0:03

Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told

0:05

You from House Supports dot Com.

0:12

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen

0:14

and I'm Caroline and Caroline Windledon's

0:16

season is upon us. Yes,

0:20

the tennis tournament of

0:22

all tennis tournaments taking placed

0:25

June, and

0:27

we figured, Hey, you know what we haven't talked

0:29

about before on the podcast tennis,

0:32

Women in Tennis, Women in Tennis,

0:34

And there is so much to talk about when it

0:36

comes to women in tennis. And I

0:38

will say that, unlike I feel like a lot

0:40

of the sports topics we've covered on

0:43

Stuff Mom Never Told You that usually

0:45

goes along the lines of, well, men started

0:48

playing this sport, and then eight

0:50

thousand years later, some

0:52

doctors decided that women's uteruses

0:54

wouldn't explode, and so women started playing

0:57

tennis. Is an exception, though perhaps

0:59

because us of it's

1:01

more uppercrust, country

1:04

club esque roots. Uh

1:06

So, let's dive in a little bit

1:09

to the history of how

1:11

tennis started and when

1:13

women started playing it. Yeah,

1:16

in eighteen seventy three, a man

1:19

with a name that sounds like straight

1:21

out of a Dickens novel, British major

1:23

Walter Clopton Wingfield,

1:26

patented a tennis like game

1:29

with an hourglass shaped court called

1:31

sporisticy maybe I'm pronouncing

1:33

that correctly, which is Greek for

1:36

quote playing at ball. And he's

1:38

often cited as the inventor

1:40

of tennis the way we think about

1:42

it today. Yeah, but there have been tennis like games

1:45

that have been going on for centuries

1:48

even before that. Um. Some trace

1:50

it back to a thirteenth century

1:52

French nobility game called

1:55

jude Palm or game of the Palm,

1:57

because humans apparently really enjoy

2:00

hitting balls with paddles, and

2:02

we've just been doing that for a very

2:04

long time. But it was really with Clopton

2:06

Wingfield that tennis got off

2:09

the ground. Um Well.

2:11

So then in the following year, in eighteen seventy four,

2:13

you have Marry you Ing outer Bridge of

2:15

Staten Island who introduced

2:17

tennis to the United States. She

2:19

went all the way to Bermuda and purchased

2:21

equipment to use to set up the first

2:24

tennis court on the island. And three years

2:26

later, speaking of Wimbledon, in eighteen

2:29

seventy seven, the All England Croquet Club

2:31

stages the first men's singles Championship

2:34

at Wimbledon and twenty two players

2:36

entered the tournament, so obviously it was a very

2:38

small affair, but still

2:41

it didn't take that long for Wimbledon to open

2:43

its doors to women. In eighteen

2:45

eighty four, Wimbledon Championships

2:48

were open to women for the first time.

2:50

So there wasn't that massive

2:52

gap. Yeah, there wasn't

2:54

that massive gap. It was just the gap between

2:57

the rich and the poor. Yeah, which we which

2:59

we will get into you more. Um.

3:01

And three years later, in eighteen eighties seven, Ellen

3:03

Hansel was crowned the first women's

3:05

singles tennis champion at the US Open and

3:08

Latti Dad love that name. Lattida

3:11

won the women's Wimbledon Championship for the first

3:13

of her five time wins between

3:16

eighteen eight seven and eight And

3:18

hey, fun Olympics. Fact, here

3:21

you have the Paris Games and it offered

3:23

two events for women, lawn

3:25

tennis and golf, because

3:27

that's what the only sports really the proper ladies

3:29

of the day played, and tennis playing.

3:32

Charlotte Chatty Cooper became

3:34

the first woman to win a gold medal.

3:37

And if you'd like to see uh an

3:39

interview with her. We just

3:41

happened to have her on our stuff. Mom never

3:44

told you show her History,

3:46

and you should totally watch it. You

3:48

can just go over to stuff Mom never told you

3:50

dot com. By the way, it's me, I'm I pretend

3:53

to be Charlotte Chatty Cooper. I

3:56

haven't gone completely off my rocker, although

3:58

possibly you will think so if you

4:01

watch that episode of History. So

4:03

this brings us up to women are

4:05

playing the game. But we now want to take

4:07

a little side road and talk about from here

4:10

the evolution of what women wore on

4:12

the tennis court, because that might

4:14

seem like sort of a

4:17

superfluous topic to focus

4:19

on, but it actually says a lot

4:22

about women's roles

4:24

and the amount of athleticism

4:26

that they were permitted. Yeah,

4:29

clothes are political. This is something we

4:31

know. This is something that we've talked about that changing

4:34

clothes is political.

