PumpCann
New User
I Burned My Bra for This?
Posted 9/2/2005 @ 10:17 PM
I confess, I’ve been trying to get my mind around Serena Williams these days. I’ve been critical of her for most of this year, and while I don’t feel especially badly about that, I found myself doing some soul-searching on the eve of the U.S. Open,
Was I holding Serena to an unusually high (and unfair) standard? Was I, as some angry emailers suggested, a bigot? Did I perhaps resent her for the ease with which she won major tournaments and seemed to diminish tennis by professing no special fealty to it?
Then came the Bling thing.
On Day 1, Serena made a pair of earrings worth a cool 40 Grand the official logo of the U.S. Open. That’s just the statement the tournament needed to make, lest wholesome Roger Federer or laid-back Lindsay Davenport create the image that the game is dominated by thoughtful, modest, and – yikes! – substantial people.
People, that is, who are more likely to express their gratitude for the opportunities they’ve had than to take their good fortune and rub it in the face of anyone and everyone watching, until it seems like the only real statement being made is this:
You will always remember me as the person who managed to find a way to trivialize and de-value everything I’ve ever been and done. For none of it is worth any more than exactly what you see here, my ultimate statement, a handful of tiny glittering stones worth exactly $000 in a lifeboat, or the basic economy of our lives.
But then I questioned my motives and standards. After all, I’ve often argued that the great, antic tradition in tennis ought to be maintained – that we don't need to turn tennis into a morality play, or an enterprise as grave and desperate as a hostage rescue. Let’s embrace the clowns and nose-thumbers and rebels and out-to-lunch Big Star wannabes, like the young Monica Seles with her absurd fashion statements.
It’s different these days; Monica seems to have morphed into a cool, studied, ruthlessly practical – and impeccably tasteful - Maria Sharapova.
But this Bling thing, it's different. Here’s the screwy thing about it. The gleam of Bling is often a dazzling beacon announcing your low self-esteem. Bling is something you need when you think that what you are, or have naturally, isn’t enough. A diamond can be just a beautiful thing — or the beautiful thing that you feel you are not.So what does it say when you can’t walk out onto the floor of Arthur Ashe Stadium with 40k worth of the stuff hanging off your ears?
Think I’m kidding, or going after Serena unfairly? Look at Sharapova. Her dresses are understated, by tennis standards, and the effect of that is the opposite of Bling – it works [i[for Maria, by emphasizing and drawing attention to her. It's the opposite of Bling, which is about itself.
And about that Maria Sharapova perfume? It bears her name, It advertises her. It works for her. Bling bears no name (although Erica something-or-other, the designer of Serena’s earrings, sure got a lot of PR out of merely lending the things to poor Serena).
Bling played you, girl. Or did you play yourself?
Johnette Howard, author and sports columnist for Newsday, wrote a strong column today, demolishing the façade of the Williams sisters “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” schtick. She accused them of being a pair of narcissistic, coddled icons. It’s about time someone in the obsequious, mainstream media did this.
When Bill Simon of Inside Tennis confronted Serena with the gist of the column after she beat Francesca Schiavone today, she said:
I’ve never been spoiled. I’ve always been — to this day, I refuse to buy a car. I want a Range Rover very bad, but I don’t feel as if I deserve it. I refuse to spend the money to buy a Range — if you look at my house, I don’t have all these elaborate things athletes have. I don’t live the elaborate life.
Is this true? Who knows? Who cares? For in a curious way, it doesn’t matter, not to me, not anymore. I’ve come full circle on the subject of Serena Williams. For I remembered that she's the daughter of Richard Williams.
He, you'll remember, brings making-it-up-as-you-go-along to a level of genius, For Richard, there is no truth or falsity (perhaps not even any singnificant reality). There is just what you feel, think or say now and 10 minutes later things might be different.
Neat way to live, if you can pull it off. It makes you immune to lots of things, including your own insecurity or low self-esteem. No therapy is nearly as effective – or ruthless - as denial and its twin, escape. Richard personifies it. And the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
So, really, Serena is less like a person than a force of nature. You can no more “like” or “dislike” her than you do an earthquake, or a hurricane. And you can no more control or understand her, either. And it seems almost futile to call her to task, blame her, attempt to influence, change or neutralize her. She’s agenda-and-guilt proof. She’s elemental, real, untouchable, chimeral, indomitable.
So in the end, the joke’s on us. And - at least we have this -on Bling.
Serena should be losing matches. She has little patience for the rally, she goes for broke frequently, she makes the kind of dumb errors that are born of poor concentration and stroke discipline
Plus, she huffs and puffs as if she were an inathletic claims adjuster, coerced into taking part in the softball game at the company picnic, and she just got done beating out a ground ball to short.
So she treads water until she gets to the important bits, then she becomes the mad-crazy-in-your-face-psycho girl, smacking winners clear to bizarro-world, doing just what she needs to keep winning and not a smidgen more.
Sure she’s overblown (any day now, I expect her to start going beep-beep-beep when she takes a few steps backwards), but don’t you get it yet? She’s larger than life. It's the root of all her problems. And triumphs.
