Becoming a Mental Health Activist: The Learning of Naomi Osaka

Mathieu Deflem
Google Scholar | ResearchGate | ORCID

and

Megan Routh
University of South Carolina

This is the manuscript of an article published in Journal for Cultural Research, first published online March 16, 2025. DOI: 10.1080/14797585.2025.2477523

Also available online and as PDF file from publisher Taylor & Francis (subscription).

Please cite as: Deflem, Mathieu, and Megan Routh. 2025. "Becoming a Mental Health Activist: The Learning of Naomi Osaka." Journal for Cultural Research, first published online March 16, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2025.2477523

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Abstract

This paper examines the development of tennis star Naomi Osaka as a mental health activist. The study is positioned at the intersection of the sociology of celebrity and interactionist theories of human behavior. Based on a media analysis, we show that Osaka’s mental health activism is most striking in terms of its favorable attention and wide recognition in that it originated on social media. On May 26, 2021, Osaka announced on Twitter that she would not participate in press conferences at the French Open. When a few days later she decided to withdrew from the tournament altogether, Osaka was quickly catapulted to the center of mental health advocacy. Relying on Howard S. Becker’s interactionism, we argue that Osaka’s advocacy cannot be explained in terms of any antecedent motivating predispositions. Instead, Osaka’s status as a mental health activist resulted from a learning process that took place over the course of various activities from which, post facto, motives were articulated. Besides demonstrating the continued theoretical relevance of Becker’s work, the case of Osaka empirically shows that the impact of celebrity and athlete activism as a broader social movement may benefit from the fact that motivations and dispositions remain unspoken and unquestioned.

Keywords: activism; athletes; celebrity culture; mental health; sport.


INTRODUCTION

Today, mental health is everywhere. Not only a medical and/or psychological condition, mental health is also a sign of our times that sociologically forms an important element of contemporary culture (Davies 2021; Grinker 2021; Haidt 2024). Mental health is a cultural construct that is used and discussed, defined and re-defined, and both embraced and contested, widely and repeatedly across various segments of society. As one dimension in this constellation, mental health advocacy is one of the most popular causes of activism today, especially among celebrities (Gupta 2021; Franssen 2020), including high-profile athletes (Billings and Hardin 2023; Ho and Tanaka 2023; Williams 2022). The transformation of celebrity culture since the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly the expansion of celebrity activism on a large number of causes, has accelerated this process (Deflem 2022b; Martin and Allen. 2024). It is against this background that this paper will apply an interactionist perspective concerning the role of motives in human conduct to examine the mental health activism of tennis star Naomi Osaka.

Both sociologists and scholars in the field of celebrity studies have made great advances to the study of celebrity. Since the elucidation of celebrity as an important dimension of contemporary society by studies now already considered classics in the field (Gamson 1994; Marshall 1997), the sociology of celebrity has already been reviewed (Ferris 2007) and greatly elaborated in recent years, both theoretically (Archer, Alfano, and Dennis 2024; Rojek 2023; van Krieken 2019) as well as in empirical studies (Chew 2022; Deflem 2023; Martin and Allen 2024; van de Rijt 2013). As will be discussed in more detail below, different approaches and competing theoretical perspectives have thereby been developed, both of a more or less explicit sociological (or otherwise disciplinary) basis. It is in this connection that the present analysis seeks to make an argument in favor of the value of the sociological work of Howard Becker in the context of a cultural conception of celebrity. Despite differences in approach and opinion, certain constants in the scholarship of celebrity and fame can be detected as well. Conceived relationally in terms of an interaction between a celebrity and the audience of their attention, celebrity can, following a now widely accepted conceptualization introduced by Daniel Boorstin (1962), defined as the quality of being known or celebrated for being well-known or famous. In the current age of the internet and social media, the preoccupation with celebrity has evolved to the point that a veritable celebrity culture has developed. Various trends and dimensions of contemporary celebrity culture, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, have received due scholarly attention among sociologists (Chew 2022; Deflem et al. 2023). Celebrity activism has thereby also been devoted attention to, in recent years especially in relation to racial (in)justice (Boykoff and Carrington 2020; Chen 2021; Deflem 2022a, 2022b; Duvall and Heckemeyer 2018; Evans et al. 2020).

Partly overlapping with celebrity culture, the world of (professional) sport has also become a growing interest area in the study of activism movements (see overview by O’Neill et al. 2023). Indicating a growing interest in the ‘new politics of sport’ (Cashmore et al. 2023), some of this scholarship has already been devoted to Naomi Osaka. The tennis player has specifically been the subject of academic work regarding the role of her racial status (Ho and Tanaka 2022, 2023; Leppard 2022; Razack and Joseph 2021) and her activism on race (Calow 2022; Deflem 2023; Ogiso et al. 2022) and mental health (Chen and Kwak 2023; Kumble et al. 2022). A central question in much of this research and, more generally, in work on activism in celebrity culture and professional sport typically involves investigations to estimate the impact of activism in terms of stated causes (Atkinson and DeWitt 2019; Brockington and Henson 2015; Jain, Sharma, and Behl 2021; Müller et al. 2024).

This paper will examine online news and social media regarding the mental health activism of Naomi Osaka. Though focused on the singular case of the development of Osaka’s activism, this effort should enable broader insights into the characteristics of contemporary activism movements and, in particular, the role played therein by celebrities. In what follows, we first explain the constructionist perspective of celebrity and celebrity activism before providing a media analysis of the case of Naomi Osaka’s process of becoming a mental health activist. An interactionist theory will be applied to Osaka’s mental health activism in terms of its reception in the media and among the public at large. Specifically relied upon will be Howard S. Becker’s (1953) seminal work on the development of motivation over the course of a learning process to suggest that Osaka’s mental health activism cannot be explained by any antecedent motives. Instead, we will show, the process of Osaka becoming an activist was distinctly unmotivated but nonetheless highly impactful in terms of its embrace among fellow athletes, in the media, and by the general public. Osaka’s status as a mental health advocate essentially resulted from her being designated as such by others. We conclude by discussing the nature of this process in terms of the dynamics of celebrity culture and activism.


THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Competing theories view celebrity either in political-economic terms, especially in advanced capitalist societies, or as distinctly cultural expressions (Deflem 2022b: 65-67). A political economy perspective conceives of celebrity as a commodity in terms of broader forces related to market and power, especially in a capitalist society. This perspective is rooted in theories of the Frankfurt School, specifically Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s (1944) neo-Marxist interpretation of the emerging (popular) culture industry. Theoretically aligned with this orientation, C. Wright Mills defended a political-economy notion of celebrity in a chapter entitled “The Celebrities” in his famous study on the power elite (Mills 1956: 71-92). Characteristically dismissive, Mills thought of celebrity culture as a mere “shadow of money and power” that had been “created from above” as a pacifying diversion to distract from the (class) problems of modern American society (Mills 1956: 83, 71).

