Suchergebnisse

This article explores the relationship between NBA player Dennis Rodman's marginalized masculinity as a black male, his cross-dressing and gender play, and his location in consumer media culture. Through ethnographic content analysis of Rodman's media image on MTV (a new and emerging site for the study of sport and media), this paper explores the effects of Rodman's gender play, asking whether Rodman's image provides a challenge or disruption to prevailing notions of masculinity. Overall, Rodman's cross-dressing does little to offer a critique of hegemonic masculinity, but rather, serves to signal his own marginalized black masculinity. His gender play seems to be contained within heterosexual, and even hyper-masculine, boundaries that reproduce the very racist and sexist notions of black masculinity against which hegemonic masculinity is stabilized.

Despite increased structural opportunities through Title IX, adolescent females in the US continue to participate in physical activity less than males. This persistent pattern suggests gender stereotypes might subtly groom girls' and boys' choices about health behaviors. Although communication can shape gender stereotypes, the majority of physical activity studies employ social influence frameworks (i.e. social learning theory) that ignore this important dimension of influence. Because the family is a primary socializing agent where gender roles are learned, the current qualitative interview study of high school basketball players illustrates: (1) how communication within the family context prompts learning about parental role models in sport; (2) how adolescents talk about maternal and paternal sports participation. This research suggests that communication is an important modifiable social process for physical activity interventions that include a family influence component.

Qualitative interviews explore the meanings increased female participation in basketball have for a sample of basketball players from three high schools. To what extent are post–Title IX female inroads into sport challenging and/or reproducing the gender order? How do girls and boys give meaning to the successes and failures of girls' and boys' basketball teams and athletics? The social processes reproducing a two-tiered basketball institution at the high school level are illustrated (i.e., emphasis on playing differences, undervaluing of girls' contributions, policing of normative gender expectations). This research suggests that both girls and boys are complicit in supporting the gender order. It illustrates how challenges to the gender order signified by females' increased participation in "male-identified" sports are appropriated. Modifiable social processes for gender equity education in sport are identified as important to support Title IX legal access.

Recent research indicates that the televised sports that U.S. boys watch most include pro basketball, pro football, pro baseball, Extreme sports, sports highlights shows, and the dramatic pseudosport of pro wrestling. Based on a textual analysis of these televised sports shows and their accompanying commercial advertisements, the authors identify 10 recurrent themes concerning gender, race, aggression, violence, militarism, and commercialism that, together, they call the Televised Sports Manhood Formula. This formula is a master ideological narrative that is well suited to discipline boys' bodies, minds, and consumption choices in ways that construct a masculinity that is consistent with the entrenched interests of the sports/media/commercial complex. However, the authors note some discontinuities and contradictory moments within and between sports media texts and call for audience studies to explore the various ways that boys interpret, use, or negotiate the Televised Sports Manhood Formula.