4:36

And so back in the Victorian

4:39

era, uh, women

4:41

were wearing basically a full suit of armor

4:43

to play tennis or the equivalent

4:46

of course, it's under dark colored,

4:48

high colored blouses with ground

4:51

length skirts typically made

4:54

from fur trimmed flannel. I mean, just kill

4:56

me, like I I like have a baseline

4:58

sweat that I'm always at like I'm always just like

5:01

vaguely anxious and sweaty, but

5:04

put me in a Victorian tennis

5:06

outfit and I would just stroke out. But so

5:08

anyway, but so anyway,

5:10

as you can imagine, this outfit,

5:13

so to speak, restricted women's movement

5:15

a lot, meaning that they could only play

5:18

the dainty pet ball. Yeah,

5:20

it was actually called pat ball

5:22

because women's movements were so

5:24

restricted they could barely do much

5:26

more than pat the bowl get

5:29

it over the neck or I don't know, maybe they

5:31

were. I just pictured them like very close together. I pictured

5:33

them on a on a tennis court

5:36

that is just the size of a ping pong table, and

5:38

they have to use these tiny paddles

5:40

to get it over dainty likes. But

5:43

I thought it was funny that by the nineties

5:46

white had become the go to color,

5:49

thanks to a woman named

5:51

Maud Watson, who wore white at

5:53

Wimbledon in four.

5:57

But I thought it was funny that by the

6:00

white had become the go to color for

6:03

women's tennis attire a because

6:06

player mod Watson wore a white

6:08

Wimbledon outfit in four

6:11

and looked very fashionable doing it. But also

6:14

white helped conceal sweat stains,

6:16

right, because sweating is like such

6:19

like an underclass, like only

6:21

the lower classes are supposed to sweat, exactly,

6:24

But how could you not sweat

6:26

playing tennis in all of those clothes,

6:28

And if you're just playing pet ball, maybe

6:30

you weren't sweat as much. But

6:33

in nineteen o five American

6:35

Mary Sutton Bundy caused a

6:37

stir. She rolled back

6:40

her dress sleeves, thus showing

6:43

her wrists, and the Wimbledon

6:45

crowd went crazy. Yeah,

6:47

it was quite a scandal, I mean, and and that's not

6:49

even her ankles that

6:52

was that was just her wrists. But

6:54

by the nineteen twenties, thanks largely

6:56

to a very fashion forward French player,

6:59

of course she was French Suzanne Langlin.

7:01

Uh, they were essentially freed from corsets.

7:04

And you should google image though the

7:06

pictures of her playing

7:08

tennis, because she was wearing this

7:10

like bando around her head rather

7:12

than a larger hat like a

7:15

lot of ladies were wearing, and shorter skirts

7:17

and just sort of that more flapper style.

7:20

And honestly, Caroline,

7:22

it was very fetching look

7:25

that you could possibly pull off even today,

7:27

even today when I played a bit of petball.

7:30

Um. Well, in nine we

7:33

have another fashion forward individual,

7:36

Gertrude gorgeous Gustie Moran.

7:39

She attracted a lot of attention for

7:41

her lace trimmed balloomas

7:44

that she wore under her tennis skirt.