Following Jeffrey Alexander (2010), perspectives of celebrity rooted in a political economy are reductionist in treating celebrity as an instrument of capitalism, typically to be critique in highly normative and negative) terms as a social pathology. To offer a distinctly cultural perspective in the study of celebrity, which we adopt in this paper, a constructionist approach can be adopted to conceive of celebrity as a form of status (rather than power or a commodity). This viewpoint theoretically builds on Max Weber’s (1922) typology of class (economy), status (culture), and party (politics) to conceive of celebrity, culturally, as a matter of esteem. Such a perspective to treat celebrity as culture also avoids the normative orientation of reductionist theories that view celebrity, in the words of Mills (1956), inherently as “social nonsense” (Mills 1956: 88). A cultural perspective is in that sense scholarly, oriented at asking a question that empirical research must answer. A growing number of contemporary scholars of celebrity have, after a period of dominance by theories of political economy (Orth 2004; Rojek 2001), indeed defended this notion of celebrity as cultural status (Alexander 2010; Kurzman et al. 2007; McKernan 2011; Milner 2005). The perspective of celebrity as status further brings out the special connection with media and the open-ended nature of inquiry in this framework. As Stewart and Giles (2020) argue, “celebrity status derives from an accumulation of social esteem or disparagement based on the countless evaluative judgements, positive or negative, that accumulate in media and wider public discourse” (p. 3).

Conceptions of celebrity activism differ according to these diverging perspectives and will variably focus on activism in terms of its stated objectives (how does celebrity activism contribute to further a cause or not?) and functional contributions to the maintenance of social order (commodity activism). On the basis of a political economy perspective, celebrity activism is cynically conceived as a commodity to bolster the influence, and sell the profitable products, of the celebrity rather than aid any cause, least of all on behalf of others (Farrell 2020; Williams 2022). It is then claimed that contemporary celebrity activism oriented at social justice is an expression of “individualised consumer capitalism” (Chidgey 2020:1055).

Avoiding the stated pitfalls of a reductionist political economy, a cultural sociology framework can be adopted on the basis of the notion that celebrity is a symbolic cultural reality with a multiplicity of meanings, depending on context and audience (McKernan 2011). The fact that celebrity is mediated in nature will in today’s age especially bring out the relevance of the internet and online (news and social) media. The privileges associated with fame (Kurzman et al. 2007) in terms of access to and reach of media give celebrities a potential measure of authority and legitimacy. Not surprisingly, therefore, much celebrity activism), including in the world of athletics (Gonzalez, Schmuck, and Vandenbosch 2024), has been aligned explicitly with matters of politics (Majic, O’Neill, and Bernhard 2020; Marshall 2020; McKernan 2011; Panis 2015).

Studies of celebrity activism tend to be dominated by effectiveness studies that examine the outcome of advocacy in terms of stated goals, typically couched in marketing terms of commodity and brand (Duvall 2022; Knowles, Scott, and Rutty 2024; Lee et al. 2024). As such, these studies inhibit a deterministic outlook that also marks political economy perspectives. Adopting a cultural sociology framework, instead, will make it possible to investigate how, as a manifestation of the very nature of fame today, celebrities’ various media engagement can reach a wide audience. Such celebrity activities can legitimize not only the messages they share but might also inspire ordinary citizens to take action about celebrity-advocated causes (Duvall and Heckemeyer 2018). Celebrity activism can therefore also influence how much and how the population at large shares stated sentiments and opinions as a result of their connection with a celebrity they claim to adore or detest (Hunting and Hinck 2017). For such a connection to be successful, the celebrity must be perceived as authentic. An important role is thereby played by the manner in which celebrity activism is communicated via various media, which establish a more or less direct relationship between celebrities and their audiences (Boykoff and Carrington 2020). As a result, identical manifestations of activism can be perceived very differently and may be polarizing, especially on divisive issues.

In line with this cultural perspective, this paper will focus on the process through which Osaka’s mental health activism was established in a particular social environment. Thus, a central sociological question is the success of activism in terms of its reception –in the media and by the public– in more or less positive terms as more or less genuinely motived and consequential. To achieve this aim, our examination of Naomi Osaka’s status as a mental health activist relies on the interactionist insights Howard S. Becker developed in his famous paper “Becoming a Marihuana User” (Becker 1953). Now published over 70 years ago, Becker’s paper made the provocative claim that the motives of human conduct result from, rather than are at the basis of, the experience of (inter)action itself. Seeking pleasure from smoking marihuana, Becker argued, is the result of a learning process that takes place after the act of smoking has already been initiated and continued over the length of a longer process. Any motives related to the pleasure of smoking result from this learning. As Becker (1953) argued, “the motivation or disposition to engage in the activity is built up in the course of learning to engage in it” (p. 235).

While critics might argue that the basic tenants of interactionist theory have today been absorbed across sociological perspectives, it remains useful to not just take insights from interactionism as a taken-for-granted starting point but to examine its usefulness in the examination of concrete cases. Becker (1953) himself explicitly suggested the wider applicability of his theory, writing that “behavior of any kind might fruitfully be studied developmentally, in terms of changes in meanings and concepts, their organization and reorganization” (p. 242). In the case of Naomi Osaka’s mental health activism, we will show, the tennis player’s status as an activist developed without the tennis star initially revealing any motives or objectives related to advocacy. Instead, Osaka initiated her relevant actions through social media, in the form of a post on Twitter (now X), announcing that she had decided not to participate in press conferences at the French Open in Paris in 2021. Osaka (2021b) made reference to a personal struggle of having to deal with the pressures of being asked questions and, within a few days, decided to withdraw from the tournament. Osaka justified her decision not to play tennis (the very activity on which her fame and success are based) on the basis of personal, but otherwise unspecified, mental health concerns. The tennis star did not claim to have been medically diagnosed, which has also not been judged relevant to her reception as an activist. Osaka’s motivations and justifications to become an activist, instead, resulted from the favorable public reactions to her actions, especially her decision not to play, for purposes left undefined, yet effectively functioning for her to become recognized as a leading voice in mental health advocacy.


METHODOLOGY

The data of this research include internet news stories and social media posts regarding Osaka’s mental health activism. This development is specifically examined from the summer of 2021 onwards when the tennis player decided to withdraw from the French Open, beginning her process to become perceived as a mental health activist. Osaka returned to the Roland-Garros tournament in Paris a year later and subsequently went through a period struggling on the tennis court, but also saw her status as an activist sustained and expanded. She would eventually not play for a year, returning to professional tennis in December 2023.

