Serena Williams is showcasing her strength, beauty, and baby bump on the cover of Vanity Fair, a recreation of Demi Moore’s “culture-jolting” 1991 VF cover. Her glowingly-visible comfort in her skin and pride in herself and her unborn baby make her even more of a badass female role model, especially because she’s had more than her fair share of people talking shit. From Romanian tennis player Ilie Natase, nicknamed “Nasty” for his on-court attitude in the ’70s, spewing racist rhetoric about the skin color of Serena’s unborn child with fiance and Reddit co-founder, Alexis Ohanan, to sexist statements from John McEnroe just last Sunday claiming that the 23-time Grand Slam champion would be ranked “like 700 in the world” if she played on the men’s tour, Serena has been a target for vitriol since the beginning of her career.
Yet, she continues to slay both on and off the court and makes it a point to call the fuckers out with grace. She responded to Natase saying (among many other words of wisdom), “It disappoints me to know we live in a society where people like Ilie Natase can make such racist comments towards myself and unborn child, and sexist comments against my peers. . . This or anything else will not stop me from pouring love, light, and positivity into everything that I do. I will continue to stand up for what is right.” And McEnroe got served with a couple of tweets last night.
Because, “factually,” Serena is the best tennis player in history, and Vanity Fair has the stats to prove it with an aggregrate 85.76 winning percentage, 72 victories on the Women’s Tennis Association Tour with 23 Grand Slam victories, and 14 doubles finals with sister Venus. She’s a fierce contender for best athlete of her time and told Vanity Fair, “If I were a man, then it wouldn’t be any sort of question.” Plus, this queen is raking in the paper with $84,463,131 in total prize money and nearly double that from endorsements and appearances.
If Serena and Alexis would like to adopt a 26-yr-old, I’m calling dibs. But my competition is steep – Serena found out she was pregnant last January at the Australian Open after a friend suggested she take a pregnancy test following Serena’s disappointment with a match (after which she hit the practice courts and an estimated 5,000 backhands over the next two days) and increasingly growing tittays. She broke to news her fiance, Ohanan, with a bag of 6 positive pregnancies tests (because can you really trust 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5?) and went on to win the Australian Open (all seven matches, bitch) with a 7-to-8-week-old fetus hanging out in her uterus. Meanwhile, the rest of us are using food babies as an excuse to lay around.
Now, Serena is 6 months pregnant, and the tennis superstar has no doubt that she can have it all – she’ll be back on the pro tennis circuit in January, telling Vanity Fair, “I don’t think my story is over yet.” Here at BUST, we’re ready for her next chapter.
Photo: August 2017 cover of Vanity Fair; screenshot from @serenawilliams Twitter
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