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The last time a woman athlete was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine (Vol.103 Issue 2) she was not in uniform, but wore a mini skirt and a tank top. The woman, carrying a wiffle ball and bat, was Jennie Finch, pitcher for the 2004 Olympic Gold Medal softball team and NCAA title holder for the most consecutive winning games (60 while playing at the University of Arizona). Seeing the magazine in a newsstand, the image of a competitive and physically proficient woman, a world-class athlete, does not suggest itself. If that cover is representative of the post-Title IX female athlete in the visual culture of sports, what has happened since 1972?

Sports Illustrated magazine is iconic. The images on its pages, particularly the cover, have come to represent the world of sport. It is, at its simplest, sports - illustrated. The magazine's paid circulation is over three million, and its readership is reported to be up to 21 million people. The average SI reader, overwhelmingly male, lives in the eastern central states (Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, etc.), is between the ages of 25 and 49, earns between 50 and 60 thousand dollars a year, most likely does not have children (less than 50% of readers), and is very likely white (about 75%).[1] If Sports Illustrated is primarily a business, as mainstream magazines are, the images included in the magazine, and their inherent assumptions about race and gender, correspond to what is most marketable to the magazine's constituency. While it is impossible to decipher if SI merely disseminates what their constituency desires or rather constructs those desires, the images in the magazine represent the current state of gender in sport.

Sports Illustrated has featured powerful pictures of powerful female athletes: Brandi Chastain and Serena Williams dominate the covers that showed them muscular and triumphant. They are, however, exceptions which confirm the dismal fact that the premiere magazine of sport has featured fewer women athletes (as athletes) the more women play. The athletes who never make the cover, and how those on the cover are represented, provides a telling history of women in sport since 1954, the year of Sports Illustrated's inception. The highest number of women appearing on the cover in one single calendar year occurred in 1955, the second year of the magazine's publication. Twelve covers out of fifty-two featured women. Since 1965, when the number of women pictured began to fall, an average of three women have appeared on the cover each year, a figure that includes models and wives of athletes, in addition to female athletes. In Olympic years women have fared significantly better, though even that number has been suffering. In every Olympic year since 1996 one female athlete has appeared on the cover, most recently track star Marion Jones in 2002 and figure skater Sarah Hughes in 2004 (snowboarders Hannah Teter, Gretchen Bleiler, and Lindsey Jacobellis shared the cover with their medal-winning male teammates in 2006). There have been two years in Sports Illustrated's fifty-one year history when the swimsuit issue was the only issue featuring a woman on the cover. Only models in swimsuits were on the cover in 1975, three years after the passage of Title IX, two years after Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the one of the most watched tennis matches ever, and only one year after the Women's Sports Foundation was established. The second year was 1981, when the NCAA first added women's championships to their domain.[2]

The covers of Sports Illustrated exemplify the contradictions facing women who are athletes. Certainly, in the past quarter-century, we have continued to see astonishing progress in terms of women's sports. At the professional level, women tennis players have successfully advocated for equal pay at many major tournaments; there is now a professional women's basketball league, along with increased interest in women's professional golf. Some women have even qualified to play in events on the men's tour. But we have also seen blocks to women's progress, sometimes in surprising places: despite the widespread excitement, almost obsession, with the women's national soccer team, the professional women's soccer league was forced to fold; at the Olympics the number of men's and women's sports remains uneven and women are barred from major events like Winter Olympic ski jumping; at the college level Title IX is under attack and gains made for women's sports are particularly targeted.[3] Given the overall trend toward progress, however, why has there been little or no progress - and actually losses - in the representation of women athletes? And, we must also ask: do these failures in representation contribute to the continuing blocks to moving forward in some areas of women's athletics?