Online news sources and social-media posts were retrieved through keyword searches in Google News (e.g., ‘Osaka’, ‘activism’, ‘mental health’), with subsequent more targeted searches on the basis of identified relevant events (e.g., ‘French Open’, ‘meltdown’). The majority of these searches were conducted in two successive stages shortly following discussed events, specifically during the summer of 2021, when Osaka’s mental health activism began to develop, and in the summer of 2022, by which time Osaka’s status as a mental health advocate was widely accepted. On the basis of preliminary findings, additional guided searches on Google and Google News were conducted thereafter, in the spring of 2023, in the spring and summer of 2024, and during the finalization of this paper in the spring of 2025.

Given the extent of news coverage about Osaka (and the proliferation of the media landscape), it will not be surprising that over 600 sources were identified over the course of the development of Osaka’s mental health activism from 2021 until 2022. Rather than randomly sampling these sources, we selected those documents for analysis that focused on critical events in the development of Osaka’s activism, that were reported in major news and sports outlets, and/or that contained information specially relevant from the viewpoint of this study. Although this study cannot rely (as did Becker in his original 1953 study) on guided in-depth interviews, we also especially consulted media sources that contain interviews with Osaka in her own voice and the tennis player’s related published accounts in news and social media.

Analysis of media sources adopts a qualitative research strategy to generate insights that make sense of observed trends and variations from an interpretive point of view (Babbie 2010; Glesne 2011). The data analysis thus follows the logic of a hermeneutic inquiry to understand the perceptions and motivations involved in the construction of celebrity and celebrity activism. As celebrity itself is essentially relational, these intersubjective realties pertain to both the celebrity (Osaka) as well as relevant audiences (other athletes, other celebrities, the public at large). Because the social construction of celebrity and the relevant components of celebrity activism are in today’s age primarily achieved via online media, it makes sense that this study will conduct a media analysis to focus on online available news sources and social media postings.

While not as exhaustive of all dimensions of celebrity activism as compared to research in which data are generated, media research has become an increasingly favored and widely applied method in celebrity scholarship. Examples in connection with athlete activism include empirical studies about gender inequalities (Crawford’s 2022), mental health disclosures (Thompson et al. 2022), and, specifically about Osaka, race and criminal justice (Deflem 2022b, 2023). Sociologists Jessica Martin and Kim Allen (2024) have recently made a strong case for the analysis of media in studies of celebrity culture. Pragmatically, they argue, media research can produce manageable data sets inasmuch as the hybridity of contemporary media means that (relatively many) social media are included in (a relatively limited number of) news sources. Because the selection criteria to include some but not other social media posts in news stories may not always overlap with scholarly concerns, the need for a comprehensive study of social media of course remains. Such research has in the case of celebrity activism specially been conducted by means of studies of posts on Twitter (e.g., Gonzalez, Schmuck, and Vandenbosch 2024; Park et al. 2015). For an examination of today’s celebrity culture, however, in-depth qualitative research of news media can benefit from the fact that the constitutive nature of language as a symbolic medium of communication implies that the impact of celebrity and celebrity activism on audiences is constructed through the media (Gill 2018). Today, this media landscape is increasingly online in nature, which not unironically in this context also poses special concerns for users’ mental health (House and Brennan 2023).

This examination would ideally need to involve a broader analysis than we can offer here, including quantitative data on a large number of online-media participants as well as survey data of relevant audience members and guided interviews with Osaka and (a sample of) many others. However, the shortcomings of our study to focus on online available news sources and social media as well as interviews discussed therein will be offset by the manner in which our interpretive analysis, presented in a relatively lengthy narrative form, is guided at an understanding of relevant dimensions of celebrity activism. Besides adding to the credibility of our findings through a high degree of consistency in themes in media from across different sources, the case of Oska’s activism is also contextualized within a broader setting of the development of celebrity activism, especially during and since the COVID-19 pandemic. While a degree of subjectivity in this qualitative form of (media) research cannot be denied (Glesne 2011: 151), this hermeneutic examination is also theoretically guided, not purely inductive. In this sense, our reliance on insights from the celebrity literature and Becker’s interactionist perspective on motives is essential to guide our analysis and strengthen the potential for replicability and falsification of presented data. As such, our research should be able to develop a meaningful albeit admittedly explorative and illustrative model that further, more systematic research can examine on a broader scale.

A thematic coding strategy was adopted to discover relevant factors in the development of Osaka’s mental health activism. Both authors of this paper undertook coding separately as research was developed as well as jointly upon the completion of preliminary reports. This sociological examination of Osaka’s mental health activism will focus specifically on the interplay between the motives and objectives of action, on the one hand, and the public reception and impact thereof, on the other. The study will reveal how Osaka’s status as an activist emerged from the public reception of her actions based on an assessment of her mental health and subsequently influenced the tennis player to proclaim motives at the end of a learning process. An obvious limitation of this study is that a systematic research of (a sample of) a multitude of cases is needed to test the generality of our findings and the value thereof for broader activism movements. For this media analysis to be sociologically relevant, this study will focus on Osaka’s mental health activism in interaction with the environment in which it developed, including its public reception and its place in professional sport and celebrity culture. In the case of celebrity activism, moreover, a study of an individual celebrity gains additional validity from the fact that celebrities and high-profile athletes are highly influential because of their elevated status. Celebrities are discussed on numerous occasions across multiple media, in which sense the study of even one celebrity implicitly involves a large number of interactions.


CONTEXT: COVID-19 AND CELEBRITY ACTIVISM

The activism of Naomi Osaka does not exist in a vacuum but developed in the context of the dynamics of celebrity culture and celebrity activism, especially during and since the COVID-19 pandemic. Confirming findings from earlier research on the impact of disasters and other crises propelling celebrity activism (Katayama 2021; Noland et al. 2009), health concerns related to the pandemic as well as later societal disturbances and events during the pandemic thereby propelled two ongoing dimensions of celebrity culture (Deflem 2022b). One, celebrities have increasingly engaged in activist causes as part of, not just next to, their usual professional activities of providing entertainment. Two, the scope of celebrity activism has broadened to include a wide variety of causes and concerns. The drift towards celebrity activism and its diversification have especially been observed since the widespread use and popularity of social media. The COVID-19 pandemic provided additional fertile ground for celebrities in many entertainment areas to accelerate this process. Between 2020 and 2021, celebrity activism especially expanded in matters related to the health response to the spread of the coronavirus, racial justice concerns following the police killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, political opinions related to the 2020 U.S. presidential elections, and the #MeToo movement (Deflem et al. 2023).

