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Friday, August 6, 2021

Are Women’s Sports Achievements Still Not As Highly Valued As Men’s?

On July 31, Canadian history was made at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. During the women’s 4×100-metre medley relay, Canadian swimmers Kylie Masse, Sydney Pickrem, Maggie Mac Neil and Penny Oleksiak finished with a time of 3:52.60 — breaking a national record, winning a bronze medal for Canada, and officially securing Oleksiak’s place as the most decorated Olympic athlete in Canadian history.

✨ PENNY OLEKSIAK MAKES HISTORY (again) ✨

After winning 🥉 in the 4x100m medley relay, Penny Oleksiak is now #TeamCanada's most decorated Olympian of all time 🤩🤯🎉

🏊‍♀️ into the details ➡️ https://t.co/6UvSEBMVb4 pic.twitter.com/CNUTLu8K9V

— Team Canada (@TeamCanada) August 1, 2021

At just 21 years old, Oleksiak now holds a total of seven Olympic medals. But despite her record-breaking victory, Oleksiak’s achievement as the newly minted most-decorated Canadian Olympian ever did not receive the fanfare that one might expect. On August 1, the lead story on CBC’s The National was about Olympic sprinter Andre De Grasse, who ran his personal best and won a bronze medal. The second, much shorter story of the show was Oleksiak’s historical news. On August 2, The Globe and Mail’s front page displayed a picture of De Grasse holding the Canadian flag with a headline about his bronze medal win. Further down on the page was a line in smaller font, with no photo, nodding to a story about Oleksiak’s victory.

These may seem like small details, and while De Grasse’s performance is certainly worthy of praise (he even went on to win a gold medal in the men’s 200-metre final on August 4), Oleksiak’s record-smashing win taking a backseat is symbolic of how women’s sports achievements are often not valued as highly as men’s. A 2014 study of major media outlets found that only four percent of all sports coverage went to women’s sports. This study was conducted during an Olympic and Paralympic year — when women’s sporting events are among their highest. Media coverage of women’s sports is lacking in both quantity and quality, says Allison Sandmeyer-Graves, CEO of Canadian Women & Sport, an organization committed to achieving gender equity in sports.

“[Female athletes] are more often described in relation to men: so in relation to their husbands, in relation to their coaches, in relation to their children. Women in photographs are more [likely] to be portrayed in a passive, objectively beautiful shot, whereas men are shown in the heat of the moment doing the sport,” says Sandmeyer-Graves. “Even when women do show up [in media coverage], they show up effectively through the male gaze. And they show up in ways that don’t centre their athleticism and their performances, but rather centre other aspects of their identities.”

With a long history of being sexualized in the media, women in sports still deal with their womanhood being tied to their performances as athletes. In sports media, grown women are often referred to as “girls” and “ladies,” which implies expectations of femininity, Sandmeyer-Graves says. “There are these subtle ways in [which] women in sports are covered that just sort of diminishes them.” During the 2016 Rio Olympics, the Toronto Sun printed a cover story of a 16-year-old Oleksiak with the headline “Pretty Penny,” after she won two Olympic medals. This type of coverage, which focuses on a female athlete’s appearance, takes away from their sport-related achievements. Men, on the other hand, typically don’t have to worry about this type of unwanted attention.

“Men’s sport participation is celebrated daily … on dedicated channels and dedicated sections of the newspaper. And women don’t get that same kind of positive reinforcement for their involvement. It reflects a very different valuing of their participation than men’s participation in sport,” says Sandmeyer-Graves. When sports media coverage is constantly skewed towards men’s achievements, it teaches us not to value female athletes in the same way.

The Olympics’ commitment to showcasing women in sports increased this year, with schedules changed to air women’s sporting events during primetime slots, instead of in the off-hours, as done in previous Olympic Games. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics are the most gender-equal yet, with added events bringing women’s participation up to 49 percent for the first time ever. Sixty percent of athletes on Team Canada are female, and consequently, Canadian women have been dominating the Olympics. Some media outlets are also making efforts to increase their representation of women in sports beyond the Olympics, like CBC’s commitment to gender-balanced coverage.

“It’s so exciting to see strong, powerful, aggressive women on our TV screens [during the Olympics],” Sandmeyer-Graves says. “So many different body shapes and types, all performing at the absolute top of their game and giving it their all. That is such a liberating thing to see.” However, she notes that this is not an accurate representation of female athletes’ participation overall in Canada. A recent study found that one in four girls who actively participated in sports before COVID-19 aren’t committed to returning. We’re still operating under a sport system that caters to male players and male audiences, Sandmeyer-Graves says, and this is what’s causing girls to leave.

1 in 4 girls are not committed to returning to sport.

If we don’t act now to counter this trend, we could see over 350,000 girls sitting on the sidelines post-COVID-19.

