Ultimate Fighting Championship and the present and future of women's sports

Mixed martial arts stars like Amanda Nunes, Zhang Weili, and Ronda Rousey have made female athletes top draws in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Jennifer McClearen charts how the promotion incorporates women into its far-flung media ventures and investigates the complexities surrounding female inclusion. On the one hand, the undeniable popularity of cards headlined by women add much-needed diversity to the sporting landscape. On the other, the UFC leverages an illusion of promoting difference—whether gender, racial, ethnic, or sexual—to grow its empire with an inexpensive and expendable pool of female fighters. McClearen illuminates how the UFC's half-hearted efforts at representation generate profit and cultural cachet while covering up the fact it exploits women of color, lesbians, gender non-conforming women, and others.

Thought provoking and timely, Fighting Visibility tells the story of how a sports entertainment phenomenon made difference a part of its brand—and the ways women paid the price for success.

| Cover TItle Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Visibility and Differences in the UFO 1. Developing a Millennial Sports Media Brand 2. Affect and the Rousey Effect 3. Gendering the American Dream 4. The Labor of Visibility on Social Media 5. The Fight for Labor Equity Coda: On Love and Violence Appendix A. Publicly Available UFC Payouts, 2015–2018 Appendix B. Publicly Available UFC Payouts by Gender and Race, 2015–2018 Notes References Index Back cover |"Fighting Visibility demonstrates that female fighters are encouraged to imagine opportunities for professional success through UFC despite several significant ways in which these athletes are exploited. UFC positions the success of Ronda Rousey as something for both athletes and fans to emulate, following the notion that 'if you can see her, you can be her.' Yet McClearen's research shows that Rousey's success is exceptional and only portrayed as typical, rendering opportunity a likely facade." —Journal of Sport History
"McClearen urges scholars to move beyond dichotomous notions of visibility and to consider the cultural and material consequences of being seen. . . . Centering the well-being and lived experienced of female athletes, McClearen's Fighting Visibility provides a strong foundation on which to build a sustained critique of the relationship between media visibility and exploitation." —Media Industries
"The book is a fascinating read. . . . McClearen has written a compelling history of women in the UFC, along with the trials they have faced." —Sport in American History
|Jennifer McClearen is an assistant professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin.