Double Standard in Judging Women's Sports

There is obviously a double standard in judging women’s sports. Male athletes receive attention from the public that focuses on their athletic skills, on how well they perform in games. Conversely, the attention on female athletes is more likely focused on their feminine features, on their physical attractiveness not on their athletic abilities. Anna Kournikova, now a retired professional tennis player, was made one of the best known tennis stars worldwide based on her beauty and celebrity status, despite her never winning a WTA singles title. This double standard devalues the athletic achievement of female athletes compared to male athletes, placing emphasis on appearance over performance. It is fairly enough to say that female athletes cannot produce the same performance as male athletes due to male’s physical superiority.
However, is it strength that matters the most in sports? In the Nike Athlete Campaign video, Gabrielle Reece, a professional volleyball player, presents rhetorical questions: “Are boys bigger, stronger, and faster? Yes. Is that all that has to do with being an athlete? No.” Sports should not be viewed merely as a platform where strength determines the popularity of athletes involved, it should includes the capability of the athletes and the level of skills that are displayed in games. It is unfair for female athletes to be judged based on their appearance rather than their performance just because they are unable to display comparable speed and power to male athletes in games because many of them indeed show excellent skills involved in the sports. Skills in sports should be the determinant of the quality of an athlete instead of mere strength. “It’s not a girl thing. It’s not a boy thing. It’s a skills thing”, said streetballer Alvina Carroll in the video. It is inappropriate to judge female athletes based on how powerful instead of how skillful they are.