Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from House Supports
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
Speaker 1: and I'm Caroline and Caroline Windledon's season is upon us. Yes,
Speaker 1: the tennis tournament of all tennis tournaments taking placed June,
Speaker 1: and we figured, Hey, you know what we haven't talked
Speaker 1: about before on the podcast tennis, Women in Tennis, Women
Speaker 1: in Tennis, And there is so much to talk about
Speaker 1: when it comes to women in tennis. And I will
Speaker 1: say that, unlike I feel like a lot of the
Speaker 1: sports topics we've covered on Stuff Mom Never Told You
Speaker 1: that usually goes along the lines of, well, men started
Speaker 1: playing this sport, and then eight thousand years later, some
Speaker 1: doctors decided that women's uteruses wouldn't explode, and so women
Speaker 1: started playing tennis. Is an exception, though perhaps because us
Speaker 1: of it's more uppercrust, country club esque roots. Uh So,
Speaker 1: let's dive in a little bit to the history of
Speaker 1: how tennis started and when women started playing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy three, a man with a name that
Speaker 1: sounds like straight out of a Dickens novel, British major
Speaker 1: Walter Clopton Wingfield, patented a tennis like game with an
Speaker 1: hourglass shaped court called sporisticy maybe I'm pronouncing that correctly,
Speaker 1: which is Greek for quote playing at ball. And he's
Speaker 1: often cited as the inventor of tennis the way we
Speaker 1: think about it today. Yeah, but there have been tennis
Speaker 1: like games that have been going on for centuries even
Speaker 1: before that. Um. Some trace it back to a thirteenth
Speaker 1: century French nobility game called jude Palm or game of
Speaker 1: the Palm, because humans apparently really enjoy hitting balls with paddles,
Speaker 1: and we've just been doing that for a very long time.
Speaker 1: But it was really with Clopton Wingfield that tennis got
Speaker 1: off the ground. Um Well. So then in the following year,
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy four, you have Marry you Ing outer
Speaker 1: Bridge of Staten Island who introduced tennis to the United States.
Speaker 1: She went all the way to Bermuda and purchased equipment
Speaker 1: to use to set up the first tennis court on
Speaker 1: the island. And three years later, speaking of Wimbledon, in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy seven, the All England Croquet Club stages the
Speaker 1: first men's singles Championship at Wimbledon and twenty two players
Speaker 1: entered the tournament, so obviously it was a very small affair,
Speaker 1: but still it didn't take that long for Wimbledon to
Speaker 1: open its doors to women. In eighteen eighty four, Wimbledon
Speaker 1: Championships were open to women for the first time. So
Speaker 1: there wasn't that massive gap. Yeah, there wasn't that massive gap.
Speaker 1: It was just the gap between the rich and the poor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which we which we will get into you more. Um.
Speaker 1: And three years later, in eighteen eighties seven, Ellen Hansel
Speaker 1: was crowned the first women's singles tennis champion at the
Speaker 1: US Open and Latti Dad love that name. Lattida won
Speaker 1: the women's Wimbledon Championship for the first of her five
Speaker 1: time wins between eighteen eight seven and eight And hey,
Speaker 1: fun Olympics. Fact, here you have the Paris Games and
Speaker 1: it offered two events for women, lawn tennis and golf,
Speaker 1: because that's what the only sports really the proper ladies
Speaker 1: of the day played, and tennis playing. Charlotte Chatty Cooper
Speaker 1: became the first woman to win a gold medal. And
Speaker 1: if you'd like to see uh an interview with her.
Speaker 1: We just happened to have her on our stuff. Mom
Speaker 1: never told you show her History, and you should totally
Speaker 1: watch it. You can just go over to stuff Mom
Speaker 1: never told you dot com. By the way, it's me,
Speaker 1: I'm I pretend to be Charlotte Chatty Cooper. I haven't
Speaker 1: gone completely off my rocker, although possibly you will think
Speaker 1: so if you watch that episode of History. So this
Speaker 1: brings us up to women are playing the game. But
Speaker 1: we now want to take a little side road and
Speaker 1: talk about from here the evolution of what women wore
Speaker 1: on the tennis court, because that might seem like sort
Speaker 1: of a superfluous topic to focus on, but it actually
Speaker 1: says a lot about women's roles and the amount of
Speaker 1: athleticism that they were permitted. Yeah, clothes are political. This
Speaker 1: is something we know. This is something that we've talked
Speaker 1: about that changing clothes is political. And so back in
Speaker 1: the Victorian era, uh, women were wearing basically a full
Speaker 1: suit of armor to play tennis or the equivalent of course,
Speaker 1: it's under dark colored, high colored blouses with ground length
Speaker 1: skirts typically made from fur trimmed flannel. I mean, just
Speaker 1: kill me, like I I like have a baseline sweat
Speaker 1: that I'm always at like I'm always just like vaguely
Speaker 1: anxious and sweaty, but put me in a Victorian tennis
Speaker 1: outfit and I would just stroke out. But so anyway,
Speaker 1: but so anyway, as you can imagine, this outfit, so
Speaker 1: to speak, restricted women's movement a lot, meaning that they
Speaker 1: could only play the dainty pet ball. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: actually called pat ball because women's movements were so restricted
Speaker 1: they could barely do much more than pat the bowl
Speaker 1: get it over the neck or I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: they were. I just pictured them like very close together.