7:46

Yeah, these weren't. When I first read she wore

7:48

lace trimmed underwear, I was thinking

7:51

that she must have had a really short skirt

7:53

on, but no, it was These were actually

7:55

almost like biker shorts with

7:58

lace on them, kind of like the ones

8:00

we used to wear under baby doll dresses in

8:03

the early nineties. And

8:05

again they were kind of cute, but people

8:08

flipped out over that that was highly

8:10

inappropriate. But really, what these

8:12

women were doing by causing all these scandals,

8:14

particularly at Wimbledon, was

8:17

essentially chipping away at the

8:19

amount of clothes that female players had

8:21

to wear, so that by the time you get to

8:24

the nineteen fifties, women

8:26

tennis players weren't wearing things like tights,

8:30

and their hemlines were shortened and and gradually,

8:32

you know, today, if you think of the kinds of

8:35

outfits we've seen Venus

8:37

and Serena Williams, where I

8:40

mean it's you know, the sky's the limit

8:42

or the clothings the minimalist. If

8:45

you will well, I mean I think

8:47

you know, like you said, clothing

8:49

seems like a superfluous topic, but

8:51

but it's not. I mean, I think as we've shown this

8:54

and when you think about it, it has

8:56

so many layers to it, because you

8:59

know, when they when Victorian women were

9:01

wearing like head to toe

9:03

tight flannel, they

9:06

their movements were incredibly restricted. But

9:08

the more clothing that you take

9:10

away, the more athleticism

9:12

you let women exhibit, the more

9:14

they can actually play a great competitive

9:17

game of tennis, the more that people are

9:19

then interested in women's tennis, and

9:21

on and on and on. Well, and it ties into

9:24

with the politics of women's bodies. And

9:26

I mean, this whole thing reminded me a lot of

9:28

when we talked about the evolution of women's

9:31

swimwear to where you know, it used

9:33

to be that women would have to wear dresses

9:35

with weighted down hymns into

9:37

the water so they wouldn't billow out and perhaps

9:39

show those scandalous ankles. It's

9:41

a similar kind of thing that is happening

9:44

on the tennis courts during this

9:47

time. But also speaking of witnessing

9:50

signs of social progress on the tennis court,

9:53

we also need to talk about the diversity

9:56

of tennis because back

9:59

when it starts it It It was very much and still

10:01

kind of is to some extent a well healed

10:04

sport that often took place at

10:06

exclusive clubs, and people

10:08

who were not white were often barred

10:10

from playing or even competing in some

10:13

tournaments. For instance, um Forest

10:15

Hills also known as the West Side Club,

10:17

which is home of the US Open through

10:19

the late nineteen seventies, was not

10:21

integrated for a long time, right,

10:25

so the opportunities were very

10:27

limited for people of color,

10:29

I mean, let alone women of color. But there

10:31

were a lot of women who made a name for

10:33

themselves in tennis. Starting

10:36

back in nineteen seventeen, Lucy dig

10:38

Slow won the singles title at the

10:40

first American Tennis Association

10:43

National Tournament. She then went on

10:45

to become the first female African American

10:47

national champion in sports. You might

10:50

also know her name because she was one of the original

10:52

founders of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

10:55

In fact, talk about a groundbreaker um

10:57

and that American Tennis Association

11:00

was largely African American, I mean because

11:02

they were having to form their own associations

11:05

because of racial segregation

11:07

at the time. And then in also

11:11

have Or Washington, who was such

11:13

a powerhouse. She won her first

11:15

American Tennis Association singles

11:17

title in twenty nine and

11:20

she held that title for seven years,

11:22

and that was a record that she maintained until

11:26

ALTHEA Gibson came along and broke

11:28

it with nine titles. But

11:30

I mean speaking about diversity

11:32

in tennis, and I mean that doesn't

11:34

mean only skin color. That also means

11:37

diversity of experience. So whereas tennis

11:39

had been this this domain

11:41

of rich white people, people of legia

11:44

who were playing it at clubs, people like or

11:46

Washington had to work in domestic

11:48

service to support themselves. So it's not like

11:51

for a large, you know, majority of people when

11:53

tennis got its start, it was just like, oh well I don't

11:55

have to work. I just get

11:57

to participate in this fun leisure activity.

12:00

But for someone like or Washington, she

12:02

had to work. She had to support herself

12:04

through domestic service. So there is a definite

12:07

diversity and experience that we're getting

12:09

around this time too well. And you see a similar

12:11

kind of socioeconomic

12:14

diversity being brought to the table as well with

12:16

Althea Gibson, who is

12:18

probably the name is probably familiar to a

12:21

lot of listeners, but she still had struggles

12:23

of her own because also at

12:25

the time when she was breaking

12:28

all these records in the nineteen forties

12:30

and in particularly the nineteen fifties, Uh,

12:33

she still had to supplement

12:36

her incomes in some ways. She actually started

12:38

playing golf for a little bit during the tennis

12:41

off season because it wasn't like,

12:43

you know, Nike could come along and sponsor her

12:45

like they could today. Yeah.

12:47

But so in in nineteen forty

12:50

seven, Althea Gibson won the first

12:52

of ten consecutive American

12:55

Tennis Association National championships.

12:58

She went on to break multiple color

13:00

barriers in the sport, despite

13:02

the fact that she was a little uncomfortable playing

13:05

such a significant, front page

13:07

stage left role. Yeah. I mean, she

13:09

she talked about that about how she wanted

13:12

to just play for herself, and

13:14

I can only imagine that if you are

13:16

on a tennis court competing against someone else,

13:19

there's all that pressure in the moment of going

13:21

to win that match. But then

13:23

on top of that, she I

13:25

think felt sometimes like she had the

13:27

weight of her entire

13:30

race on her shoulders when she was on the court.

