Tennis representations in the 20th-century Brazilian press: women’s bodies in focus

Abstract

ABSTRACT Involved in representations that produce meanings according to the characteristics of each time and space, the human body is a record of history and culture. The media is one of the instruments that convey these meanings, and, as tennis was a sport considered beautiful and without physical contact, it represented a practice that did not disfigure the femininity of cisgender women. Therefore, this study sought to discuss how the sport of tennis was represented in a women’s magazine in the mid-20th century in Brazil, analyzing the stereotypes behind such a representation. For this, we used the pages of the Brazilian magazine Jornal das Moças and defined the period in which it was distributed as being from 1914 to 1965. We identified different representations of the tennis practice that reinforced whiteness and specific stereotypes, such as cisness and heteronormativity, when encouraging women to be attractive to men, with tennis supporting the importance of women in the constitution of families and being an opportunity for women from ruling classes to leave the domestic environment. In addition, it involved aspects of health maintenance and forms of beautification capable of developing physical characteristics that received high praise in virtue of the type of femininity.