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Serena Williams Addresses the Body Shaming She's Experienced for Having Muscles

In the more than 20 years since she turned pro, Serena Williams has faced a consistent stream of body shaming from those who (incorrectly, problematically) label her muscles and sheer power as “manly.” While those misogynistic comments used to affect Williams, in her cover interview for the July 2018 issue of Harper’s Bazaar U.K., she explains the much healthier, more empowering mindset she’s adopted to ignore the haters and keep doing what it takes to win 23 Grand Slam titles and four Olympic gold medals—and counting.

“It was hard for me,” Williams said. “People would say I was born a guy, all because of my arms, or because I’m strong. I was different to Venus: she was thin and tall and beautiful, and I am strong and muscular — and beautiful, but, you know, it was just totally different.” When asked by Bazaar about a 2004 report that on the tennis pro’s list of goals at the time, getting down to a size four was right under winning a handful of major tournaments, Williams replied, “Oh God, I’ll never be a size four! Why would I want to do that, and be that?”

“This is me, and this is my weapon and machine,” Williams continued, pointing to her biceps. “But I love that I said that, because I can understand. I can show Olympia that I struggled, but now I’m happy with who I am and what I am and what I look like,” she went on, referencing her nine-month-old daughter with husband Alexis Ohanian. “Olympia was born and she had my arms, and instead of being sad and fearful about what people would say about her, I was just so happy.”

And Williams knew from the beginning that Olympia would be just as strong as her mother, since, after all, Williams won the 2017 Australian Open while pregnant (and has since mounted the trophy in Olympia’s nursery because “it’s her win”). “I knew I was having a girl, because when I was playing tennis in the tournament, I didn’t have one day of morning sickness, no symptoms. Australia is really hot, some days can be over 40 degrees, which is insane, but she never complained. I said to Alexis, ‘This is a girl. Only a woman can be this strong,'” said Williams, who confirmed that sentiment earlier this week, when she won her first Grand Slam match since giving birth at the French Open—in a “supermama” catsuit, no less.

Related: Serena Williams Pelts a Heckler With Tennis Balls

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Natalie Portman Says She's Still Reckoning With the Sexism She's Experienced on Almost Every Project

As women continue to speak out about the sexual misconduct they’ve had to deal with at the hands of powerful men in Hollywood, Natalie Portman says she’s only just now realizing that she’s a survivor of the entertainment industry’s toxic sexism, too. During a discussion at the Vulture Festival in Los Angeles on Sunday, the actress said that, at first, upon hearing other people’s stories about their encounters with power players like Harvey Weinstein, she counted herself among the few unscathed by sexual abuse or harassment in the workplace. But now, Portman said she’s since realized that she, too, has experienced sexual harassment and discrimination on a disturbingly regular basis since she started acting.

“When I heard everything coming out, I was like, wow, I’m so lucky that I haven’t had this. And then, on reflection, I was like, okay, definitely never been assaulted, definitely not, but I’ve had discrimination or harassment on almost everything I’ve ever worked on in some way,” she said, according to Vulture. “I went from thinking I don’t have a story to thinking, oh wait, I have 100 stories. And I think a lot of people are having these reckonings with themselves, of things that we just took for granted as like, this is part of the process.”

The Oscar winner offered as an example the time a producer offered her a seemingly innocent ride on his private jet. “I showed up and it was just the two of us, and one bed was made on the plane. Nothing happened, I was not assaulted. I said, ‘This doesn’t make me feel comfortable,’ and that was respected,” Portman recalled. “But that was super not okay, you know? That was really unacceptable and manipulative and could have been—I was scared, you know? But just the fact of any woman, if you’re walking down the street alone at night, you feel scared, and I’m not sure guys know what that [feels like].”

She also suggested that the fact that women are still struggling to achieve parity with men in both cast and crew roles in the industry could be a reason that it took so long for men like Weinstein and Louis C.K.‘s long histories of sexual misconduct and harassment to come to light. “Usually, you walk into a movie as the only woman, and you’re often the only woman on set. It’s very rare to have female crew members apart from hair, makeup, and wardrobe—the very stereotypical departments for women to be in—and I think women experience this in a lot of industries,” the Annihilation star said. “If you do get the opportunity to work, you’re often the only woman in the room. I hear this from friends of mine who are lawyers, business people, writers on shows.”

Portman continued, “The surprising thing is, it almost feels strategic to keep you away from other women, because you don’t have the opportunity to share stories. All these accusations are like, ‘Oh yeah, everyone was isolated from each other.’ People didn’t share. They didn’t realize that there were hundreds of people with similar stories…It prevents mentorship of women by other women because you’re just not exposed to it. You have to work hard to find and actually connect to people doing the same thing, because we’re often that one seat at the table.”

Here’s the Problem With Privilege and Divulging Sexual Assault

Every Woman on Earth Should Read and Memorize This Viral Tweet

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