text: Media and sports Hegemonic masculinity has also been employed in studying media representations of men. Because the concept of hegemony helps to make sense of both the diversity and the selectiveness of images in mass media, media researchers have begun mapping the relations between different masculinities. Portrayals of masculinity in men's lifestyle magazines have been studied and researchers found elements of hegemonic masculinity woven throughout them. Commercial sports are a focus of media representations of masculinity, and the developing field of sports sociology found significant use of the concept of hegemonic masculinity. It was deployed in understanding the popularity of body-contact confrontational sports which function as an endlessly renewed symbol of masculinity and in understanding the violence and homophobia frequently found in sporting environments. Rugby union, rugby league, American football, and ice hockey, and the prevalence of injuries and concussions in these sports, is a particularly salient example of the impacts of hegemonic masculinity. With the dominant mode of hegemonic masculinity valuing emotionlessness, invulnerability, toughness, and risk-taking, concussions have become normalized. Players have accepted them as simply "part of the game". If a man does not play through a concussion, he risks being blamed for the team's loss, or labelled as effeminate. It is noble to play in pain, nobler to play in agony, and noblest if one never exhibits any sign of pain at all. Coaches buy into this unwritten code of masculinity as well, by invoking euphemisms such as "he needs to learn the difference between injury and pain", while also questioning a player's masculinity to get him back on the field quickly. Players, coaches, and trainers subscribe to the hegemonic model, thus creating a culture of dismissiveness, often resulting in concussions, which can lead to brain diseases like CTE.