“WE ARE JUST EVERYDAY PEOPLE AND WOMEN”: AN EXAMINATION OF SELF-PRESENTATION OF NBA WIVES AND THE TWO-PERSON CAREER ON INSTAGRAM
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2019-12
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[Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University
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Abstract
The professional sport career has been identified as a two-person career (Dixon,
Bruening, Mazerolle, Davis, Crowder, & Lorsbach, 2006; Papanek, 1973), in which the demands
of the sport industry require two people to contribute to the career in order for the paid employee
to be successful (Knoppers, 1992). It has been argued that the two-person career heavily affects
the work-family interaction, as it requires the paid worker, such as a professional athlete, to put
in considerable time and other resources, and it requires another full-time person, typically the
athlete’s wife, to manage domestic tasks to shield the worker from any non-work distractions
(Budig, 2002; Knoppers). This career-dominated marriage arrangement has been found to lead to
the sport wife providing a heavy investment of unpaid work to the sport career, which some
argue is an exploitation of women and their free labor that ultimately benefit others for the
maintenance and reproduction of sport (Ortiz, 2006; Thompson, 1990).
Previous research has shown that professional sport wives experience a variety of
disparities at the hands of the sport marriage, including the sacrifice of their own careers, social
isolation and loneliness, assuming sole responsibility for domestic and family work, and
managing the unpredictable aspects of the sport industry that are beyond the wives’ control
(Dixon & Bruening, 2005; Gmelch & San Antonio, 2001; Ortiz, 2001; Roderick, 2012;
Thompson, 1990). The sport wife’s investment in the sport career often aligns with traditional
gender roles in which the woman serves her husband and family to the benefit of her husband
and his career (Ortiz, 2006). Hochschild (2012) argues that this unpaid domestic work is not only
undervalued by society, but it is expected and simultaneously ignored, marginalizing women and
their unpaid work as inferior to their husband’s and their paid work. Ortiz (2002) finds that
participating in a marriage that is largely shaped by hegemonic masculine-dominate sport
industry leads the wife to feeling out of control and powerless in many areas of her life, often
negotiating her identity and coordination of gender roles. Additionally, sport wives have shared
their experiences of feeling lonely and socially isolated, only finding acceptance through the
collective identities they share with their respective husbands, while also battling the stereotypes
associated with sport wives (Binns-Terrill, 2012; Gmelch & San Antonio; Ortiz, 2002; Roderick,
Simonetto, 2019).
The majority of sport wife literature was completed prior to the development and
increased use of social media (e.g., Binns-Terrill, 2012; Dixon et al., 2006; Gmelch & San
Antonio, 2001; Ortiz, 1997, 2011; Roderick, 2012). Sanderson (2009) explains that the publicity
opportunities through social media have allowed athletes and others to assume greater control
over their public representations shared with large audiences (Sanderson, 2009). While athletes’
use of social media to control their self-presentations has been studied extensively (e.g., GeurinEagleman & Bruch, 2015; Lebel & Danylchuk, 2012; Pegoraro, 2010; Smith & Sanderson,
2015), the secondary actor in the two-person career, the wife, has yet to be evaluated with regard
to her use of social media to manage her self-presentation. It has yet to be determined whether
and how the wife manages her work in the sport career, her identity, her coordination of gender
roles, and her resistance to stereotypes via her self-presentation shared through a public platform
such as her social media profile.
This study evaluates the patterns of self-presentation utilized by professional sport wives
on their social media to further explore the function of gender roles in sport, the two-person
career, and the professional sport marriage and family. Employing content analysis methodology,
this research evaluates the public Instagram profiles of NBA wives, identifying the common
frames the individuals use to manage their public presentations. The study found that 93 of 479
active NBA players at the time of the study had a wife. The study found that close to half (n=43)
of the NBA wives were inaccessible on Instagram by way of no profile or a private profile. The
remaining 50 NBA wives had a public Instagram profile, 13 of whom had a verified profile,
including 10 wives that have their own public career a part from their husband. Utilizing 100
posts from the 13 wives with a verified profile and a randomly selected 13 of the remaining
wives with public profiles, 6,285 units of analysis were retrieved and coded for the study’s
purpose.
Using Goffman’s (1959) theory of self-presentation and impression management, several
unique patterns of self-presentation emerged. For instance, an analysis of the study’s findings
revealed four types of careers and/or work roles that dictate an NBA wife’s own level of public
audience she would have on social media. The four groups include NBA wives who have their
own public career, NBA wives who have a verified profile but no public career, NBA wives who
manage a blog, and NBA wives who have a public profile but do not have a public career,
verified profile, or manage a blog (identified as “traditional” wives throughout the study). It was
found that the most common social media self-presentations for all NBA wives were
combination roles (15.30%, the most common being the role as a wife and her role as a mother),
her role as a parent (14.43%), and her relationship with extended friends and family (11.09%).
When compared to the wives who did not have a public career, the NBA wives who had
their own public careers had statistically significant (c2 = 328.30, p = .00) higher rates than the
rest of the wife categories of self-presentation in their roles as a parent (19.3%) and in their own
career ambitions (15.4%). Wives with verified profile but no public career had statistically
significant (c2 = 328.20, p = .00) higher rates of self-presentation engagement pertaining to the
categories of the NBA wife’s role as a parent (20.40%), philanthropy and encouraging posts
(13.30%), and celebrating a holiday (7.30%). However, this same group had much lower
statistically significant rates in presentations in their own career ambitions (2.70%) and within
selfies (6.2%). Blogging NBA wives, however, were found to have statistically significant (c2 =
501.46, p = .00) more self-presentations of selfies (26.70%) and her career ambitions (13.80%)
and low rates of presentations that indicated her relationships with her husband (3.10%), children
(3.0%), or extended family (5.3%). In contrast traditional wives have statistically significant (c2
= 540.97, p = .00) higher rates of presentations that include her role as a wife (10.70%), as a
parent (10.70%), in her work for the two-person sport career (7.00%) and with her extended
family (16.20%) but have drastically less presentation rates within her own career (1.00%).
The findings also showed that the NBA wives in the study only included their husbands
in their social media content 15% of the time, while wives as bloggers had a statistically
significant lower inclusion rate and the traditional wives had a statistically significant higher
inclusion rate. In 11% of the data, the NBA wives tagged their husband’s Instagram profile in
their data, with wives with a public career and traditional wives having the highest levels of tag
rates, and the blogging wives having the least. The study also identified ways in which NBA
wives have – through various social media self-presentation strategies (e.g., profile status
changes) and management techniques – negotiated against common sport wife stereotypes.
Through its focus on NBA wives, the study also showed the utilization of social media to
identify public figures and their families as power couples and/or build a family brand.
Description
Dissertation (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, School of Public Health, 2019
Keywords
sport wives, two-person career, content analysis, NBA wives, Instagram
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Doctoral Dissertation