Speaker 1: I pictured them on a on a tennis court that
Speaker 1: is just the size of a ping pong table, and
Speaker 1: they have to use these tiny paddles to get it
Speaker 1: over dainty likes. But I thought it was funny that
Speaker 1: by the nineties white had become the go to color,
Speaker 1: thanks to a woman named Maud Watson, who wore white
Speaker 1: at Wimbledon in four. But I thought it was funny
Speaker 1: that by the white had become the go to color
Speaker 1: for women's tennis attire a because player mod Watson wore
Speaker 1: a white Wimbledon outfit in four and looked very fashionable
Speaker 1: doing it. But also white helped conceal sweat stains, right,
Speaker 1: because sweating is like such like an underclass, like only
Speaker 1: the lower classes are supposed to sweat, exactly, But how
Speaker 1: could you not sweat playing tennis in all of those clothes,
Speaker 1: And if you're just playing pet ball, maybe you weren't
Speaker 1: sweat as much. But in nineteen o five American Mary
Speaker 1: Sutton Bundy caused a stir. She rolled back her dress sleeves,
Speaker 1: thus showing her wrists, and the Wimbledon crowd went crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was quite a scandal, I mean, and and that's
Speaker 1: not even her ankles that was that was just her wrists.
Speaker 1: But by the nineteen twenties, thanks largely to a very
Speaker 1: fashion forward French player, of course she was French Suzanne Langlin. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were essentially freed from corsets. And you should google
Speaker 1: image though the pictures of her playing tennis, because she
Speaker 1: was wearing this like bando around her head rather than
Speaker 1: a larger hat like a lot of ladies were wearing,
Speaker 1: and shorter skirts and just sort of that more flapper style.
Speaker 1: And honestly, Caroline, it was very fetching look that you
Speaker 1: could possibly pull off even today, even today when I
Speaker 1: played a bit of petball. Um. Well, in nine we
Speaker 1: have another fashion forward individual, Gertrude gorgeous Gustie Moran. She
Speaker 1: attracted a lot of attention for her lace trimmed balloomas
Speaker 1: that she wore under her tennis skirt. Yeah, these weren't.
Speaker 1: When I first read she wore lace trimmed underwear, I
Speaker 1: was thinking that she must have had a really short
Speaker 1: skirt on, but no, it was These were actually almost
Speaker 1: like biker shorts with lace on them, kind of like
Speaker 1: the ones we used to wear under baby doll dresses
Speaker 1: in the early nineties. And again they were kind of cute,
Speaker 1: but people flipped out over that that was highly inappropriate.
Speaker 1: But really, what these women were doing by causing all
Speaker 1: these scandals, particularly at Wimbledon, was essentially chipping away at
Speaker 1: the amount of clothes that female players had to wear,
Speaker 1: so that by the time you get to the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: women tennis players weren't wearing things like tights, and their
Speaker 1: hemlines were shortened and and gradually, you know, today, if
Speaker 1: you think of the kinds of outfits we've seen Venus
Speaker 1: and Serena Williams, where I mean it's you know, the
Speaker 1: sky's the limit or the clothings the minimalist. If you
Speaker 1: will well, I mean I think you know, like you said,
Speaker 1: clothing seems like a superfluous topic, but but it's not.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think as we've shown this and when
Speaker 1: you think about it, it has so many layers to it,
Speaker 1: because you know, when they when Victorian women were wearing
Speaker 1: like head to toe tight flannel, they their movements were
Speaker 1: incredibly restricted. But the more clothing that you take away,
Speaker 1: the more athleticism you let women exhibit, the more they
Speaker 1: can actually play a great competitive game of tennis, the
Speaker 1: more that people are then interested in women's tennis, and
Speaker 1: on and on and on. Well, and it ties into
Speaker 1: with the politics of women's bodies. And I mean, this
Speaker 1: whole thing reminded me a lot of when we talked
Speaker 1: about the evolution of women's swimwear to where you know,
Speaker 1: it used to be that women would have to wear
Speaker 1: dresses with weighted down hymns into the water so they
Speaker 1: wouldn't billow out and perhaps show those scandalous ankles. It's
Speaker 1: a similar kind of thing that is happening on the
Speaker 1: tennis courts during this time. But also speaking of witnessing
Speaker 1: signs of social progress on the tennis court, we also
Speaker 1: need to talk about the diversity of tennis because back
Speaker 1: when it starts it It It was very much and still
Speaker 1: kind of is to some extent a well healed sport
Speaker 1: that often took place at exclusive clubs, and people who
Speaker 1: were not white were often barred from playing or even
Speaker 1: competing in some tournaments. For instance, um Forest Hills also
Speaker 1: known as the West Side Club, which is home of
Speaker 1: the US Open through the late nineteen seventies, was not
Speaker 1: integrated for a long time, right, so the opportunities were
Speaker 1: very limited for people of color, I mean, let alone
Speaker 1: women of color. But there were a lot of women
Speaker 1: who made a name for themselves in tennis. Starting back
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventeen, Lucy dig Slow won the singles title
Speaker 1: at the first American Tennis Association National Tournament. She then
Speaker 1: went on to become the first female African American national
Speaker 1: champion in sports. You might also know her name because
Speaker 1: she was one of the original founders of the Alpha
Speaker 1: Kappa Alpha sorority. In fact, talk about a groundbreaker um
Speaker 1: and that American Tennis Association was largely African American, I
Speaker 1: mean because they were having to form their own associations
Speaker 1: because of racial segregation at the time. And then in
Speaker 1: also have Or Washington, who was such a powerhouse. She
Speaker 1: won her first American Tennis Association singles title in twenty
Speaker 1: nine and she held that title for seven years, and
Speaker 1: that was a record that she maintained until ALTHEA Gibson
Speaker 1: came along and broke it with nine titles. But I
Speaker 1: mean speaking about diversity in tennis, and I mean that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean only skin color. That also means diversity of experience.
