Wednesday, May 12, 2010

WNBA = NBA?

I recently saw a commercial on television attempting to promote the WNBA. The commercial showed various images of NBA players followed by images of WNBA players doing similar things as the men. At the end of the commercial, there was a quote that said basketball is basketball. Hopefully, there will be more and more commericials like this being put on television. Hopefully, commercials like this will get women's sport the publicity and respect it deserves. Hopefully, commercials like this well help women gain equality to men. Women are able to do many things men are able to do, and simply because women's sports does not recieve the same media attention, women as a result have not gained the same respect as men. Ultimately, the lack of media coverage is more detrimental to women's equality than simply television ratings. Seeing commercials like this gives hope that one day, sports will be seen as sports, and not distinguished between women and men's sports.

Bryant Wang
Kin 338i Section 5
Posted by at

4 comments:

Kerrie Kauer said...

Going off what Bryant said, I think it is safe to say that it is commercials like these that offer hope to the younger female generations in terms of how women are portrayed in sport. To further affirm Bryants thoughts on women not getting proper attention in the media, I feel as though we as a society are often times our own worst enemy in that we tend to become bystanders. If more people in the media were bold enough to depict women as being athletically equal to men, the stigma of women being either negatively portrayed, or only having the femininity to fall back on in their sports career may easily be diminished. I think that the statement "basketball is basketball" explains the power struggle encountered by female athletes in a very simple way. Although we have evolved as a society in recognizing the success of female athletes, we still have a long way to go and it is commercials like these that will empower the younger generations to be advocates of diminishing the social norm of women athletes being absent in the media compared to the male athletes.

Elise Severson
Kin 338I Section 5306

May 13, 2010 at 1:35 AM
Kerrie Kauer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
May 13, 2010 at 5:16 PM
Kerrie Kauer said...

I would have to agree that this commercial sounds amazing because it represents the equality and strenth of women's athletics. Although this commercial was refering to the WNBA and the NBA, I think it represents a powerful message beyond that. Not too many networks realize that society unintentionally favors men when it comes to sports and when women get recognition like this it means a lot to not only female athletes, but to females in general. For this assignment I researched sportscenter.com to see what publicity they had to offer for women, and on the front page there was nothing. The headlines and pictures were of the Cavaliers vs. Celtics playoff game, Floyd Mayweather, John Clayton, and Ray Lewis. This is why we cherish commercials such as the one Bryant wrote a blog about. Hopefully as time goes on more and more commercials, advertisements, and credit is given to female athletes because they deserve it just as much as male athletes.

Anya de Leon
KIN 338i
Section 6398/5306

May 13, 2010 at 5:18 PM
Kerrie Kauer said...

In hearing this news it sounds like a step in the right direction, although the coverage is still low regarding women in athletics, unless you have cable tv and pay for full sports access. Hopefully media increases televised events of women's sports and makes them more accessible. However, the implementation that they may get more attention may be from corporate sponsorship (in the ways of Nike or Gatorade) because they realize they can cash in on these things as well. These companies are known to market to who ever they can because it helps sell their product. This was seen in the past giving inspiration to women and making them feel more empowered. This may spur others in time to question why women don't receive more coverage and to demand to see equal coverage, just as policies for Title IX have pushed further for equality.
Ryan Stapleton
Kin 338I Section 5

May 13, 2010 at 8:04 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)