Osaka’s emergence as an activist was part and parcel of the transformation of celebrity activism during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was alongside of the expansion and diversification of celebrity activism during COVID-19 that Osaka emerged not only as a celebrated tennis star but also a widely respected activist, especially on matters of racial justice related to police violence and criminal justice reform (Deflem 2023). As was the case with many other celebrities (and professional athletes), Osaka began her racial justice activism shortly following the video-taped police killing of George Floyd, when she spoke on Twitter about the matter and subsequently took several relevant actions, such as posting on social media, writing op-eds in major news outlets, and otherwise visibly showing her concern. Among her most discussed action, Osaka wore facemasks at the US Open (which she would go on to win) with the names of several Black victims of police killings and related alleged racially motivated violence. In its positive reception, Osaka could, as a biracial Japanese woman tennis star of great athletic accomplishment, take thereby advantage of aspects of her identity and experience as well as a generally receptive climate of activism, especially among athletes (Marston 2021), to be embraced as a leading advocate.

A year after Osaka had begun to express her concerns about racial injustice, a sudden turn took place in the direction of her activism from racial justice to mental health. On May 25, 2021, public demonstrations took place across the United States to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the killing of George Floyd. But Osaka, like many other celebrities who had earlier been very vocal about the incident, remained silent (Deflem 2023). Instead, she that day posted a comical video on Twitter showing her tumbling at a practice match for the upcoming French Open (Osaka 2021a). The next day, she announced that she would not hold press conferences at the Paris tournament (Osaka 2021b), followed a few days later by her decision to withdraw from the event (Osaka 2021d).


FINDINGS: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A MENTAL HEALTH ACTIVIST

Over the course of just one year following her decision to withdraw from the French Open in 2021, Osaka would come to be widely embraced as a leading mental health activist, a status she has since been able to maintain. This section provides a narrative of the various stages in this process and its subsequent development until 2024. This review of relevant media is especially focused on uncovering the interplay between the tennis player’s actions, on the one hand, and the response thereto in the media, among other celebrities and athletes, and by members of the general public.

Leaving Paris: Osaka’s Refusal

On May 26, 2021, Osaka took a decisive turn towards her reception as a mental health activist when she announced on Twitter that she would not participate in press conferences at the French Open (Osaka 2021b). Osaka stated that questions from reporters at tournament press conferences oftentimes show “no regard for athletes mental health” and complained that tournament organizers, threatening with fines, were neglectful of athletes’ mental well-being. Following a first-round win in Paris, Osaka spoke briefly with reporters on the court but did not attend the postgame press conference (NPR 2021). The response from the tournament organizers was swift. Osaka was fined $15,000, with further potential sanctions, including suspension and expulsion, should she continue not to attend press conferences (Reid 2021).

Osaka’s public stance on press conferences quickly became the subject of much public debate and media commentary (NPR 2021). Fellow tennis player Coco Gauff and many fans leapt to Osaka’s defense, but some were less receptive of her actions and voiced their criticisms, especially on social media, leading Osaka (2021c) to post on Twitter: “anger is a lack of understanding. change makes people uncomfortable.” On May 31, Osaka announced that she withdrew from the French Open (Osaka 2021d). She explained her decision as an attempt to mitigate the mental health challenges she has faced, citing “long bouts of depression since the US Open in 2018” and “huge waves of anxiety” before press conferences (ibid). Osaka’s decision quickly met with much understanding and praise, particularly from fellow tennis players (such as Coco Gauff and Serena Williams), other athletes (among them, Stephen Curry, Lisa Leslie, and Usain Bolt) as well as celebrities from outside of the sports world (including Ellen DeGeneres, Rita Wilson, and Naomi Campbell) (Ushe 2021).

Leaving Tennis: The Making of an Activist

On June 17, 2021, after having backed out of a tournament in Berlin earlier in the month, Osaka announced she would not participate at the Wimbledon tournament (Hertel 2021). The decision came despite the fact that Wimbledon organizers had been in contact with Osaka regarding ways to provide accommodations in view of her mental health (Reuters 2021). The reactions to Osaka’s decision were again generally very positive. Tournament organizers wished Osaka well and expressed their hope she would return to Wimbledon in the future (McKenzie 2021). Fellow professional athletes, such as Tom Brady and Lindsey Vonn, expressed empathy for Osaka (Daniels 2021; Frye 2021). Former tennis star Boris Becker, who had initially stated he did not believe Osaka had sufficient reasons to skip press conferences, reversed course and now stated his support for Osaka’s withdrawal and her mental health activism (Chowdhury 2021).

Following the start of the Wimbledon tournament in late June 2021, the media focus remained firmly fixed on non-attendant Naomi Osaka. While the competition was still ongoing, Osaka published an op-ed in Time magazine, in which she clarified her position. Osaka said that she loves the press but does “not love all press conferences” (Osaka 2021e). She stated that while she hopes her activism will help others, she also felt “uncomfortable being the spokesperson or face of athlete mental health,” explaining “it’s still so new to me and I don’t have all the answers” (ibid.). Osaka expressed she was unhappy about having to discuss what she considered to be a private medical condition in such a public way.

In early July 2021, Osaka appeared in public for the first time since her French Open and Wimbledon withdrawals to accept the 2021 ESPY award for best female athlete (Mizoguchi 2021). Later that month, she returned to competition to represent Japan at the Olympic Games in Tokyo. But after winning two matches, she was eliminated from the Games in the third round against a much lower ranked opponent (Newsmax 2021). When Osaka explained that she experienced a lot of pressure going into the match, the tennis player received much sympathy and was favorably discussed alongside gymnast Simone Biles, who withdrew from the Olympics for mental health reasons (Rosenberg 2021). Osaka and Biles were generally praised for voicing their struggles, particularly as women of color athletes (Gerald 2021).

In August 2021, Osaka participated in the Western and Southern Open (losing to an unseeded player) and also took part in the tournament’s press conference (Fitzgerald 2021). At one point during the press conference, Osaka became emotional and cried, upon which a reporter asked her to reconcile her disdain for the media with how much her career is helped by reporters. Osaka’s agent later referred to the reporter as a ‘bully’ (Fitzgerald 2021).

Though now achieving little to no success on the tennis court, Osaka remained in the media spotlight, mostly because of her perception as a mental health activist, and also maintained her standing as the world’s highest paid female athlete (Rhinehart 2021). In an interview, Osaka stated that she did not expect the amount of attention she had received but was thankful for the support from family and friends and for the connections she had been able to make with other people dealing with mental health (Jeffrey 2021). At a press conference for the US Open in August 2021, Osaka admitted to her mental instability at the French Open earlier that year and that she should have put more thought into her refusal to attend press events (Berman 2021). On Twitter, Osaka also discussed her mental health, specifically her struggles with low self-esteem. “I’m gonna try to celebrate myself and my accomplishments more,” she wrote, encouraging others to adopt her optimistic view (Osaka 2021f). “Seeing everything that’s going on in the world,” Osaka stated, “I feel like if I wake up in the morning that’s a win” (ibid.).