Speaker 1: So whereas tennis had been this this domain of rich
Speaker 1: white people, people of legia who were playing it at clubs,
Speaker 1: people like or Washington had to work in domestic service
Speaker 1: to support themselves. So it's not like for a large,
Speaker 1: you know, majority of people when tennis got its start,
Speaker 1: it was just like, oh well I don't have to work.
Speaker 1: I just get to participate in this fun leisure activity.
Speaker 1: But for someone like or Washington, she had to work.
Speaker 1: She had to support herself through domestic service. So there
Speaker 1: is a definite diversity and experience that we're getting around
Speaker 1: this time too well. And you see a similar kind
Speaker 1: of socioeconomic diversity being brought to the table as well
Speaker 1: with Althea Gibson, who is probably the name is probably
Speaker 1: familiar to a lot of listeners, but she still had
Speaker 1: struggles of her own because also at the time when
Speaker 1: she was breaking all these records in the nineteen forties
Speaker 1: and in particularly the nineteen fifties, Uh, she still had
Speaker 1: to supplement her incomes in some ways. She actually started
Speaker 1: playing golf for a little bit during the tennis off
Speaker 1: season because it wasn't like, you know, Nike could come
Speaker 1: along and sponsor her like they could today. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: so in in nineteen forty seven, Althea Gibson won the
Speaker 1: first of ten consecutive American Tennis Association National championships. She
Speaker 1: went on to break multiple color barriers in the sport,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that she was a little uncomfortable playing
Speaker 1: such a significant, front page stage left role. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: she she talked about that about how she wanted to
Speaker 1: just play for herself, and I can only imagine that
Speaker 1: if you are on a tennis court competing against someone else,
Speaker 1: there's all that pressure in the moment of going to
Speaker 1: win that match. But then on top of that, she
Speaker 1: I think felt sometimes like she had the weight of
Speaker 1: her entire race on her shoulders when she was on
Speaker 1: the court. But nonetheless, she still went on to be
Speaker 1: such a trailblazer because in nifties, she became the first
Speaker 1: African American to play in a major United States Lawn
Speaker 1: Tennis Association event at the US Nationals, and her case
Speaker 1: was helped by white tennis player Alice Marble, who was
Speaker 1: one of the top tennis players at the time. Because people,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of people didn't want to let
Speaker 1: Althea Gibson play because the place where they were playing
Speaker 1: was segregated and she would have to bring a color
Speaker 1: line and people were really uncomfortable with that. But Marble
Speaker 1: wrote this public letter saying, you know what, I want
Speaker 1: to see how good I really am, and if she's
Speaker 1: one of the best athletes in the US, then we
Speaker 1: should compete against each other and then althe beater, which
Speaker 1: is great. Well um. A year later, in ninetift one,
Speaker 1: Gibson became the first black player ever to compete at Wimbledon,
Speaker 1: and she goes on to be the first in many things.
Speaker 1: In nifty six, she was the first black person to
Speaker 1: win the French Championships, and in nine seven she was
Speaker 1: the first black person to win Wimbledon and the US Open,
Speaker 1: and she was voted the Female Athlete of the Year
Speaker 1: by the Associated Press and Notice we're saying black person
Speaker 1: because she was the first male or female player of
Speaker 1: color to do this, and she's sort of known for
Speaker 1: for breaking those color lines, breaking down barriers for other players.
