ABSTRACT
Women’s bodies are everywhere in Western culture. They are used in advertising to sell everything from cars to movies to hamburgers, and clothed or naked, they are among the most commonly seen images in magazines, on television, and on the Internet. Sports Illustrated’s annual “swimsuit issue” is the best-selling issue every year, and the British tabloid The Sun features a topless woman on page 3 in every day’s paper. Whether clothed, veiled, or naked, women’s bodies are on constant display, and every woman knows that she is subject to being looked at, judged, and defined by her appearance and her sexuality. In fact, in 2012, American soccer star Alex Morgan appeared in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue without a swimsuit; instead of a swimsuit, she was nude and covered in body paint. The idea that a female athlete should appear nude in a magazine devoted to sports is unsurprising; we live in a society in which gazing at women’s bodies is simply commonplace. After the 2012 Olympics, which many observers called the “Year of the Woman,” because of the prominence of female athletes at the games, NBC produced a video highlighting female athletes which featured scantily clad, beautiful women in slow motion set to music which sounded like a soft porn film.