On September 4, Osaka suffered a third-round defeat at the US Open against (later finalist) Leylah Fernandez. Media outlets labeled the loss a ‘meltdown’ and raised questions about Osaka’s emotional state (Maine 2021). Following her tournament exit in New York, Osaka announced at a press conference that she intended to temporarily step away from tennis (Maine 2021). She later also apologized for the loss at the US Open (a tournament she had won in 2018 and 2020) and explained that tennis did not make her as happy as it once did (Helmore 2021). Media and fans alike continued to praise Osaka, crediting her with a positive change in how mental health, particularly for athletes and Black women athletes, is approached (Thomas 2021). For the remainder of 2021 following her loss at the US Open, Osaka did not participate in tennis tournaments but nonetheless maintained her status as the best-paid woman athlete of 2021, mostly because of endorsement deals (Forbes 2022).

A Return to Play: Losing at Tennis, Winning at Activism

Early January 2022, Osaka returned to tennis at the Melbourne Summer Set, a tournament that served as a warmup for the Australian Open later that month (Woodyatt 2022). Coming after a four-month break from competition, Osaka went on to the semi-finals before exiting due to injury. At the Australian Open itself, she failed to advance beyond the third round, citing a lack of readiness to play as the reason for her disappointing performance (Reuters 2022). Despite her weak tennis performance, however, coverage on Osaka remained largely positive, focusing on the prioritization of her mental health and generally lauding her as a mental health activist (Mesic 2022).

Two months after her defeat in Melbourne, Osaka participated at the Indian Wells tournament in March 2022. She lost in a difficult second-round match at which she was heckled by an attendee and subsequently broke down crying (Jerkins 2022). Media outlets focused not just on the loss, but also on Osaka’s and other players’ responses to the heckler, comparing the incident to a similar one involving Venus and Serena Williams at the same tournament some years prior (Jones 2022). A few days after her exit from the tournament, Osaka again took to Twitter, writing: “Very proud of myself for reaching a point that despite the lows, I would still rather be myself than anyone else” (Osaka 2022). Later in March, Osaka bounced back and reached the finals at the Miami Open (Church 2022), an achievement receiving wide praise and leading Osaka to express her happiness over her performance (Morgan 2022).

When Osaka took part in the Madrid Open tennis tournament in April 2022, she said that she was now more concerned with her happiness than she was with winning (Hemingway 2022). At Madrid, she injured her Achilles tendon in the first round and lost in the second (Goodwin 2022). As before, Osaka received much credit for changing how mental health among athletes is spoken about more openly (Jerkins 2022). Yet, Osaka’s struggles on the tennis court continued. On May 9, she exited the Italian Open due to the injury to her left Achilles sustained at the Madrid Open, stating that she withdrew in an attempt to make sure she was healthy enough to play in the upcoming French Open (Associated Press 2022a).

On May 23, 2022, Osaka lost in the first round of the French Open, the major from which she had withdrawn a year prior to effectively begin her process of becoming a mental health activist. Participating in a press conference at the Paris tournament before the competition began, Osaka said that she was now in a better mental state, having received much support (Associated Press 2022b). But following her loss in Paris, Osaka on June 18 announced that she would not compete at the Wimbledon tournament later that month, citing an Achilles tendon injury (Osaka 2002e). Fans expressed positive reactions and offered well-wishes (Audilet 2022).

Following her reception as a mental health activist between the French Open tournaments of 2021 and 2022, Osaka generally continued on the path set in that period. In the second half of 2022, she continued to do poorly in her athletic pursuits, with several early tournaments exits, including a first-round loss at the US Open on August 30, and being inactive from tennis for the rest of the year. Early January 2023, Australian Open organizers announced Osaka would not play at the Melbourne tournament later that month (Moore 2023). The news initially raised concerns over Osaka’s well-being, but she soon thereafter revealed that she was pregnant, expecting a child with her then-boyfriend rapper Cordae, with whom she had been in a relationship since 2019 (Andaloro 2023). During her pregnancy, Osaka was relatively quiet on social media and only rarely discussed in the news. In September 2023, she returned to the US Open tournament, not to participate on the court, but to speak at a forum on mental health and sports (Fendrich 2023). In December, Osaka posted on Instagram to announce her upcoming return to tennis (Osaka 2023) and, in an interview with NHK television, mentioned her daughter Shai (to whom she had given birth in July) as a special motivating factor (NHK 2023).


ANALYSIS: THE POWER OF UNMOTIVATED ACTIVISM

A striking characteristic of the positive reception of Naomi Osaka as a mental health activist is its origin in an act of non-action (refusing to participate and play). Osaka’s refusal to play at Roland-Garros in 2021 was immediately perceived in activist terms, revealing the remarkable reach and success of an unmotivated form of activism. On the basis of this media analysis, the indicators of the widespread favorable recognition of Osaka’s status as a mental health activist include: 1) the numerous references to mental health among other professional athletes and celebrities who explicitly invoked Naomi Osaka, thereby creating a notable noise about her silence (Chowdhury 2021; Merrell 2022; Thomas 2021; Wamsley 2021); 2) the generous treatment and widespread coverage of Osaka’s mental health activism in the media, including analyses of the tennis star’s assumed mental health struggles (Duffy 2021; Hayasaki 2023; Jeffrey 2021; McKenzie 2021); and 3) the wide recognition of Osaka’s mental health activism among members of the public at large, as evinced from the feedback provided on social media and in response to news stories (Audilet 2022; Chen and Kwak 2023; Kumble et al. 2022).

The centrality of mental health in the media coverage about Osaka can also be seen quantitatively from the number of news stories devoting attention to the issue following the 2021 French Open. We measured this trend by counting relevant news items in the electronic database NewsBank (which provides access to a total of 14,797 news sources, including U.S. newspapers, news videos, and news blogs). To focus on the most meaningful articles and exclude those that mention Osaka or mental health only in passing, we searched for news items mentioning “Naomi Osaka” in the Headline and “mental health” in Lead/First Paragraph. In the 5-year period before Osaka’s decision of May 26, 2021 not to participate in press conferences at the French Open (5/25/2016 to 5/25/2021), during which time the tennis player had won four grand slams and risen to the top of world tennis, the search showed that only 2 out of a total of 3,567 news stories about Osaka dealt with mental health. In the one year thereafter (5/26/2021 to 5/26/2022), 402 of 3025 stories about Osaka discussed mental health, of which more than half (226 of 1009) were published in the first month of that period.

