“Babes” & Boards

Abstract

The proliferation of action or extreme sports in recent years leads to a reassessment of fundamental, foundational questions regarding the nature of sport. One such question is Does the much-vaunted alternative ethos of action sports lead to a concomitant paradigm shift in fundamental attitudes toward race, class, or gender differences within these new sport forms? In this article, the focus is on advertising in slick, national skating magazines and more particularly on the gendered nature of advertising and how it reflects and promotes gender segmentation in markets. In examining such print advertising, several metathemes emerge: There are images that (a) reify the naturalized maleness of North American sport;(b) objectify girls and woman as a naturalized position; (c) objectify girls and woman in sexualized manners, so that they create misogynist views in their audiences; and (d) attempt to set up the brand advertisers as outlaws, as oppositional to mainstream sport culture.