Abstract

In recent years, a new level of commodification and sexualisation of female athletes can be observed. Athletes, women as well as men, enact and market themselves with an up to now unseen energy and intensity. Today not only the performance in the sport grounds counts, but also the appearance and the image of the athletes who play a new role in mass media and in public. Using a constructivist approach to gender as a starting point, this paper demonstrates these new trends using Anna Kournikova as an example. Anna Kournikova’s popularity is based mainly on her appearance and her image; her sporting performances play a secondary role. This article describes the changes in the presentation and the enactment of the athletes in sport and media sport. It analyses the motives of the athletes to signal sexuality and present themselves as sex objects. And it identifies changes in mass media that led to a focus on human interest stories and sexualised images in media. The article focuses on the interrelations between the developments of sport, the public representation of sport in mass media and the role of female athletes in sport and in the sport coverage. Among other things, the globalisation of sport, the increasing performance level, the costs of top level sport, the competition between mass media and the interest of the audiences in the erotic attractiveness of sport stars are discussed as reasons for the “Kournikova syndrome”. Verf.-Referat