Osaka’s status as a mental health activist is qualitatively expressed in the generous manner in which she was embraced and discussed in very positive terms, initially particularly so by other star athletes and celebrities (Wamsley 2021). Following Osaka’s lead, other athletes became more open in voicing their mental health struggles in the high-pressure environment of professional sports. Osaka was at times explicitly referenced by other athletes, in tennis and elsewhere, thus functioning as a symbol of mental health awareness (Thomas 2021). The positive reception of Osaka’s (and other celebrities’) mental health activism also benefited from the controversy that arose whenever an occasional commentator was more cynical or negative about its nature (Bradley 2022). Such criticism could be redirected as an additional source of pressure, demonstrating the validity of the issue precisely by its denial.

Those who had at first been skeptical about Osaka’s actions later often changed their minds. For example, commenting on Osaka’s decision not to participate in press conferences at the US Open, Billie Jean King had advocated for mutual respect between athletes and reporters and defended tournament organizers’ rights to require athletes to attend press conferences (Reid 2021). But soon thereafter the tennis legend conceded that Osaka’s actions had given her a greater understanding of the situation and praised Osaka for sharing her thoughts about her mental health (Ushe 2021). Similarly, men’s tennis legend John McEnroe initially questioned Osaka’s attitude toward the game of tennis and her perspective on mental health after the Japanese player’s loss at the Australian Open in 2022, a tournament she had won in 2019 and 2021 (Atkin 2022). But following Osaka’s continued struggles on the court over the summer and fall of 2022, McEnroe conceded that Osaka was “hugely important for the women’s tennis tour in the next 5 years” (Malachy 2022). Only very few have remained critical of Osaka’s action. Media personality Piers Morgan, for example, called Osaka an “arrogant spoiled brat” and accused her of lying about her mental health (Bradley 2022).

As a celebrity, Osaka can rely on her fame and influence, especially via social media (Chen and Kwak 2023; Duvall and Heckemeyer 2018), while as a minority (woman) athlete in a majority-white sport, she is more readily perceived as genuine and authentic (Jain, Sharma, and Behl 2021). In her native Japan, it is to be noted, these conditions are different in view of that country’s general absence of, and reluctance to embrace, celebrity involvement in activism as well as Osaka’s status as half Japanese (hāfu) (Ho and Tanaka 2022). As such, Osaka indeed must navigate but also can successfully navigate “points of sameness and difference afforded to her by her multiple personal and professional identities” (Leppard 2022). Osaka and other (Black/minority women) athletes engaging in activist conduct are therefore seen, because they are intersectionally positioned, as having earned the right to say ‘no’, to not shut up nor dribble, and lead the way in the ‘great refusal’ to play (Allen and Miles 2020; Gerald 2021). These athletes can win in their activism precisely by not playing or when losing, regardless of the practical effects regarding the causes of their activism.

The reception of Osaka’s actions as a mental health activist also benefited from a favorable cultural climate. Following a period during which activism from celebrities and professional athletes at times still met with some resistance, today a much more positive climate exists on such matters as racial justice, gender equity, sexual violence, and the like (Boykoff and Carrington 2020). Activism has a special capacity towards outreach when it involves race (Johnson et al. 2023; Marston 2021) and gender (Crawford 2022). Further, victimhood and mental health have in recent decades experienced a notable de-stigmatization (Kumble et al. 2022) in the wake of a cultural move towards acceptance (‘believe all women’, ‘believe the victim) and a subjectification of truth (‘her story’, ‘her truth’). As a result, mental health struggles have in the current age become more routinely acceptable and accepted (Grinker 2021). In the case of Osaka’s mental health activism, it was also beneficial that her actions took place during the COVID-19 pandemic when mental health challenges were more common, in part as a direct result of the pandemic and in part indirectly because of exposure to news coverage about the spread of the virus and the havoc it brought about (Stainback, Hearne, and Trieu 2020).

Osaka’s mental health activism is part of, and served as a critical catalyst for, a wider movement of athletes discussing their mental health openly (Billings and Hardin 2023; Chen and Kwak 2023; Kumble et al. 2022). At least some healthcare experts have suggested that Osaka has thereby had a positive effect on mental health inasmuch as people “look to important figures in their life, some of which can include star athletes, family members and peers” (Andaloro 2023). Effectiveness aside, however, it is a special sign of the success of the positive embrace of Osaka as an activist that there are but relatively few concrete aspects of mental health activism directly associated with her besides her social media posts, op-eds, and interviews and how her statements in these various forums have been received. On May 9, 2022, Osaka announced a partnership with health app Modern Health to provide resources for people struggling with mental health (Ruiz 2022). The app’s founder stated that Osaka was chosen as a partner in large part because of her openness about her own mental health and her activism (Red 2022). Almost a year later, in March 2023, the partnership produced a mental health video series for kids, featuring meditations narrated by the tennis player (Andaloro 2023). Given the scarcity of such tangible achievements in Osaka’s mental health activism, it can be said that the tennis star represents a different and new type of activist without activism.

It was not until her deal with the Modern Health app that Osaka began to articulate an explicit motive for her actions in terms of mental health advocacy. Hearing of people’s mental health struggles, she then said, made her understand the need for this change in motivation since her withdrawal from the French Open. “At the time, I was doing it for myself,” she stated, “but I realized that my decision to help myself was also helping many others” (cited in Andaloro 2023). As in the case of her criminal justice activism (Deflem 2023), Osaka thereby defined the objectives of her mental health activism modestly in terms of increasing awareness. “I just want people to talk about [mental health] and not feel ashamed,” she stated in an interview, in order to “Normalize it” (Hayasaki 2023).

Among the factors that contributed to Osaka’s gradual learning of becoming an activist with a platform oriented at others is the fact she was embraced as genuine in her decisions as an athlete experiencing struggles precisely because of who she is and what she represents. A three-episode Netflix documentary simply called Naomi Osaka that was released in July 2021 focused primarily on Osaka’s mental health (and racial justice) activism and her struggles dealing with fame, including the challenges facing her as a biracial person (Elber 2021). The media reacted overwhelmingly sympathetically to the documentary, especially because of the way it highlighted the pressures in Osaka’s life that affected her mental health (Negley 2021). When a few days later Osaka became the first Black woman to be on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, she was similarly praised for her racial justice and mental health activism besides her athletic prowess (Gleeson 2021).

The relatively late development of an explicit advocacy motive on the part of Osaka did not prevent her actions to be concretely impactful in matters of mental health promotion. Almost immediately following her decision to withdraw from the French Open, news coverage concerning Osaka’s actions focused not only on her supporters and critics but also involved broader discussions on mental health and the special pressures athletes face (Siregar 2021). Following Osaka’s lead, moreover, other Black (women) athletes began to speak more openly about their mental health issues and decision to take leaves (Thomas 2021). Testifying to how seriously Osaka’s actions were taken, some news reports about her activism included interviews and quotes from mental health professionals, arguing for better efforts to protect the mental health for athletes and the public in general (Duffy 2021). In the world of professional sport, Osaka’s actions produced concrete results as well. The press conference format at the French Open tournament was adjusted to be more suitable for players, a change partly credited to Osaka (Merrell 2022). At the 2021 US Open tournament, participating athletes could benefit from quiet rooms and mental health providers, a move explicitly linked to Osaka’s activism (Taranto 2021).

