Breaking the mold or reinforcing norms? The digital construction of female athletes’ bodies on TikTok

Abstract

This article examines the digital construction of female athletes’ bodies on TikTok, analyzing whether the platform serves as a site of disruption or whether it reinforces long-standing societal expectations. The analysis identifies three dominant narratives that shape the digital reception of female athletes: sexualization, empowerment, and defeminization. The first, sexualization, reveals the persistent reduction of female athletes’ accomplishments to their physical appearance, perpetuating their objectification rather than recognizing their athletic skill. This phenomenon is also racialized and cisgendered, manifesting in distinct ways depending on athletes’ intersections with racial and gender identities. The second narrative, empowerment, highlights the ways in which female athletes are celebrated for their strength, skill, and resilience. However, this empowerment is conditional, dependent on athletes’ alignment with hegemonic standards of femininity, desirability, and marketability. The third narrative, defeminization, disproportionately affects transgender athletes, positioning them as outsiders within women's sports. They are subjected to intense scrutiny, misgendering, and biologically essentialist arguments that seek to invalidate their identity and exclude them from competition. This study concludes that TikTok functions as a paradoxical space, offering the potential for empowerment and visibility while simultaneously reinforcing restrictive, cisnormative, and racialized gender hierarchies.

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ORCID for Shuai Wei: orcid.org/0000-0001-9627-787X

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