Tutu-Gate: Why We Need to Accept Females in the Sports World
By: Avery Didden
The world never seems to be able to reconcile the ideas of femininity and sports. If you’re a girly-girl, you can’t be a tomboy. If you play dress up, you can’t throw off your costume and lace up your soccer cleats the next minute. It’s just ~the way the world works~. You have to choose: you’re either a ditzy fairy princess or an emotionless athlete. And, sorry sweetie, there’s no in-between.
You’re either getting saved by the prince or lacking the emotion for a prince to ever want to spend his time on you.
Well, in August of 2018, world-renowned tennis player, Serena Williams, got fed up with having to choose. She rocked the world by showing up to her US Open tennis match in (hold your gasps of horror) a tutu.
No one in their right mind would discredit Williams as an athlete. She has proven herself time and time again and made more of a household name for herself than most men in the sports world.
But, she is also a woman. She is also a mother. She is someone for whom femininity is an equal part of who she is as is tennis. So then, why is it so surprising that she showed up in a tutu, a stereotypically feminine outfit, to her match?
Some might say because it’s never been done before. But, if you want the real reason, I’d bet my life it's because people think it’s too girly for a tough tennis match. And, no woman has dared to express their femininity by showing up in a stereotypically “girly” outfit to a sports match before. Sports, unfortunately, are still viewed as male territory. A tutu doesn’t belong there, and subliminally, that sends the message that women don’t belong there either.
Williams has used her influence to take an important step, a step that begins to break down the barrier between sports and femininity. Only when we start to combine these two worlds do girls have a chance to express the multifaceted natures of their identities. Only when doing this can we start to live in a world where girls don’t have to choose between two unappealing options: doing what they love but being unable to express themselves or expressing themselves and not being taken seriously while doing what they love.
Only then can we create a world of princesses who can come to their own rescue.