“Now she has everything, a happy family story and an Olympic medal”: Representations of Gloria Kotnik in the Slovenian media landscape

Abstract

Over the last four decades, feminist sports media research has developed into an established transdisciplinary branch of research that contributes to highlighting the contradictions and unevenness of social change at the level of women's sports and its positioning in society. In this context, the increasing media visibility of athlete mothers as an expression of an emerging social phenomenon provides an opportunity to examine and reflect on the patterns of media portrayal of sportswomen. This article focuses on the media representations of Gloria Kotnik, the Slovenian snowboarder and bronze medalist at the 2022 Winter Olympics. Through textual analysis, it attempts to identify how Kotnik was portrayed in selected Slovenian media and what role her motherhood, in particular, played in this. While ambivalence was identified as a predominant pattern in the media representations of Kotnik, the role of motherhood was presented both as something seemingly incompatible with the role of an elite athlete and in a way that perceived these two roles as compatible. Due to the reproduction of traditional gender ideologies and hierarchies, the article problematizes both patterns and concludes by linking the desire for social change with the need to redefine the ethics of care.