At the end of 2023, Osaka was unranked in tennis but still listed 5th among top-earning female athletes, with an impressive $15M income, all of it derived from endorsements and business ventures such as sponsorship contracts with retailer Crate & Kids and baby formula Bobbie (Knight and Birnbaum 2023). Financially secure, the former tennis world number-1 continued to receive occasional attention in the media over the course of 2023, though mostly as a celebrity among celebrities. The relative rise and fall of the centrality of mental health in the media coverage on Osaka can be seen from the news coverage in the NewsBank database from 2022 on. In the one-year period following Osaka’s rise as a mental health activist (5/27/2022 to 5/27/2023), only 10 of 523 news stories about Osaka discussed mental health. The additional 389 stories published in the remainder of 2023 (5/28/2023 to 12/31/2023) devoted attention to mental health in 26 cases, slightly more than in the preceding 12-month period but still much less than in the year following Osaka’s withdrawal from Roland-Garros. Likewise, from 1 January 2024 until 1 January 2025, only 23 of 758 news stories on Osaka brought up mental health issues.

Although Osaka has recently stayed in the news but nonetheless been discussed considerably less than during the period of her rise as a mental health activist, this decline can be attributed to the fact that her influence on the mental health debate had already taken place and that her role as a catalyst had been accomplished. This became clear when media attention following her return to tennis at the Brisbane International tournament in Australia in December 2023 again focused on Osaka’s mental health as well as on her athletic prospects (Andaloro 2023). Linking her chances for success on the court to her “mental struggles,” Osaka was thereby predicted to gain the attention of “a wide range of sociologists, psychologists, and perhaps also poets, novelists, playwrights, and film producers” (Tennis.com 2023). A biography of Osaka published at that time likewise emphasized her mental health activism and its purported role in transforming professional sport (Rothenberg 2024).

After a relatively uneventful and quiet first half of 2024 for Osaka, in matters of tennis and activism as well, news about Osaka continued to reference mental health explicitly. After Osaka had lost her second-round match at Wimbledon in July 2024, she mentioned a lack of confidence. News reports highlighted that the tennis player “has publicly detailed her struggles with mental health” (Blinn 2024). Most recently, Osaka again drew attention to her mental health when she lost her second-round match at the U.S. Open in August 2024 (Fendrich 2024). Following her loss, Osaka took to Instagram to discuss “the strange feeling” of how she had come to “appreciate losses” (Osaka 2024). When 21-year old tennis sensation Carlos Alcaraz also exited earlier than expected from the New York tournament (after winning both the French Open and Wimbledon earlier in the year), he went on at length during a press conference that he was “not doing well mentally” (APTour 2024). Over the second half-year of 2024, Osaka’s return to tennis has been shaky at best, with some good single-game performances, but no major victories. In January 2025, following the announcement of her breakup with boyfriend (and father of her child) Cordae, Osaka won two matches against notable opponents before exiting the 2025 Australian Open, a tournament she won twice, in 2019 and 2021 (Maine, 2025).


DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

On the basis of a cultural sociology framework of celebrity activism and in line with Howard S. Becker’s (1953) interactionist perspective of the development of motives, this paper has shown that the mental health activism of Naomi Osaka cannot be understood in terms of any antecedent predispositions. When Osaka first took to Twitter to raise her concerns and announce her subsequent withdrawal from the 2021 French Open, the singular act of communicating not to play tennis launched her reception as an activist promoting mental health awareness, even though she had not yet mentioned any such interest. When she later articulated an activist motive, Osaka acknowledged the constructive role of others, including people she had heard from sharing their mental health struggles, while a general trend towards mental health awareness among professional athletes also played a role that facilitated her learning. As such, Osaka became a mental health activist in interaction with an environment that was generally favorable, given certain minimum conditions, to embracing her as a leading spokesperson and advocate. In this sense, Osaka’s status as an activist is primarily social, inter-subjectively perceived and constructed rather than subjectively presented or objectively realized in terms of any benefits for those suffering from mental health.

This media research of Osaka’s process of learning to become a mental health activist shows that, in the words of Becker (1953), “the presence of a given kind of behavior is the result of a sequence of social experiences during which the person acquires a conception of the meaning of the behavior” (p. 235). The motivational transition Osaka underwent from dealing with her own struggles to wanting to help others underscores Becker’s (1953) notion of the “utility of explaining behavior in terms of the emergence of motives and dispositions in the course of experience” (p. 235). The role of the societal reaction to Osaka’s actions, by fellow athletes, media observers, and the public at large, can thereby also not be minimized, for otherwise her self-understanding as an activist might not have developed –much like marihuana smoking did not continue for those to whom smoking remained “meaningless” (p. 237). Indeed, with Becker (1953), we argue that Osaka’s learning to become a mental health activist implied a “transformation of meanings” that shows the relevance of “the favorable definition of the experience that one acquires from others” (pp. 242, 241). In Osaka’s case, becoming an activist involved learning to be an activist after already having been perceived to be one.

While Osaka’s mental health activism involves relatively few concrete achievements in terms of prevention and treatment, her de facto status as a mental health activist is not only undisputed but has also influenced mental health debate and actions. The broader impact of Naomi Osaka’s status as a mental health activist is demonstrated by its wide public embrace and concrete impact on mental health practices, especially in the world of professional sport. Given the unmotivated origins of her mental health activities, Naomi Osaka is a strikingly often discussed and effective activist with a very small amount of activism. To be sue, Osaka did not make any concrete policy recommendations outside the confined world of professional tennis itself. Tennis is also a (still) relatively elitist sport which, although popular on a global level, reaches certain segments of the population more than others. Yet, although Osaka’s own efforts in matters of mental health were in this sense narrow, media reports and social media engagements nonetheless suggest that Osaka did raise awareness of mental health problems and that she definitely brought heightened attention to mental illness in the larger culture.

