“When you’re in a minority community and the representation always feels inadequate, whoever arises either as openly queer or is attributed that identity by fans, those people become disproportionately important to queer fandoms,” explains Eve Ng, an associate professor in the School of Media Arts and Studies and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Ohio University. “Certain fandoms around these queer imagined relationships have an intensity and obsessiveness that often exceeds straight ‘shippers.’”
For collegiate athletes, there’s another layer as well. Other students at their school are likely to see them as peers; maybe they have a class together or share a dorm. There is the potential to run into them on campus or at an off-campus party—and it’s fairly easy to find out their class schedule, room location, or travel itinerary. The level at which stans track the activities of these players sometimes includes following the families and friends of athletes on social media to scour their accounts for photos, getting their license plate numbers, or asking students on campus to report on any interactions or sightings they may have.
Paige Bueckers and WNBA player Kate Martin are two examples of athletes that young people have latched onto and elevated as objects of fixation. Throngs of college-aged women have been showing up to Bueckers’s games and crowding the hallways outside the locker room, trying to get a glimpse of her. Bueckers was asked about the crowds after a recent game, and while she said she’s grateful for the support, she chalked the number of people following her around up to “the new generation of social media [where] everybody knows your location at all times, they know your bus routes, or where you’re staying in hotels.”
The members of the media around Bueckers laughed at this, but for a young woman who had to deal with a stalker, the situation wasn’t especially funny.
But disengaging from social media isn’t really an option, either, especially in an era when college athletes earn money by treating themselves like a brand—a right referred to as NIL (name, image, likeness). With professional salaries still relatively low, no wages (yet) for collegiate athletes, and a massive gendered wage gap (not a single woman was on Forbes’s list of the 50 highest-paid athletes in 2024), women athletes need to build platforms in order to be financially successful. According to a 2024 survey from Parity Now, 78% of pro women athletes report making $50,000 or less from their sport; brand sponsorships can help fill that gap.
