and told\u00a0USA Today\u00a0ahead of the Aug. 15 on-sale date for her doll that it was a “huge moment”<\/a> in her career, on and off the court.<\/p>\n“To see that moment honored with a Barbie doll is incredibly special,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I hope it inspires young girls to speak up, believe in themselves, and know they have the power to change the game too.”<\/p>\n
Williams worked closely with Mattel throughout the design process, and described seeing the final product as a “full-circle moment.” The doll also wears accessories to match the ones Williams wore when she beat Marion Bartoli for the fourth of her five Wimbledon singles titles, including a green gem necklace, drop earrings, wristbands and visors, as well as Reebok sneakers.<\/p>\n
It’s not the first time that the seven-time Grand Slam singles champion and equality advocate has been honored by Barbie. Last year, she had a doll in the collection that highlighted nine trailblazing female athletes — including Brazilian gymnast Rebeca Andrade, Canadian soccer great Christine Sinclair, and Italian swimmer Federica Pellegrini — as part of the doll’s 65th anniversary celebration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beginning this week, Venus Williams’ legendary push for equal prize money for women tennis players won’t just be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,1602,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-68119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis","10":"tag-text","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68119","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=68119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}