Recent media coverage of Tiger Woods’ marital “transgressions” is overflowing. Some argue that Tiger is sex obsessed and has a “sex addiction” given his high sex drive and desire for sex with many women over time. Others argue that any sports star who is on the road and away from home so much has a huge chance of being unfaithful to their wife. (Some media reports argue that it is “rare” to find a faithful male sports star). Still others argue that Tiger Woods’ late father pressed him down under his thumb too much as a youngster and upon his death, Tiger unleashed his “wild side.”  Finally, some news reporters offer that Tiger was “traumatized” as a child when his father cheated on his mother, and that he must just be paradoxically following in dad’s footsteps.

But very little media coverage attempts to press beyond an individual level and not many articles offered a much needed broader analysis of masculinity, race, sport, sexuality, and media.  Here, my own previous research might shed some light on these media events. Awhile back, I wrote an article titled “The Morality/Manhood Paradox” with Faye Linda Wachs that was published in a book titled Masculinities, Gender Relations, and Sport. In that article, I underscored how media coverage frequently packages these types of media events into familiar frames of individual morality and they do so through frames of sin and redemption. To be sure, media reports do not offer redemption to everyone. Media coverage only offers redemption to certain athletes while others do not enjoy this privilege. For example, basketball great Magic Johnson openly admitted to having hundreds of sex partners in the early 1990s and stated that he acquired the HIV/AIDS virus due to his lack of sexual protection. He was forgiven in media coverage and by the public, and was even repeatedly deemed a “hero” for his announcement. At the same time, another male athlete, Greg Louganis, who self identifies as gay, was not offered any media redemption. This was the case even though Greg Louganis was monogamous with his long-term partner and his long term partner cheated on him.

Why the difference in access to forgiveness by the media and by the public? At the time, Faye Wachs and I argued that sexuality and sexual identity was a key reason. Self-identified heterosexually active Magic Johnson was discussed as “doing what any normal man would do” and as having kindly “accommodated” the hundreds of women who “wanted him.”  Women were presented as sexually desirous and out of control and men were presented as  doing what “boys” do  to be “boys.” There was no mention of Magic Johnson’s own sexual agency in those media framings, and the women he was with were framed as having all of the wild desire. The women were described as uncontrollable groupies who were anxiously awaiting Magic and numerous other ball players after the big games were over and the athletes swaggered off the court.

In the media events surrounding Tiger Woods’ circumstances, media coverage couldn’t be more different. Tiger Woods’ sexual agency is the primary frame of news media. Articles discuss his “preference” for blondes, his “big appetite” for sex, his enjoyment of “girl-on-girl sex” and how he “wanted to be with them together,”  his “endurance,” the difficulty some of his mistreses had in  “keeping up with him,” in bed and his wish to party 24/7 on the weekends with a large number of women. Some news articles discuss his “kinky” sexual desires, some discuss his willingness to pay for sex, and some describe how he would “ask for” the type of women he liked in advance before he arrived at bars and clubs, and he would have a table of “his type” waiting for him when he arrived. All of the articles discuss the physical beauty of the women he was with and news media features them as “gorgeous” or “hotties.” Without question, Tiger is framed as wanting sex–needing sex–and is even frequently cast as a sexual addict.

Not only is the current coverage different from previous married athletes who are unfaithful through multiple extramarital partners, but it is also different from the sexist ideologies that are often used by media to blame women for men who stray. For example, George Gilder, a conservative and major player in the Reagan Administration underscored that:

“In a world where women do not say no, the man is never forced to settle down and make serious choices. His sex drive–the most powerful compulsion in his life–is never used to make him part of civilization as the supporter of a family. If a woman does not force him to make a long-term commitment to marry–in general, he doesn’t. His sex drive only demands conquest, driving him from body to body in an unsettling hunt for variety and excitement in which much of the thrill is in the chase itself” (Gilder, 1986, p. 47).

Using this conservative logic, one would think that media frames might discuss the women who “tempted” Tiger as being at fault or “making” him stray. But no. Given the history of media frames of this kind, there is a rather shocking media silence on women’s sexual agency in this story (this fact is not being stated to suggest that the women should be analyzed for this reason–we are simply pointing out that the coverage is different from other unfaithful male athletes). The sexual “problem” is all on Tiger. And Tiger is viewed as a sex addict. Why?

