equal supporters. Last year one Australian female athlete with over 100 thousand followers on Instagram found herself needing to raise money to head to the World Championships. A call went out on her account to donate via a crowdfunding site. With 100,000 followers she needed just 5% to donate just $1 each to have well exceeded her target. After weeks of posts and messages the time limit on the fundraising was up and she’d barely reached more than a few hundred dollars.
How athletes go about getting their likes and follows can also prove destructive. Sexier, seductive shots, with plenty of cleavage and skin, can often get more likes and an increase in followers. Surfer Alana Blanchard is the queen of Instagram, at 1.7million, she has more followers than any other female professional surfer. Alana has never won a world surfing tour event and while her results saw her dropped from the tour, yet her popular Instagram feed is filled with shots of her g-string bikini bottom, shots in underwear and seductive poses. This article is not to say women can’t nor shouldn’t express themselves in posts but sometimes it can shift the focus onto sexual objectification rather than success. We are still in a time the public goes in an uproar when mainstream media portrays a female athlete in that way, and while I’m all for a female’s freedom to dress and show herself in the way she chooses, there’s a side of me that worries about the broader picture of how the public perceives, and marketers respond to, women in sport.
I often see on Instagram young girls obsessing with selfies, teenagers snapping themselves in their underwear in the bathroom and concentrating more on pictures rather than performances. Utilizing apps to alter their facial features, skin texture, and body. Their self-esteem is counted by the number of followers on their Instagram, their worth measured by the number of likes on a post and insecurities are increased as they seek validation through social media.
Women in sport need to be the people these girls look up to, aspire to be and can teach them that success isn’t determined by their social media account.
There are plenty of female athletes who have been able to mirror their competitive success with their social media accounts. In cycling for example, the greatest female cyclist of our time is no doubt Lizzie Deignan. On Instagram, Lizzie is also the most popular female cyclist with over 86.5k followers. Along with cycling athlete and friend, Tiffany Cromwell is well known on Instagram as the most marketable female athlete in cycling and has 61k followers. In addition, there are women in cycling (@Gravel_Tryhard) who are fighting back against the hypersexualization of women cycling influencer accounts. How you represent yourself on social media is extremely important as well, showing authenticity and personality in posts proves popular, so too does behind the scenes snapshots that traditional media isn’t privy to. This allows fans a sneak peek inside your character – rather than inside your clothes.
The message here is that it’s up to you girls to decide how you’re represented. Your followers, likes and comments don’t determine your value and shouldn’t be a benchmark for your success. Your posts have a bigger impact than just your profile.
Social media is causing a huge cultural shift, let’s make sure it’s in the right direction.
Image: courtesy of #bikebabes