In this study, we attempt to understand and explain to what extent the claims that the media treats female athletes as sexual objects and exploits them in some way reflect the truth, in what ways the media sexualizes female athletes, and the reactions of female athletes to the sexual objectification implemented by the media, based on available information and documents. In this qualitative study, which was designed based on a limited number of previous studies examining the coverage of female athletes in the media, document analysis, and literature review were used as data collection tools. To access the documents to be examined, an advanced search was conducted in the databases of the YOK National Thesis Center, SOBIAD, WoS, EBSCO, Scopus, JSTOR, ScienceDirect, Cochrane Library, ACM Digital Library, Embase, DOAJ, Historical Abstracts, SciFinder Scholar, CORE, ASC, ERIC (via ProQuest), Sociological Abstracts, and Google Scholar. The documents included were read, understood, analyzed, evaluated, and synthesized. It was concluded that female athletes were subjected to overt systematic gender discrimination and sexual objectification by the media, that quantitative media coverage was significantly inadequate compared to male athletes, that female athletes were sexualized through the predominant visual and language used, and that the achievements of female athletes and women's sports were deliberately trivialized. It was understood that some female athletes approved of the media’s sexualization actions with the expectations of popularity and sponsorship, while others strongly opposed it. To prevent sexual objectification, media and sports organizations should include positive representations of female athletes. Young women’s skills in questioning and criticizing sexualized images should be developed through gender equality and media literacy education. Sexual objectification should be socially opposed. The reasons for the media’s dependence on sexualized female bodies should be further examined and discussed.