ABSTRACT
Professional tennis player Naomi Osaka became the highest-paid woman-identified athlete of all time in 2021 due, in part, to her numerous endorsements. Her feat was particularly impressive considering sponsors and brands typically prefer to grant White women the most lucrative deals and women of color tend to receive far less exposure. As a Black/Asian, Japanese/Hatian, and international star, Osaka’s celebrity reflects and negotiates her fan’s beliefs about globalization and can serve as a key to understanding ideologies circulating in global media culture. Drawing upon a visual culture approach to her social media and to her strategic brand partnerships and advertising campaigns, we argue that Osaka’s currency relies on her appeal as a multiracial, multinational social activist to Generation Z consumers. While still subject to xenophobic, sexist, and racist gatekeeping in the sports-media complex, Osaka’s multiraciality, her ability to convey authenticity, and her activism converge to represent an emergent cosmopolitan ideal. This ideal, which we define as zoomer cosmopolitanism, is increasingly open to difference but still beholden to the logics of a global marketplace. Osaka provides a key point of entry to considering the complexity of multiraciality, transnationality, and generation in response to codified and static notions of race in the theorizing of race and ethnicity in communication.
