<div dir="ltr"><div>All, <br></div><div>Please find below and attached Adrian Markle's review of Jennifer McClearen's <i>Fighting Invisibility: Sports Media and Fighting in the UFC.</i></div><div>Thanks</div><div>Duncan
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:200%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><i><span>Fighting
Visibility: Sports Media and Female Athletes in the UFC </span></i><span>by Jennifer McClearen<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:200%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span>Reviewed by Adrian
Markle<span></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:200%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span>In February 2013,
Ronda Rousey strode into the cage at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California,
to fight in the first women’s MMA bout in UFC history, headlining UFC 157 over
former UFC champion Lyoto Machida and former Pride and Strikeforce champion Dan
Henderson. After her win, Rousey headlined five more pay per views before her
retirement, becoming the then highest paid and most popular fighter in the UFC.
Since Rousey’s explosion in popularity, many other female fighters also gained
significant visibility, with more than two dozen women headlining events since
UFC 157. In the UFC, perhaps unexpectedly considering its reputation as
aggressively hyper-masculine, female athletes appeared to be gaining parity
with male athletes. Jennifer McClearen’s <i>Fighting Visibility: Sports Media
and Female Athletes in the UFC </i>analyses the realities of being a visible
female UFC fighter, and the ways in which that appearance of equality might be
misleading.<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:200%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span><span> </span>The introduction discusses some of
the book’s central concepts: visibility; branded difference; and contract
labor. The first chapter, “Developing a Millennial Sports Brand,” provides a
history of the UFC and their brand development in the twenty-first century,
including their digital and transmedia marketing; their desire for a global audience;
and their marketing of the diversity of their competitors’ racial, gender, and
sexual identities. The second chapter, “Affect and the Rousey Effect,” focuses
on Rousey and her impact on the sport, especially with regards to the conceptual
and practical effects of empowerment. The third chapter, “Gendering the
American Dream,” discusses the UFC’s strategy of marketing “difference”; the
story of the first female flyweight champion and the first Native American UFC
champion Nicco Montaño (who was cut from the UFC roster during the writing of
this review); the particular experience of lesbian athletes in the UFC; and the
“cruel optimism” of the fighter’s dream. Chapter Four, “The Labor of Visibility
on Social Media,” looks at social media engagement as labor; the relationship
between social media engagement and real-life opportunity; and racial and
gender inequalities of online engagement. And the fifth chapter, “The Fight for
Labor Equity,” focuses on the UFC’s compensatory structure, the athletes’
attempts to unionize, and the organization’s response to those unionization
efforts. There is also a coda, which is about the athlete’s love for their
sport and for each other. <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:200%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span><span> </span>Each of these chapters is compelling
and presents a detailed and interesting analysis of the way in which the
visibility these athletes have does not always provide the advantages and
security that might be expected. Increased visibility does not necessarily equate
to increased pay, to increased job security, or even to increased popularity. High
profile fighters can still struggle financially. Champions are still stripped
of their titles for questionable reasons. Divisional mainstays are still seemingly
let go for challenging the organization. While these issues are looked at
primarily through the lens of gender, <i>Fighting Visibility</i> also includes
significant analysis of experiences of race and sexuality, as well as an
overall excellent articulation of contemporary sport branding and economics. Early
on, McClearen uses the word “ambivalent” to describe her findings, which speaks
to <i>Fighting Visibility</i>’s best qualities: its analysis is thorough and
its interpretations are nuanced. It does not oversimplify. To that end, the
book also sometimes reaches for examples beyond female mixed martial artists to
great effect; anecdotes centering on male MMA fighters Cain Velasquez, Drakkar
Close, and Kajan Johnson add much to our understanding of the sport’s issues,
as does a section that discusses tennis legend Serena Williams. <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:200%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span><span> </span>That being said, there are a few
exclusions that may have added value here: former Strikeforce champion Sarah
Kaufman’s campaign for five-minute rounds, which directly affected the
Carano-Cyborg fight; and the particularities of the UFC’s relationship with
Invicta (arguably being the only organization they have ever cross promoted
with, by virtue of allowing Cyborg to fight there while under UFC contract).
There were also one or two areas where a claim may not have been quite
justified—the differences in resources devoted to the <i>Revolution </i>and <i>Jessica
Andrade Emerges (JAE) </i>promotional videos are initially framed as resulting
from <i>Revolution </i>being about two conventionally attractive, straight,
white, American women, and <i>JAE</i> being about a lesbian woman from Brazil,
rather than the fact that the former video was made for a major championship
fight and the latter for the promotional debut of a woman with (at that time)
few notable wins. But these issues are not numerous or significant enough to
detract from the overall quality of the book, which is excellent.<span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:200%;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><span><span> </span><i>Fighting Visibility </i>challenges
the concept of visibility as inherently or wholly positive or valuable, and it
illustrates how the marketing of diversity may undermine the very experiences
it appears to endorse. And beyond that, McClearen provides us with an insightful
and informed account of the experiences of female mixed martial artists in the
UFC at a pivotal time in the development of their sport, its culture, and its
perception.<span></span></span></p>
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</div><div><i></i></div><div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past<br><br>Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.<br>Professor of History<br>Book Review Editor<br><i>AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature</i><br>Ashland University<br>Ashland, OH 44805<br>USA<br></div></div></div></div>