I read this morning the New York Times’ piece on women’s body image which has stirred up some controversy – how Serena Williams’ physique is excellent for tennis, but certain professional tennis players or their coaches were quoted saying they didn’t want such a body, because it made them seem or feel less feminine and attractive. The article did not really mention – and has come under some fire for this – the way race might further complicate this. Once I took an interest in this article, Facebook suggested many others – articles about how Serena Williams makes less in endorsements than Maria Sharapova does, despite Williams’ much more impressive tennis resume.
Race has certainly been on my mind of late, travelling in South Africa, and media stories from the United States about the Confederate flag have kept me thinking about it; and while sitting out a fever in South Africa I watched a match from Wimbledon, and the picture it beamed into South Africa, of beautiful privilege, I found pleasant, but it did make me think. And there have been many articles since the Charleston church shooting about racism, most of them, I think, somewhat stupid – of the “yes you white people are racist” variety.
I think that our sexuality is the key for understanding the problem of race; and this makes sense, because race, as we use the term, is nothing other than different populations of our species which have developed different traits solely because they have not intermingled sexually. For thousands of years this was largely geographical accident; but now there is enough movement of people across the globe that individual attraction and individual choice become part of the equation, and we can see this continued separation of the different races of humanity unfold in our own lives: in the highly intimate facts of who we fall in love with, and who we choose to marry, and who we choose to have children with.
That race plays a large factor in this is obvious. I spoke with a white woman who worked at a big law firm who was clearly upset about something that day. She was speaking with one of her coworkers, who is black, about dating, and this coworker asked her if she filtered her Okcupid dating pool by race (which you can apparently do, and presumably that filter exists because people want it). She said she didn’t, but, this woman told me, she had lied – actually, she did filter out black men. She said she would be fine dating a black man, but she found that there was a cultural difference – they sent very forward messages, they weren’t respectful, etc. Her inbox was too much of a hassle, she said. I just let her talk. It was obvious enough that what was driving her words was a discomfort with the simple fact that race was not only important, it was intimately important – it shaped her love-life, her sex life, and would shape her marriage, and hence the next generation too.
My first response to this is, of course it does. There couldn’t be races if this weren’t true, if this weren’t reenacted with every generation. People who think otherwise don’t know themselves. But I take a relatively scientific attitude towards this, because I am a Christian: I expect that all the problems I see in human society will be found in my heart.
Race is only one factor in the whole complicated business of injustice known as love and marriage and family. I thought about it constantly while single, because I was aware that there were good people around me that I simply wasn’t attracted to, pretty much always for dumb reasons: reasons that won’t mean much when I take leave of my body, and maybe won’t even mean much when I’m old. I know that the beauty of a face or body fades, and I know beauty does not make a person better and often makes them worse, and I know that standards of beauty are culturally and biographically shaped and do not represent God’s view of us – but in the end, few things give me so much happiness as being in the presence of someone I think is beautiful, and not everyone seems beautiful to me.
And so of course people will give up “even” professional success for this beauty – in fact “professional success” is from the individual’s perspective probably just a subset of beauty (of course from the GDP-economics perspective professional success is the only important thing, so anything that cuts into that is considered sinful, a perspective many career-bots will have on this article).
But these questions always make me return to Christianity. I think the real root of all the Christian unease with sex are these truths about ourselves. Christianity tries to make us see with God’s eyes: “there is no slave nor free, no Jew nor Greek, no male nor female, because you are all one in God” – but sexuality is so unlike this that in many ways it is the worst, most unfair thing we do. Money, race, manners, physique, cleanliness, complexion, height, tone of voice, accent, health, humor, use of language, sophistication, movement, clothing, charm (even to the point of being deceptive) – Christianity tells us these things are not the way to measure people, but our bodies respond to them whether we want to or not. And today there is a vast world of advertizing and profiteering which can put dollar values on all these things – so that we know that by this system Maria Sharapova’s lithe blonde body is worth twice as much, in advertizing revenue, as Serena Williams’ thick brown body. “Let the market decide,” economists say. Christianity lodges a complaint against this entire way of thinking, and I think some degree of freedom from it is necessary for our happiness, but we will always, I think, be immersed in it to some extent.
