Serena Williams is considered by many to be the greatest tennis player of all time. However, being an African-American woman in a mostly white sport, she's sometimes treated unfairly. Critics scrutinize her body, describing her as "masculine." The French Open banned her black catsuit, which had a medical function, preventing blood clots in her legs. (In response, she kicked ass in a tutu.)

Recently, an Australian artist mocked Serena in a controversial cartoon, sparking outrage on social media. At the French Open, Serena got in a heated argument with the empire, calling him a 'liar' and 'a thief.' The penalties cost her the game, and some say men would not have been punished so harshly. In an attempt to mock the debacle, the cartoonist portrayed Serena as an angry baby. However, he exaggerated her facial features in a crude manner similar to racist Jim Crow-era illustrations.

Now the 23-time Grand Slam winner is being grossly disrespected once again. Three Australian amateur league football players painted their bodies black for their club's annual Mad Mondays. Mitch Stanley and Matt Chamberlain meant to portray Serena and Venus Williams, while Beau Grundy meant to portray Sydney Swans player Aliir Aliir.

The three men play for the Tasmanian Penguin Football Club, and uploaded their photo to the Facebook page where Mad Mondays costumes are typically featured. However, dressing in blackface as the Williams sisters caused a bit of a stir, following the events of the past few weeks.

Now, there might be a culture clash here. In the United States, blackface has an ugly history, tethered to the shameful treatment of a group of people who faced brutal discrimination. Unless blackface is done as part of satirical art - like, say, Robert Downey, Jr.'s character in Tropic Thunder - it can come across as a pretty jerk move. I'm not sure what connotation blackface has in Australian culture, but Twitter users were not happy about it.

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A spokesperson for AFL Tasmania said "individual clubs" are in charge of Mad Monday celebrations, rowdy events "often involving heavy drinking and extreme costumes." However, they note that they do not condone blackface.

In a statement released to The Huffington Post, The Penguin Football Club stated they were not aware the players "intended to dress in this manner," and they consider the behavior "unacceptable in this day and age." The players have been reprimanded, and the club insisted their "actions were never intended to be racist in any way." The players have apologized, and claim "all they meant to do was dress as one of their sporting idols"

The AFL states it plans "to ensure that this completely unacceptable behavior never happens again." Like, maybe, every time they see someone dress in blackface, the Williams sisters get to hit them with tennis rackets? One can only hope.

Welcome to 2017, a year where people are still doing blackface. I mean, come on guys... really? Despite several incidences of beauty bloggers and makeup artists being called out for doing blackface, it still keeps happening. I would genuinely be interested to wonder why people think this would ever be okay?

Even if you do, why would you then choose to upload a photo/video of your blackface onto social media, where it is always going to be greeted with hostility and abuse?

The latest MUA to come under fire for her use of the controversial makeup look is Perçem Akin, who is currently on the receiving end of some serious scorn from the online community. Akin recently uploaded a tutorial to her YouTube channel and Instagram account where she taught her followers how to blackface, and unsurprisingly, people aren't happy with her in the slightest.

According to several reports surrounding the controversial tutorial, Akin also further angered her audiences by using the hashtag #slave and #sadmakeup in the caption for the tutorial. However, not one to take the abuse lying down, Akin has responded to those giving hating on her online, saying that she was simply following the instructions of her director and that the makeup was for an upcoming film which she was working on. Akin says that the reason she had to blackface was because the production company who are in charge of the film were finding it hard to find a black female model.

"This post is for a movie character in my country. Directors came and asked me: Could you do this? And the movie is about the fucking racism which is rising all around the world. So this is not my design and not my idea, because I am just a makeup artist not director, you know. We are not living in America or Africa, so finding any black model is so difficult in here."

Akin also says that she never used the hashtag #slave, and that the original hashtag on her post was #slayer, which is the title of the film. She said she would be taking legal action against the person that changed it, as she feels like that is what started the vitriol towards her.

"I wanna say that, I never used the hashtag #slave, never ever. My hashtags is #slayer which is the tittle [sic] of the movie. Someone in my country had changed this and started all this against me and I am taking a legal action against to them now"

The makeup artist has now made her account private and it's easy to see why, given the backlash on social media towards her.

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Whether intentionally offensive or not, Akin was pretty stupid to go through with this makeup tutorial, let alone put it online. Blackface is racist, and it's unbelievable that given we are now living in 2017, we are still having to deal with stupid incidents like this. When will people learn?

Because it's so easy to hide behind a social media profile these days, the famous faces we see on Instagram aren't always what they seem to be.

Take Emma Hallberg, for example: a 19-year-old self-described model and influencer from Sweden. She has just shy of 200,000 followers on the picture-sharing platform, and regularly updates her followers with makeup looks and tutorials. This is a picture of her:

From her appearance, many have assumed that Hallberg is Black or mixed race. But she's not. She's white, and claims that she has never tried to identify as anything otherwise.

