Only s**y Females Snowboarders Torah Bright and Gretchen Bleiler are Marketable
Snowboarding is a male dominated sport. Anytime an event is on television, it will usually be men competing strapped onto a snowboard. So where does that leave the valiant women, who have an intense passion to snowboarding and compete in the sport they love. The problem with women who snowboard face, is the same problem that most female athletes face in the world today; they are judged just as much on their skills as they are on their appearance.
It is rare to hear about how attractive a male athlete is, unless that man is David Beckham. A lot of the time female athletes are judged on how good looking they are; what they wear, how much make up they have on and how thin they are. It is as if female athletes are judged not only on the level of their skills but also on their appearances.
In the early days of snowboarding, women were not a big part of the sport. This was evident in the way the media talked about them. When the odd woman did appear on a snowboarding circuit, she was labelled as the token woman, or a tomboy. Today female snowboarders have cemented a place for themselves in the world of snowboarding and they have forced the media to treat them as equals to the men in the sport. However, this is the case with a lot of fields in regards to women, the media tends to focus on those particular snowboarders, who are attractive as well as have a high level of skill. It seems those women are highlighted by the media who have a high degree of marketability. Those are the ones that get the big sponsorships, the media attention and have their faces plastered all over the magazines.
Basically, the marketability of a female snowboarder means how attractive she is and so she can endorse a product and get other women to see her as an attractive role model. It neglects all the not so attractive female snowboarders, who are better than the attractive ones at the sport. Two female snowboarders who stand out in the regards of high marketability are Torah Bright and Gretchen Bleiler. Both are very attractive and both have big name sponsors on board.
It may be the fact that snowboarding has always been seen as a male oriented sport. The reason for this is the fact that the sport of snowboarding is a dangerous one and a high level of physical ability is required to perform tricks and stunts. It is only a few women that would be willing to partake in this kind of extreme sport and only a few do. Now though more and more women are getting training and they are becoming very good at the sport. They are now being considered as equals to men in the sport. Women snowboarders are just as adventurous as men and they have proved their mettle continuously over the years in competitions such as the Winter X-Games and the Winter Olympics.
It seems women who are snowboarders cannot escape the fact that being women they will also be questioned about their fashion sense, their make up, their hair, and many other things that have nothing to do with the sport they participate in. An interviewer once asked a famous snowboarder after a long line of specific snowboarding questions what her favourite line of clothing was. Now one has to wonder why an interviewer would ask a professional athlete what her favourite line of clothing was or whether she liked Gucci handbags or Louis Vitton ones. It has absolutely nothing to do with her ability to ride a snowboard well. It could have something to do with the fact that she is a woman at the end of the day and in trying to get more women interested in the sport, maybe a few questions about hair and clothing might get the female audience more interested in the athlete and her chosen sport.
It is interesting that female snowboarders and other female athletes have to face these kinds of issues, which male athletes for the most part do not have to face. This might just be a transitional phase the sport of female snowboarding is going through and in time, interviewers and fans will be more concerned with how a female snowboarder executed that insane 360 degree half pipe as opposed to how she does her hair before a party.
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