{"id":1932,"date":"2025-05-28T15:43:28","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T19:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/engagingsports\/?p=1932"},"modified":"2026-02-07T12:27:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T17:27:27","slug":"thirsting-for-more-what-tiktok-can-tell-us-about-womens-basketball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/engagingsports\/2025\/05\/28\/thirsting-for-more-what-tiktok-can-tell-us-about-womens-basketball\/","title":{"rendered":"Thirsting for More: What TikTok Can Tell Us About Women\u2019s Basketball"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
TikTok “edits” are short-form videos that compile multiple quick clips of a player set to music and include sports highlights and off-court footage (image by Julia Macey).<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

Historically, mainstream media have portrayed athletes differently based on intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. Black athletes\u2019 athleticism tends to be elevated<\/a>, while white athletes are praised for intellectual attributes. Female athletes\u2019 athletic contributions have been minimized<\/a>, as they are often displayed in passive poses <\/a>and sexualized<\/a>, especially when they identify as heterosexual and appear stereotypically feminine<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

<\/p>\r\n

These trends affect how basketball players are perceived and marketed. White players have long been prioritized for marketing<\/a>. Among players of color, feminine, light-skinned Black women are more likely to be featured in advertisements from brands like Skims<\/a> as compared to more \u201cvisibly queer\u201d, masculine-presenting Black women.\u00a0 Mostly early WNBA marketing<\/a> actively resisted queer inclusion; however, the league has evolved as a site for queer fandom<\/a>, a shift facilitated by the Internet<\/a> and social media. In particular, the social media app TikTok has emerged as a space where players can attract fans and bring attention to both the college and professional game. Given that the app has approximately 1.6 billion users<\/a> worldwide, it is important to pay attention to the unique ways in which users post about women\u2019s basketball athletes. Preliminary research suggests that TikTok activity points to both new and old directions in media discourse surrounding female athletes.<\/p>\r\n

TikTok \u2018edits\u2019 are short-form videos that compile multiple quick clips of a player set to music. The clips include sports highlights and off-court footage. Perhaps most interestingly, these edits are not seen in mainstream media because they are created by and for TikTok users only. Because of this, our research team wondered if edits for women\u2019s basketball players reinforced or disrupted existing media stereotypes. In order to understand this, a student researcher analyzed 50 women\u2019s basketball TikTok edits: 5 edits each for 10 players, half of whom were white and half of whom were Black. The convenience sample was collected in Fall 2024 by conducting an initial search for \u201cwomen\u2019s basketball edits\u201d. Since search results are based on popularity, the researcher selected the first 5 players of each race to appear and conducted a second query, this time searching each player by name and recording the first five edits to emerge from the search. The sample included 9 current WNBA players and one collegiate athlete. The researcher noted the videos\u2019 impressions (views, likes, saves, and shares), observed user comments, and coded two specific aspects of the edits: player activity and \u201cvibe\u201d.\u00a0 Player activity was coded as active or passive, with active edits containing three or more clips of on-court basketball action, such as shooting or dribbling. \u201cVibe\u201d was defined as either \u201chype\u201d (championing, fanatic themes) or \u201cthirst\u201d (edits made with a sexual gaze). She then analyzed both the impressions and codes by race. Results of the preliminary, convenience sample were not statistically significant but still revealed noteworthy themes.<\/p>\r\n

As seen in the table, white players had twice as many impressions. Notably, this was heavily driven by Paige Bueckers who averaged roughly 5 million views, markedly higher than Catilin Clark (1.7 million) and A\u2019ja Wilson (1.5 million). Though the overall numbers confirm previous knowledge about race and media marketability, it is worth noting that Black player videos were viewed less often, but liked at about the same rate as white players. Editors clearly love these players enough to create videos. Fans enjoy watching players\u2014even those who are left out by mainstream media (or TikTok algorithms).<\/p>\r\n

