Let’s play a quick game. Two tennis stars and two post-match questions from the Australian Open last night. Your job is to match the question to the player.
The players are Rafael Nadal and seventh-seed Eugenie Bouchard. These are the questions:
“Can you give us a twirl and tell us about your outfit?”
“There have been some truly momentous moments on this court and yours tonight would be among the most courageous. Congratulations.”
Do you need a moment longer to make up your mind? I didn’t think so.
The Channel 7 commentator asked Nadal, sadly I mean Bouchard, to twirl because Serena Williams had been “kind enough” to do it the night before.
After the commentator clarifies he means “pirouette” Bouchard complies but she is visibly embarrassed and afterwards in her post-match interview explains why.
“I don’t know, an old guy asking you to twirl. It was funny,” she reportedly said.
I do know. An old guy asking a top female athlete “to twirl” isn’t funny. It’s ridiculous and blatantly sexist. The fact is no male athlete would ever be asked to do the same. Eugenie Bouchard is entitled to expect that her post-match interviews will focus on her match, in the same way that Nadal and every other professional player is entitled to expect the same.
What female tennis players wear is the subject of much discussion and focus. That Bouchard herself used social media to compliment Serena Williams on her outfit the night before does not render the Channel 7 commentator’s request reasonable.
There is a substantial difference between players themselves complimenting one another, and a commentator making a player’s outfit the first matter referred to in a post-match interview.
Whether it’s intentional or not, it belittles Bouchard’s game, which at an international grand slam event like the Australian Open ought to rank pretty highly, and reinforces the notion that what women wear and how women look is, above all, what matters. It’s not.
But footage like this makes it pretty clear that for lots of people it is.