Speaker 1: But as we'll get into in a little while, I mean,
Speaker 1: when you talk about players like Arthur Ashe or the
Speaker 1: Williams sisters, there's really not that many other people of
Speaker 1: color playing tennis. There's still a lot of barriers there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's still a predominantly white sport. But when
Speaker 1: it comes to women's tennis, it has been a standout
Speaker 1: among other professional sports in terms of how women have
Speaker 1: really been able to pave their own way and also
Speaker 1: have ripple effects into social changes within the broader population
Speaker 1: um and a lot of that was led by Billy
Speaker 1: Jean King and the other quote unquote Original nine players
Speaker 1: who started up the Women's Tennis Association in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: and protest of male tennis players getting paid so much
Speaker 1: more for wins, because, for instance, in nineteen seventy, Billy
Speaker 1: Jean King received six hundred dollars for winning the Italian
Speaker 1: Open while the men's champion earned right and a lot
Speaker 1: of these players, a lot of the Original Nine had
Speaker 1: a lot of junk to deal with from you know,
Speaker 1: there were some Australian players who were not allowed to
Speaker 1: play for their country anymore. There was like this huge
Speaker 1: upheaval about you're you're just gonna leave and like start
Speaker 1: a girl's only club. Well, that's not fair. We don't
Speaker 1: want you then, to which they were like, no, but
Speaker 1: see what you're doing isn't fair. So we're going to
Speaker 1: start our own thing. And it's worth noting too that
Speaker 1: this is within the context of Title nine being passed
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two, so there is a lot of
Speaker 1: attention being focused during this time in the early seventies
Speaker 1: on women in sports. Yeah, and their efforts certainly paid off.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy three, they did start the Women's Tennis
Speaker 1: Association Tour. In the same year, the US Open started
Speaker 1: offering equal purses to both men and women, and for
Speaker 1: people unfamiliar with the tournament system, purses means prize. My
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I thought it meant that
Speaker 1: people got highly decorated purses, and I still wanted one,
Speaker 1: But I wondered in my child brain, what would guy
Speaker 1: do with that? Maybe he would keep his tennis balls
Speaker 1: in there? Yes, his his tennis balls. Tennis balls. Um.
Speaker 1: Same year nine, big year for gender issues and tennis.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you, because that is the year that
Speaker 1: Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs faced off at the
Speaker 1: Houston Astrodome in the famed Battle of the Sexes. King
Speaker 1: was just twenty nine and had just won Wimbledon. She's
Speaker 1: a champ. Meanwhile, Riggs was fifty five years old and
Speaker 1: had just beaten Margaret Court, the world's number one women's
Speaker 1: tennis player, in what was called the Mother's Day Massacre. Yeah. Essentially,
Speaker 1: he was doing these exhibition matches against women as part
Speaker 1: of his public persona of being this outspoken ovanist. He
Speaker 1: I mean, he called himself a chauvinist pig. He he
Speaker 1: thought it was like really funny and needed to make
Speaker 1: some cash, and so these kinds of exhibition matches were
Speaker 1: away for him to make some money, and he had
Speaker 1: beaten Court. But the thing is leading up to this
Speaker 1: tennis match, as Billy Jane King, of course, his training
Speaker 1: and watching videos of Rigs and like making sure that
Speaker 1: she can beat him because this means a lot to
Speaker 1: her because she's an outspoken feminist at the time, and
Speaker 1: this is really being built up into something that has
Speaker 1: a much broader social significance beyond the tennis court. But
Speaker 1: Riggs was doing pretty much nothing to train because he
Speaker 1: had beaten Court and he just assumed that he would
Speaker 1: similarly beat Billy Jean King. But that is not what happened,
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen. Uh. The l A. Harold Examiner headline
Speaker 1: the day after the match was pigs are dead, long
Speaker 1: live the King Billy Jane King one. In other words, yeah,
Speaker 1: she won. And while there are still to this day
Speaker 1: lots of questions about the Battle of the Sexes, a
Speaker 1: lot of angry people asserted that Riggs through the match
Speaker 1: from money. Billy Jane King says, that's ridiculous. She saw
Speaker 1: it in his eyes that he had lost and that
Speaker 1: he knew he was losing and he didn't want to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean she was. She was basically saying, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody chokes at some point, and it was just clear
Speaker 1: on the court that he choked. But he also choked
Speaker 1: in front of the largest tennis audience ever. It was
Speaker 1: held at the freaking Astrodome, like it was held on
Speaker 1: a genormous on a genormous stage, and that event is
Speaker 1: such a time capsule. When you read all of the
Speaker 1: ways that it was being framed, and he even was
Speaker 1: brought into the tennis match, it was very hammy the
Speaker 1: whole thing. He was brought in wearing a Sugar Daddy
Speaker 1: rand jacket. You know, they can't the Sugar Daddy Candy
Speaker 1: sponsored him, and so he was wearing the Sugar Daddy
Speaker 1: jacket and had these you know, bucks, some babes escorting
Speaker 1: him out. Meanwhile, Billy Jane King came out. I forget
Speaker 1: who her sponsor was, but it was something similarly pro
Speaker 1: woman and she should have been sponsored by Ortho Tricycline,