These questions are particularly pressing given the amazing improvements in the scope and power of the photographic illustration of sport. The increased capabilities of photographic technologies have been part of a revolution in visual culture that has ushered in the age of video cell phones, HDTV, and continuous access to media through the Internet. In our increasingly media saturated culture, one would expect more and more outlets to allow the accomplishments of female athletes to enter public view, but that is yet to be seen. The images that do appear assume more importance as they become progressively more available to more people, especially in a world where visual recognition can be more important than accomplishment or success. In a world organized in and through the media, the importance of image over achievement plays itself out in politics and in business. And, it is certainly true that in the world of sport, visual recognition is crucial to the most lucrative form of success: not the winning of championships, but the securing of contracts for product endorsements.

So, if illustration is so important, why are the numbers of female athletes represented on SI's cover dropping, and why is the content of the illustration shifting? In viewing cover images from 1954 to the present there has been a marked shift away from athleticism and toward sexuality, more specifically toward a sexuality that seems unrelated to women's athletic abilities, that seems to empty out the import of their athletic achievement. We could argue that this change is simply part of the greater sexualization of U.S. public culture since the 1950s, and perhaps that is one factor, but, of course, then we have to ask why male athletes have not experienced a similar sexualization. And, when men are presented in poses that are body-baring, attractive and even sexual, why is that sexuality always tied to their athleticism? On an unquestionably homoerotic cover from 2001 (Vol. 94 Issue 10), Nomar Garciaparra, a here shirtless player for the Boston Red Sox, holds a baseball bat tight against his upper thigh, implying the size of his anatomy, apart from his muscular arms. The headline reads: "A Cut Above: How Boston's Nomar Garciaparra Made Himself the Toughest Out in Baseball." Here the suggestion of sexuality (is the reference to coming out incidental?) is tempered by his athletic accomplishments. While the cover undoubtedly signals sex, we are intended to see his sexuality as coupled with his athletic prowess, as part of his physical domination. My critique is not of sexualization, per se, but the way that, when it comes to women, illustrating sex substitutes for illustrating sport.

Here it is helpful to think about the relation between the status of women in sport and the declining status of the representation of women in sport. Since women's athletic opportunities and achievements have expanded, while their representation has contracted, we cannot assume that SI is merely reporting Ñ illustrating Ñ what is happening in the world of sport. Rather, at least as far as the cover is concerned, SI is telling some other kind of story, one that tells us something about the role of sport in the production of cultural values (see Catharine Stimpson's essay in this issue). The poor representation of women athletes may contribute to the obstacles to equitable treatment that they continue to face. Further, this problem of representation may have wide implications in terms of the way that sport - and its representation - contributes to the production of gender relations, and the values ascribed to masculinity and femininity.

For example, in an interview with a former football player, sociologist Michael Messner demonstrates one of the ways in which American men construct their understanding of gender relations, through identification with athletes in the media. Most men could never match the athletic accomplishments of those with whom they identify, but nonetheless, these figures epitomize masculinity, not just as an ideal, but for average men. As the former player stated, men and women were not the same, or even equal, because "[a] woman can do the same job as I can do - maybe even be my boss. But I'll be damned if she can go out there on the field and take a hit from Ronnie Lott" (then a dominating defensive back for the San Francisco 49ers).[4] Even if he once could "take a hit" (although perhaps not from Ronnie Lott) the man who made this statement could no longer do so; yet this athletic act still made for a gender difference that told him who he was - his athletic ability or lack thereof aside. Moreover, the question of who could or could not "take a hit" somehow spoke to the question of gender equality.

If sport so fundamentally defines gender for (at least some members of) U.S. society, what impact does the representation of women athletes have on this definition? And perhaps more to the point, if the cover of Sports Illustrated regularly included women who were athletes first and sexual second, how would the gender relations encapsulated by this anecdote have to change? Would the vision of women who might in fact be able to take a hit from Ronnie Lott change the meaning not just of femininity but of masculinity? Would it open the door to women who could, unlike Atalanta, afford to bypass the apple and win the race (whether on the athletic field or in other areas of competitive accomplishment in our society)? The question here is what do strong images of female athletes actually accomplish? If the mere existence of a powerful athlete like Ronnie Lott can construct masculine identity, can an image of a powerful athlete like Lisa Leslie construct an identity for women? Do images of competitive and athletically competent women have the ability to enact social change that exceeds the boundaries of the world of sport?

