Serena Williams solidified herself as one of the most talented female tennis players of all time and, arguably, the greatest female athlete in any sport when she won her 28th straight Grand Slam match on Saturday. Williams is now poised to make tennis history by sweeping all of the major tournaments in a single season, a feat that was last accomplished by Steffi Graf in 1988.
Despite Williams undeniable athletic skill, however, theres one controversy thats persisted throughout her career: Endless scrutiny over what her body looks like, and messages about why it doesnt fit into societys expectations for female beauty.
Just one day before Williams secured yet another Wimbledon title, for instance, the New York Times published an article that suggested other tennis players dont want to look like her.
The New York Times wrote that Williams has large biceps and a mold-breaking muscular frame and her rivals could try to emulate her physique, but most of them choose not to. Other (white) female tennis players were quoted as saying they try not to bulk up like Williams because they want to be a woman and dont want to feel unfeminine. Maria Sharapova described in the article as a slender, blond Russian said that she wants to be even thinner than she is now: I always want to be skinnier with less cellulite; I think thats every girls wish, she said.
The article was widely criticized on Twitter for its central premise: Asking a bunch of white woman what they think about Serena Williams body in a society where black bodies are already undervalued.
Because Serena Williams is a wildly successful black woman in a white-dominated sport, she occupies a fraught space both within the sport itself and the society actively informing our perceptions, Daily Beat writer Tomas Rios argued this week, in a piece making the case that Williams is paid much less than her rivals like Sharapova because of these issues. She is an unprecedented affront to our collective notion of the beautiful female athlete.
Its nothing new for Williams, whose body has been critiqued for years. Every win she racks up including Saturdays is invariably accompanied by tasteless commentary about the shape of her body and whether or not she looks too much like a man. The dynamic doesnt escape race and gender scholars, who have closely tracked the way Williams is portrayed in the media.
