Black female athletes: Things are better, but far from fair

Earlier this year, Morgan State faculty produced a studyBeating Opponents, Battling Belittlement: How African-American Female Athletes Use Community to Navigate Negative Images, that examined the history of black women’s participation. It identified cultural factors such as attitudes about body image that interfered with the ability of black women to succeed and coping methods that they continue to use today.

“You have some people who will say the same thing: ‘She’s manly’ or ‘Her muscles are too big. From the neck down, it looks like a man.’ All because of my muscles,” Andrews said. “At the end of the day, I’m an athlete. I don’t know what you’re expecting me to look like, but I’m going to have muscles. I worked for these. I’m going to show them off.”

Davis, whose academic work focuses on race, gender and sports, said the cultural conversation surrounding black female athletes has shifted in part from what women have to look like to participate to what they have to look like to be endorsed. Davis pointed to the example of professional boxer and two-time Olympic gold medalist Claressa Shields. Davis talks about a moment in T-Rex: Her Fight for Gold, a documentary about Shields, in which she complains that she received virtually no endorsement deals after her gold medal wins.

“You see a moment in this documentary where she’s like, ‘Listen. Gabby [Douglas], Simone [Biles], they all got Wheaties boxes and all this stuff. What do I have?’ ” Davis said. “And they said, ‘OK, we’ll help you with your image, but the first thing we need you to do is to stop telling people you want to hit people.’ She’s like, ‘But I’m a boxer!’

“There’s no space for that, and I think it’s particularly important when we’re talking about black women. When we’re talking about women’s sports, a lot of the financial stability comes from those endorsement deals.”

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