These questions are so important because SI is not just a medium for entertainment. SI is also a journalistic enterprise, part of Time, Inc. one of the most highly respected and powerful sources for news in this country. And so, there is good reason to be concerned that the pictures provided by SI help to construct the facts about women, men, and our society. But, as with almost all news outlets in the United States, SI is a for-profit enterprise. And so we have to ask, would people - men or women - want to buy a magazine that consistently challenged gender norms? If SI is, however, in the business of images then we need to think about the ways in which this business shapes the representation of both gender and race. It seems clear, for example, from the cover with Jennie Finch to the types of photos we see of tennis players like Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova that SI thinks that sex sells. Moreover, when it comes to women, the sex that really sells can even be detached from athletic accomplishment. Kournikova became an icon in the pages of SI without ever breaking through to the very top ranks of her sport. Part of her popularity seems to be founded in the fact that she has not been entirely successful on the court, or at the very least her lack of success is negligible in relation to her level of popularity.

The impact of the market on the reporting of sports has not just been through the need to sell magazines and the perceived means of doing so. A major reason for the decline in women's representation is the change in what one considers 'sport.' In SI's first years women were featured swimming, riding horses, skiing, doing gymnastics and archery, even playing chess. Sports were open to amateurs. You did not need to endorse the products of a corporation or have a multi-million dollar contract to appear on the cover of a major sporting magazine. As the sports world becomes more closed off, with coverage of basketball, football and baseball comprising the majority of sports media, it becomes more closed off than ever to women. While there is no professional baseball league for women (there is for football though it never appears in the media), there is a successful professional basketball association for women, the WNBA. There has, however, never been a WNBA player on the cover of Sports Illustrated, not even in its inaugural year, 1997.

The only two women to appear on covers in 1997 were Venus Williams (professional tennis players have fared relatively well in SI, and are likewise the highest paid female athletes) and Jamila Wideman, a basketball player for Stanford who appeared next to her father, John Edgar Wideman, an author and college basketball star himself. Jamila Wideman is one of only four female college athletes to get the cover shot on SI (excluding the five covers in nine years that included college cheerleaders). The other three are Cheryl Miller (1985), Jennifer Rizzotti (1995), and Diana Taurasi (2003), all basketball players. In contrast, from 1954 to 2004 male college athletes have been on an average of 8 covers per calendar year, with the month of March almost exclusively dedicated to college basketball.

Jamila Wideman can also consider herself one of sixteen women athletes of color ever to be on a cover of Sports Illustrated Magazine. The first woman of color, Althea Gibson, was featured in 1957. A full twenty-one years later, golfer Nancy Lopez made the next appearance. Others include Venus and Serena Williams, Marion Jones, Gail Devers, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Florence Griffith Joyner, Michelle Kwan, Kristi Yamaguchi, Cheryl Miller, and three members of the 1996 U.S. Women's Basketball team.

When it comes to men of color, the issue is not under-representation. In that same year that readers encountered Jamila Wideman on the cover, they also saw thirty-one covers portraying men of color, from Tiger Woods and Evander Holyfield to Jerome Bettis and Alex Rodriguez. Sport is one of, if not the only, realm in U.S. popular culture where men of color are not under-represented, and this representation is again determined by the nexus of business and sex. The one time the magazine directly brought up the issue of race, the trope was not that of accomplishment, but of "danger." The type of "danger" associated particularly with African American men in U.S. society, is a danger that is often sexualized. And, when it comes to women of color, we see few photos of African American women in a society which is famously ambivalent about African American women's sexuality.[5]

