Looking at the magazine covers in the supermarket checkout line is always an adventure for me. The four or five tabloids always seem to feature a slightly different incarnation of the same photo, while the dating magazines claim to have the newest secret for netting my secret crush. And then there are the exercise magazines, the ones that so badly want me to use their formula to lose ten pounds in ten days, or employ recipes that will make me healthier while making my taste buds go wild. The marketing strategies employed on these covers really are fascinating, but what makes them truly significant for study are the cultural ideologies they appeal to and attempt to install in our culture.
What does it say, then, about cultural ideology that South Africa’s You magazine ran a cover story about embattled middle distance runner Caster Semenya, with the headline reading “We turn SA’s power girl in to a glamour girl – and she loves it!” (“Makeover”). What does it say about cultural ideology when we consider the fact that Semenya had much attention directed toward her following her 800 meter world championship win because she is suspected of not quite being biologically female? What does it say about cultural ideology that Semenya apparently felt the need to undergo a makeover to make her fit western conceptions of “beauty” only after she came under fire for appearing too masculine?
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Business is about reaching a target market and convincing individuals making up that market that they need a certain product or service. It’s pretty simple, really. Assess what a given group wants and needs (or thinks they want and need), and provide it – for a fee, of course. I say this at the risk of essentializing those who develop and market products, but much of this field operates through stereotype, fictive kinship, and other factors that media and social ideology tell people are a part of their identity. Certainly in the twenty-first century such marketers tend to avoid the explosive and the potentially offensive while attempting to employ the purely profitable. But the result of this can often be seen curious to behold.
Take the popular magazine Runner’s World as an example. The target audience of this publication is casual long distance runner. That is, the non-elite or non-competitive “jogger.” Many of the magazine’s readers are people just starting out in the sport or people who began running later in life. And, of course, the magazines available in this country are likely intended for Americans. Beyond this, looking at the publication’s content can provide clues as to who comprises the target audience, with the ultimate question being why such an audience is the focus. Like any other publication, I believe Runner’s World serves to support hegemony, normalizing white individuals in the sport of running, and othering people of color.
Consider first the magazine’s covers. Between November 2008 and May 2010 the individuals featured on the cover appeared to be white sixteen times, versus being a person of color three times. Further, in December 2009 Runner’s World printed the article “The Best of Running” chronicling a variety of categories, such as “Most Exciting Young” runner, “Best Looking” runner, and others, presumably taking in to account professional distance runners from around the world. The choices for this piece are curious, to say the least. For performance-based awards one would expect athletes from Kenya, Ethiopia, and Morocco to dominate given the fact that athletes from these countries have won most major championships in recent years. With this in mind it is no surprise that Ethiopian legend Haile Gebrselassie was named “Best Male Distance Runner of All Time,” but a surprise that the “Most Exciting Young” award winners were Kara Goucher and Ryan Hall, who are both white and never won a major international race (Flax 65, 70). This, given the plethora of younger Kenyan and Ethiopian runners who have won major competitions over the last few years, is quite odd.
Perhaps even more telling are the award recipients for “Best Looking” runner, where Australian Craig Mottram was selected for the men, and Goucher for the women (67). These selections beg the question, to whom are these individuals considered the “best looking”? The variability of western and non-western selections in this piece are quite curious, but it is clear that western conceptions of beauty and cultural ideologies are at play in this article. This is particularly curious in reference to Caster Semenya, who was given a new hairstyle, clothing, and make-up to help her fit western conceptions of beauty. In many ways this links to Frantz Fanon describing people of color finding it necessary to achieve “a white totality” (that is, “becoming white”) in an attempt to gain acceptance (193). The response to Semenya’s sex being questioned was to her present as more feminine (in the Western understanding). Despite this, though, this attempt is ultimately fruitless because the white hegemone still sees color, thus the person of color is still subject to the racist ideology that subverted them in the first place. This is seen with Semenya, as questions regarding her sex did not abate, even after a makeover that was presumably meant to present her in a more feminine, and therefore positive, light.
Given the questionable selections of ability-based “Best of Running” awards, it is clear that Runner’s World attempted to create a strong representation of Americans in this article. This is understandable in a sense given the fact that the article appears in an American magazine and must therefore appeal to a nationalistic prejudice. But the color divide in this piece, as with the magazine’s cover models, is quite curious. Of all the athletes mentioned in these selections twenty-eight different white people are mentioned versus eight people of color – with only half of the people of color being non-Americans.
This is only one example, but it is quite telling as to the apparent motivations of Runner’s World. Based on these trends it appears that running as a profit-making venture is targeted toward white audiences. Why is this? Perhaps it is because most of this country’s poor are people of color, and therefore reaching out to white audiences provides greater profit potential. However, I believe that this is based on a stereotype that, for Americans, running is a “white sport” as opposed to sports like football and basketball that are “black sports.”