13:32

But nonetheless, she still

13:34

went on to be such a trailblazer

13:37

because in nifties, she became the first

13:39

African American to play in a major United

13:41

States Lawn Tennis Association event

13:44

at the US Nationals, and

13:46

her case was helped by

13:48

white tennis player Alice Marble, who was

13:51

one of the top tennis players at

13:53

the time. Because people,

13:55

you know, a lot of people didn't want to let Althea

13:58

Gibson play because the place

14:00

where they were playing was segregated and she would

14:02

have to bring a color line and people were really uncomfortable

14:04

with that. But Marble wrote this public

14:06

letter saying, you know what, I want

14:08

to see how good I really am, and if she's

14:11

one of the best athletes in the

14:13

US, then we should compete

14:15

against each other and then althe

14:17

beater, which is great. Well

14:20

um. A year later, in ninetift

14:23

one, Gibson became the first black player

14:25

ever to compete at Wimbledon,

14:27

and she goes on to be the first in many

14:29

things. In nifty six, she was the first black

14:32

person to win the French Championships, and

14:34

in nine seven she was the first

14:36

black person to win Wimbledon and

14:39

the US Open, and

14:41

she was voted the Female Athlete of the Year

14:43

by the Associated Press and Notice we're

14:45

saying black person because she

14:47

was the first male or female

14:50

player of color to do

14:52

this, and she's sort of known for

14:55

for breaking those color lines, breaking down

14:57

barriers for other players. But as

14:59

we'll get into in a little while, I mean,

15:01

when you talk about players like Arthur Ashe

15:04

or the Williams sisters, there's

15:06

really not that many other people

15:08

of color playing tennis. There's still a lot

15:10

of barriers there. Yeah, I mean, it's still a predominantly

15:13

white sport. But when it comes

15:16

to women's tennis, it has

15:18

been a standout among

15:21

other professional sports in

15:23

terms of how women have really been able

15:26

to pave their own way and also have

15:28

ripple effects into social

15:30

changes within the broader

15:33

population um and a lot

15:35

of that was led by

15:37

Billy Jean King and the

15:39

other quote unquote Original nine

15:42

players who started up the Women's

15:44

Tennis Association in nineteen seventy

15:47

and protest of male tennis

15:49

players getting paid so much

15:51

more for wins, because, for instance,

15:54

in nineteen seventy, Billy Jean King received

15:56

six hundred dollars for winning the

15:58

Italian Open while the

16:01

men's champion earned right

16:05

and a lot of these players, a lot of the Original

16:07

Nine had a lot of junk

16:09

to deal with from you know, there were some Australian

16:12

players who were not allowed to play for their country

16:14

anymore. There was like this huge upheaval

16:16

about you're you're just gonna leave and

16:19

like start a girl's only club. Well,

16:21

that's not fair. We don't want you then, to which

16:23

they were like, no, but see what you're doing

16:26

isn't fair. So we're going to start our own

16:28

thing. And it's worth noting too that

16:31

this is within the context of Title

16:33

nine being passed in nineteen

16:35

seventy two, so there is a lot of attention

16:38

being focused during this time in the early

16:40

seventies on women in sports. Yeah,

16:43

and their efforts certainly paid off. In nineteen

16:45

seventy three, they did start

16:47

the Women's Tennis Association Tour. In

16:50

the same year, the US Open started

16:52

offering equal purses to both men

16:54

and women, and for people

16:56

unfamiliar with the tournament system, purses means

16:59

prize. My when I was a kid, I thought

17:01

it meant that people got highly

17:03

decorated purses, and

17:05

I still wanted one, But I

17:07

wondered in my child brain, what would guy do with

17:10

that? Maybe he would keep his tennis

17:12

balls in there? Yes, his his tennis

17:14

balls. Tennis balls. Um.

17:17

Same year nine, big year

17:20

for gender issues and

17:23

tennis. Let me tell you, because

17:25

that is the year that Billy

17:27

Jean King and Bobby Riggs faced

17:30

off at the Houston Astrodome in

17:32

the famed Battle of the Sexes.

17:35

King was just twenty nine and had just won

17:37

Wimbledon. She's a champ. Meanwhile,

17:39

Riggs was fifty five years old and had

17:42

just beaten Margaret Court, the world's

17:44

number one women's tennis player,

17:46

in what was called the Mother's

17:48

Day Massacre. Yeah. Essentially,

17:50

he was doing these exhibition matches

17:53

against women as part

17:55

of his public persona of being

17:58

this outspoken ovanist.

18:01

He I mean, he called himself a chauvinist

18:03

pig. He he thought it was like really

18:05

funny and needed to make some

18:07

cash, and so these kinds of exhibition

18:09

matches were away for him to make some money,

18:11

and he had beaten Court. But the

18:14

thing is leading up to this

18:16

tennis match, as Billy Jane King, of course,

18:18

his training and watching

18:20

videos of Rigs and like making sure that

18:22

she can beat him because this means a lot

18:24

to her because she's an outspoken feminist

18:27

at the time, and this

18:29

is really being built up into

18:31

something that has a much broader

18:34

social significance beyond the tennis

18:36

court. But Riggs was doing

18:39

pretty much nothing to train

18:41

because he had beaten Court and he just

18:43

assumed that he would similarly beat

18:47

Billy Jean King. But

18:50

that is not what happened, Ladies

18:52

and gentlemen. Uh. The l

18:54

A. Harold Examiner headline

18:56

the day after the match was pigs

18:59

are dead, long live the

19:01

King Billy Jane King

19:03

one. In other words, yeah, she won.

19:06

And while there are still

19:08

to this day lots of questions

19:11

about the Battle of the Sexes, a lot of angry

19:13

people asserted that Riggs

19:16

through the match from money. Billy

19:18

Jane King says, that's ridiculous. She saw it

19:20

in his eyes that he had lost

19:22

and that he knew he was losing and he didn't want to.

19:25

Yeah, I mean she was. She was basically saying, you know, everybody

19:27

chokes at some point, and it was just clear

19:30

on the court that he choked.

19:32

But he also choked in front of

19:35

the largest tennis

19:37

audience ever. It was held

19:39

at the freaking Astrodome, like it was held

19:41

on a genormous on a genormous stage,

19:44

and that event is such a time capsule.

19:46

When you read all

19:48

of the ways that it was being framed,

19:50

and he even was brought

19:52

into the tennis match, it was very

19:55

hammy the whole thing. He was brought

19:57

in wearing a Sugar Daddy

20:00

rand jacket. You know,

20:02

they can't the Sugar Daddy Candy sponsored

20:04

him, and so he was wearing the Sugar Daddy

20:06

jacket and had these you know, bucks,

20:08

some babes escorting him out.

20:10

Meanwhile, Billy Jane King

20:13

came out. I forget who her sponsor

20:15

was, but it was something similarly pro woman

20:19

and she should have been sponsored by Ortho Tricycline,

20:22

but she was brought out um

20:25

by a bunch of hulking dudes.