However, due to the way she looks, many Black and mixed race women had followed her for her beauty tips - and now they feel betrayed knowing that her entire look is manufactured and fake.

The revelation caused something of an uproar on Twitter, with hundreds of people calling out the so-called influencer (and others like her) for profiting off appearing as a Black woman while real women of colour face all sorts of problems and prejudice due to their natural look.

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"The girl was clearly posing as black, as she’s posted by many black pages etc.," said one person.

"Emma Hallberg really had my ass fooled, I'm sick," added another.

Some Twitter users even went so far as to suggest that Hallberg was doing blackface by using makeup that is so much darker than her natural skin tone. And when you see her without makeup, it's not hard to see why.

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Hallberg has since spoken to Buzzfeed news about the backlash, saying "I do not see myself as anything else than white," and claiming that, "I get a deep tan naturally from the sun."

She backed this up by sharing a snap of herself from two years ago, where she says she has no product on her skin to darken it in any way.

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"The only difference is that I didn’t post as many pictures that summer compared to this summer, because I didn’t have as many followers then as I do now," she said.

"It made me sad that some of my natural features are hurting and upsetting people. It also made me upset and scared that I can’t look the way I look naturally, without receiving false accusations, hate, and threats," Hallberg said. "I do not have any specific intentions other than [to] show my passion for makeup and fashion."

But Hallberg has also been called out for falsely claiming that her dark, wavy hair was natural, as she'd previously posted that she styled it specifically to achieve that texture.

Still, many fans are on her side.

"Think it’s absolutely disgusting that emma hallberg has had to justify wearing dark foundation and turned her comments off cause she’s getting threatening messages. Anyone pretending they’re ‘offended’ is just puuuuure jealous cause she’s stunning," said one person.

Another added: "You all should really be ashamed for sending Emma Hallberg so much hate. That girl felt the need to explain herself when I could look at her & tell it wasn’t cultural appropriation. Maybe your approach should have been different & from a point of curiosity and not assumption."

Older photos of the teen do show her with a significantly different complexion, however.

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Hallberg still maintains that she is being her authentic self.

Blackface is a form of makeup used by a nonblack person to play a black role. Regardless of one's intent, the practice has an ugly history tethered to the brutal treatment of an oppressed group of people. Sporting blackface in public is bound to offend people, and could even kill a career.

Ralph Northam, the Democratic governor of Virginia, recently found himself in a firestorm of controversy after his 1984 medical school yearbook page surfaced, revealing a photo of a person in blackface and a person dressed as a KKK member. Northam denied that he's pictured in the photo (which does not explain why it's featured on his yearbook page), and refuses to step down.

However, Northam did admit to darkening his skin to dress up like Michael Jackson for a dance contest in 1984. "I had the shoes, I had a glove, and I used just a little bit of shoe polish to put under my - or on my - cheeks," he told reporters at a press conference. "And the reason I used a very little bit is because, I don’t know if anybody’s ever tried that, but you cannot get shoe polish off."

In a bizarre turn of events, the Democratic Attorney General of Virginia, Mark Herring, also admitted to wearing blackface in the past. "In 1980, when I was a 19-year old undergraduate in college, some friends suggested we attend a party dressed like rappers we listened to at the time, like Kurtis Blow, and perform a song," he said in a statement.

These scandals raise a question - what is in the water in Virginia? Also, how many people in the US think that blackface is okay?

Shockingly, a third of Americans think sporting blackface for Halloween is absolutely fine, according to a new Pew Research survey. 39 percent of white adults polled said that it's okay to darken your skin when dressing up like someone of another race for a costume. Only 19 percent of black adults agreed, making white adults twice as likely to approve of the practice. (Meanwhile, 28 percent of Hispanics said blackface is "always or sometimes acceptable.")

The study was conducted from January 22 to February 5, "almost entirely" before Governor Northam's blackface controversy broke. Pew surveyed more than 3,300 people, and a "slight majority" of those polled found it "generally unacceptable" for a white person to wear blackface, even if it's for the purpose of a costume.

However, thirty-four percent of Americans polled said they believe the act is totally fine, with Republicans comprising the majority (51 percent). "By contrast, a majority of Democrats and Democratic leaners (67 percent) say blackface is not acceptable, with about half saying it’s never acceptable," stated the researchers in their report. "Black and white Democrats hold similar views on this."

The Pew survey about blackface is part of a larger study about race, ethnicity and identity, which will be released later this year. In the meantime, just avoid wearing blackface, even if it's part of a costume. If you want to dress up as Black Panther, Michael Jackson or Falcon, you can wear everything but the blackface, and make the costume work. Unless you're Robert Downey Jr. playing a character that satirizes the practice as part of the brilliant comedy Tropic Thunder, you're probably not going to get away with it.