"NOW that’s a rugby strip!" screamed the headline. "Female athletes from England’s sevens squad get naked for a risqué photoshoot to promote body confidence ahead of the Rio Olympics!"

Five rugby players from the England Women’s Rugby sevens team were celebrating the bodies that got them to the top of their field. They did this by taking all their clothes off.

Their bodies are not the kind you might once have seen on the front page of men’s magazines. They’re incredibly powerful athletes, muscular and honed.

These women are role models to look up to, something to aspire to, not the wafery, starved supermodels on the catwalk, or the artificially rounded breasts of women on page 3.

They appeared in Women’s Health magazine September issue, empowered women at the top of their field.

Unfortunately, the September issue’s front page wasn’t quite so empowering. “TORCH FAT FOR GOOD”, it said on the cover. “4 WAYS TO RUN YOUR BELLY OFF”, was another feature.

Okay, it’s a health magazine – but there’s being healthy, which I associate with eating well and getting fit – and then there’s fat shaming.

The Rio Olympics are dragging the issue of how female achievement in sports is being portrayed into the spotlight.

The Chicago Tribune provoked outrage when it tweeted “Wife of a Bears’ lineman wins a bronze medal today in Rio Olympics”, completely debasing the achievements of top trap shooter Corey Cogdell.

The newspaper later apologised, claiming it was concentrating on the local angle. But this hardly excuses putting her husband’s job and the fact she was a “wife” as opposed to a sportswoman, above her Olympic achievements.

Women are constantly defined not by their individual achievements but more often as “mother”, “wife”, or “female bodybuilder”… “female weightlifter”… “female rugby player”.

We all do it. A study that looked at more than 160 million words from years of newspapers, websites and academic writing showed that men were three times more likely to be mentioned than women when it came to sport. Women’s age, appearance or whether they were married was far more likely to be mentioned.

It’s not just sport, either. I remember being a slightly naïve cub reporter and interviewing a woman who had taken over a high powered business position. She had recently had a baby and I asked The Question.

The question that if someone asked me now I would struggle not to punch them on the nose.

“How do you balance motherhood with your career?” I asked. No hint of irony.

She met my gaze, unwavering. “You wouldn’t ever have asked a man that question,” she said.

I have never forgotten it. I just hadn’t thought it through, although that’s no excuse.

If I was a man it would have been even worse.

It’s called unconscious sexism and we all allow it to filter into our lives. It’s time we, the media - men and women – were more mindful about the language we use to describe each other.