Daniels, E.A., and H. Wartena. “Athlete or Sex Symbol: What Boys Think of Media Representations of Female Athletes.” Sex Roles, vol. 65, no. 7-8, 2011, pp. 566-579. doi: 10.1007/s11199-011-9959-7.

This article by Daniels and Wertena explorers the impact of media representations of female athletes on boys’ attitudes towards women. It was published in the peer-reviewed academic journal, Sex Roles, which is a well-known journal in the field of gender studies. Also, the authors of the article, Elizabeth A. Daniels and Heather Wartena, are both well-respected scholars in the field of gender studies. Daniels is a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and has published extensively on topics related to gender and media. Wartena is a research analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, and has also published several articles on gender and media.  In this specific article, the authors conducted a study with 113 highschool boys, asking them to evaluate images of female athletes and models. The study found that boys had more positive attitudes towards female athletes who were depicted in athletic contexts rather than sexualized ones. The authors argue that the sexualization of female athletes in Western media is a pervasive problem that reinforces gender stereotypes and undermines the achievements of women in sports. This would support my thesis that the female notion of modesty in Islam promotes full control over their bodies and how the Western notion of female liberation is flawed. Specifically, the article highlights the way that Western media sexualizes and objectifies women in the sports industry, reducing them to mere objects of desire and perpetuating harmful gender stereotypes. In contrast, the Islamic concept of modesty promotes a holistic view of women as individuals worthy of respect, rather than as sexual objects to be consumed by others.

• “Boys’ responses suggest that they perceive female athletes as caught between two conflicting cultural demands – to be strong, competitive athletes on the one hand, and to conform to traditional feminine standards of beauty and sexual appeal on the other” 
• ( 577) 
• “When female athletes are reduced to sexualized objects, their athletic abilities and achievements are often overlooked or undervalued, which can have negative consequences for their self-esteem and their prospects in the sports industry” (576)