Two covers in 1997 explicitly explored race in sport. In the first issue (Vol. 87 Issue 23) the headline reads, "What Ever Happened to the White Athlete?" which is superimposed over a classic black and white picture of four posed, clean-cut players in white uniforms from a boy's basketball team in the fifties. The next issue, published just a week later, is starkly different. The cover is entirely black with a large block of white text. The only picture is a small photograph of Latrell Sprewell, clearly emotional and implicitly dangerous. The text reads:

Latrell Sprewell has been publicly castigated and vilified, and any player who gets a similar urge to manually alter his coach's windpipe will surely remember Sprewell's experience as he acts on that impulse. Problem solved. But the Sprewell incident raises other issues that could pose threats to the NBA's future, issues of power and money and - most dangerous of all - race . . .." (Vol. 87 Issue 24).

The cover viewed in isolation raises its own problems, but in contrast with the previous week a telling story of race emerges.[6] No one would condone Sprewell's volatility, which led him to attempt to strangle his coach, P.J. Carlesimo, during practice while playing with the Golden State Warriors. There was much argument in the national media on whether Sprewell had been a victim of racism given his one year suspension from the game and the fact that Carlesimo was not held accountable for his well-documented, constant, and vile verbal assaults on a series of players, not only Sprewell.[7] Juxtaposing these two covers, we see the first as implying that race is dangerous to white athletes and to the world of sports in general, and the second declaring that angry black man are dangerous, period. There's no suggestion that racism is the problem.

In her essay included in this issue Karla FC Holloway sees a similar situation in the recent controversies at Duke University involving the alleged rape of a black woman by members of the Duke Lacrosse team (which first received mention in a corner of the June 26, 2006 cover, over three months after the allegation first appeared in the news). Again, race is dangerous, here to the culture of the University, but not necessarily to "those members of a class who have been exposed to abuse or intolerance or inequity (on this campus, as in the nation, women and black folks)." In a recent New York Times column, Harvey Araton makes an explicit connection between the Duke controversy and the Latrell Sprewells and Allen Iversons of professional sports:

Somehow, what ZIP codes the players' families live in, what high schools they attended, what they wear and, yes, the color of their skin are supposed to be clues as to why they developed reputations as devilish Dukies, and why two or three could end up in jail. Sound familiar? It's the same character trial-by-appearance and cultural typecasting we get when the finger of the accuser points to the African-American male with tattooed biceps and cornrows.[8]

Holloway would agree that cultural perceptions of those involved are at work in the perception of guilt and innocence in both instances, but she also points to a crucial difference: in the case at Duke the characterization of the players as white implies their innocence - and thus the guilt of the black woman accusing them. Black innocence is never an option.

The Sports Illustrated covers play out the logic of a racism which renders black men always already dangerous and black women always already guilty. What ever happened to the white athlete? What about that Latrell Sprewell? Who is guilty and who is innocent in the Duke case? When we juxtapose the cover picturing the young white men and their basketball from the 1950s with the starkly black cover with the small photo of Sprewell, what are we to think? Are we supposed to long for a time when interracial teams were against the law in southern states, or when black athletes faced discrimination on and off the field or court? Of course not, but the subtext of race says otherwise, suggesting a racism unspoken yet legible on the covers.