Speaker 1: but she was brought out um by a bunch of
Speaker 1: hulking dudes. And it was this entire spectacle. But it
Speaker 1: made a huge difference to a lot of both girls
Speaker 1: and boys watching tennis that day, just to see a
Speaker 1: woman beating Bobby Riggs. Yeah, and King talks about how
Speaker 1: you know, she knows that it made a difference to
Speaker 1: two boys and men also because she has a lot
Speaker 1: of guys come up to her still and say, you know,
Speaker 1: I watched that, and now my daughter is a tennis
Speaker 1: player and all this stuff, and so it really made
Speaker 1: huge waves throughout the whole, not just the tennis community,
Speaker 1: but really American society. Well. In speaking of making huge waves,
Speaker 1: this is also a time where women's tennis was a
Speaker 1: very early platform for LGBT visibility. There was a great
Speaker 1: quote in the book Love Game by Elizabeth Wilson, which
Speaker 1: is about tennis, um, which goes in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: all the feminists followed tennis because of Martina Navratalova. It
Speaker 1: was a lesbian thing and um, this was in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. That was before Navratalova officially came out, but
Speaker 1: both she and Billy Jean King came out publicly in
Speaker 1: ninety one, although King, who was actually married at the time,
Speaker 1: was sort of forced out of the closet by her
Speaker 1: former secretary, who I guess she had had a relationship with,
Speaker 1: or the secretary alleged she had had a relationship with
Speaker 1: and there was a Palimoni suit that kind of forced
Speaker 1: King out of the closet. But then later that year,
Speaker 1: Navratalova came out on her own terms well, which is
Speaker 1: pretty innate. It's prety amazing that she came out on
Speaker 1: her own terms after what happened to King, because I mean,
Speaker 1: she was forced out of the closet, and that's bad enough,
Speaker 1: but then she proceeds to lose all of her her deals,
Speaker 1: her endorsements, her support, and so she was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about retiring or you know, stopping playing tennis,
Speaker 1: but all of a sudden, I can't because i have
Speaker 1: no more additional funds coming in. I've got to keep
Speaker 1: playing tennis. And you know, it was really hard for
Speaker 1: her and her family, her parents, she's described as homophobic,
Speaker 1: but she talks about how society large was homophobic at
Speaker 1: the time, and she said even a lot of LGBT
Speaker 1: people were themselves homophobic at the time, and so it
Speaker 1: was incredibly difficult for her, as a very public athlete,
Speaker 1: to be forced out of the closet like that. So
Speaker 1: it's even that much more impressive than avratilovitchose to come
Speaker 1: out on her own terms after that. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: wonder if that was almost a bit of solidarity with King,
Speaker 1: because another layer on top of that, too is that
Speaker 1: Billy Jean King had been so closely aligned as well
Speaker 1: with the second wave feminist movement that had its own
Speaker 1: troubled relationship with lesbians. There was a lot of fear
Speaker 1: within those circles that if they aligned with lesbians too
Speaker 1: closely then that would only you know, confirm the very
Speaker 1: you know, sexist, misogynistic stereotype at all feminists are just
Speaker 1: man hating lesbians and they're like, well, we don't need
Speaker 1: that for our PR team. So there was clearly a
Speaker 1: lot of conflict going on within King in this whole process.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I just wonder, um uh, it's good in
Speaker 1: that way then that Navratalova came out because I think
Speaker 1: it probably helped move that pushed that momentum forward instead
Speaker 1: of leaving it stalled in this more controversial coming out
Speaker 1: that King experienced. Yeah, and you know, we talked about
Speaker 1: pay earlier, and if we're if we circle back and
Speaker 1: look at that issue today, after all of these women
Speaker 1: like Billy Jan King and Navratalova have you know, been
Speaker 1: public faces of women's rights and huge the stars, surely
Speaker 1: like that must mean that all women and men are
Speaker 1: getting equal pay in tennis, right, Yeah, no, not that
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily the case. Um. And and this is
Speaker 1: despite the fact that beyond you know, King, Navratalova, the
Speaker 1: original nine et cetera. Through the late eighties and forward.
Speaker 1: We have Jennifer Capriotti, Stephie Graft, the Williams Sisters, Lindsay Davenport,
Speaker 1: Martina Hingis, Monica Sellis, Martina Charapova, all of these names.
Speaker 1: We could keep ongoing, all these women who have clearly
Speaker 1: cemented women's tennis as a world class professional sport, and
Speaker 1: yet there is still a lingering gender gap. And speaking
Speaker 1: of Wimbledon, why is it that women just play three
Speaker 1: sets whereas men play five because they're playing a little
Speaker 1: bit of pet ball. It's just the pet ball, just
Speaker 1: a little bit of the pet ball over the net.
Speaker 1: That women are are athletes, guys, and and she'll probably
Speaker 1: just play five. That's just like the guys do. Although
Speaker 1: you know what, if I was out on a tennis
Speaker 1: court right now, I'd probably be like three. Fine, Well,
Speaker 1: it's very humid here today in Atlanta. I will to
Speaker 1: give you that. Um. But yeah, so this whole issue
Speaker 1: of of equal pay and equal time spent broadcasting women's
Speaker 1: tennis is definitely still an issue, even though, as we've
Speaker 1: talked about, it is definitely a sport where women on
Speaker 1: are on a more equal footing with their male counterparts. UM.