As revealed in this media analysis, what the case of Osaka shows is the need to devote due sociological attention to the role of individual activists and their public reception. The sociology of activism has routinely, and for good reason, been treated under the heading of social movements and collective behavior. In the case of mental health promotion, the general de-stigmatization and mainstreaming of mental health concerns provided a helpful environment in which Osaka’s activism could develop. Further showing that Osaka’s mental health activism did not emerge in a vacuum, it came about at a time of a relatively intense and widespread wave of athlete (and celebrity) activism, especially with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic (Deflem et al. 2023) and racial justice activism (Chen 2021; Deflem 2022b; Ogiso 2022). In matters of racial justice, Black women athletes have in recent years especially risen as an important force (Allen and Miles 2020; Duvall and Heckemeyer 2018; Evans et al. 2020). But, in today’s celebrity age and era of social media, it nonetheless remains useful to focus on the activism of singular individuals, especially people of great fame and influence, who may contribute considerably to shape the contemporary discourse on activism. It is among the special privileges of celebrities that they can function as role models and that they can interact with many audiences (Kurzman et al. 2007). Celebrity activism, therefore, can have very wide appeal, both horizontally with other celebrities as well as vertically with the public at large. At the same time, the influence that emanates from these privileges can in specific cases be as fleeting as the fame of the celebrities themselves.

The impact of Osaka’s status as a mental health activist despite its unmotivated origins points to the fact that mental health is subject to a process of celebritization (Driessens 2012). As a matter of celebrity activism, mental health itself is treated as a matter to be ‘celebrated’ in the sense that it is subject to a discourse that is framed in the terms of celebrity culture rather than mental healthcare. In the wake of the positive embrace of the mental health advocacy attributed to Osaka (and others), mental health has become a routine element of professional sport and other areas of celebrity culture. Celebrities involved in setting the tone and direction of the discussion are in various ways privileged (Kurzman et al. 2007), having access to an elaborate system of support and being able to exploit their activism as part of their elevated standing.

Celebrities such as Osaka and others have been argued to have effectively contributed to further de-stigmatize mental health (Kumble et al. 2022). But an ironic consequence of celebritization in the case of mental health is that both healthcare professionals and most (ordinary) people who suffer from mental health problems are largely left out of the debate. As discussed in the media and received among the public, celebrity activism on mental health matters is perceived in terms of setting the tones of a discourse without much if any examination of its actual impact on mental healthcare. As the expansion of celebrity culture can only be expected to continue in the foreseeable future, a general trend can thereby be observed towards the celebritization of mental health as one of multitude of advocacy issues and concerns (Deflem 2022b; Franssen 2020).

Although Osaka’s turn towards mental health began instantly with a Twitter post that was being responded to such that the label of activist and mental health champion was instantly conferred upon her, her actual taking on the role of an activist by adopting the motives of a status that was assigned to her by others involved a gradual process. Over the course of the further development of her activism, Osaka engaged in a learning process from which she afterwards could develop dispositions and motives. Thus, as Becker (1953) argued about the pleasure motive of marihuana smoking, Osaka’s motivation was built up in the course of a learning process. As celebrities have great mastery over the techniques of their impression management (Goffman 1959), it is important to note that any declaration of motives cannot readily be assumed to be an expression of an authentic self, but rather is a component of celebrity culture itself (Whitmer 2021).

The question of motivation poses the larger issue of whether authenticity is needed, and can be assumed, on the part of both the celebrity who engages in activism and other celebrities who proclaim to endorse such actions in the media. As this analysis showed, outwardly support and empathy for Osaka’s mental health concerns, and for mental health more broadly, has often been proclaimed in news reports and on social media. The motivations for such candid confessions and statements of support from fellow professional athletes in the public sphere of the media may, of course, vary, including a desire to maintain an appearance of support without corresponding genuine feelings. Among celebrities, professional athletes in this respect take up a special place as they must navigate their recognition of others’ and their own vulnerabilities in an environment that is by definition highly competitive and critically relies on participants showing and demonstrating both physical and mental strength. It is in this sense remarkable to observe that whereas athletes traditionally were not expected to openly acknowledge, let alone embrace, any mental fragility, in today’s age of celebrity activism and the normalization of mental health the exact opposite attitude has become routine. It is now not uncommon for highly successful professional athletes, such as Tom Brady (Daniels 2021), Michael Phelps (Fendrich 2023), and Venus Williams (Wamsley 2021), to not only openly acknowledge but fully embrace and publicize their mental struggles.

The public confessions professional athletes and other successful celebrities pronounce in the media concerning mental health struggles are an important indication of the de-stigmatization of mental health. Whether these pronouncements are (subjectively) genuine or not is not only difficult to ascertain but also secondary to the fact that they can be, and –as in the case of Osaka and others like her– often are, (intersubjectively) accepted as such. Regardless of whether or not Osaka initially only had a personal story to share and later actually wanted to be an advocate for mental health awareness, the positive reception of her refusal to play in any case created an expectation for her to act and define herself as an activist even if that was beyond what she (initially) meant to convey.

As acknowledged at the outset of this paper, further research is needed to examine the development and impact of the broader currents of celebrity and sports activism on mental health and other issues. It is clear, however, that Osaka’s case does not stand alone. Star athletes and other celebrities are today openly discussing mental health more than ever before. They are also more readily acknowledged to be well-positioned to speak about mental health, despite the fact that they are not average people and that their professional experiences are not widely shared. Less discussed also is that athletes and celebrities have access to the best professionals and support systems to provide expert care. The intersubjective acceptance of celebrity activism as authentic clashes with the asymmetry, separateness. and inauthenticity that objectively characterize celebrity culture (Kakko and Isolatus 2024). In the case of Osaka, the wide embrace and impact of her activism in this respect benefitted from the fact that her initial motives and subjective dispositions remained unspoken as a form of ‘silent activism’ (Ho and Tanaka 2023) and, consequently, unquestioned. Especially inasmuch as public opinion is shaped by an ever-present celebrity culture, Osaka’s positive reception as a mental health activist may then even outweigh the role of expertise among healthcare professionals. As in the case of Osaka, celebrity activists can reach a wide audience and increase awareness inasmuch as their actions are not seen as motivated by advocacy but as expressions of victimhood. Under circumstances that are accepted as believable and genuine, celebrities can potentially also mobilize a broader movement of activism, on mental health and other issues, inasmuch as they are believed to be struggling as we all do, even when by definition they do not.
 

Author contributions 

Mathieu Deflem developed the study conception and research design. Data collection was performed by Megan Routh. Analysis was conducted by both authors jointly. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Deflem, and both authors commented on and contributed to previous versions of the manuscript. The revisions were conducted by Deflem.


Statements and Declarations 

Ethics Approval: Ethics approval was not required for this study. Consent for Publication: No additional consent was required for publication. Competing Interests: The authors state that there are no conflicts of interest.


Funding 

Research for this paper was supported by a COVID-19 Research Initiative Grant (#135300-20-54087) and a Racial Justice and Equity Research Fund Award (#135300-22-59455) from the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of South Carolina. Additional support was received from the University’s Department of Sociology. Special gratitude is extended to Brandii Brunson for her excellent research assistance. We also thank the journal’s anonymous reviewer and Editor for their helpful feedback. A previous version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Philadelphia, August 2023.
 

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