"Nobody ever seems to care what women have to say when it comes to sports," said Mina Mieczkowski, a sophomore at West Virginia University. "The only time anybody comments on women in sports broadcasting is if they're good-looking, and I don't want to be known as just a pretty face."
Sound familiar? Speaking for myself, it's impossible to count the number of times someone has said to me, "Good thing you're attractive," when I tell them my college major. And you know what? It's SUPER insulting.
Us women understand that when someone calls you pretty, you're supposed to take it as a compliment, but that phrase is ridiculously far from a compliment. Are you meaning to tell me that if my face looked differently, then I would never make it in the news field? Why does someone have to be deemed "pretty" in order to choose this career path? Do my journalistic abilities mean nothing if I'm not wearing the right outfit?
Mieczkowski ended up changing her major before she even started at WVU, and is no longer in sports broadcasting because society labels it a 'male' profession. Are there female sports broadcasters in the world? Yes. Are they pretty? Some may think so. Do their looks affect the way they produce their new stories? According to males, yes.
I also got to talk with Hannah Marren, a music photographer for "VENTS Magazine." Marren's job is to do live shoots of bands while they are performing, and then conduct interviews with the musicians after the show. Marren has shot bands such as Mayday Parade, Bring Me The Horizon, Of Mice & Men, Pierce the Veil, and many other extremely popular bands.
"There have been times I'd dress nice for the show I'm shooting, and I hear people along the barricade saying, 'She's just trying to sleep with the band,'" said Marren. "And a lot of times, there has been male photographers that said to me, 'You're a real photographer? Yeah, okay.' And more often than not when I meet a band, unless I'm with a group of guys or another band, they only see me as a fan, just because I'm a girl."
Marren even said she was supposed to go on tour with a band this summer as their photographer. After nine months of being told she was going to be touring, they dropped her a week before the tour started, and can you guess why? They decided taking a female photographer on tour wasn't a good look for them.
While women do enjoy being told that we are pretty or good looking, we also love being told we are capable of doing something that doesn't have to do with our looks. Instead of saying, "You've got the looks for it," when I say I want to be a journalist, maybe ask, "Oh, what have you written?" or, "That's interesting, why?" Literally, say ANYTHING else.
There are so much more to women than appearance, and it's time that the male-dominant industries realize this. Being a woman doesn't make us weak or incapable; we are empowered, we are determined and we are just as good as you are.
