Salute to a female tennis icon
In the modern era where proactive political-correctness reigns and we’re all forced to view/listen to – and agree with – ‘equal’ coverage of female sport, worry ourselves silly about the fact there’s no woman in the world’s top 100 earners and generally cow-tow to the ludicrous notion that any benefits that accrue to elite sportsmen should also be made available to their female equivalents even though participants in their versions of sport – and the numbers who bother to follow and/or watch them – number but a tiny fraction in comparison, it is sometimes hard to retain a considered perspective.
We all know where this is going.
How long will it be before – to misuse a one-time unfortunate ‘on mike phrase’ from John Inverdale – those female sports stars who “are never going to be lookers” demand equal pay with the commercial and image income generated by their counterparts who just happen to be photogenic, attractive, slim and public-friendly … especially if, like former good-but-never-great Russian tennis player Anna Kournikova – the latter were (or indeed are) raking in far more cash than their contemporary multi-Grand Slam winners?
[Furthermore, why not extend this to male sport? Why shouldn’t ugly male track and field athletes – and indeed gnarled rugby prop forwards – demand and get similar ‘income’ and commercial opportunities as those that fall to their colleagues who happen to possess matinee idol looks and/or conform to social media’s concept of the male body beautiful?]
And how long will it be before representatives acting for disabled, deaf, blind, autistic, black or LGTB sportsmen and women are banging their drums in the media, demanding equal access to the airwaves – and also to sponsorship, image rights and general income – for their particular versions of sports and events, especially when they see how the female cause is advancing week by week?
Which brings me to the nostalgic and some might feel halcyon days of yesteryear – the days when men were men and women were women … and frankly, things were not so bad as they are habitually painted in these 21st Century ‘snowflake’ times.
Sad news arrived overnight in the form of reports of the death from cancer of the great Brazilian tennis player of the 1950s/1960s Maria Bueno at the age of 78. In all she won 17 Grand Slam titles – seven singles, eleven women’s doubles and one mixed doubles – and was loved by tennis fans for her feminine athleticism and grace.
See here for a link to an Associated Press piece that appears today upon the website of the –DAILY TELEGRAPH