Learn more in the COVID Alert: Pandemic Impact on Girls in Sport report ⬇

🔗https://t.co/448NSLGAWW pic.twitter.com/3qgAEKcmj1

— Canadian Women & Sport | Femmes et sport Canada (@WomenandSportCA) July 13, 2021

Because representation for women in sports is still lacking, it’s invaluable that women and girls have athletes like Penny Oleksiak to look up to. When she became Canada’s most decorated Olympian on July 31, Oleksiak said “this is only the beginning for team Canada in swimming,” adding that she’s excited for what future Olympics will hold. When those events come, and Oleksiak inevitably secures more wins, it’s crucial that she and her achievements are celebrated loudly, in the same way a male athlete would be.

The post Are Women’s Sports Achievements Still Not As Highly Valued As Men’s? appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

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Homophobia Is Alive and Well in Hollywood

Carmen Logie remembers the very first time she heard of HIV/AIDS. It was the mid-1980s and she was about 10 years old when she saw a billboard that read “AIDS kills.” This jarring introduction to an unknown concept confused her. She remembers thinking, “What is this? AIDS kills?” Now an associate professor in the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto and a Canada Research Chair in Global Health Equity and Social Justice, she says this kind of HIV/AIDS messaging in the media contributes to the othering of LGBTQ+ communities. After seeing recent headlines about well-known celebrities using homophobic slurs and perpetuating HIV/AIDS stigma with harmful comments, Logie says she’s reminded of how far we still have to go in challenging our biases.

On August 2, rapper DaBaby apologized for homophobic comments he made during his performance at Rolling Loud music festival on July 25. “If you didn’t show up today with HIV, AIDS, any of them deadly sexually transmitted diseases that’ll make you die in two or three weeks, put your cellphone light in the air,” he announced in the middle of his set, as reported by Newsweek. He made additional derogatory remarks about women’s bodies and members of the LGBTQ+ community. DaBaby received backlash for his comments and has since been dropped by several upcoming music festivals he was scheduled to perform at. In his apology, he said his comments were “misinformed” and that he had needed education and guidance on these topics.

Actor Matt Damon has also come under fire for an anecdote he shared in an interview with the U.K.’s Sunday Times on August 1, where he said he only recently stopped using “the f-slur for a homosexual” thanks to his daughter educating him on the offensiveness of the term. Damon later released a statement to Variety asserting that he’s never actually used the term in his personal life, but that as a child, he “heard the word ‘f*g’ used on the street before I knew what it even referred to.”

Both stories taking place within the same week, though different from one another, point to a common trend: lack of knowledge regarding LBGTQ+ issues that lead to misinformation and casual homophobia. Despite developments in research and scientific knowledge around HIV and AIDS, lack of representation and understanding in media contributes to underlying biases toward LGBTQ+ people, explains Logie.

At the beginning of the HIV crisis in the 1980s, the often limited coverage from media was stigmatizing and damaging. Uncertain of the origins of the disease, media outlets dubbed HIV “gay cancer,” perpetuating prejudice and alienating LGBTQ+ communities. Discrimination was also placed on drug users, as the virus could spread through needle injections. Both of these marginalized groups were seen as the sole targets for HIV, and some media outlets echoed conservative sentiments that the virus was God’s way of punishing them for their “sins.” Over the intervening decades, science has made significant strides in terms of understanding the disease, but media and Hollywood representation hasn’t quite followed suit.

“We have done a really bad job of having the media align with science,” Logie tells FASHION. “There’s a lot of silence around HIV. I don’t really see, in any of the big blockbuster movies that I’ve seen, anybody living with HIV.” She commends the impact of TV shows like Pose, which explores HIV in a complex way and stars Billy Porter, who is open about living with HIV himself. However, we rarely see movies and TV shows feature characters living HIV-positive when it’s not their main, often tragic storyline. But the thing is, HIV can just be a part of someone’s life.

“The strongest level of evidence you can have shows that when a person living with HIV is taking their medication and [it’s] virally suppressed, there’s no chance they can transmit the virus,” explains Logie, whose research focuses on HIV and stigma. “There’s every chance that, given a healthy diet and secure housing — the social determinants of health, a person living with HIV can live a long, healthy and happy life. You could have a partner who is HIV-negative, if you’re HIV-positive, and not transmit the virus if you are undetectable on your medication. You can have children and not transmit the virus to children. There’s so much hope. And there’s so much progress, scientifically, that it is disappointing when I see that social progress is behind the science.”

She says Damon’s conversation with his daughter represents an important generational shift away from harmful language, something she didn’t see when she was young. “When I was growing up in a small town, [the f-slur] was a very common insult that was used all the time. I witnessed the harm of that word, as somebody [who is] a part of the gay community,” Logie says. “I have very strong memories of hearing that word.” She explains that straight people, like Damon, often don’t have to confront their own LGBTQ+ biases or the way that slurs like this hurt marginalized groups, because it doesn’t affect them personally.

Slurs and outdated falsehoods about HIV and the LGBTQ+ community are part of a harmful homophobic narrative. It’s one that can perpetuate a dangerous culture of anxiety and silence surrounding the virus specifically, explains Logie, pointing to DaBaby’s remark that the virus will kill you in a matter of weeks. “It just creates more fear around HIV, and that fear could fuel more stigma towards people living with HIV. It’s [also] going to dissuade people in that audience from getting tested. We know that fear of HIV [and] fear of learning you’re HIV positive … is a deterrent from getting a test. And you need to get tested in order to be able to start your medication if you’re living with HIV,” says Logie.

