Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli is standing calmly at the centre of the latest shitstorm to ignite a gender war in pro sport.
Over the weekend, BBC commentator John Inverdale made the following ridiculous statement on Radio Live Five: "Do you think Bartoli's dad told her when she was little, 'you're never going to be a looker — you'll never be a Sharapova — so you have to be scrappy and fight?'"
Bartoli, while dressed in a stunning black dress at the Champions' Ball in London, returned serve in the classiest way possible: "I invite this journalist to come and see me this evening in ball gown and heels," she said, "and in my opinion he could change his mind.
"I am not blonde, yes. Have I dreamt about having a model contract? No. But have I dreamed about winning Wimbledon? Absolutely."
Bartoli's father, Walter, gave Inverdale this little rebuke: "The relationship between Marion and me has always been unbelievable so I don't know what this reporter is talking about. When she was five years old she was playing like every kid and having fun on the tennis court. She's my beautiful daughter."
To be fair to Inverdale, he apologised swiftly, offering this at the start of his coverage of the men's final: "Before we start, I probably ought to just briefly return to yesterday and a clumsy phrase that I used about Marion Bartoli which has understandably caused something of a furore.
"The point I was trying to make, in a rather ham-fisted kind of way, was that in a world where the public perception of tennis players is that they're all 6ft tall Amazonian athletes, Marion — who is the Wimbledon champion — bucks that trend."
He went on to state that Bartoli is "a fantastic example to all young people that it's attitude and will and determination together, obviously, with talent that, in the end, does get you to the top."
The subtext being, of course, that Bartoli is an inspiration to ugly kids because of her "attitude and will and determination" and sure as hell not her looks, but Inverdale seems heartfelt and we don't want to keep piling on the guy at this point.
The bigger problem was arguably the barrage of abuse hurled at Bartoli by 'the lads' on Twitter. These are all actual things that people who know their tweets can be seen by other people really posted:
"For the first time ever a man wins the women's Wimbledon final! Go team men. #balls"
"This Bartoli chick is a fat slob"
"Bartoli didn't deserve to win because she is ugly"
"get a boob job with the money you won. ugly bitch"
"I want Lisicki to win because she is really fit. Bartoli wouldn't even get raped let alone fucked"
But the biggest problem? It's the implication, from the way Andy Murray's win has been reported, that Bartoli's victory doesn't actually 'count' anyway. See, Murray is widely being hailed as the first Briton to win Wimbledon in 77 years, which is true — unless you count Briton Virginia Wade, a mere woman, who took home the women's singles title in 1977.
As Feministing editor Chloe Angyal notes:
Murray is indeed the first Brit to win Wimbledon in 77 years unless you think women are people.
— Chloe Angyal (@ChloeAngyal) July 7, 2013
Despite sports journalist Sue Mott's claim that 2013 would mark "the end of sexism in sport", we can now confirm that, nope, it's totally still a thing. Ugh.
