Looker

Since I started a blog, I’ve wanted to write something about my unadulterated love for the sisters Williams. Serena and Venus, that is. In my mind, I have always been a six-foot tall take-no-shit black woman, so their success is my success, right? Anyway, every time I try to write something about them, it always comes out like this:

“Serena and Venus are awesome. Like, really, really, really, really, really, really awesome. Totally awesome. They’re so great. Don’t you think they’re great? They are. So great.”

That, as it turns out, makes for a shitty blog, so that’s why you haven’t seen it. HOWEVER, that doesn’t mean that I don’t still somewhat-obsessively follow stories about them. So, because I lead the Cats with Knives chapter of the Serena and Venus fan club, I am fully aware that, while I think they are perfect female specimens, others feel very comfortable trash-talking their looks as too tall, too muscular, too black, too heavy, etc. etc. etc. Because Serena and Venus, arguably two of the greatest ever tennis players, in the end, are reduced to their looks.

It seems that this treatment is not limited to my girls, the Williams sisters. Marion Bartoli, the Frenchwoman who just won the ladies singles title at Wimbledon without dropping a set, was described by John Inverdale, a BBC commentator, as a woman who would “never” be “a looker.” Here is a picture of Bartoli, a perfectly-lovely human being.

Inverdale, who looks like this, typifies the societal illness that allows people to reduce a woman to her looks, regardless of achievement, based on an impossible-to-meet standard of beauty. Any accomplishment that a woman has is invariably followed by an unflattering description of her looks. Even objectively gorgeous women, like Beyonce, Gisele Bundchen, and Angelina Jolie have been described, in order, as, “ugly without makeup,” “horse-faced,” and “ugly from the waist-down.” If these women are ugly, what chance does an even modestly less-attractive woman face?

Here’s what’s what: I am not going to sit here and point to things that make the Williams sisters or Marion Bartoli attractive. They don’t need me to do that. But what I will say is this: every time we let a woman be reduced to nothing based on a distorted standard of beauty, we are sending a message out to the world that this is how we should view the women in our lives, including ourselves. And, when we do that, we tell the young women of the world that, first and foremost, they need to be attractive, which is why 13-year-olds sit around in boob-baring shirts and enough makeup to spackle a house, making duck faces on the internet instead of getting their asses on a sports team or student council. Jesus Christ people, didn’t Whitney teach us that the children are our future? We need to show them all the beauty they have left inside – to give them a sense of pride!
So, as a woman who won’t use the camera installed on my laptop at work to have meetings with my distant colleagues because the angle makes my jaw look like Jay Leno's, I say this to Venus, Serena, and Marion: you have the bravery to excel at what you do, knowing that the world is watching, and harshly judging your hair, faces, bodies, outfits, and any other manner of unrelated things. Strong, confident, athletic, and undaunted IS beautiful. Here’s looking at you, ladies.