Dreams and Mirrors

On July 7^th 2013, in front of a packed crowd at Centre Court and with the eyes of a million people on her, Marion Bartoli was living her dream. After battling injuries and suffering first round defeats in the months leading up to the Wimbledon, the 28 year old bounced back by winning what is largely acknowledged as the most prestigious tennis tournament in the world. Yet, the focus of the world was not on her remarkable victory. Instead, the attention of everyone that follows tennis, and even those that don’t, was riveted by a fierce debate about a mundane aspect of her personality – her looks.

BBC commentator John Inverdale said ‘Do you think Bartoli's dad told her when she was little: 'You're never going to be a looker, you'll never be a Sharapova, so you have to be scrappy and fight'? In that one moment, Inverdale succeeded in doing two things. One, he brought to fore what many tennis fans were discussing in the privacy of their homes  – the fact that Bartoli cannot be an archetypal Wimbledon champion because she is not conventionally pretty. And two, he effectively reminded us that however successful a woman may be in her chosen field, her success will always be undermined if she does not have the looks to go with it.

Women’s tennis over the years has increasingly come to be defined by a certain ‘glamourisation’ of the sport. The players are expected to look their best and expected to introduce new fashion trends on court. The media coverage of most women’s tournaments is invariable always accompanied by glamorous shots of tennis players in various poses. The WTA is itself implicated in this stereotyping of women tennis players. The ‘Strong is Beautiful’ campaign features women tennis players showcasing their ‘strength’ not by representing how well they play tennis, but instead by wearing glamorous dresses. In such a scenario, to blame Inverdale for his insensitivity is largely missing the point. Inverdale is not a one off case, but a manifestation of a larger mindset that is trained to evaluate the talent of a woman on the basis of her looks. Bartoli cannot be a Wimbledon champion because she is not tall, blonde or slim. She is ‘fat and ugly’, as the Twitter trolls termed her, and so what does it matter how well she plays?

 But there is a larger question that needs to be probed here that goes beyond Bartoli’s looks and Inverdale’s prejudices. And that is the question of the overwhelming role that ‘looks’ play in our lives – whether as a student, a working professional or a Wimbledon champion. Why are notions of beauty and looks so central to our notions of success? Why do I need to conform to a certain beauty type to be considered good at what I do, even if it is something unrelated to like writing or playing tennis? Jhumpa Lahiri, the celebrated writer, has time and again ‘topped’ lists that proclaim her to be a ‘thinking man’s sex symbol.’ But why does she need to be reduced to a sex symbol for us to appreciate her ethereal writing? She is a brilliant writer and effectively articulates the complex issues of dislocation and identity in non-resident Indians, but to a generation of people she would be introduced as the ‘intelligent sex symbol.’ Why don’t we declare Khaled Hosseini to be a sex symbol and reduce his achievements to just the fact that he looks good? Why Andy Murray’s inspiration to excel isn’t attributed to the fact that he is not much of a ‘looker’?

But reversing the looking glass is not the solution, if we can talk about solutions. To look at men through similar notions of beauty and subject those to the female gaze will only seek to reinforce the ideology that drove Inverdale to compare Bartoli to Maria Sharapova. We need to attempt as a society to reevaluate the way we look at individuals and relook at the inherently internalized notions of beauty that is present in our culture. The question is not why Bartoli was criticized for her looks. The question is why wasn’t she celebrated for her astounding victory?  As Bartoli retorted with an impish grin in the press conference after the final, ‘It doesn't matter, honestly. I am not blonde, yes. Have I dreamt about having a model contract? No. I'm sorry. But have I dreamed about winning Wimbledon? Absolutely, yes.’ Maybe it is time to discard the looking glass through which we have judged so many people through so many years. Maybe we need to look at people for who they are, and look at victories for what they are – a happy smile and a completion of a long lost dream.