SI's ambivalence over race and racism has been apparent not just in its representation of Black men and danger, but also in its ambivalence over Black women and sexuality. If white women are first and foremost presented for their sex appeal, SI has had much more trouble representing Black women as sexual at all. This came to the fore most famously in a controversy over covers of the swimsuit issue, the point at which the most women are represented and the point at which it was particularly hard for SI to include Black women or any women of color. The history of the swimsuit issue is much discussed, but it is a crucial aspect to the representation of both race and gender in SI. The swimsuits seen in recent years are clearly not suitable for competitive swimming, but the first swimsuit issue was arguably the third issue in the entire history of the magazine, part of the magazine's early representation of amateur sporting. While SI does not consider this the first swimsuit issue (it 'officially' started in 1964) it is the first cover on which a woman appears wearing a bathing suit (and in this case a bathing cap as well).[9] The swimsuit issue, always considered controversial, has not always featured the skimpily clad women we expect to see today. The women have been shrinking and the clothes have been disappearing. The swimsuit model for 1965 (Vol. 22 Issue 3) has a surprisingly normal body and wears a one piece. In 1969 (Vol. 30 Issue 2) she wears a skirt over her bikini, and in 1970 (Vol. 32 Issue 2) she actually wears a sweater. The turning point seems to be in 1973. The model, Dayle Haddon, looks seductively at the camera, sitting rather provocatively in the water and wearing a metallic blue bikini. The headline reads, "Don't Just Sit There." One must question if the reader expects her to stand up and play a competitive game of beach volleyball. We cannot know, but we do know that many copies of this magazine were sold to see her "just sitting there."

For several years after the swimsuit covers are recognizable; they wear bikinis, have unnaturally bronzed bodies, and often embrace themselves uncomfortably. This is only interrupted by the first model of color, Tyra Banks in 1996 (Vol. 84 Issue 4). It is not a coincidence that the appearance of a woman of color on the cover should have (briefly) interrupted this trend. An anxiety about race and sexuality was portrayed most vividly by the fact that in 1996 Banks did not appear alone, but with a white woman, model Valeria Mazza. The text on the cover, which was published just two years after the end of apartheid, reads "South African Adventure," and at first glance purports to be a depiction of togetherness and diversity - the Black woman and the white woman, wearing leopard print bikinis, lean on each other at the beach. The subtext is drastically different in this falsely ethnographic photograph. The Black woman, here read as African simply because she is non-white, represents the sexual availability and wildness of the female African body. While SI was apparently trying to allay fears about the representation of Black women's sexuality, what the magazine got instead was a controversy about the racism of its timidity, and the next year Banks appeared alone on the cover, which reads "Nothing But Bikinis," as if her skin, her race has been erased. It is notable that in the ten years since that time no other Black woman has appeared on the cover of the swimsuit issue, and the 2002 cover, one of the few on which a woman who could be read as non-white appears, Yamila Diaz-Rahi, a Lebanese and Spanish model, states, "Red Hot in Latin America," again a misreading of all non-white women as being equally capable of fitting into the ethnicity of any non-white country.

More recently we have seen the actual undressing of the model. In 2003 she unties the bottom of her bikini. In 2004 she unties the top. In 2005 the cover aptly states, "The SI Swimsuit Issue Gets Hotter," and again features the untied top, but this time promises models wearing only paint within the covers. In a somewhat drastic leap from the preceding years, the most recent swimsuit cover, published February 17, 2006, includes a total of eight models (six of whom have blonde hair), using their hands and each other to stand in for bikini tops (and a promise of Heidi Klum wearing just paint on an interior page).

But all of this is to be expected. Not many would argue that the swimsuit issue is 'good' for women, though it is relatively tame compared to the weekly covers of many young men's magazines or any Victoria's Secret advertisement. What is particularly troubling about the 2006 swimsuit issue, not ignoring the eroticization of straight women as lesbians, is the bottom right hand corner, where we see Maria Sharapova lying down wearing the same swimsuit as the cover models, though including a top. The text reads, "Maria Sharapova as You've NEVER Seen Her." In recent years, Sports Illustrated, which in this case can only be said to represent the actions of the larger sports world, has taken the athlete, the physicality and competitive prowess, out of the female athlete. Maria Sharapova, who won Wimbledon at age 17 in 2004 and has consistently been in the top ranks of the women's professional tennis circuit, is not featured as an athlete, she is featured as an attractive woman with a famous name. Her online photo gallery on SI's website for the 2006 swimsuit issue states that, "she follows in the footsteps of fellow tennis players Serena and Venus Williams."[10] The site is referring not to their mutual success in tennis, but to their undressing in the swimsuit issue. The problem is not necessarily the sexualization of Sharapova, it is the replacement of athleticism for sexuality. Several athletes have appeared in the swimsuit issue, including Steffi Graff in 1997 and Annika Sorenstram in 1999. Sorenstram, tellingly, has only appeared in a very small picture in the corner of a traditional cover twice, each time with similar headlines: "Next Target: Men at Colonial" and ". . . Annika is the Manhunter."[11] Sorenstram's inclusion in the swimsuit issue can be read as the taming of a threatening and competitive athlete, one of the few professional athletes who has competed directly against men. In this case her sexuality empties the significance of her athletic success.