Edits were slightly more likely to be passive (58%) than active (42%), reinforcing past findings about female athletes\u2019 off-court presence eclipsing their on-court efforts. Of those 29 passive edits, 26 (89.7 %) were coded as thirsty. While this appears consistent with previous research about sexualization, the sexual undertone of these edits does not come across as men sexualizing women, but instead as women desiring other women. Though TikTok users\u2019 gender and sexuality cannot be verified, the video creators seem to be portraying these athletes through the lesbian gaze, as most of the \u201cthirsty\u201d videos were created by users with feminine names and photos. Furthermore, many of the editors used she\/her pronouns feminine emojis in their bios. The fans of the edits seem to fit this mold as well. For example, one commenter wrote under an Angel Reese edit, \u201cLord have mercy she\u2019s so fineeee\u201d. These edits create a space for people to admire these athletes in this manner together. Moreover, there was consistent admiration for all types of players, including players who are visibly queer or masculine-presenting, such as Griner and Cloud.\u00a0 One Griner fan commented: \u201cNo matter what they say about her, no one will ever make me hate you Britt\u201d.<\/p>\r\n

Black players were slightly more likely to be active (48%) than white players (36%), which seems to confirm past findings that Black athletes are praised more for their physical abilities in a racially-charged way. However, the edits had a different feel to them, as they seemed to celebrate physicality as just one valuable piece of a player\u2019s overall identity. For example, a mainstream broadcaster might describe a physical play but an editor would show that same play along with other clips and combine those images with a song deliberately chosen to honor the player. Some of those subtleties emerged during the research and were not specifically coded for, but we believe the pattern deserves more attention.<\/p>\r\n

Overall, it appears that the videos and the way users interact with them both reinforce and defy what we know about mainstream media coverage of female athletes. Our research suggests that TikTok is creating a space for female basketball players, including Black, queer, and masculine-presenting players, to be viewed as sexually desirable and <\/em>amazing athletes. We call on other researchers to expand this preliminary investigation to more closely study women\u2019s sport fandoms on social media and to pay attention to the way those spaces are shaped by race and sexuality.<\/p>\r\n

Average TikTok Metrics for a Select Group of Basketball Players<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Metric <\/strong><\/td>\r\nWhite Player Sample*<\/strong><\/td>\r\nBlack Player Sample^<\/strong><\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Views<\/td>\r\n1,415,550<\/td>\r\n736,510<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Likes<\/td>\r\n221,301<\/td>\r\n115,917<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Saves<\/td>\r\n32,658<\/td>\r\n14,003<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
Shares<\/td>\r\n7,541<\/td>\r\n2,1083<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n
% of Views Earning Likes<\/td>\r\n15.65%<\/td>\r\n15.64%<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n

* Paige Bueckers, Caitlin Clark, Cameron Brink, Diana Taurasi, Kelsey Plum
^ A\u2019ja Wilson, Angel Reese, Brittney Griner, Natasha Cloud, Skyler Diggins-Smith<\/p>\r\n

Author Biographical Notes:<\/h2>\r\n

Julia Macey is an Honors School graduate from Monmouth University, where she studied psychology and sociology.<\/p>\r\n

Jen McGovern is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Monmouth University, where she studies sport and social inequalities.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our research suggests that TikTok is creating a space for female basketball players, including Black, queer, and masculine-presenting players, to be viewed as sexually desirable and amazing athletes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2075,"featured_media":1934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[285],"tags":[504,172436,778,14,176,732,103873],"class_list":["post-1932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-raceethnicity","tag-basketball","tag-gender-sexuality","tag-intersectionality","tag-race","tag-sexuality","tag-social-media","tag-wnba"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thesocietypages.org\/engagingsports\/files\/2025\/05\/TikTok-1.png?fit=1608%2C704&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8iFlL-va","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/engagingsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/engagingsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/engagingsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/engagingsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2075"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/engagingsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1932"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/engagingsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1953,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/engagingsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1932\/revisions\/1953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/engagingsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/engagingsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/engagingsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/engagingsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}