Red Bottoms, Gold, and Ass: The Werk of Serena Williams on the Cover of Harper's Bazaar

While surfing the internet in August of 2019, I spotted a cover image from the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar. Featured on the cover was the world-renowned tennis player Serena Williams. I immediately felt awe and admiration for this bold image of Serena that was being viewed by the magazine's readership and beyond. In this rendition of the cover's image (there were additional images taken for the cover layout), Williams posed with her backside to the camera, staring directly into the lens. She was looking over her left shoulder, with her mouth slightly open and a confident facial expression. Draped in a long, flowy gold cape, wearing red-bottom gold heels, she exposed her bare and muscular legs as well as a portion of her left buttock. This photo is important because Williams was boldly photographed unretouched, unfiltered, and raw. The text to her right reads, "serena unretouched the naked truth."

Williams has often been subjected to blatant sexist and racist comments and critiques. Jessica Love and Lindsey Conlin Maxwell argue that "media criticism of Serena Williams's body, choice of clothing, and behavior lie at the intersection of both sexual and racial politics in the sport of tennis. Williams has been mocked for her muscular frame and Black features, and her sexuality has often been compared to that of a man."¹ The Harper's Bazaar issue featured a first-person essay written by Williams in which she discusses her mission to continue advocating for herself and other female athletes who face a number of injustices that male athletes don't experience. She recounts the 2018 US Open altercation with an umpire who accused her of cheating against Naomi Osaka (he claimed Williams's coach was signaling to her during the match). As Williams reports in the essay, she was penalized with three point violations for showing her frustration during the match, smashing her racket and calling the umpire a "thief" for giving Osaka points in a match Williams ultimately lost. She describes feeling "defeated and disrespected" for being vocal about the umpire's actions during the match, yet she acknowledges how this setback has encouraged her to continue being vocal about the differential treatment of female athletes. She writes, "I've been paid unequally because of my sex. I've been penalized a game in the final of a major because I expressed my opinion or grunted too loudly. I've been blatantly cheated against to the point where the Hawk-Eye rules were introduced so that something like that would not happen again. And these are only the things that are seen by the public. In short, it's never been easy. But then I think of the next girl who is going to come along who looks like me, and I hope, 'Maybe, just maybe, my voice will help her.'"²

Figure 1.

Cover, Harper's Bazaar online magazine, July 2019. Photo by Alexi Lubomirski. https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a28209579/serena-williams-us-open-2018-essay/.

Grounded in a Black feminist framework, in what follows I explore how Serena Williams's image on the cover of Harper's Bazaar serves as a vector for an intersectional reimagining of the Black female sporting body in popular culture and the importance of its inclusion in sports media research.³ Patricia Hill Collins argues that African American womxn possess an "outsider-within" status that allows for a unique viewpoint on self, family, and society. Further, Collins explains, "Many Black intellectuals, especially those in touch with their marginality in academic settings, tap this standpoint in producing distinctive analyses of race, class, and gender."⁴ My dual positionality as a Black woman and a former Division III student athlete allows me to analyze particular nuances embedded within Williams's image both personally and intellectually. In writing this essay, I seek to continue the conversation about the Black female sporting body by unpacking three elements of the photo. I argue that the work of Serena Williams...