Women’s sport was in the headlines for the past 24 hours with three images causing equal measures of intense commentary.
Women’s Running in the US put an image of model Erica Shenk on the cover of the August issue. The Super Plus size model is different from the normal run of sporting cover images and generated significant commentary across social and mainstream media.
“Runners come in all shapes and sizes,” said Editor Jessica Sebor. “You can go to any race finish line, from a 5K to a marathon, and see that. It was important for us to celebrate that.”
“I think that every woman goes to the magazine rack sometimes and feels like she can’t see herself in the cover images. We wanted our readers to feel like they could see themselves in our cover.”
Closer to home TG4 came in for equal measure of praise and criticism for an ad for the Ladies Football Championship suggesting that this was ‘The most important nine months of a Woman’s life.
There was a lot of angst about sports women being portrayed in terms of pregnancy but it later emerged that this was in fact an ad from six years ago that was never actually run.
Finally EA Sports announced that it was to put US Women’s Soccer star Alex Morgan on the cover of FIFA 2016 in the United States, the first time it has happened and marking the first year that Women players will be part of the massively popular game.
They will also have women alongside Lionel Messi in Canada and Australia though not yet in any other country.
Our opinion is that we want equality when it comes to sports participation and sports promotion. The fact that so many people were talking about women role models actually being out playing sport at the highest level is a good thing. That some of it should be more about body shape than talent is less than ideal but should be seen as a stepping stone towards a future when equality will be the norm in sport as it is in almost every other aspect of life.
And let’s not forget that when David Beckham was in his prime only a decade ago as much was written and portrayed of his hairstyles and tattoos as his free kicks and crosses.
