ESPN The Magazine's WNBA20 Issue: Sex Sells, But Then Again, So Does Basketball

ESPN The Magazine's WNBA20 Issue: Sex Sells, But Then Again, So Does Basketball When the WNBA launched in 1997, print media could not wrap its head around how to cover women’s professional basketball. All too often, sports magazines gravitated towards sexualizing or feminizing the athletes believing that readers would not consume women’s basketball coverage unless the players were portrayed in non-active poses. Thus, the stereotypical depictions in print media focused on appearance and framed WNBA players as “sexy” or “pretty”, which trivialized their athletic accomplishments and downgraded the seriousness of women’s professional basketball.