"Interrogating inequalities in Sports Media: Examining gender/race representation in Sports Illustrated"

There seems to be a pattern of the covers in Sports Illustrated during the year of 2013. Over the year there was 102 magazine covers done, and with that their was no covers featured with an Asian female or male athletes. There were numerous covers done of white and African- American male athletes, but then again no females. The only covers that featured women were the swimsuit edition, and one with Kate Upton with two baseball players from the Braves.

However, in 2003 Yao Ming was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated. The real question is why has it been 11 years since an Asian athlete has been featured on the cover? Some studies showed that for a long time there were not many Asian children involved in sports. Nevertheless, in 2001in larger cities such as Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Chicago, were where there was evidence that more Asian children participated in sports. More Asian children started participating in sports later on because they finally saw adults on Sports Center that looked like them.

 So, is it just that there is not a significant amount of professional Asian athletes that participate in the "big 3 sports" , meaning baseball, basketball, or football that Sports Illustrated can feature in their cover? If this is the case, why can't Sports Illustrated widen  their horizons on sports. Why can't they feature lacrosse, water polo, or even ice skating? If they featured ice skating they could definitely feature a  professional Asian, male ice skater, but more then likely they won't because it doesn't fit the masculine appearance of the male athletes they feature in their magazine.

I think in order for Sports Illustrated to eliminate discrimination between races there needs to be an equal number of covers of each race. No matter the variation of sports at which the different races partake in they should be recognized to eliminate the favoritism of  one race over the other.  If they do not do this the Asian professional athletes will never get the same recognition as the other professional athletes do.


References:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/magazine/photos/1305/si-covers-2013/3/
http://www.asian-nation.org/sports.shtml