As the second leg of Beyonce's Formation tour comes to an end Ms. Carter brought out a number of special guests including highly esteemed tennis player Serena Williams. While glancing through Facebook and Instagram pages that displayed the pictures from the event I noticed a number of negative comments concerning Serena's body and lack of clothing. Men and women alike spoke highly of Serena only to criticize her for failing to be the role model that they wanted her to be.
By failing to cover up every inch of her body they derived a number of nasty statements in which some assumed that Serena didn't have any respect for herself and coming to America has caused her to lose all her morals. Despite the presence of all these cynics I admire Serena's self confidence and the way that she has chosen to respond to her naysayers. Serena was recently given the opportunity to headline Fader magazine and in doing so she addressed the comments coming from those that spoke against her choice to bare some of her clothing in the interest of promoting body positivity. She speaks of being uncomfortable with her body for many years and finally coming to the conclusion that she was perfect as is.
While I am a big believer in being your own role model and allowing everyone to live their lives as they please I definitely salute Serena for coming out and using her platform as a way to show girls that regardless of what their outer exterior looks like it is more important to be at peace with yourself than to constantly try to meet those standards that the world tries to force everyone to adhere to. Amongst the comments people also made mention of the fact that Serena made a major switch up in terms of her persona in the eye of the media and some argued that she needed to adopt a more modest state of being to make herself "more appealing to men" and to make her "a better role model for younger girls". Growth is a hell of a thing and Serena is not denying herself the right to bask in her own livelihood, a trait that I think is admirable for individuals everywhere regardless of gender. Moreover, this whole ideal that women should be training themselves to meet the image of a domesticated creature that is without autonomy is tired and played out. I've seldom hear of people promoting the idea that males should be preparing themselves to attend to the needs of a woman outside of a solely financial setting.
Too bad we live in a world where presidential candidates or human beings rather are being permitted to say that they can grab the crotch of a woman without fearing police involvement or criticism outside of "lewd speech". In fact, rapists from ivy league schools have a heightened status that allows them a pardon or significantly reduced sentence for committing a crime that would have landed the common civilian a sentence in jail for at minimum a decade. All in all whether it be dated expectations of the role of a woman or laws/ officers of the law that fail to protect us as they should there is much work to be done in America.