To be sure, male athletes who participate in sports at very high levels in US society are often highly culturally valued. They are framed as heros and they are often associated with an unusual dose of moral superiority. Yet, simultaneously, given their cultural fame and popularity, they also enjoy numerous economic and social privileges. One of those privileges is the highest valuation of masculinity which brings with it access to numerous women’s bodies. Hence, male athletes in particular are faced with a “moral paradox:” athletes are viewed as moral role models but being a successful sports star is often equated with the pinnacle of masculinity and sexual prowess. What typically happens is that the public will use this paradox to  stigmatize subordinated masculinities when the men “fall.”  Men of color and gay men have historically paid that price in terms of denigrating tropes of promiscuity. Tiger Woods is now linked to other men of color in team sports who are said to have shown him the ropes of how to access large numbers of women.  News media report that Woods “was always palling around with Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan.” As one woman said: “They’re the ones who showed him the way.” Charles Barkley has stated that he can’t even get in touch with Tiger and is quoted by media as saying that Tiger “…is a 33-year-old grown man. He did something wrong to his wife. He has to answer to her and his kids. That’s it.”

I think that the quantity of media coverage and the sexual addict frames of Tiger Woods’ story make it different from the media coverage of Magic Johnson and other male athletes who “step outside of their marriages.” Here are a few reasons why I think this is the case:

• First, there are the class and race dynamics of golf. Media have not cast their high surveillance eye on the sport of golf, likely because it is dominated by upper class and white players who are assumed to be more moral. Yes, the men of golf are assumed to be more moral than men who participate in hegemonic sports such as basketball, baseball, and football–who are often men of color–and are often stereotyped as violent, promiscuous, or both.
  
• Second, Tiger Woods is  a man of color who is married to a white woman and he frequently selects white women as his sexual partners. The U.S. has a long and unforgiving history of lynching, anti-miscegenation laws, rape and violence accusations, and more when it comes to Black men being with white women (during slavery, and post slavery, black men  could not even look at a white woman without being accused of rape). Tiger Woods is a mixed race man who is playing a sport that is not dominated by men of color and hence his behavior as a token person of color is being explosively explored. The current media coverage runs the risk of essentializing men of color as sexually exotic and sexually obsessed just as racist ideologies of sexual excess always have (there are many works on this, but 2 excellent ones are Patricia Hill Collins’ 1990 book titled Black Feminist Thought, or Frantz Fanon’s, 1967 work titled Black Skin, White Masks).
• Finally, male athletes’ sexuality itself is constituted differently in different sports. Men who participate in sports that constitute hegemonic masculinity (football, basketball, baseball) are team sports that require high degrees of aggression, physical contact, muscularity and explosive physicality, all of which get marked as masculinized and as highly valued sex objects (some scholars argue that these particular sports and their participants are disproportionately responsible for sexual assaults and rapes. For work on these claims see Jeff Benedict’s book titled Public Heros, Private Felons: Athletes and Crimes Against Women) . Golf is not only less sexy because of the polo shirt, goofy shoes, and white grey hair, but because it is an individualized sport rife with controlled skills which do not frequently allow for sports performances that take visible muscularity and power. The media coverage of Tiger’s behavior then—explodes because it takes the mask off of the assumed to be more moral realm of upper class golf. Tiger Woods’ younger age, good looks, and muscular body helped to change the stiffness of the sport (no pun intended).

Current media coverage doesn’t just tell us that sport can be sexist or that women get betrayed with age old stories of infidelity (or thinking they’re the only mistress). It also tells us that Americans may feel betrayed because they thought they were getting a squeaky clean man of color in a white sport.  They didn’t get that man. Media reports now state that white quarterback Peyton Manning, who also has a “squeaky clean image” in football will be checking his phone to ensure that he isn’t guilty of any racy text messages.  The unrelenting nature of the media coverage of Tiger Woods doesn’t just expose the hypocrisy of Tiger Woods–it exposes the hypocrisy of media and of Americans. Tiger Woods needed a squeaky clean image to make him acceptable in golf as a man of color and yet we fault him more than other athletes for trying to uphold this image and failing at it.