Let me just get this out of the way: I have a girl crush on Serena Williams. Her badass physical and mental power catapulted her to her first French Open win in over 11 years and 16th overall Grand Slam title, only further cementing her place among the all-time tennis greats. This is enough to make me swoon as a fellow female athlete. Her powerful, muscular physique is symbolic of the new wave of female athletes. At, 31, Williams is playing possibly the best tennis of her career and even clocked her fastest ace at 120 mph – prompting her opponent, Maria Sharapova, to excuse herself by saying, “I think if I was built like Serena I hope I’d be able to hit a big serve like that, too.” The force of her service is only one part of the enormous cultural power she holds as an iconic female athlete – she’s also an avid social media user (Forbes even dubbed her one of their fifteen Social Media Overachievers). The above photo from Sports Illustrated encapsulates the ecstasy, exhilaration, and elation of winning as well as the sacrifices, frustration, and disappointments of past losses. Simply put, it is a beautiful and moving portrait of a lifetime of work captured and expressed in a singular moment in time. A picture really is worth a thousand words. I hope the photo will go viral and help disabuse people of the notion that female athletes are too masculine or not worth watching. The awesome physical and emotional power displayed is inspiring. Social media allows us to not only record moments such as these, but comment on them and pass our thoughts along. It makes us less passive – we fancy ourselves participants, not observers. I’m not alone in this sentiment either. Among the many Twitter reactions to Serena’s win, @niketennis had over 1500 retweets of the post below:
acknowledges the benefits of social media
#SerenaFriday
