Göksu Üçtaş Şanlı, who has a child named Lina and coached by Meral Gürel, has a very successful career as parent. She is a Turkish artistic gymanst. Her career has started at the age of five and continued with numerous successes. She was the first turkish female athlete who represented Turkey in 2012 London Olympic Games.
In the image of the post she holds her baby and and the title of the post is her call to her colleagues, in which she states that sportswomen shall not end their career when they become mother. This call points out that the norm for women is rather being a mother than an athlete and Göksu Üçtaş Şanlı protests against that. At the same time, this image also shows that a woman is able to be both a mother and a successful athlete. Generally, women show up quite few in the media but in this case she is sort of out of the box and that’s why she receives more attention than usual.
While it is enough for men to be successful in order to show up in the media, women draw the equal attention if they are both successful and a good mother. According to gender stereotypes, which is also the cause of this fact, women have to fulfill the feminine qualities like domesticity, motherhood, sexuality or romance.
As men have the qualities such as agression, dominance and strength which are also expected values of sports and women lack these qualities, men are more inclined to sports in common sense. Even though sportswomen have not showed up in the media recent years, it is a fact that females get over this perception and their success in sports increase. Women may seem like to be less powerful physically and more emotional hormonally. However, as women do more sport they become more successful and it also shows everyone that sports are not just about physical strength.
Like Göksu Üçtaş Şanlı’s example women mostly show up with feminine sports, actually there are many success examples of sportswomen in all kinds of sports. Indeed these circumstances are a proof of wrong use of media and society’s wrong perspective. Every woman is actually able to be successful in sport, but the problem lies that many women give up their sports career due to the expectations of society, which pressures them into feminal activities.
sosc111: Studies in Popular Culture 