Serena Williams

Grandmaster – point #1 of my original post explains why Serena has only just joined my Goddess's list.
P.S. I'm damm glad I'm not the only one who thinks she's sexy. 8)  I'd started to think it was just me!  :-[ 8)

I was referring to their muscularity, not their ethnicity (I am about as anti-racist as its possible to be).  Whether society disapproves of their race means not one jot to me (I do happen to think that the UK is nowadays less inherently racist than the US, although 25-30 years ago it may well have been the other way around.)  Their physiques, however, are still the subject of much derision and scorn on the Internet as a whole (I've read some very anti-femuscle and some racist views in the last few days). 

Culturally, the UK is afraid of muscular women as much as, if not more so than the US – although the fad amongst teenage girls here to idolise dangerously skinny celebrities did lag behind the US, the prevailing desireable female stereotype has long been the curvy but soft figure.  Being from the US, the Williams sisters were possibly 'tolerated' in terms of their Amazonic status because they were winning – success is a potent medicine that helps heal prejudices.  Let's not ignore the fact that the UK hasn't had a decent female tennis player since the days of Virginia Wade and Sue Barker; both were talented and successful – Wade won Wimbledon, Barker won the French Open – but that was back in the mid-1970s.  It therefore made popular opinion turn against the Williams sisters much more easily.  Add in the excessive cultural influence of the British tabloid press (the infamous "red-tops") who decree that a "bit of totty" (young woman) isn't worth looking at unless she's curvy but unthreatening and possesses the all-important "big knockers" (breasts), and you can see that the conventional UK response to Venus and Serena was "ugly, bloke-like freaks in tennis dresses".  By the way, all words in quotation marks are not my words, they reflect the opinions of either the Neanderthal-like Sun newspaper-reading so-called 'Great British public' or, in some cases even the 'chattering classes' – those often right-wing, middle-class reactionaries who read the Telegraph or the Daily Mail, both newspapers which pander to closed-minded reactionary thinking.

I very much appreciate your thoughts, C.P. (See, I "knew" you had some insight.)  😉

Ah. You see, I'm "spoiled". I generally steer clear of those places (I don't need the aggravation).

Okay. Wow. U.S. folks–did "we" do this here, too? In traditional commercial media (not online)? If so, I missed it.

As far as "steering clear of those places" is concerned, I certainly don't go looking for that sort of thing, but it is quite healthy (I think) to play Devil's Advocate and to try and see the alternate point of view.  I find that it tends to help reaffirm my feelings of "Wow, she's sexy" ;D 8)
I don't obviously know whether your media did or didn't.  I'm not saying that the UK press rabidly pilloried them the whole time either, but it was rather like wading into the sea when there's an undertow off the beach; it may look calm on the surface, but, delve a little deeper and it's trying to pull your legs from under you.

Oh, and to illustrate my feelings about Serena, just take a look at the left-hand three photos on the bottom row of the following:

How any guy at peace with himself and without a chip on his shoulder can fail to be reduced to a dribbling wreck by her sheer magnificence is quite beyond me.  The lefthandmost image in particular is, to my mind, an iconic image of an Amazonic woman – strong, tall, proud, silhouetted against the sky and looking truly heroic.
Mmmmmm (melts into puddle of lust) ;D :-[ 8)