Selling
Skin
Part 2: The
"Average Woman"= "White Femininity"
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Anna Kournikova,
off the court
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Sports marketers like
to talk about what they call the "average woman," a homogenous,
all-rolled-into-one representative of every race, class, and
physical appearance of American women.
They
won't define exactly who she is. But the Williams sisters,
who bring a whole new layer of complexity to the image of
the woman athlete, are not "average women."
"Their image now is a bit
too tough," said Jim Spence, the president of Sports Television
International, when asked about the response of television
viewers to Venus and Serena Williams. "It's not conducive
to a really successful viewers' response. I don't think
many people feel comfortable with them." Spence is also
a former senior vice president of ABC
Sports.
Linda Steiner, who teaches a course called, "Women, Minorities
and the Media" at Rutgers
University, agreed. The Williams sisters, she said,
"send out a complicated message."
"I do think that it has been a particular problem for women
of color to establish themselves as credible athletes because
advertisers are still sticking to very conventional notions
of beauty," Steiner added. "They want an athlete, but they
don't want an athlete who is not perceived as pretty."
So on came the Avon ads.
Trying to overshadow the stereotypical portrayals of the
Williams sisters, marketers have clearly endeavored to make
the public feel comfortable with them. Their most recent
efforts have appeared in women's magazines such as Elle
and Self.
Serena poses fetchingly in a long, cream-colored silk
gown, while Venus stands behind her, arms wrapped around
her sister. Venus wears a similar, spaghetti-strapped gown.
Both sisters' faces are turned to the camera to reveal plaited
hair, careful makeup jobs and elegant smiles.
"It's a big issue that they're getting these opportunities,"
said Wendy Hilliard, former president of the Women's Sports
Foundation in New York. "To be honest with you, black athletes
haven't always been able to do this." Hilliard, who is an
African-American and former gymnast, said the idea that
Avon, a company with such a wide reach, "is using the Williams
sisters as their representatives is a breakthrough."
She added, "We [African-American women] would of course
like more, but we're happy that they have been able to break
through."
| "Their
[Venus and Serena's] image is a bit too tough" |
Then
Reebok released a Venus commercial on April 5, which shows
her doing anything but playing tennis. There's a 30-second
montage of Miami Beach scenes with the song, "Where Do You
See My Venus?" playing in the background, a rendition of
the old theme song for the television program, "Bridget."
In one scene, Venus idles by a villa pool. In the next
scene, she strums an acoustic guitar (she really does play
guitar), surrounded by men wearing black berets. And in
the final scene, she runs through a garden kicking a soccer
ball in a white evening gown with matching gloves and beehived
hair. For the finale, she lifts her head and smiles a brilliant
smile, and for a moment you think she's trying to impersonate
Diana Ross.
The ad ends with the phrase, "Defy Convention," part of
Reebok's new campaign.
To the casual viewer, it's not clear after the ad if the
word should be "defy" or "define." Maybe the ambiguity is
deliberate for Venus, who may have been set up to defy the
conventional approach to marketing black athletes, while
at the same time, giving marketers a version of the soft
femininity they think appeals best to audiences.
"People found it appealing to see a softer image of her,"
said John Wardley, Reebok's vice president of brand communications.
"With Venus, people think tennis, performance. The obvious
thing to do was to put on her on a tennis court and show
her being aggressive. They don't think of the Venus that
we have cast, her happy, glamorous style. We defy the convention
of Venus."
Wardley, though, disagreed that the ad was about her race
or her femininity. It was about "Venus's sense of fashion"
and her everyday life, he said, not about her being a black
woman. "It wasn't us saying, 'Venus happens to be a black
woman, let's create a juxtaposition with her in that role,'"
he said. "I think people just picked up cues on that."
NEXT:
Marketing Against Masculinity >>
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