20:28

And it was this entire spectacle.

20:30

But it made a huge

20:33

difference to a lot of both

20:35

girls and boys watching tennis

20:37

that day, just to see a

20:40

woman beating Bobby Riggs.

20:42

Yeah, and King talks about how you know, she

20:44

knows that it made a difference to two boys

20:46

and men also because she has

20:49

a lot of guys come up to her still and say,

20:51

you know, I watched that, and now

20:53

my daughter is a tennis player and

20:55

all this stuff, and so it really made

20:57

huge waves throughout the whole,

21:00

not just the tennis community, but really American

21:03

society. Well. In speaking of making

21:05

huge waves, this is also a time where women's

21:07

tennis was a very early

21:10

platform for LGBT visibility.

21:13

There was a great quote in the book Love Game

21:15

by Elizabeth Wilson, which is about tennis, um,

21:18

which goes in the nineteen seventies,

21:20

all the feminists followed tennis because

21:22

of Martina Navratalova.

21:24

It was a lesbian thing and

21:27

um, this was in the nineteen seventies. That was

21:29

before Navratalova officially came

21:31

out, but both she and Billy Jean

21:33

King came out publicly in ninety

21:36

one, although King, who was actually

21:38

married at the time, was sort of

21:40

forced out of the closet by her former

21:43

secretary, who I guess she had had a relationship

21:45

with, or the secretary alleged she had had a

21:47

relationship with and there was a Palimoni suit

21:49

that kind of forced

21:52

King out of the closet. But then later

21:54

that year, Navratalova

21:57

came out on her own terms well, which

21:59

is pretty innate. It's prety amazing that she came out on her own

22:01

terms after what happened to King, because I

22:03

mean, she was forced out of the closet, and that's bad enough,

22:06

but then she proceeds to lose all of her her

22:08

deals, her endorsements, her support,

22:11

and so she was like, you know, I've been thinking

22:13

about retiring or you know, stopping

22:15

playing tennis, but all of

22:17

a sudden, I can't because i have

22:19

no more additional funds coming in.

22:21

I've got to keep playing tennis. And you know,

22:23

it was really hard for her and her family, her

22:26

parents, she's described as homophobic,

22:28

but she talks about how society large was homophobic

22:30

at the time, and she said even a lot of LGBT

22:33

people were themselves homophobic

22:35

at the time, and so it was incredibly difficult for her,

22:37

as a very public athlete,

22:40

to be forced out of the closet like that. So it's

22:42

even that much more impressive than avratilovitchose

22:44

to come out on her own terms after

22:46

that. Yeah, And I wonder if that was almost

22:49

a bit of solidarity with King,

22:51

because another layer on top of that, too is

22:53

that Billy Jean King had been so

22:56

closely aligned as well with the

22:58

second wave feminist movement that

23:00

had its own troubled

23:02

relationship with lesbians. There was a

23:04

lot of fear within those circles that if

23:06

they aligned with lesbians too closely

23:09

then that would only you know, confirm

23:12

the very you know, sexist,

23:15

misogynistic stereotype at all feminists

23:17

are just man hating lesbians and they're like, well, we don't

23:19

need that for our PR team. So

23:21

there was clearly a lot of conflict

23:23

going on within King in this whole

23:26

process. So yeah, I

23:28

just wonder, um uh,

23:30

it's good in that way then that

23:32

Navratalova came out because I

23:34

think it probably helped move

23:37

that pushed that momentum forward instead

23:39

of leaving it stalled in this more

23:41

controversial coming out

23:44

that King experienced. Yeah,

23:46

and you know, we talked about pay earlier,

23:48

and if we're if we circle back

23:50

and look at that issue today, after

23:53

all of these women like Billy Jan King and Navratalova

23:55

have you know, been public faces

23:58

of women's rights and huge the

24:00

stars, surely like that must

24:02

mean that all women and men are getting

24:04

equal pay in tennis, right, Yeah,

24:07

no, not that that's not necessarily

24:10

the case. Um. And and

24:12

this is despite the fact that beyond

24:15

you know, King, Navratalova, the original nine

24:18

et cetera. Through the late eighties and forward. We

24:20

have Jennifer Capriotti, Stephie

24:22

Graft, the Williams Sisters, Lindsay

24:24

Davenport, Martina Hingis, Monica Sellis,

24:27

Martina Charapova, all of

24:29

these names. We could keep ongoing, all these

24:31

women who have clearly

24:34

cemented women's tennis

24:36

as a world class professional

24:38

sport, and yet there

24:41

is still a lingering gender gap. And

24:43

speaking of Wimbledon, why

24:45

is it that women just play

24:47

three sets whereas men play

24:49

five because they're playing a little bit of pet

24:52

ball. It's just the pet ball, just a little bit

24:54

of the pet ball over the net. That women

24:56

are are athletes, guys, and and

24:58

she'll probably just play five. That's just

25:00

like the guys do. Although you know what, if I was out

25:02

on a tennis court right now, I'd probably be like three.

25:05

Fine, Well, it's very humid here today

25:07

in Atlanta. I will to give you that. Um.