While this is certainly Westernized, I think it’s also racialized. This stereotype suggests that running is a white sport, normalizing whiteness within it. Of course it’s not true that only white people run, just like it’s not true that only black people play basketball, but Runner’s World cover trends and “Best of Running” selections perpetuate stereotypes and reifies racist ideology. The rhetoric of this as a choice for the normalized is very interesting. This is because running is commonly seen as being a pure, “man versus man” endeavor. It’s not a contact sport, and it’s a classical activity that goes back to the first Olympics nearly three thousand years ago, while representing the bravery shown in the first marathon runner who ran the distance and died. This compared to football, a war metaphor where athletes dig in to the “trenches” and attempt to take over the enemy’s “territory.” In war it is not the nobles that fight, but “expendable” individuals. Running meanwhile is done for health, it’s done to see who is the better man, not for conquest. It is of the upper class. This, in conjunction with the trends seen in Runner’s World supports the claim that sports and media reflect a hegemony that subverts people of color. This is supported by Fanon, who describes the way black people in particular “[symbolize] the biological” both in terms of sex and the physical (167). That is war, work, athletics and other arenas.
In addition to this racializing of what running is and who takes part in it, it is also sexualized, as I said before, based on Western concepts of beauty. Kara Goucher and the aforementioned Caster Semenya are prime examples of this. Goucher, who I noted as the “Best Looking” runner according to Runner’s World, has been on the cover of the magazine three times between January 2008 and March 2010, significantly more often than any other athlete despite only medaling once in international competitions (a bronze in the 2007 10,000 meter world championship). Conversely, Caster Semenya, who was a nineteen year old sensation at the 2009 track and field World Championships after easily winning the 800 meter run, has never appeared on the cover. Further, she’s garnered much unwanted attention amid accusations that she has failed gender tests and should therefore be disallowed from competing against women. It was this attention that led to her appearance on the cover of a magazine having been given a makeover. Further, one could certainly argue that she would not have appeared on the cover of this magazine, or any in the same genre, had it not been for such a makeover because she does not meet these westernized, racialized expectations of women.
The racialization of distance running as a sport reflects an ideology of normalized whiteness that is widespread. That is to say those who are crowned as the most popular (or in the case of Runner’s World, explicitly naming the “best looking”) are white and serve to reflect an image of the sport as white-dominated. Returning to Runner’s World’s “Best of Running” article, how can Ryan Hall and Kara Goucher be rationalized as the “Most Exciting Young Runners” currently involved in the sport? Goucher, after all, is nearly thirty-two years old and Hall is twenty-seven, while both have competed professionally since 2006. In light of the fact that there are numerous more accomplished, younger, athletes of color currently competing in the sport, this clearly reflects a trend of using rhetorical strategies to normalize and value achievements of white runners more than those of the other.
Certainly it can be argued that whiteness is normalized in our culture. Patricia J. Williams tells the story of a loan officer who assumed she was white in her important book Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race (39). This was based on the fact that the sole communication between the two was done over the telephone, and the loan officer’s presumption that a law professor with good credit who spoke in a Standard American English accent would be white.
Similarly, in the second edition of Racism Without Racists: Coor-Blind Racism and the Peristence of Racial Inequality in the United States Eduardo Bonilla-Silva describes the day, when working in his front yard, a real-estate agent asked him if he worked for the home owners and if they would mind if she showed the house to a potential buyer (223-224). In both cases whiteness is presumed as a position of affluence and authority. It is normalized in the sense that the successful individual (the law professor and home owner) is expected to be white. In Bonilla-Silva’s case, the “help” is expected to be the person of color, and in Williams’ case the person of color is not anticipated as being capable of such a position.
In light of this it becomes clear that whiteness is normalized in our culture in terms of the expectation of success and general acceptance. Whiteness is normalized in the way that women of color are pushed to reflect western conceptions of beauty in their appearance in an attempt to reach acceptance. Ideology is also reinforced by media such as Runner’s World where people of color are rarely seen on the cover and rarely equally represented in the articles contained within. In this way cultural ideologies that place whites as prime are reified, thus creating an expectation of people of color as less successful and less able to perform and achieve what whites do. Through this hegemony is reinforced and perpetuated by the ideologies that both whites and people of color are encouraged to hold.
Works Cited
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. 2nd ed. New York: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006. Print.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press Inc., 1967. Print.
Flax, Peter. “The Best of Running.” Runner’s World Dec. 2009. 62-70. Print.
“Makeover For SA Gender-Row Runner.” BBC News. 8 Sept 2009. Web. 28 Dec 2009.
Williams, Patricia J. Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race. New York: The Noonday Press, 1997. Print.
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