How do we feel about Serena Williams’ Nike ‘catsuit’ at the French Open?
May 30, 2018Serena Williams won her first round match at the French Open on Tuesday. It was her first Slam match since the 2017 Australian Open, where she won the trophy while she was about nine weeks pregnant. Serena gave birth last September, and as she has detailed in interviews and on her HBO show, the birth was incredibly difficult. She had a last-minute C-section, she had blood clots and she needed at least three surgeries after the C-section. It was awful and it took her weeks to just be able to walk again. Obviously, she couldn’t simply “bounce back” in a month, which was difficult for Serena to realize, if you’ve been watching Being Serena.
Anyway, the point is that she’s been through the wringer physically and emotionally and she came out of it still wanting to play tennis. She came back on the red dirt of Roland Garros and she won her first match in straight sets, even though she wasn’t playing her best tennis overall (she got through it though). She was happy and she’s on to the next round. If she wins two more matches and Maria Sharapova wins two more matches, they’ll meet in the fourth round. It might be a mess, but I still believe that she just wants to get some matches in on clay and then she’ll really buckle down for Wimbledon.
But what people were focused on mostly during her first match? Serena’s Nike catsuit. Nike has been – in my opinion – messing around with Serena’s kits for a few years. I hated when Nike started giving her those “sleeves” (like basketball players wear) and I absolutely loathed the high-neck, mock-turtle styles they were giving her (and other women) for the past two years. But this catsuit is… next-level. After she won her match, Jon Wertheim asked her about the catsuit, and she said:
“All the moms out there that had a tough pregnancy and have to come back and try to be fierce, in a middle of everything. That’s what this represents. You can’t beat a catsuit, right?…I call it, like, my Wakanda-inspired catsuit. We designed it way before the movie… I feel like a warrior in it, like a warrior princess kind of, (a) queen from Wakanda. I’m always living in a fantasy world. I always wanted to be a superhero, and it’s kind of my way of being a superhero. I feel like a superhero when I wear it.”
See, now I feel like I can’t really hate on the catsuit. I mean… if she feels comfortable and powerful and like a warrior, so be it. I doubt she wanted to go out there in a little tennis skirt, but I also feel like there was a happy medium, and that happy medium resembles her 2017 AO kit. But seriously… this catsuit just looks so binding and uncomfortable!
Also: Novak Djokovic got to spend some time with little Olympia. This photo made me ridiculously happy, mostly because Uncle Novak and Olympia seem equally delighted each other.
Photos courtesy of Getty & Twitter.