Sunday, March 13, 2011

Gendered Photos: Mixed Martial Arts Event

Last night, I attended the X-1: Champions III mixed martial arts (MMA) event in Honolulu. I left a bit early, so today I went online at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser to see the last few matches' results. I noticed the page has a series of 20 photos that follow the typical notions of hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity.

If you were a male at the event, you could be featured visually in this photo array in a diverse range of roles. Of course, you could be pictured as a fighter, as seen below.


Or, you could be seen as an announcer:


You could be featured ringside as part of the media or a cornerman (coach):


Or again as a winning fighter, notably with females on the side.


Females pictured has more limited roles as shown in the 20 picture photo array. You could be shown as a ring girl.


Or as a fan in attire that very much emphasizes femininity.


And by the way, there was a women's fight in which Raquel Paaluhi of Waianae, Hawaii defeated Nicole (last name not shown on results) of Las Vegas, NV by 3rd round TKO stoppage in a very exciting competition. Perhaps unsurprisingly, their photos were not featured.

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6 comments:

  1. You made a very compelling argument. Compelling enough, in fact, to incite me to look into it further.

    I did come across another photo gallery from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser website that I thought you might want to look at if you missed it originally .

    The pictorial depictions of gender roles are a little less rigid in this photo set, but a depiction of society, skewed or not, there are still the same phenomenon present. Relevantly, there is still a bias towards the emphasis of sexuality in some of the women featured.

    Most glaringly and disappointingly, this set does not contain any of pictures from the womens' fight either.

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  2. Hey Noah, good to hear from you. Do you have the link to the other Star-Advertiser photo gallery? Hope all is well!

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  3. Thanks for giving us an inside look into this MMA event. It's always interesting to see what's going on cageside.

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  4. Go in the ring if you feel that the socialised role for women in MMA is so wrong...

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    1. Seriously? In disagreement, this is your response? Fighting MMA should change my viewpoints on media trends in sport? Do you just randomly write things, or is partaking in fight sport the answer you offer for anything you disagree with?

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