Naomi Osaka withdraws from the French Open.
I wish this didn't have to happen this way. I understand why she did what she did.
Let's start with her tweet about why she doesn't want to do the pressers.
This article from the Guardian pretty much put the responsibility of the sports press machine on how it asks questions female athletes questions during these pressers.
Here's an excerpt from that article.
This dynamic is only exacerbated in women’s tennis, a highly visible enterprise that takes place not just in a largely white male space, but a white‑male‑with‑free‑food space. That sense of voracious, engorged entitlement often manifests itself in exceptionally creepy ways. Question: “I noticed you tweeted a picture. Are you prepared that if you go on a long run you may be held up as a sex symbol, given you’re very good looking?” (Genie Bouchard, Wimbledon 2013.) Question: “You’re a pin-up now, especially in England. Is that good? Do you enjoy that?” (A 17-year-old Maria Sharapova, Wimbledon 2004.) And of course there are plenty of decent, curious journalists out there doing decent, curious things. In a way, this is what makes the chronic lack of self‑awareness so utterly self-defeating. Read the room. We are not the good guys here. We are no longer the power. And one of the world’s best athletes would literally rather quit a grand slam tournament than have to talk to the press. Rather than scrutinising what that says about her, it might be worth asking what that says about us.
I emboldened that section because a question needs asking; just how sexist and racist could the sport press get?
I'm going to answer that question. The answers are really racist and sexist.
- Ilie Nastaste has the nerve to ask if Serena Williams's baby "will have the skin color of chocolate milk".
- Serena Williams wore a catsuit for her medical condition; it didn't make Roland Garros very happy.
- Serena Williams broke her racket, penalized for illegal coaching, and loses to Naomi Osaka.
That's a small sample of what women athletes, especially athletes who are Black, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Hispanic.
What's even crazier is there is a double standard.
Let's start with the catsuit controversy.
Here's an excerpt from the Vox article talking about the catsuit.
Serena Williams’s catsuit may have caused a sensation at the 2018 French Open, but it wasn’t the first time Williams had worn a catsuit during competition. She also wasn’t the first woman tennis player to wear a full-length bodysuit during a Grand Slam contest. During the first round of the 1985 Wimbledon tournament, tennis star Anne White heeded organizers’ all-white rule but defied tradition by wearing a white catsuit instead of a tennis skirt. White’s opponent, Pam Shriver, insulted White’s spandex suit, calling it the “most bizarre, stupid-looking thing I’ve ever seen on a tennis court.” Wimbledon officials apparently agreed and told White not to wear it again to the tournament.
Here's another excerpt from the same article.
But off the court, the 5-foot-11 White won praise for her unconventional fashion choice. Pony, the sportswear company that provided the ensemble, promoted it as the “Perfect 10 White,” and commentators noted that while the average woman could not get away with wearing the bodysuit, White’s long and lean body made her the exception.
As one tennis retailer put it, “It’s attractive, but you have to be built like Anne White is built to wear it. And the rest of the world is not.”
Seventeen years later, when Serena Williams wore a short catsuit to the 2002 US Open, she received a significantly different response. Unlike White, she wasn’t praised as an enviable example of femininity in the suit but instead was slut-shamed, body-shamed, and generally demeaned.
Let me see if I get this straight; Anne White was 5'11" and thin therefore feminine but Serena Williams gets slut-shaming, body-shaming, and mocked for doing the same thing?
That's absolutely infuriating and not acceptable AT ALL!!
What I find absolutely astounding is how tone deaf, hypocritical, arrogant, misogynistic, racist this institution of tennis is, expects those standards to be upheld, but either wind up surprised or mad when the word "no" is invoked and upheld.
It might help hearing out these athletes and addressing those concerns instead of dismissing concerns and expecting them to play.
These women aren't your mules!