The disrespect hurled at Williams, much of it focused on her body, has been rampant – even among her peers. In 2012, tennis player Caroline Wozniacki stuffed her bra and shorts to imitate Williams during an exhibition match against Maria Sharapova. The crowd and commentators at the match laughed, while outlets like Yahoo! Sports described the incident as “hilarious.” (Andy Roddick and Novak Djokovic have also imitated Williams’ physique in the past.)
On the surface, it may look like playful athletic ribbing, but these kind of incidents, coupled with the language so often used to describe Serena as an athlete, speak to a kind of dehumanization specific to black women. As Ms. Magazine writer Corinne Gaston puts it, the policing of Williams’ body “comes gift-wrapped in a triad from hell: misogyny, racism and transphobia.”
So while it’s certainly important, it’s not enough to point out that Serena isn’t in fact “built like a man,” using photos of her in shapely, curve-hugging dresses to illustrate the point. This isn’t about the fact that Williams isn’t tall, slim and a size two. It’s about the fact that she isn’t white. We can certainly have a conversation about how the sports world expects physically powerful women to look like dainty supermodels, but the fact remains that muscular tennis stars like Martina Navratilova, Justine Henin, Victoria Azarenka, and Samantha Tosur aren’t subject to the same disdain and body-focused critiques that Williams is.
Rather than focusing on the body dysmorphic beauty standards of tennis, and the inherent sexism that drives it – a piece I’d love to read – the New York Times instead focused on the otherness of Serena Williams’ body. Female tennis players were asked to discuss their own bodies in contrast to Williams’, as if she were the epitome of everything they strive not to be: muscular, yes, but also black.
Williams is simultaneously sexualized and caricaturized, othered and exoticized. Her body is a representation of her athletic skill. But rather than being celebrated, it’s been scrutinized mercilessly, turned into a kind of spectacle for white amusement, with painful parallels to Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman.
i wrote a little about Serena Williams, you can read the full article here