That from his Blog, I am just to pissed to speak!!!
Posted 9/2/2005 @ 10:17 PM
I confess, I’ve been trying to get my mind around Serena Williams these days. I’ve been critical of her for most of this year, and while I don’t feel especially badly about that, I found myself doing some soul-searching on the eve of the U.S. Open,
Was I holding Serena to an unusually high (and unfair) standard? Was I, as some angry emailers suggested, a bigot? Did I perhaps resent her for the ease with which she won major tournaments and seemed to diminish tennis by professing no special fealty to it?
Then came the Bling thing.
On Day 1, Serena made a pair of earrings worth a cool 40 Grand the official logo of the U.S. Open. That’s just the statement the tournament needed to make, lest wholesome Roger Federer or laid-back Lindsay Davenport create the image that the game is dominated by thoughtful, modest, and – yikes! – substantial people.
People, that is, who are more likely to express their gratitude for the opportunities they’ve had than to take their good fortune and rub it in the face of anyone and everyone watching, until it seems like the only real statement being made is this:
You will always remember me as the person who managed to find a way to trivialize and de-value everything I’ve ever been and done. For none of it is worth any more than exactly what you see here, my ultimate statement, a handful of tiny glittering stones worth exactly $000 in a lifeboat, or the basic economy of our lives.
But then I questioned my motives and standards. After all, I’ve often argued that the great, antic tradition in tennis ought to be maintained – that we don't need to turn tennis into a morality play, or an enterprise as grave and desperate as a hostage rescue. Let’s embrace the clowns and nose-thumbers and rebels and out-to-lunch Big Star wannabes, like the young Monica Seles with her absurd fashion statements.
It’s different these days; Monica seems to have morphed into a cool, studied, ruthlessly practical – and impeccably tasteful - Maria Sharapova.
But this Bling thing, it's different. Here’s the screwy thing about it. The gleam of Bling is often a dazzling beacon announcing your low self-esteem. Bling is something you need when you think that what you are, or have naturally, isn’t enough. A diamond can be just a beautiful thing — or the beautiful thing that you feel you are not.So what does it say when you can’t walk out onto the floor of Arthur Ashe Stadium with 40k worth of the stuff hanging off your ears?
Think I’m kidding, or going after Serena unfairly? Look at Sharapova. Her dresses are understated, by tennis standards, and the effect of that is the opposite of Bling – it works [i[for Maria, by emphasizing and drawing attention to her. It's the opposite of Bling, which is about itself.
And about that Maria Sharapova perfume? It bears her name, It advertises her. It works for her. Bling bears no name (although Erica something-or-other, the designer of Serena’s earrings, sure got a lot of PR out of merely lending the things to poor Serena).
Bling played you, girl. Or did you play yourself?
Johnette Howard, author and sports columnist for Newsday, wrote a strong column today, demolishing the façade of the Williams sisters “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” schtick. She accused them of being a pair of narcissistic, coddled icons. It’s about time someone in the obsequious, mainstream media did this.
When Bill Simon of Inside Tennis confronted Serena with the gist of the column after she beat Francesca Schiavone today, she said:
I’ve never been spoiled. I’ve always been — to this day, I refuse to buy a car. I want a Range Rover very bad, but I don’t feel as if I deserve it. I refuse to spend the money to buy a Range — if you look at my house, I don’t have all these elaborate things athletes have. I don’t live the elaborate life.
Is this true? Who knows? Who cares? For in a curious way, it doesn’t matter, not to me, not anymore. I’ve come full circle on the subject of Serena Williams. For I remembered that she's the daughter of Richard Williams.
He, you'll remember, brings making-it-up-as-you-go-along to a level of genius, For Richard, there is no truth or falsity (perhaps not even any singnificant reality). There is just what you feel, think or say now and 10 minutes later things might be different.
Neat way to live, if you can pull it off. It makes you immune to lots of things, including your own insecurity or low self-esteem. No therapy is nearly as effective – or ruthless - as denial and its twin, escape. Richard personifies it. And the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
So, really, Serena is less like a person than a force of nature. You can no more “like” or “dislike” her than you do an earthquake, or a hurricane. And you can no more control or understand her, either. And it seems almost futile to call her to task, blame her, attempt to influence, change or neutralize her. She’s agenda-and-guilt proof. She’s elemental, real, untouchable, chimeral, indomitable.
So in the end, the joke’s on us. And - at least we have this -on Bling.
Serena should be losing matches. She has little patience for the rally, she goes for broke frequently, she makes the kind of dumb errors that are born of poor concentration and stroke discipline
Plus, she huffs and puffs as if she were an inathletic claims adjuster, coerced into taking part in the softball game at the company picnic, and she just got done beating out a ground ball to short.
So she treads water until she gets to the important bits, then she becomes the mad-crazy-in-your-face-psycho girl, smacking winners clear to bizarro-world, doing just what she needs to keep winning and not a smidgen more.
Sure she’s overblown (any day now, I expect her to start going beep-beep-beep when she takes a few steps backwards), but don’t you get it yet? She’s larger than life. It's the root of all her problems. And triumphs.
That from his Blog, I am just to pissed to speak!!!