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John, I read and enjoyed this. I particularly rejoiced to see the line in which you said that you are a Christian. I guess I should not have been surprised, but I also guess I do not read your blog often enough. I really enjoyed the photos of South Africa that you shared, and congrats on your recent nuptials.
your approach of racism involves so many pillars of thought… I will mention only a few: the public spirit that is influenced by ” money, race, manners, physique”, etc, and I will have to put this into the cubicle of our ” persona”, a ” persona” mentioned by Jung as part of our being, a part of us that will stay here, within the limits of this visible world; the racism promoted by the monoteism itself, and by the spirit of the Cristianity ( see the Ecumenical Councils regarding the cult of Theotokos; see Cyrilus of Alexandria and the fact that Hypathia was exterminated by the Church at that time- Hypathia that Steiner regards as the first victim of racism);racism and sexism promoted and experienced by the psychotic triangle Freud/Spilerein/ Jung( Jung will take a different route into studying the ramifications of anima/ animus within us, the humans); our biological structure and the ” shaping” of our homo sapiens since the intermingling of Neaderthal/ homo erectus( see the research on Nova re the homo sapiens/Neanderthal/ Denisova, till we reached the present homo sapiens); the fact that theologians are scared to approach the sexuality within the bossom of deities. These are a few starting points: I do not expect the Church to solve this problem: Mother of God was on the ship heading towards Mount Athos, hoping to tell the apostles about the Inner power of the woman, but tell the monks now about that, and see what response you will get… Thank you for the signal, though.
Christianity/ pardon; I might have plenty of mispelling along the way
I read that article too, and it made me angry. Angry that these, in essence, millionaire athletes, at the pinnacle of their success are perhaps TRYING not to be better at their game in order to preserve endorsement deals or to fit into some stereotype of femininity, that they are leveraging their sex appeal against their playing. (I had an ex-boyfriend whose friends would rank the tennis players according to their hotness [that’s a nice way of putting it], having nothing whatsoever to do with their playing.) And, as you pointed out, they’re saying that Serena is somehow “other” and they don’t want to be like HER – quite obviously the best athlete in any sport right now – but they couch it in terms of her strength, not her blackness. When they are, in fact, inseparable. So I suppose I was doubly angry that the article elided that as well. I read another article about how female athletes in general feel pressured they have to perform this sort of hetero femaleness – makeup, long hair – when it has nothing to do with their performances. But female sports in general is a whole ‘nother can of worms, in terms of who is watching them, and why. Your piece made me think (as usual), so thanks for that.
I thought the article was far too reductive. Serena has often been catty towards rival players and has done things like tell the line judge at the US Open “If I could, I’d take this ******* ball and shove it down your ******* throat”. She can be difficult to root for, but it has nothing to do with her race. In fact, her sister Venus seems much nicer to me and has never rubbed me the wrong way. I admired Jorge Posada and do not admire Alex Rodriguez (even before the steroid scandal) and they were both great players, were the same race, and played on the same team. Their conduct on the field was entirely the deciding factor in whether I liked the player. I’ve seen Sharapova play a few times, once in person, and she mostly just coolly goes about her business and plays very well (she has been #1 in the world and still routinely reaches majors’ finals). Jeter, who is half-black, probably had the most baseball endorsements money (by a lot, I would surmise), yet he never had the best stats or won an MVP but he was a consummate professional on the field. Yes, endorsements are entirely not a meritocracy, but I think professionalism is a much bigger factor than race.
I’m not trying to be reductionist about it; I acknowledge that everything is a factor – the individual personality still counts. But I think race plays a role in a society’s view of what is attractive and valuable and what is not. Professionalism can count too, but we all know that Taylor Swift can act as bitchy as she wants and still get a job as New York City’s goodwill ambassador, because she looks the part, and looking the part means skinny and pretty and blonde. And the examples you use are from men’s athletics, which is different: there there is no obvious conflict between what makes one a good athlete and an attractive man.