25:10

But yeah, so this whole issue of of equal

25:12

pay and equal time spent

25:15

broadcasting women's tennis is

25:17

definitely still an issue, even

25:20

though, as we've talked about, it is

25:22

definitely a sport where women on are on a

25:24

more equal footing with their male counterparts.

25:27

UM. Back in about

25:29

sixty female professional players signed

25:32

a petition to the Women's Tennis Association

25:34

for equal Grand Slam

25:37

prize money. Yeah, and then in two

25:39

thousand seven, Wimbledon finally

25:41

caved and became the last major

25:43

to offer equal prize money. So now all the

25:45

Grand Slams have equal

25:47

purses for men and

25:50

women, but that's often not the case at

25:52

a lot of lower profile

25:54

events. And for you know,

25:57

considering the fact that a majority of tennis

25:59

players are not Venus and Serena

26:01

Williams making money hand over

26:04

fist, there's actually quite

26:06

a pay gap when you look at tennis

26:08

on the whole. Right, there was a study

26:11

called Advantage Men, the Sex Pay Gap

26:13

in Professional Tennis that found that

26:15

female professional tennis players earned twenty

26:18

three point four percent less

26:21

than their male counterparts. And

26:23

then when you take in the issue of

26:25

like women earning less than their

26:27

male counterparts and having to support

26:29

themselves, it's

26:32

it's a really awful situation. Yeah, it can. It

26:34

can definitely be tough out there for a

26:37

not a list

26:39

tennis player if you're trying to make

26:42

a living out of it. Um. And then there's

26:44

this question too with the the athleticism,

26:47

the question of why in Grand Slams,

26:49

women play those three sets as opposed to

26:52

five, and a lot of people say

26:54

this is really um kind

26:56

of harkening back to the Victorian

26:58

era of ten It's because when it started,

27:01

it was under the the idea

27:03

that women simply could not withstand

27:06

playing tennis for that long, when

27:08

clearly these world class players can

27:10

absolutely do that. So some are arguing that

27:13

it should also be evened out to where women

27:15

also play five sets, sort of drive

27:17

home that point that these

27:19

are two groups of equally

27:22

trained and equally competent and talented

27:25

athletes, right, because the whole three set

27:27

thing is often used as an argument to not pay

27:29

women the same amount and prize money because

27:31

it's like, oh, well, they don't even play as much as men. Date. Yeah,

27:33

it's almost like calling them the opener, you know,

27:36

at a at a at a Rock and Rule show,

27:38

Caroline. And another gender

27:40

gap pointed out by the Wall Street Journal is

27:43

in tennis officiating. If

27:45

you look at the umpires, only twenty

27:47

two percent of the bronze level

27:50

and above chair umpires are

27:52

women. And this might this probably

27:54

isn't because they're trying to keep women

27:56

out. It might be for lack of interest.

27:59

Oregon, lack of visibility.

28:01

I have no idea, though I'm not in the tennis

28:03

world. I don't know if being a cheer umpire

28:06

is a position that

28:08

people really grapple for. I

28:10

know though that umpires, for instance, in baseball,

28:13

make a lot of money, as you referees in

28:15

the NFL. Right. Well, one woman

28:17

they interviewed who was training to be one

28:20

of these chair umpires said

28:23

she's basically like, well, I don't know why more women aren't

28:25

interested in this, you know, but maybe it's

28:27

because women don't want to get yelled at, oh,

28:30

by tennis players and coaches, by by the tennis

28:32

players and coaches, also by the audience. Yeah,

28:34

that definitely seems like a downside

28:37

of the job. But that's whether you're a

28:39

man or a woman. Um.

28:42

But when it comes to to how

28:45

these a list female tennis players

28:48

are more broadly

28:50

publicized, how we talk about them.

28:52

Um. There's also this interesting term

28:55

called big babe tennis

28:57

that was coined by Mary Carrillo that

29:00

some think is oh, well, it's just sort of

29:03

it describes the style

29:06

of tennis today where you have these larger,

29:08

muscular, athletic women who play

29:11

really powerful tennis. But

29:13

apparently they're also babes.

29:16

Yeah, and I mean that that's an issue a lot of people have

29:18

have had a problem with because

29:21

you know, they're just their athletes. Talk

29:23

about them. You you don't call the guys

29:26

like stud muffins, you know, I mean, although

29:28

you could, you could, but I mean, you

29:30

know, it's this whole idea that

29:32

women aren't allowed to just be athletes.

29:35

They also have to be sexy. They've

29:37

got to be babes on the court. Yeah,

29:39

I mean, and that's something though that when

29:41

you look at women in sports

29:44

in general, if you just google

29:46

image like a female

29:48

athlete, a lot of times it ends

29:51

up being like sexy pin up kinds

29:53

of photos, which you

29:55

don't see quite so much with

29:58

men. I feel like that's not so much

30:00

a problem for tennis,

30:02

but more how we I

30:04

guess I don't want to grasp just women

30:07

women as athletes. There always needs to be this sort

30:09

of sexualizing that happens. Well.

