The Portrayal Of Women of Color in Ads

Mark knight’s caricature of Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka was shown in Australia’s Herald Sun. Serena Williams, a woman who has worked extremely hard to get where she is and has fought through stereotypes to prove herself worthy of her talents, was once again an example how women, especially women of color still deal with modern sexism and racism. According to Lips (2017), “modern sexism is associated with negative attitudes toward women and affirmative action and a lower tendency to define a situation as discriminatory”. Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, two women of color, were victims of modern sexism in Mark knight’s caricature. Williams was negatively portrayed as an angry black woman with this cartoon exaggerating her body and representing her as an oversized baby whining while showing Osaka to be good looking, calm, and have white features.

On September 8th, Serena Williams, a woman of color from Michigan lost the US Open final to, Naomi Osaka, a Japanese and Haitian woman of color. During their match, Williams was given three code violations, which caused her to get a point deduction and then lost her the game. She was penalized for coaching, breaking her racquet and calling the chair umpire Carlos Ramos a thief, which was considered verbal abuse. Tennis is a sport and sports for many years has been seen as a men’s activity making it hard for women to thrive because of sexism. As a tennis fan that has watched many matches, I’ve seen both men and women express themselves in the court. In this situation, Williams expressed her frustration of being called a cheater by calling the chair umpire a thief. Chair umpire Carlos Ramos called this out as verbal abuse and penalized Williams.

While in comparison men have further aggressively verbally attacked umpires yet they have not been penalized for verbal abuse. This is a clear example of double standards. Mark Knight’s caricature of this situation is an offensive bomb filled with sexism and racism. This cartoon demonstrates how white men and white media represents women, specifically women of color. Let me unpack how this cartoon characterizes Serena Williams as an angry black woman with a baby whining behavior while representing Naomi Osaka with a westernized image. Williams a beautiful woman of color is drawn with exaggerated features like her arms, lips, and nose while Osaka who is also an attractive woman of color with muscles and an average chest is drawn with a whiter skin tone, blond, skinny arms, and a bigger chest. Knight placed a baby’s pacifier next to the broken racket and drew Williams in a specific position with a facial expression mimicking a whining baby.

While Williams is depicted as a baby throwing a tantrum, Osaka is represented standing still with a calm, unalarmed aura. Chair Umpire Carlos Ramos is drawn commenting “Can you just let her win?” which diminishes Williams’ past accomplishments to other people letting her win to get her over her childishness tantrum. Mark Knight’s caricature demonstrates how white men and white media represents women, specifically women of color. On September 11th, Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka were victims of modern sexism and racism in Mark knight’s caricature. Williams was pictured as an angry black woman who is acting like a baby throwing a tantrum and Osaka a white version of herself with blond hair and a victim of Williams’ tantrum. Williams was drawn with exaggerated features making her unappealing while Osaka was drawn with what we have been taught to think an attractive woman looks like, skinny, white, blond hair and a full chest. The two women were portrayed as images of who they are not by white media.