Serena Williams has been subjected to a steady barrage of body shaming from people who view her muscularity and strength as “manly.” She’s addressed these troubling statements previously, but in her latest cover interview for Harper’s Bazaar U.K.’s July 2018 edition, she goes unusually candid about them. She discusses how she’s acquired a much healthier, more empowered mindset to ignore the detractors and keep doing what she’s doing to win 23 Grand Slam singles championships and four Olympic gold medals—and counting.
Williams was dressed in a costume with the words: “People would say I was born a guy, all because of my arms, or because I’m strong.
“I was different to Venus: she was thin and tall and beautiful, and I am strong and muscular – and beautiful, but, you know, it was just totally different.”
Black women have been assigned male characteristics since enslavement in an attempt to separate us from our feminine features. Both Black women and men have been “othered” in numerous circumstances to justify abuse, including extensive physical work. This institutional racism from the past has made its way into current media, including cinema, television, and press coverage. The prejudicial belief that darker-skinned women are intrinsically less feminine stems from the stereotype of Black women being permanently strong, indestructible, pain-invulnerable, and generally capable of taking anything that comes their way.
Serena has worked through all of the above from the beginning of her life to the end of her great career.
Bazaar then asked Williams about a 2004 story in which she stated that one of her objectives was to become a size four at the time. Williams said, “Oh God, I’ll never be a size four. Why would I want to do that, and be that?”
Williams added, pointing to her biceps, “This is me, and this is my weapon and machine. But I love that I said that, because I can understand. I can show Olympia [her daughter] that I struggled, but now I’m happy with who I am and what I am and what I look like. Olympia was born and she had my arms, and instead of being sad and fearful about what people would say about her, I was just so happy.”
Williams returned to Grand Slam tennis this month for the first time since winning the Australian Open at eight weeks pregnant in 2017.
Williams is presently leading the 2018 French Open and has gotten a lot of attention for her Black Panther-inspired catsuit, which she says makes her feel “like a warrior princess” from Wakanda.
Williams recently had to stifle a reporter who asked if her (white) opponent Maria Sharapova’s “supermodel good looks” frightened her. All this accomplishes is raise a recurrent concern about Williams’ femininity, which must be addressed, first and foremost, by her, when she should be concentrating on more pressing matters.
