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Guest blog: For one Wimbledon champion, triumph was overshadowed by abuse

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HannahMumsnet · 08/07/2013 16:02

On Saturday, Marion Bartoli beat Sabine Lisicki to become Wimbledon women's singles champion. It should have been a moment of triumph, but instead Bartoli found herself the target of a barrage of abuse focusing on her appearance - including a comment from the BBC's John Inverdale, characterizing her as "not a looker".

In this post, novelist and blogger Rosie Fiore examines what the aggressive reaction to the tennis champion tells us about our culture, and what it means for our children.

Let us know what you think here on the thread - and if you blog on this topic, don't forget to leave your URL.

When I'm not writing novels and being a (fairly opinionated) blogger, my day job is as a freelance copywriter. Today I am doing product copy for a company which sells crafts kits for children. Every single one I have written about his morning which is aimed at girls has had a beauty angle. Design clothes, make your own lip gloss, make jewellery - it's as if girls' only concern is what they look like .

But if you watched sport over the weekend, that's exactly what you would have been led to believe. I'm not going to link to John Inverdale's odious and inexcusable "not a looker so she'd better be scrappy" comment about Wimbledon Women Singles Champion Marion Bartoli. You've read it everywhere, along with his equally offensive non-apology. However you might not have seen this selection of tweets from various members of the public, posted during the match. These were gathered by @EverydaySexism. Many have since been deleted, and the accounts closed. Seems these big men aren't brave enough to stand by what they say when challenged.

The vitriol in the tweets is astonishing. One goes so far as to suggest Bartoli is too ugly to be raped. Her crime? She isn't as conventionally blonde, slender and pretty as her opponent. They're cross, because there's a woman out there, doing something astonishing in public, and they don't want to have sex with her. Think about that for a second.

On Sunday, Bartoli didn't appear on the cover of any national newspaper, despite being the Wimbledon champion.

Compare and contrast with the (justifiable) delight around Andy Murray's win. I know he is the first British MALE winner in umpty-umpt years, but still: he is on the front page of every conceivable newspaper; David Cameron was on television this morning saying that "no one is more deserving of a knighthood" (no one? Really Dave?), and yet - not one single person, to my knowledge, has commented publicly on whether or not they consider him attractive enough to have sex with.

Many press outlets scrambled to compensate today, printing pictures of Bartoli in a short black dress at the Wimbledon Ball, as if to say, "See? She IS pretty, so it's all okay. We love her, honest."

So here's my question. What if your daughter isn't pretty? How do you raise her to believe she has value in the world?

If a young woman who attains the peak of physical perfection and skill - to the point that she wins the greatest tennis title in the world against strong odds - has to face what Bartoli has faced, what chance do other girls have? Women in other fields experience it: witness Hillary Clinton, Theresa May, Mary Beard, all vilified by the press and members of the public for daring not to be beautiful. It happens to other women in sport too: Olympic weightlifter Zoe Smith got it and challenged her detractors. I blogged about her last year.

Women have to battle sexism in every area of work and endeavour already. Women's sport for example, gets 0.5% of sponsorship and 5% of TV coverage. How can we add another layer of difficulty, by insisting that women can only succeed if they also meet a Lisicki-style standard of beauty?

So make a small difference today. Talk to a small girl and praise her for something. ANYTHING other than being pretty, wearing a pretty dress, or having lovely hair. Praise her for being imaginative, athletic, brave or funny. Encourage her to develop her skill and challenge herself in a wide range of fields. Help her be good at something other than being beautiful. And if, god forbid, the endless murmuring of vitriol reaches her and she expresses doubts about her body, keep telling her that it is perfect. The perfect body for the job it's doing.

Rosie Fiore is the author of Wonder Women. She blogs at Wordmonkey and is @rosiefiore on Twitter.

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LalyRawr · 08/07/2013 16:07

God I agree with this so much.

There are not enough words in the English language to express how much I agree with this.

Brilliant piece.