30:11

Speaking of that, people are trying to tell

30:13

women that they can't grunt on the court when they

30:15

hit the ball. Okay, yeah, I read about

30:17

this, Caroline, how the Women's

30:19

Tennis Association in fact is

30:22

trying to tamp down on female

30:25

grunting on court, and I'm not going to demonstrate

30:27

what that is on Mike because I

30:29

don't want all of our podcast listeners

30:31

to have get a get

30:33

a case of tonitus from that. But I

30:35

will say when I play Caroline, one

30:37

of my favorite things to do is grunt.

30:40

It feels so good when you hit the ball

30:42

and make contact. Hopefully in my case you

30:44

can never know and get out

30:46

a good grunt. I feel like it helps.

30:49

Yeah. Well, and a lot of people would

30:51

argue that it is a physiological thing that

30:53

it does help people men

30:55

and women propel the ball, have

30:58

that burst of energy and act and

31:00

other people say, oh, they're just out

31:02

there screaming like crazy women trying

31:05

to distract their opponent. Yeah, there

31:07

there might be a tactical benefit to it,

31:09

because if you grunt

31:11

at the same time, it uh sort

31:14

of masks the sound of where

31:16

on the rack at the tennis ball hit, which

31:18

if you are a seasoned player, will

31:21

tell you where the ball is going to go,

31:23

whereas if you're me, I'm going to be

31:25

running like a crazy person from side to side

31:28

anyway, because I have no idea, but the

31:30

tone, the tone of the discussion about

31:32

women's grunting is very gross to me

31:35

because and I don't mean gross like, I

31:37

just mean that it's it's distressing

31:40

because everybody seems to be like women

31:43

making noises they might also

31:45

make when doing something like in the bedroom

31:48

or giving birth to a child from their

31:50

vaginas, like, oh,

31:52

well, that's grows. No. Men grunting is okay,

31:55

that's like, that's not a sexual thing. I don't have

31:57

a problem with that, But women grunting I have a problem

31:59

with that. Do you think, though, I

32:01

will give the Women's Tennis Association, which,

32:03

by the way, they this conversation came

32:06

up in two thousand twelve, and they were going

32:08

to actually come up with almost

32:10

a grunt ometer that

32:12

measured the sound of a player's

32:14

grunt and if she kind of got out of control, then

32:17

they would maybe find her for

32:19

it. I think it's a pretty undisputed

32:21

fact though, that female tennis players

32:23

probably grunt more than male tennis players.

32:26

But it might still be that physiological

32:28

aspect of it, when it comes to sex

32:30

differences and upper body's strength.

32:33

Maybe the grunting

32:36

that women I'm now like for people,

32:39

for people listening, I'm now making air

32:41

tennis racket movements with my

32:44

arms. Um, but perhaps the

32:46

grunting sort of makes up

32:48

perhaps for differences

32:51

in our upper body strength. It

32:53

gives us a little bit more muscle, a little bit more heft.

32:55

Well, I watched a YouTube clip of one

32:58

of the Williams sisters playing against a Sharapova,

33:01

and so you've got Sharapova screaming and

33:04

you've got Williams like grunting,

33:06

and it's just you're like wow, because

33:08

a lot of people do say that. Okay, no, I

33:10

don't care if it's a woman or a man. It's just plain

33:12

distracting for the fans. But

33:15

who cares though, I mean, we're not playing, Who

33:17

cares? Yeah, I think Yeah. There

33:19

was a lot of a lot of debate

33:21

about it with some Um I think it

33:23

was Billy gene King actually who

33:27

was a little ambivalent, but

33:29

she definitely wasn't she wasn't staunchly

33:31

against it. She thought, well, you know

33:34

what, if if this will, if this will move

33:36

women's tennis forward, then okay,

33:39

let's do it. Let's cut down on the grunting. Yeah,

33:41

but a lot of people are you know, the pitch

33:43

they say that, you know, women just have a higher pitch

33:46

and that is grading on the average tennis

33:49

viewer. Well, that's when it gets to circles

33:52

back around too. Well, now

33:54

you're just being rude about our voices.

33:57

This is just how we talk slash

34:00

slash uh scream sometimes.

34:03

Well, so you know I mentioned

34:06

before our our mid role

34:08

break that you

34:10

have a woman like Althea Gibson who

34:13

broke down a lot of color barriers in the sport

34:15

and a lot of barriers for women. Um,

34:17

but that there was not this huge flood

34:19

of people of color of women of color

34:22

after her. So obviously there

34:24

are still these barriers today. And so

34:26

I mean, looking forward, I

34:29

mean I hope that we see more

34:32

diversity coming up in tennis.

34:35

Well, I think tennis is a challenge

34:37

has a challenging barrier of entry because

34:40

unlike say a team sport

34:43

like football, where a kid from

34:45

a lower socio economic background can maybe hop

34:48

on a team at school, Um, tennis

34:50

I think is a little more isolated.

34:53

And I mean if you look at Serena

34:55

and Venus Williams, so we really I mean we could have

34:57

done an entire podcast just on them. Mean

35:00

they trained for six

35:03

plus hours a day,

35:05

I mean they were I mean, and it was their father's intention

35:08

to raise two world class

35:10

tennis players, and it

35:13

takes so much time and

35:15

a lot of resources. And I mean the Williams

35:17

sisters did not grow up wealthy at all.

