Last year, ESPN ranked the 100 best athletes since 2000 (which, of course, excludes Michael Jordan); Serena Williams came out at number 2. And just to be clear, the list was not of the greatest female athletes since 2000; no, it was just of the greatest athletes. Right after Michael Phelps, is Williams, the American with the most tennis single title wins, ever. To win the way both Phelps and Williams have requires an almost superhuman physique. For some, when they think of Williams’ body, their minds immediately go to her straddling two ballet bars with almost impossibly perfect form, and for others, it is whatever image they’ve crafted to justify openly critiquing someone whose in much better physical form than they’ll ever be.
Recently, Williams shared a selfie, showcasing a noticeable weight loss, which is a departure from the tennis phenom’s usual build. Of course, people whose only disciplined act is the regimented schedule of running their mouths had something negative to say about it.
Having her body scrutinized isn’t new for Williams.
During the height of her career, she was often physically compared to Maria Sharapova, a rival with a mean streak better than her winning streak, and who stands four inches taller than Williams, but was often viewed as the featherlike white woman, who had to defend herself against the burly, beastly Black woman. That was the only way people could justify Williams’s dominance over Sharapova; it was that her body was so big, so muscular, that it was almost masculine in comparison to the blonde, waifish Sharapova, who even credited her own body’s desirability over Williams’ body as the reason for her losses.
In her memoir Unstoppable: My Life So Far (which is a hilarious title for someone Williams has stopped, A LOT), Maria whines, “I think Serena hated me for being the skinny kid who beat her, against all odds, at Wimbledon. But mostly I think she hated me for hearing her cry. Not long after the tournament, I heard Serena told a friend – who then told me – ‘I will never lose to that little b**** again’.”
Maybe she was right, because she never won a game against Williams ever again. However, it is utterly ridiculous to assert that the body that continued to lose was the body most likely to be envied.
Williams bore two children, and to some, her post-partum accomplishments were still not enough, and there were calls for her to retire. However, Williams’s wins are cemented in time. People have desired her to look a way that feels the best to them. They called Williams names, made fun of her features and then condemned what they thought were attempts at changing those features. Not only has she been on the receiving end of body shaming, but so has her husband, with particular focus on the differences between their physique, hers being obviously more toned and fit. Even still, her body, with its top physical form, was not good enough to be deserving of love, but too good for the one who loved it.
There is never a space where Williams, whose body has given so many people so much pride and exposed a totally different demographic to a sport, is allowed to use it at her discretion. She lost weight, but she’ll never lose another Wimbledon to Maria Sharapova, and that’s what matters.
Imagine being one of the greatest athletes of all time, and yet your body is never enough.