Speaker 1: Back in about sixty female professional players signed a petition
Speaker 1: to the Women's Tennis Association for equal Grand Slam prize money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then in two thousand seven, Wimbledon finally caved and
Speaker 1: became the last major to offer equal prize money. So
Speaker 1: now all the Grand Slams have equal purses for men
Speaker 1: and women, but that's often not the case at a
Speaker 1: lot of lower profile events. And for you know, considering
Speaker 1: the fact that a majority of tennis players are not
Speaker 1: Venus and Serena Williams making money hand over fist, there's
Speaker 1: actually quite a pay gap when you look at tennis
Speaker 1: on the whole. Right, there was a study called Advantage Men,
Speaker 1: the Sex Pay Gap in Professional Tennis that found that
Speaker 1: female professional tennis players earned twenty three point four percent
Speaker 1: less than their male counterparts. And then when you take
Speaker 1: in the issue of like women earning less than their
Speaker 1: male counterparts and having to support themselves, it's it's a
Speaker 1: really awful situation. Yeah, it can. It can definitely be
Speaker 1: tough out there for a not a list tennis player
Speaker 1: if you're trying to make a living out of it. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's this question too with the the athleticism,
Speaker 1: the question of why in Grand Slams, women play those
Speaker 1: three sets as opposed to five, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people say this is really um kind of harkening back
Speaker 1: to the Victorian era of ten It's because when it started,
Speaker 1: it was under the the idea that women simply could
Speaker 1: not withstand playing tennis for that long, when clearly these
Speaker 1: world class players can absolutely do that. So some are
Speaker 1: arguing that it should also be evened out to where
Speaker 1: women also play five sets, sort of drive home that
Speaker 1: point that these are two groups of equally trained and
Speaker 1: equally competent and talented athletes, right, because the whole three
Speaker 1: set thing is often used as an argument to not
Speaker 1: pay women the same amount and prize money because it's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: they don't even play as much as men. Date. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost like calling them the opener, you know, at
Speaker 1: a at a at a Rock and Rule show, Caroline.
Speaker 1: And another gender gap pointed out by the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal is in tennis officiating. If you look at the umpires,
Speaker 1: only twenty two percent of the bronze level and above
Speaker 1: chair umpires are women. And this might this probably isn't
Speaker 1: because they're trying to keep women out. It might be
Speaker 1: for lack of interest. Oregon, lack of visibility. I have
Speaker 1: no idea, though I'm not in the tennis world. I
Speaker 1: don't know if being a cheer umpire is a position
Speaker 1: that people really grapple for. I know though that umpires,
Speaker 1: for instance, in baseball, make a lot of money, as
Speaker 1: you referees in the NFL. Right. Well, one woman they
Speaker 1: interviewed who was training to be one of these chair
Speaker 1: umpires said she's basically like, well, I don't know why
Speaker 1: more women aren't interested in this, you know, but maybe
Speaker 1: it's because women don't want to get yelled at, oh,
Speaker 1: by tennis players and coaches, by by the tennis players
Speaker 1: and coaches, also by the audience. Yeah, that definitely seems
Speaker 1: like a downside of the job. But that's whether you're
Speaker 1: a man or a woman. Um. But when it comes
Speaker 1: to to how these a list female tennis players are
Speaker 1: more broadly publicized, how we talk about them. Um. There's
Speaker 1: also this interesting term called big babe tennis that was
Speaker 1: coined by Mary Carrillo that some think is oh, well,
Speaker 1: it's just sort of it describes the style of tennis
Speaker 1: today where you have these larger, muscular, athletic women who
Speaker 1: play really powerful tennis. But apparently they're also babes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean that that's an issue a lot of
Speaker 1: people have have had a problem with because you know,
Speaker 1: they're just their athletes. Talk about them. You you don't
Speaker 1: call the guys like stud muffins, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: although you could, you could, but I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's this whole idea that women aren't allowed to just
Speaker 1: be athletes. They also have to be sexy. They've got
Speaker 1: to be babes on the court. Yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: that's something though that when you look at women in
Speaker 1: sports in general, if you just google image like a
Speaker 1: female athlete, a lot of times it ends up being
Speaker 1: like sexy pin up kinds of photos, which you don't
Speaker 1: see quite so much with men. I feel like that's
Speaker 1: not so much a problem for tennis, but more how
Speaker 1: we I guess I don't want to grasp just women
Speaker 1: women as athletes. There always needs to be this sort
Speaker 1: of sexualizing that happens. Well. Speaking of that, people are
Speaker 1: trying to tell women that they can't grunt on the
Speaker 1: court when they hit the ball. Okay, yeah, I read
Speaker 1: about this, Caroline, how the Women's Tennis Association in fact
Speaker 1: is trying to tamp down on female grunting on court,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to demonstrate what that is on
Speaker 1: Mike because I don't want all of our podcast listeners
Speaker 1: to have get a get a case of tonitus from that.
