Serena Williams, 44, a winner of 23 Grand Slam titles, sat down with PORTER Magazine and said what she had kept silent about throughout her career. 🎾
During her first 15 years as a professional, her body did not look like that of the other tennis players. “I had large breasts and a big butt”, she confessed, while her rivals were “super flat-chested, super thin, and beautiful, but in a different way”. She didn’t know how to deal with that difference. They compared her to men because of her physique and, in her own words, it truly affected her: “I was pretty stressed out”.
Today, retired and 14 kilos lighter, she looks back with a different perspective: she understands that she was simply fit, with the muscles of an elite athlete. And she celebrates that Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka, the new generations of Black tennis players, no longer receive the same insults she had to endure in silence. 💪
