How Serena Williams Changed Black Representation Forever
For a sassy little black boy growing up in the very white city of Melbourne, Serena Williams’ ascent to the top of the very white sport of tennis was wildly exciting. The first time I caught a glimpse of my queen was on a sweltering Australian summer’s day as I lazed beneath the aircon, half-watching the tennis. Through my afternoon lethargy, a teenage Serena came on screen – a vision in beaded hair and oversized Puma. My eyes lit up.
For a preteen at the turn of the millenium, Serena’s fearless fashion and peppy self-confidence held a similar appeal to me as the Spice Girls, Cher from Clueless and the Charlie’s Angels reboot. Throughout my teenage years, Serena blossomed into a sporting equivalent of Beyonce: fierce, femme and flawless. In more recent times, she’s become an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez figure in my mind: a stable, comforting force in a world of chaos - a life-affirming symbol.
Venus and Serena in 1999
Last week, Serena retired from the game. I will miss the looks – throughout the years, her on court outfits have included pink leopard print, acrylic nails, giant ‘Serena’-emblazoned hoop earrings, an Off White x Nike tutu dress, multiple catsuits and an unforgettable 80s vibe that included a denim skirt, leather warm-up jacket and knee high boots. But I will miss more than that too.
I will long for her press conferences, where the ferocious diva from the courts would morph into somebody you’d love to go shopping with at the mall. One time she explained the three personalities that live inside her -
Summer is a sweetheart: “She's my assistant who lives inside my body. Summer’s really like organised and she's amazing”.
Megan is the wild child, a bit of a bad girl – but in a fun way.
And then there’s Laquanda: “I have been trying to keep that one under wraps. She's not nasty. She's just real. And you just definitely don't want to cross her. Because you cross her, then she snaps.”
I’ll delve more into these roles later, but it is Serena's acts of railing against body shaming, sexism, classism and racism that should be celebrated the most loudly. Early on, the Williams sisters’ talent was undeniable, but the tennis world considered them with a collective raised eyebrow. It was as if it was too incredulous to believe that two black girls from Compton could succeed in a sport so obsessed with its own tradition. Their well-told origin story – father Richard, a self-taught coach, honing their skills on dilapidated courts, with gunshots a regular backing track to practise sessions – made them media darlings, but this attention often turned into unjust scrutiny.
In one of Venus and Serena’s first blockbuster matches against each other, Venus withdrew minutes before their semi-final was due to start due to injury – intensifying rumours that their father Richard fixed the results of their matches. In the final, the Californian crowd booed Serena with increasing hostility throughout the match and Richard received racial abuse from attendees sitting around him, one muttering “I wish it was '75, we'd skin you alive”. Playing through tears, a 19-year-old Serena still won the match and the tournament.
2004 in Juicy Couture
Other times, racism towards Serena was more casual and pervasive – toxic remarks about her muscled physique were rife in the skinny girl era of Paris Hilton and low-rise jeans; and impersonations, cartoons and attacks on her body through words like ‘manly’ and ‘imposing’ have persisted. In 2011, the women’s tennis tour launched a ‘Strong is Beautiful’ tagline, which featured glossily made up top players floating in billowing, Grecian goddess dresses, with close-ups of their chiselled arms in slow motion. Despite presumably good intentions, the campaign thoroughly missed the mark by continuing to value female athletes by measures of beauty.
Tennis is one of the few sports in which women are able to rival men in terms of fame and marketability, but this is mainly only beneficial for the leggy, blonde Anna Kournikovas and Maria Sharapovas of the game. Serena has rarely been allowed the same space within the mainstream media’s idea of a sex symbol. Regardless, through her love of showing flesh and skintight clothing, she has carved out a place in the spotlight where a buxom and muscled black woman can be sexy and dominant; in control and carefree. Serena didn’t set out to change the world’s attitude to black bodies, but simply by being herself in the most visible of public realms, she has forged a more complex image than many black women had previously been able to possess.
The dont-mess-with me, Laquanda side of Serena’s personality was definitely on the court during an infamous 2009 US Open semi-final in which she was penalised a point after disagreeing with a line-judge and threatening to “shove this fucking tennis ball” down her throat. The incident fed into the reality TV decade’s favourite trope – ‘the angry black woman’ – and countless Tweets, think-pieces and dinner party conversations were had about how Serena had just gone too far. It was astonishing how quickly the world disregarded her years of sportswomanlike behaviour up until this point, and how hungrily it discussed whether she should be banned from the sport.
Nine years later, Laquanda made another memorable appearance at the US Open. Furious that the umpire had penalised her a point for believing she had received illicit coaching, she called him a “liar” and a “thief”. The umpire deemed this ‘verbal abuse’ and penalised her an entire game. In high distress and vehement rage, Serena roared: “This has happened to me so many times. It is not fair. It’s really not. There are a lot of men out here who have said a lot worse than that.”
“Like most people of colour and most women in prominent positions, Serena had to be twice as good as everybody else to get the credit she deserved.”
Serena went on to lose the match, but the reaction was different this time. By this point, she was 36 years old, chasing all-time records, and a pop culture icon who had slut-dropped with Beyonce in her ‘Sorry’ video clip. She was no longer seen as disposable – people listened and thought about what she had said. Although views on her antics were divided, many respected her for calling out sexism on one of the biggest stages of sport.
Like most people of colour and most women in prominent positions, Serena had to be twice as good as everybody else to get the credit she deserved. But she retires as one of the most respected and lauded athletes of all time, and someone who has expanded the realm of what was considered possible for black women, while never pretending she was perfect or compromising who she was to get what she wanted.
I didn’t see myself very much in pop culture growing up and I didn’t have very much of my African family in my life. Like many people of colour in the west, my reaction to casual racism has generally been not to rock the boat – skim past microaggressions and act like my skin colour is a non-issue. But when BLM happened, I realised that there is a yearning for connection to black culture and black icons deep inside of me, and I reflected on the guardian angel role Serena has played in my life.
Through watching and loving Serena, I’ve experienced the thrill of representation and harvested a greater acceptance of myself. Sometimes, I’m sane-girl Summer, other times Laquanda comes out to start some shit. I embrace my contradictions. I channel Serena’s confidence when I step into job interviews. And because of Serena, I’ve rarely questioned if I was too much, too loud, or too different from the people around me.
Words: Tsari Paxton
