Slut-shaming Serena

There’s been a scandal in the tennis world. Usually I stay away from anything to do with sports- I don’t understand it, it scares me, whatever- but this caught my eye, because it’s all feeling a little too familiar.

So. Serena Williams posted a photo of herself on Twitter. It’s quite a beautiful picture- very classic and romantic, with lovely use of light and contrast. You see Serena almost as a silhouette, shielded behind a gauzy curtain. The curves of her figure are clearly outlined, and if you look closely you can see that she’s actually just wearing underwear and heels. It’s sensual, but tastefully done.

But within half a day, there was so much criticism that she took it back down.

The thing is, a man was recently arrested for stalking Serena. So when she posted this picture of herself looking gorgeous, a flurry of critics called hypocrite. If you don’t want to be stalked, they say, don’t put up sexy photos. In other words, if she gets sexually harassed again, it will be her fault for asking for it.

Victim-blaming of this sort seems to be the rule, not the exception. Remember the reaction to Lara Logan’s sexual assault in Cairo? And it happens on all different levels every day.

Our Serena is in a bit of a double-bind. Female athletes are cast as either a sex symbol or a “dyke”. Tennis players, with their sport of choice having naturally somewhat more glamorous connotations, are usually placed in the former category, and Serena and her sister fit into it nicely- even more so because there are two of them. So she’s going along with it. To be honest, the photo is not all that much more revealing than the tennis outfits she is expected to wear for her job.

Sports columnist Greg Couch scorned Serena for apparently saying through that photo, “Peep at me, but don’t stalk me.” Well, if that was her message, I’d suggest the word she’d use would not be “peep.” It might be something more like, “Admire me, but don’t stalk me.” Which personally, I think is fair enough. Surely she’s allowed to be sexy without being stalked. Surely she’s allowed to know she has an incredible body, and be proud of it, without being blamed for inciting sexual harassment.

The message I get from that photo is more about fearlessness. It’s about not letting the creeps win. Her timing timed correlated with the release of the World Tennis Association’s Strong is Beautiful campaign, which features Serena and other prominent female tennis players and plays on the delicate balance between graceful, feminine beauty and the incredible strength and athletic prowess of these women. The videos for the campaign are cheesy, but the idea behind it is interesting. And Serena’s photo does get that same message across. Except, of course, that she was shamed into taking it down.