Currently, the United States is in the lead for the most medals won. If you check your Snapchat, you can find out which countries are in the top five positions and how many gold, silver, and bronze medals they've won. If you walk into any store, odds are you are going to see magazines with the faces of various American athletes adorning the cover. Just the other day, I went to Barnes & Noble and saw Simone Biles, four time gold medal gymnast, on the cover of Time Magazine. It's difficult to avoid the Olympics.
It's wonderful seeing women breaking records and succeeding in areas that they've trained years for. However, it seems necessary that not all media outlets are as excited about showcasing these talented women as I am.
If you've been following media coverage of the Olympics, you've heard backlash about some of the media's coverage of female athletes. A headline by the Chicago Tribune described Corey Cogdell, women's trap shooting bronze medalist, as the "wife of a Bears' lineman." With a headline like that, the rest of the article went as one would assume; it described how Cogdell met her husband, the support she's been given from the Bears, and that her husband broke away from training to see her compete in Rio.
People Magazine described Simone Biles as the "Michael Jordan of Gymnastics." The comparison, in the first place, doesn't make sense. Why would a gymnast be likened to a basketball player? Why does a woman need to be correlated with a man to prove that she is the best at what she does?
To top it off, media has done what they do best and reduced women to their appearances. In an article by the Daily Mail, women's gymnastics uniforms have been ranked for being the best or the worst. Fox News asked if female Olympians should wear makeup. Female athletes do not come to the Olympics to be judged on their appearances; they are there to compete for the gold, just like every single man there.
What does it take for female Olympians to be taken as seriously as their male counterparts? These women have shown they're at the Olympics because they are the best at what they do.
It's 2016. There should not be an apology for sexist comments after people have called out media outlets. Sexist comments shouldn't be made in the first place. Women should not be diminished to who they're married to, whatever man they're "similar" to, or what they're wearing. They should be praised for their success, respected for the fact that they are Olympic athletes, and treated as equals to their male counterparts.
