The landscape in which female beauty trends play out is increasingly mean and ludicrous, just when it should\u00a0be\u00a0less prone to obsession and caricature than ever before.\u00a0We should be seeing thick hairy legs on urban streets, not just on LGBTQ activists. We should\u00a0barely\u00a0be hearing normal women talking about facial\u00a0ageing or\u00a0getting regular poison-loaded needles injected into their faces for the sake of the blandest type of beauty.\u00a0\u00a0And we should definitely not be seeing the rise of teenagers making millions from hawking anti-ageing skin products to other children.\u00a0And yet, here we are. What is obvious is that a female body is still the most powerful asset a human being can have, if presented correctly.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
There is something especially powerful, of course, about the female athlete\u2019s physicality, as suggested by the hubbub surrounding tennis star Naomi Osaka sashaying into the French Open in a series of glinting net trains and sexy couture tops\u00a0\u2013 one of which was aptly labeled \u2018the Eiffel Tower at night\u2019. Cue much fury and condemnation from traditionalists, sexists, and even her (defeated) first round opponent Laura Siegemund who complained that Osaka\u2019s statement fashion tripled the time it took her to change for the court, an allowance, felt\u00a0Siegemund, that suggested\u00a0it\u2019s one rule for them (big names) and another for the rest.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Osaka, who, like Serena and Venus Williams, and the current number one,\u00a0the Belarussian\u00a0Aryna Sabalenka, is not a conventional beauty by any stretch. I\u00a0actually think\u00a0she\u2019s\u00a0rather ugly but in the world of elite sport, something strange and physics-bending\u00a0happens:\u00a0this\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0matter; if anything, it is a virtue. Looks, hotness, attractiveness\u2013 for the Grand Slam\u00a0player,\u00a0these become only part of the whole, not the main event. In this case, victory, strength, skill,\u00a0glamour\u00a0and fame are what sets\u00a0the woman\u2019s course in the world\u2019s eyes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s\u00a0a piquant mix, where raw strength and killer instinct \u2013 traditionally masculine domains \u2013 result in the fatless ideal of feminine beauty and health. Serena, Venus,\u00a0Aryna\u00a0and Naomi are examples of female tennis players who look as though they could flatten most men and yet they are magnets for high fashion, branding, selling, and enormous loyal fan bases across all\u00a0walks of life.\u00a0They\u2019ve\u00a0reached\u00a0the very end of the rainbow\u00a0that all those\u00a0botox-obsessed, million-step beauty-routine-following\u00a0influencers, can only dream of.\u00a0Indeed,\u00a0Osaka is one of the most marketable and high-earning athletes in the world. In 2020, she had the highest-ever annual income of any female athlete.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Is this person a warrior? Is she sexually appealing? Is she beautiful, or just magnificent? I think\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0the latter<\/p>\n
Osaka\u2019s icon status is a fun, refreshing thing. It shows that there are still other types of ogling possible for women, and that there is perhaps no more thrilling type than that attracted by the 5 ft 11 figure of honed muscle striding across the court, racket insouciantly in hand,\u00a0corset and cascading pleated skirt coming off to reveal a\u00a0sequinned\u00a0bespoke Nike tennis dress that glinted so extremely Osaka worried she might be kicked off court for blinding her opponent. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Is this person a warrior? Is she sexually appealing? Is she beautiful or just magnificent? I think\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0the latter. And so, Osaka madness, and its answer across other\u00a0sports, offers an important corrective to\u00a0almost everything\u00a0else in the\u00a0\u2018womanosphere\u2019. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
After all,\u00a0beauty\u2019s\u00a0dreams and fantasies\u00a0still seem to be essentially\u00a0composed of two types. One is the Lara Croft-Kardashian caricature of bums and waists as extreme a distance from each other as possible, and the other is the emaciated look of tirzepatide, Mounjaro\u2019s magic peptide, overlaid on already-skinny women who do too far much\u00a0Pilates. Neither of these types seem interested in doing much beyond perpetuating their\u00a0\u2018look\u2019\u00a0through extreme regimens. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
As for the fashion\u00a0element of Osaka\u2019s self-presentation on the court,\u00a0she is not the first tennis icon to ignite a frenzy by breaking the sartorial rules \u2013 flagrantly \u2013 of the court. One thinks of Serena Williams\u2019s late 2010s run of outfits, especially the black 2019 tutu\u00a0ensemble designed by Virgil Abloh, now Louis Vuitton\u2019s designer, for Nike, at the US Open in 2018. \u2018What I love about tennis is\u00a0the gracefulness.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0an aggressive and powerful game but it takes touch and finesse,\u2019 Abloh said. His statements about her outfit, which included a brown off-the-shoulder top, embody that special meeting of the anti-feminine with the frankly gorgeous. \u2018The dress is feminine,\u2019 he said, \u2018but combines her aggression.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0partially\u00a0revealing.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0asymmetrical. It has a sort of ballerina-esque\u00a0silhouette to symbolize her grace.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0not about bells and\u00a0whistles\u00a0and tricks.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0just about it\u00a0living\u00a0on the\u00a0body, and\u00a0expressing Serena\u2019s spirit with each swing of the racket.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are plenty of opportunities for famous women,\u00a0including simply\u00a0internet-famous women, to flaunt their most outlandish takes on self-expression. Among these are the recent\u00a0Met Gala, the art biennales and film festivals,\u00a0perhaps the\u00a0Baftas.\u00a0But those women are all caught up in the beauty trap. Their clothes are their statements, but their thin, passive, conventionally attractive bodies are their currency. Only in elite sport can women leave such strictures in the dust: in the upper echelons of athletic prowess, women become not just goddesses, but akin to gods, too \u2013 all power, glory, skill, strength topped off with a bit, or a lot, of haute couture.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The landscape in which female beauty trends play out is increasingly mean and ludicrous, just when it should\u00a0be\u00a0less…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[7384,6564,101,118,56,54,55,208249],"class_list":["post-612233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-french-open","tag-naomi-osaka","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-womanosphere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}