35:19

But it took a father who

35:22

almost like Tiger Woods as father who

35:24

trained those kids from

35:27

I mean they were I think five and six years

35:29

old when they started playing up

35:31

until now to be

35:34

who they are. Yeah, So it still seems

35:36

like their race aside, it

35:39

does still seem like there is a socio

35:41

economic barrier a lot of the time to

35:43

getting involved in this competitive tennis because

35:45

you know, the Williams sisters, they all moved to Florida

35:48

to train at a really elite tennis school

35:51

in Florida. Like who who can do

35:53

that? Not everybody can do that well. And even

35:55

today, if you think about the fancier

35:57

suburban neighborhoods, they're the one

36:00

with tennis courts in the pool and they

36:02

have access to that, whereas

36:05

it can be a lot harder. I mean, we have there there's

36:07

actually a public tennis

36:09

court near me, but

36:12

it's usually locked up and the

36:14

nets you know, sometimes up, sometimes down.

36:16

I mean a lot of times you know, those those more

36:19

accessible resources aren't always

36:21

kept up so well. Yeah, but what

36:23

is interesting to see, um with

36:25

this progression of tennis is that today

36:28

if you look at the top two

36:30

female tennis players in the world, it's two

36:32

women of color. It's Serena Williams at

36:35

number one and Lena at number

36:37

two. Yeah, I mean, I think it's I think

36:39

tennis is such a and we've said this, but I mean, I think

36:41

tennis is such an interesting

36:44

example for our girls

36:47

coming up behind us because it does have

36:49

this history of gender

36:52

equality. Might be too strong to

36:54

say, but I mean of letting women

36:56

in, of not keeping them out, and

37:00

these these incredible names in

37:02

African American tennis, these incredible

37:04

women who made names for themselves and breakdown

37:06

barriers in that regard to Yeah,

37:09

I mean, when it comes to sports, tennis

37:11

usually is cited as the standout

37:13

in terms of gender equity. But

37:16

it's also because women fought

37:18

for it. You know, they formed the Women's

37:21

Tennis Association, they demanded equal

37:23

purses and

37:25

so far they've gotten it, which is pretty

37:27

incredible too. So now

37:30

we want to hear from folks out there. Are there any

37:32

tennis fans listening? Tennis players,

37:35

who's your favorite tennis player. Let us

37:37

know all of your tennis and Wimbledon

37:39

thoughts. Mom Stuff at how stuff works

37:41

dot Com is where you can email us. You can also

37:44

tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast or

37:46

messages on Facebook, and we have a couple of

37:48

messages to share with you right now.

37:55

Okay, Well, I have a letter here from Kara

37:57

about our Women in Animation episode.

38:00

She says, I recently started looking at GRAB schools

38:02

for animation, and I've only gotten a chance to

38:04

tour one of them so far. My boyfriend

38:07

went with me to the school, and when we were there,

38:09

we were introduced to many of the staff, all

38:11

men. Every time we met a new staff

38:13

member, they consistently started talking to my boyfriend

38:16

about the program, not me. When

38:18

they saw that I was the one responding and asking

38:21

questions, they stopped talking and

38:23

asked which one of us was planning on attending.

38:26

At the end of the tour, the woman that was showing us around,

38:28

an administrator not an artist, apologized

38:30

to me and told me that the classes are eighty five

38:32

percent male, so no one would assume that

38:35

I was the one applying. She seemed a

38:37

little sad that it was so male dominated

38:39

and encouraged me to apply to help

38:41

women get into the business just a little

38:43

bit more. Just one of the many

38:45

times I've experienced a gender gap in art

38:47

recently. Uh, Kara,

38:49

I'm sorry about that experience, but good for you forgetting

38:52

an animation that's really cool. Yeah. Um.

38:54

I've got one here from Joanna

38:57

about our episode on imagination,

38:59

and she writes, I do still

39:02

at one spent a lot of time daydreaming,

39:04

slash imagining, slash telling myself

39:07

stories in my head, but they're nowhere near

39:09

as vivid and almost physical as the

39:11

ones I had when I was a kid. I was an avid

39:13

lover of horses from an early age, and spent

39:15

a lot of time pretending to have a horse or

39:17

be a horse with friends or alone.

39:20

And it's crazy how real it was. It

39:22

was probably partly because I was regularly

39:24

riding horses and interacting with horses,

39:27

but still, when I was galloping

39:29

around in the forest or on our

39:31

lawn, it was so much like being on

39:34

an actual horse, or even being

39:36

a horse. And oh the horses

39:38

I imagined I had, and how I loved

39:41

them. And Joanna, I can

39:43

only recommend that you head

39:45

over to stuff I've never told you

39:47

dot com and search for the

39:49

video why Girls Love Horses. There's

39:52

also a podcast on it and

39:54

you're gonna love it. If you love horses

39:57

that much, then we have a video and a podcast

39:59

for you, and also for all of our

40:01

other listeners as well. If

40:03

you want to email us, you can write

40:05

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40:08

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40:10

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40:19

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