Speaker 1: But I will say when I play Caroline, one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things to do is grunt. It feels so
Speaker 1: good when you hit the ball and make contact. Hopefully
Speaker 1: in my case you can never know and get out
Speaker 1: a good grunt. I feel like it helps. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people would argue that it is
Speaker 1: a physiological thing that it does help people men and
Speaker 1: women propel the ball, have that burst of energy and
Speaker 1: act and other people say, oh, they're just out there
Speaker 1: screaming like crazy women trying to distract their opponent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there might be a tactical benefit to it, because
Speaker 1: if you grunt at the same time, it uh sort
Speaker 1: of masks the sound of where on the rack at
Speaker 1: the tennis ball hit, which if you are a seasoned player,
Speaker 1: will tell you where the ball is going to go,
Speaker 1: whereas if you're me, I'm going to be running like
Speaker 1: a crazy person from side to side anyway, because I
Speaker 1: have no idea, but the tone, the tone of the
Speaker 1: discussion about women's grunting is very gross to me because
Speaker 1: and I don't mean gross like, I just mean that
Speaker 1: it's it's distressing because everybody seems to be like women
Speaker 1: making noises they might also make when doing something like
Speaker 1: in the bedroom or giving birth to a child from
Speaker 1: their vaginas, like, oh, well, that's grows. No. Men grunting
Speaker 1: is okay, that's like, that's not a sexual thing. I
Speaker 1: don't have a problem with that, But women grunting I
Speaker 1: have a problem with that. Do you think, though, I
Speaker 1: will give the Women's Tennis Association, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: they this conversation came up in two thousand twelve, and
Speaker 1: they were going to actually come up with almost a
Speaker 1: grunt ometer that measured the sound of a player's grunt
Speaker 1: and if she kind of got out of control, then
Speaker 1: they would maybe find her for it. I think it's
Speaker 1: a pretty undisputed fact though, that female tennis players probably
Speaker 1: grunt more than male tennis players. But it might still
Speaker 1: be that physiological aspect of it, when it comes to
Speaker 1: sex differences and upper body's strength. Maybe the grunting that
Speaker 1: women I'm now like for people, for people listening, I'm
Speaker 1: now making air tennis racket movements with my arms. Um,
Speaker 1: but perhaps the grunting sort of makes up perhaps for
Speaker 1: differences in our upper body strength. It gives us a
Speaker 1: little bit more muscle, a little bit more heft. Well,
Speaker 1: I watched a YouTube clip of one of the Williams
Speaker 1: sisters playing against a Sharapova, and so you've got Sharapova
Speaker 1: screaming and you've got Williams like grunting, and it's just
Speaker 1: you're like wow, because a lot of people do say that. Okay, no,
Speaker 1: I don't care if it's a woman or a man.
Speaker 1: It's just plain distracting for the fans. But who cares though,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're not playing, Who cares? Yeah, I think Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of a lot of debate about
Speaker 1: it with some Um I think it was Billy gene
Speaker 1: King actually who was a little ambivalent, but she definitely
Speaker 1: wasn't she wasn't staunchly against it. She thought, well, you
Speaker 1: know what, if if this will, if this will move
Speaker 1: women's tennis forward, then okay, let's do it. Let's cut
Speaker 1: down on the grunting. Yeah, but a lot of people
Speaker 1: are you know, the pitch they say that, you know,
Speaker 1: women just have a higher pitch and that is grading
Speaker 1: on the average tennis viewer. Well, that's when it gets
Speaker 1: to circles back around too. Well, now you're just being
Speaker 1: rude about our voices. This is just how we talk
Speaker 1: slash slash uh scream sometimes. Well, so you know I
Speaker 1: mentioned before our our mid role break that you have
Speaker 1: a woman like Althea Gibson who broke down a lot
Speaker 1: of color barriers in the sport and a lot of
Speaker 1: barriers for women. Um, but that there was not this
Speaker 1: huge flood of people of color of women of color
Speaker 1: after her. So obviously there are still these barriers today.
Speaker 1: And so I mean, looking forward, I mean I hope
Speaker 1: that we see more diversity coming up in tennis. Well,
Speaker 1: I think tennis is a challenge has a challenging barrier
Speaker 1: of entry because unlike say a team sport like football,
Speaker 1: where a kid from a lower socio economic background can
Speaker 1: maybe hop on a team at school, Um, tennis I
Speaker 1: think is a little more isolated. And I mean if
Speaker 1: you look at Serena and Venus Williams, so we really
Speaker 1: I mean we could have done an entire podcast just
Speaker 1: on them. Mean they trained for six plus hours a day,
Speaker 1: I mean they were I mean, and it was their
Speaker 1: father's intention to raise two world class tennis players, and
Speaker 1: it takes so much time and a lot of resources.
