Abstrak

This research aims to know how WTA (Women Tennis Association) constructs the image of Serena Williams’ body, as the representation of African-American female athlete in Strong is Beautiful campaign which was released in 2012.

This research is a descriptive qualitative research which used some still pictures and some screenshots of Serena Williams in the selected campaign from http://www.wtatennis.com/strong-is-beautiful. The primary data are pictures, gestures, words, phrases, dialogues and other miss-en-scene that contain the messages of the campaign. The secondary data are needed to support the primary data, they are theses, books, journals, articles and etc that are related to the topic of the research.

The research is conducted under the frame of American Studies. It uses a number of theories and approaches to analyze the data; they are Race and Gender in Sports, Socio-cultural Background of African-American Women in America and Semiotic Film Theory.

Based on the analysis, it shows that WTA constructs the image of Serena Williams’ body as a masculinized female athlete who is strong, fierce and high-tempered. It means that WTA does not challenge the existed myths and stereotypes of black women as a masculinized woman in the media construction

Keywords :  Female Athlete Body, Women in Sports, Race in Sports, Construction Image