Beyond the inclusion of athletes in the swimsuit issue, where there is no question as to how she will be represented, is the portrayal of women athletes on standard covers. This is not just true for Jennie Finch in 2005. Vol. 92 Issue 23, which appeared in 2000, is one of the most troubling covers in the history of Sports Illustrated. Anna Kournikova appears wearing an off-the-shoulder shirt, hugging a pillow, and staring seductively at the camera. Her tennis career has been overshadowed by her personal life and media image. No longer does she appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated (or in other major media) for her recent win or impressive performance (she has been out of the professional circuit due to injury for a few years) she can appear on the cover for a pretty face. In contrast, men have very rarely been on the cover out of uniform. The few times they are sexualized, their sexuality is trumped by their athleticism; it is their athleticism that makes the male gaze possible. Women's athleticism is unarguably exalted on several covers. Maria Sharapova exalts after a win, Sarah Hughes leaps on the ice, Serena Williams' pounds the ball, but when only two or three issues a year feature a female athlete on the cover, one would like to see those athletes being highlighted because of their talent. We must wonder when we'll see snowboarder Hannah Teter on the cover trading in her signature plaid snowboarding gear for a plaid bikini. And, once again, the connection between business and sport is crucial to these representations. The women who are most often taken up on the cover of SI for their beauty rather than their talent are also those who are most likely to gain lucrative endorsements. Directly after her win at Wimbledon, Sharapova quickly gained endorsement contracts that made her the highest paid female athlete in the world, an opportunity that was conspicuously never offered to either Venus or Serena Williams, nor to nine-time Wimbledon champion (and out lesbian), Martina Navratilova. The inequitable distribution of endorsement opportunities speaks a great deal about the ways in which making a business of sport in the midst of a media culture also makes for road blocks to opportunity.

How do we change an entire sports history in which women earn mere mentions in sports media, and when they do, their athletic command is quickly diluted? If Sports Illustrated is at the nexus of sport, big business, and visual culture, it is probably best to start somewhere else, to create other venues where women's athleticism can be illustrated, to create alternative cultural values. An example of such a visual counter culture is a traveling photography exhibition and book, Game Face: What Does a Female Athlete Look Like, edited by Jane Gottesman. Game Face is a remarkable collection of photographs of athletes, professional and otherwise, of all ages, along with personal sports histories. It is a rewriting of women's sports history that includes not only athletes like U.S. soccer star Michelle Akers, but girls with hula hoops, Little League players, and Aimee Mullins, who set the Paralympic records in the 1996 Atlanta games in the 100-meter dash and the long jump. Two photographs of Chris Evert are illustrative of the difference between images like those included in Game Face and those on the covers of Sports Illustrated magazine. In her last cover for the magazine, in 1989, Chris Evert, who has been one of the most illustrated female athletes in SI, holds her tennis racket on her shoulder like an accessory and says, "I'm Going to be a Full Time Wife" (Vol. 71 Issue 9). This is not the Chris Evert who won 18 Grand Slam singles titles and 3 Grand Slam doubles titles. She appears to be the neighborhood tennis mom. In contrast there is an image in Game Face, interestingly from the Sports Illustrated 20th Century Sports Awards, in which Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, long time rivals, are arm wrestling. Evert with feminine propriety wears a sleeveless gown, one that also allows her muscular arms to be entirely visible. Ten years without playing professional tennis, she still has the physical presence of an athlete. What is truly striking about Game Face is its implicit definition of sport. It is a much more inclusive arena in which all are welcome, in which women's bodies are valued in entirely new ways.