In Canada, approximately 13 percent of people living with HIV are undiagnosed. And HIV stigma is more dangerous for people with intersecting identities, who are on the receiving end of both racism and LGBTQ+ discrimination. With HIV stigma comes the criminalization of HIV in the media, which has historically disproportionately impacted Black communities. An Ontario study that analyzed 1,680 Canadian newspaper articles between 1989 and 2015 about HIV non-disclosure criminalization cases — when an individual doesn’t tell their partner they have HIV — found that Black people were overrepresented. Despite Black men making up only 20 percent of people charged, the study found that Black immigrant defendants made up 62 percent of the media stories told about prosecution for non-disclosure.

Comments that play into the harmful tropes about gay people and HIV are indicative of how much destigmatization efforts are still needed, says Logie. “For me, [DaBaby’s comments] felt like a really big step back, and also just a wake-up call of how much work we still have to do to bring science into popular culture.”

Logie says information regarding HIV is available, but obtaining that knowledge is only half the battle. The other half is challenging our underlying biases and the stigmas we were taught to bear, which involves removing harmful words from our vocabulary. She adds that the most meaningful step in challenging stigma is doing the work yourself before asking others to educate you.

“Read a book, read a newspaper article, listen to a podcast,” says Logie, who has a podcast dedicated to unpacking different kinds of stigma. “If you don’t know about HIV, there’s a lot of places you can learn that about it. You can go to the UN AIDS website, you can look for some people who are openly living with HIV, like Billy Porter’s story, watch Pose — go educate yourself a little bit. Start to unpack some of the ways you were raised to think of what is normal, what is natural, what is acceptable.”

The post Homophobia Is Alive and Well in Hollywood appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

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Thursday, August 5, 2021

New York Fashion Week’s Must-Have Accessory? Proof of Vaccination

The one accessory guests can’t forget to stuff in their Bottega Veneta handbags at this fall’s New York Fashion Week is their vaccine card.

The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) is working with IMG this year to organize the live shows for the highly anticipated return to in-person NYFW. On August 2, IMG announced that all those in attendance must present proof of being fully vaccinated, as first reported by WWD.

Designers are responsible for enforcing the rule, which applies to staff, models, photographers, makeup artists, and anyone who will be present at the shows. Attendees who are under the age of 16 will be exempt from providing vaccine proof but will be required to show a negative COVID-19 test upon arrival. The rules will be strictly enforced, IMG said, and those who don’t comply will be denied entry.

Mask requirements and other COVID-related rules for NYFW will be determined in the coming weeks and outlined in a full health and safety plan to be released by the CFDA and IMG.

The news comes just after the announcement that New York City will require people to show proof of vaccination in order to enter gyms, restaurants, movie theatres and other indoor spaces. The rule will reportedly be phased in over several weeks in August and September and was established as part of a push to get vaccine rates up as the Delta variant leads to more infections across the U.S., and here in Canada.

NYC’s vaccine proof requirements comes amid growing speculations surrounding Canada’s own plan for vaccine documentation. While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is implementing vaccine passports for international travel, a mandate around domestic vaccine passports remains a question mark. The federal government is allowing provinces to decide whether they will require vaccine passports, and as of now, the topic remains contentious. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said no to the concept, along with Alberta and Saskatchewan, while provinces like Quebec and Manitoba have announced plans to move forward with a domestic vaccine passport. Though still divided, data shows that more than half of Canadians are in support of domestic vaccine passports.

In a statement released on August 3, the CFDA encouraged “the broader industry to follow suit” with vaccine-proof requirements like the ones they’re enforcing at NYFW. “It is imperative to place the safety of guests and those working events in the highest priority,” the statement read. NYFW is scheduled to begin September 8 and run through September 12, followed by an in-person (*gasps*) Met Gala on the evening of September 13.

The post New York Fashion Week’s Must-Have Accessory? Proof of Vaccination appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

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Wednesday, August 4, 2021

40 of Meghan Markle’s Best Looks as a Royal

When it comes to style, Meghan Markle has already crafted quite the legacy. In celebration of her 40th birthday, we’re looking back at some of the Duchess of Sussex’s most memorable looks as a royal.

She and Prince Harry might have left their royal titles behind to focus on their growing family and charitable foundation Archewell, but her style continues to have a lasting impact. Since joining the British royal family, Markle has served up a treasure trove of cool, fresh looks that had us (and the world) wanting to emulate her style. She expertly toed the line between royal and runway, all while championing smaller labels (including plenty from Canada) alongside her lineup of luxury brands. She single-handedly made the case for the versatility of a shirt dress, proving that you can wear one for just about any occasion, as well as giving us all a lesson in colour-blocking.

On her 40th birthday, click through our roundup of her 40 best looks.