But as a muscular black woman whose career is full of wins, Williams regularly becomes the subject of commentary that is simply degrading at best, and openly racist at worst. Williams’s body, like the bodies of many other women athletes, is under constant scrutiny. Knight’s cartoon picks up these assertions and runs with them. In conclusion, she is a gorilla.” And another described her as “so unbelievably dominant. One Twitter user wrote that Williams “looks like a gorilla, and sounds like a gorilla when she grunts while hitting the ball. Williams was compared to an animal, likened to a man, and deemed frightening and horrifyingly unattractive. After Williams won the French Open in 2015, for example, Desmond-Harris wrote: Not only is Williams depicted as a petulant toddler for having spoken up about what she felt was a sexist call, but also as a hulking, animal-like brute.Īs Jenée Desmond-Harris has previously detailed for Vox, Williams’s career has long been marked by racist remarks and assumptions made by tennis spectators, fellow players, and the media. Knight’s cartoon is a literal illustration of the way society is quick to degrade women - and black women in particular - when they don’t fall in line with the ways women are “supposed” to act. (For contrast, it’s worth noting how Osaka, who is Japanese and Haitian, is depicted in the cartoon as lithe, expressionless, and, as some have observed, seemingly whitewashed.) And Williams has repeatedly been a target of those tropes - despite the fact that she’s one of the most prominent, successful athletes in the world, regardless of gender - throughout her storied career. Whether or not you think Williams’s behavior during the match warranted the penalties that eventually cost her the game, Knight’s depiction of Williams is a jarring reminder of insidious, racist tropes that undercut black women in America. The cartoon was a bad look - and it’s nothing new for Serena Williams’s detractors Both during and after the match, Williams called out the sexist double standards that she says colored Ramos’s calls, specifically noting that many male tennis players have not been penalized as harshly (or at all) for similar (or worse) outbursts. Williams first challenged Ramos over the coaching call later, after Williams smashed her racket in frustration over losing a game, Ramos penalized her by a point for the racket abuse.Īfter that, Williams called him a “thief,” and he ultimately penalized her by an entire game for what he said was verbal abuse. The penalties followed an initial verbal warning that Ramos issued to Williams about receiving coaching from the sidelines. The women’s final ended with Osaka winning the match, after Williams got into a dispute with Ramos over scoring penalties. In the background, umpire Carlos Ramos asks her opponent, Naomi Osaka, “Can you just let her win?” (update: Knight’s account is now inactive) twitter A discarded pacifier lies nearby, as if Williams is a toddler throwing a tantrum. Herald-Sun cartoonist Mark Knight’s image shows a monstrous, hulking depiction of Serena Williams stomping her racket into the ground. An Australian newspaper ran a nasty editorial cartoon on Monday, attempting to capture the fallout of the contentious US Open women’s final that ended in controversy over the weekend.
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