Tenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

This paper looks at the ban imposed on the catsuit worn by Serena Williams at the 2018 French Open and aims to answer the questions of the shifting social worth of human beings, body boundaries and to explore the notions of accepted body performances. At the French Open 2018, Williams wore a black spandex catsuit. It aided movement and limited the risk of blood clots to which she was prone, especially so after her pregnancy. Shortly after the tournament, French Tennis Federation president Bernard Giudicelli stated that the catsuit would no longer be accepted at the French Open and that “one must respect the game and the place”. A qualitative research methodology has been followed, with critical analysis of sport as a method. Literature from cultural studies, women’s studies, black feminism and sport sociology have been used to analyze the site and argue that race and gender play a major role in sports, sporting decisions and the ways of perceiving sport. This paper looks at the ways in which the elitist nature of tennis, gender performance, disciplining of female bodies and invisibility, hypervisibility and marginalization of black female bodies have influenced this sporting decision. This inquiry becomes important because of the occurrence of a trade-off between functionality and body policing when it comes to bodies of black women.