Speaker 1: And I mean the Williams sisters did not grow up
Speaker 1: wealthy at all. But it took a father who almost
Speaker 1: like Tiger Woods as father who trained those kids from
Speaker 1: I mean they were I think five and six years
Speaker 1: old when they started playing up until now to be
Speaker 1: who they are. Yeah, So it still seems like their
Speaker 1: race aside, it does still seem like there is a
Speaker 1: socio economic barrier a lot of the time to getting
Speaker 1: involved in this competitive tennis because you know, the Williams sisters,
Speaker 1: they all moved to Florida to train at a really
Speaker 1: elite tennis school in Florida. Like who who can do that?
Speaker 1: Not everybody can do that well. And even today, if
Speaker 1: you think about the fancier suburban neighborhoods, they're the one
Speaker 1: with tennis courts in the pool and they have access
Speaker 1: to that, whereas it can be a lot harder. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have there there's actually a public tennis court near me,
Speaker 1: but it's usually locked up and the nets you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes up, sometimes down. I mean a lot of times
Speaker 1: you know, those those more accessible resources aren't always kept
Speaker 1: up so well. Yeah, but what is interesting to see,
Speaker 1: um with this progression of tennis is that today if
Speaker 1: you look at the top two female tennis players in
Speaker 1: the world, it's two women of color. It's Serena Williams
Speaker 1: at number one and Lena at number two. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's I think tennis is such a and
Speaker 1: we've said this, but I mean, I think tennis is
Speaker 1: such an interesting example for our girls coming up behind
Speaker 1: us because it does have this history of gender equality.
Speaker 1: Might be too strong to say, but I mean of
Speaker 1: letting women in, of not keeping them out, and these
Speaker 1: these incredible names in African American tennis, these incredible women
Speaker 1: who made names for themselves and breakdown barriers in that
Speaker 1: regard to Yeah, I mean, when it comes to sports,
Speaker 1: tennis usually is cited as the standout in terms of
Speaker 1: gender equity. But it's also because women fought for it.
Speaker 1: You know, they formed the Women's Tennis Association, they demanded
Speaker 1: equal purses and so far they've gotten it, which is
Speaker 1: pretty incredible too. So now we want to hear from
Speaker 1: folks out there. Are there any tennis fans listening? Tennis players,
Speaker 1: who's your favorite tennis player. Let us know all of
Speaker 1: your tennis and Wimbledon thoughts. Mom Stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com is where you can email us. You
Speaker 1: can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast or messages
Speaker 1: on Facebook, and we have a couple of messages to
Speaker 1: share with you right now. Okay, Well, I have a
Speaker 1: letter here from Kara about our Women in Animation episode.
Speaker 1: She says, I recently started looking at GRAB schools for animation,
Speaker 1: and I've only gotten a chance to tour one of
Speaker 1: them so far. My boyfriend went with me to the school,
Speaker 1: and when we were there, we were introduced to many
Speaker 1: of the staff, all men. Every time we met a
Speaker 1: new staff member, they consistently started talking to my boyfriend
Speaker 1: about the program, not me. When they saw that I
Speaker 1: was the one responding and asking questions, they stopped talking
Speaker 1: and asked which one of us was planning on attending.
Speaker 1: At the end of the tour, the woman that was
Speaker 1: showing us around, an administrator not an artist, apologized to
Speaker 1: me and told me that the classes are eighty five
Speaker 1: percent male, so no one would assume that I was
Speaker 1: the one applying. She seemed a little sad that it
Speaker 1: was so male dominated and encouraged me to apply to
Speaker 1: help women get into the business just a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Just one of the many times I've experienced a gender
Speaker 1: gap in art recently. Uh, Kara, I'm sorry about that experience,
Speaker 1: but good for you forgetting an animation that's really cool. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: I've got one here from Joanna about our episode on imagination,
Speaker 1: and she writes, I do still at one spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time daydreaming, slash imagining, slash telling myself stories
Speaker 1: in my head, but they're nowhere near as vivid and
Speaker 1: almost physical as the ones I had when I was
Speaker 1: a kid. I was an avid lover of horses from
Speaker 1: an early age, and spent a lot of time pretending
Speaker 1: to have a horse or be a horse with friends
Speaker 1: or alone. And it's crazy how real it was. It
Speaker 1: was probably partly because I was regularly riding horses and
Speaker 1: interacting with horses, but still, when I was galloping around
Speaker 1: in the forest or on our lawn, it was so
Speaker 1: much like being on an actual horse, or even being
Speaker 1: a horse. And oh the horses I imagined I had,
Speaker 1: and how I loved them. And Joanna, I can only
Speaker 1: recommend that you head over to stuff I've never told
Speaker 1: you dot com and search for the video why Girls
Speaker 1: Love Horses. There's also a podcast on it and you're
Speaker 1: gonna love it. If you love horses that much, then
Speaker 1: we have a video and a podcast for you, and
Speaker 1: also for all of our other listeners as well. If
Speaker 1: you want to email us, you can write us Mom
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com. You can also
Speaker 1: find links to again all of our videos, podcasts, and
Speaker 1: blogs at stuff mom Never Told You dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
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