The UK's Daily Mail is running a photo spread of a bikini-clad Serena Williams. The paper remarks on her chunky muscularity in the accompanying story:
The curvy star showed off her fuller figure in a teeny black string bikini as she swam, photographed her boyfriend and played with seaweed on Miami beach.
With her thunder thighs and bulging biceps, she is a formidable opponent on the tennis court. She is a former world number one and has won eight Grand Slam singles titles.
But the heavyweight player proved that size isn't everything last week when she lost out at the French Open to diminutive Justine Henin, who went on to claim the women's title.
Look, I really don't want to inject race into this, but Serena has a classsic BLACK WOMAN'S BODY. Which means she's big boned, wide hipped, with a fireplug physique that she would have even without the muscles. If she didn't work out the way she does, she'd get big and fat. My sister used to train heavy, years ago. She even tried out as a contestant for American Gladiators. When she stopped working out, she balloned up fast. Now she keeps her weight down doing weekend warrior sports. What I'm getting at is, that this is the physique Serena was born with and I wish writers would stop being so "amazed" and "astonished" by it. She's BIG and will always be BIG. Better to have a thick muscular physique than a big flabby one.
BTX
Lingster
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Yep
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Super Administrator
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2007-06-13 10:13:33
That's what makes the European fascination/discomfort so amusing to me. Serena Williams has a figure that is reasonably typical for American women with West African ethnic backgrounds.
You know about the "Hottentot Venus", right? Two hundred years ago a woman from southern Africa, named Saartjie Baartman, was trotted all over Europe as a living museum piece. Crowds were stunned by her unusual body shape. Amazingly, the response to Serena Williams is very similar.
And they accuse us of being provincial.
cpbell0033944
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Provincial
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Registered
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2007-06-16 07:17:08
In the UK, we shouldn't really be 'provincial', as Lingster puts it, because we have substantial Caribbean communities in many parts of the UK. Having said that, I don't think that many of the women in our West Indian communities are as muscled and, to use a US expression, "thick" as Serena. What I find interesting is that she seems as muscular and solid as her boyfriend. Would it therefore be fair to say that the size gap between African-American women and men of the same ethnicity is smaller than in the European-originating Caucasian population?
Another thing to bear in mind is that the Daily Mail is rather infamous for being right-of centre and reactionary; I wouldn't expect to read similar comment in the Guardian or Independent, for example.
Lingster
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Nope
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Super Administrator
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2007-06-16 09:18:31
Relative size difference between genders is about the same, I think. She just didn't get herself a particularly big fella.