While changes within sports media and the representation of female athletes are necessary in transforming the cultural value of sport, or more specifically, the position of gender, race and business in sport, there is also a need for other interventions. In addition to photographic presentations like Game Face, strategic encroachment is possible in more mainstream venues, such as women's college basketball, which in its increasing popularity has the opportunity to create its own culture of fandom and representation of its athletes. Perhaps most importantly at this point in women's sports history is our continued protection of the possibility for young female athletes to participate in sports through Title IX. While Sports Illustrated, in its over fifty year history, has increasingly relegated female athletes to the sidelines, to the margins of mainstream visual culture, we know that women and girls remain on the playing field, even when no one is watching.

Endnotes

1. Circulation information for the past three years can be found in Sports Illustrated's online Sales and Marketing Information Center: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/adinfo/si/. [Return to text]

2. All references to statistics and individual Sports Illustrated covers come from research conducted at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. For a complete searchable archive of Sports Illustrated cover photos, go to http://dynamic.si.cnn.com/covers/search. [Return to text]

3. See the Nancy Hogshead-Makar and Donna Lopiano article in this issue for a discussion of recent threats to Title IX. [Return to text]

4. Messner, Michael A. Power at Play: Sports and the Problem of Masculinity (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992). [Return to text]

5. For more discussion of Black female sexuality, see, for example: Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race, and Class (New York: Vintage, 1993); Hortense Spillers, "Interstices: A Small Drama of Words," Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, ed. Carole Vance (New York: HarperCollins, 1993); and Evelyn Hammonds, "Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality," Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 6, nos. 2-3 (1994): 126-145. And for more on Black masculinity and sexuality, work includes but is not limited to: Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York: Routledge, 2004); Representing Black Men, Marcellus Blount and George P. Cunningham, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1995); and Cool Pose: The Dilemmas of Black Manhood in America, Richard Majors and Janet Mancini Billson, eds. (New York: Touchstone, 2002). [Return to text]

6. Time Magazine's digitally altered June 27, 2004 cover comes to mind, as an image that undoubtedly raises its own problems. Here O.J. Simpson's mug shot was intentionally darkened, intensifying a sense of danger and thus implying an assumption of guilt, solely through visual representation. Guilt is inextricably linked with race. For further discussion of race and the O.J. Simpson case, see, Birth of a Nation'hood: Gaze, Script and Spectacle in the O.J. Simpson case, Toni Morrison and Claudia Brodsky Lacour, eds. (New York: Random House, 1997). [Return to text]

7. A year later the Sprewell incident would return to the news when Kevin Greene, a football player for the Carolina Panthers attacked his coach on the sidelines of a nationally televised game. Greene, a white man, received a one game suspension. While the incidents were undeniably different (Sprewell came back for a second meditated attack), a black man attacking a white coach lead to a one year suspension and a public roasting that continues today, while a white man attacking a white coach resulted in a slap on the wrist and a relatively mild media outcry, and an even milder response from the public. [Return to text]

8. Araton, Harvey. "Indulging Athletes Isn't Class Matter," The New York Times. 21 April 2006, late final edition: D1. [Return to text]

9. For a detailed analysis of the Swimsuit Issue, see Laurel Davis, The Swimsuit Issue and Sport: Hegemonic Masculinity in Sports illustrated (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997). [Return to text]

10. The 2006 Swimsuit Feature can be found at: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/2006_swimsuit/. [Return to text]

11. The first issue appeared in February of 2003 (Volume 98, Issue 8) and the second in May of 2003 (Volume 98, Issue 21). The second cover is included in the companion slideshow to this essay. [Return to text]