Serena Williams is the First Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year to Go Pantless
This morning, Sports Illustrated announced its Sportsperson of the Year to be Serena Williams, a clear choice considering she won 53 of 56 matches and three of four Grand Slam events this year. But the cover decision, photographed by Yo Tsai, is also monumental: Williams is the first and only Sportsperson of the Year to be slathered in baby oil and photographed without pants. Prior to this issue, the closest to half-naked that the Sportsperson of the Year cover had approached before was the 1988 cover with baseball players Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa wearing white togas, uncovering one nipples each. It is an interesting choice to hyper-feminize Williams and align her with the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue covers than with the previous Sportsperson of the Year covers because reporters, officials, and viewers alike have disparaged the champion tennis player — and her sister, Venus — for being “too masculine.”
While they may not frequently comment on the physique of male tennis players, sports experts love to discuss the body — and specifically the booty — of Serena Williams. Back in 2009, Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock claimed that no matter how good of an athlete Williams is, she will always be held back because of her butt. “I’m only knocking Serena’s back pack because it’s preventing her from reaching her full potential as an athletic icon,” Whitlock wrote. In 2014, a Russian official referred to the Williams sisters as the “Williams brothers.” The Guardian columnist Erika Nicole Kendall notes “[He]r body has been described in language not unlike the kind you’d find in old timey slave auction advertisements or Old English freak show exhibits.” In July 2015, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling took to Twitter to call out a man named Rob for saying Williams is successful only because she “is built like a man.” Rowling replied with a photo of Williams in a red dress and Christian Louboutin heels and wrote, “Yeah, my husband looks just like this in a dress. You’re an idiot.”
Williams has never denied her interest in dressing up — she’s well known for designing her own custom ensembles for the court, including a Puma catsuit in 2002, and her manicures are artistic creations. And it’s perhaps undeniable that Sports Illustrated, desiring a catchy cover, would want to show off her strong, toned legs — but Williams is not the only Sportsperson of the Year with formidable legs. The first ever Sportsman of the Year, Roger Bannister of 1955, broke the world record for fastest mile run while he was still a student at the University of Oxford in England — but even he was depicted in action in a pair of running shorts. The choice to depict Williams in hyper-femininity, staring right back at the male gaze of the camera (77 percent of Sports Illustrated readers are guys), is an act of defiance against all the people who claimed she would be held back in her career for being “too curvy and sexy” or “too manly and unattractive.” On this cover, she is the expected woman, pantless and oiled with long glossy hair, that usually appears on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s highly ogled Swimsuit Issue, but her $74 million in prize money and athletic track record disproves remarks that she’s only successful because she is “built like a man.”
“No other active U.S. athlete rules a sport the way Serena Williams rules hers, and few reflect our era better,” wrote S.L. Price in the cover story. Sitting on her gilded throne, Williams looks both powerful and sexy, staring directly at the camera. “I do want to be known as the greatest ever,” she told Sports Illustrated.
Related:
#CoverTheAthlete: Male Athletes Are Never Asked to Twirl
