In a breathless puff piece, Variety celebrated tennis star Venus Williams, for her new crusade for “equal pay” with male tennis players. But her sudden concern for equal pay seems to clash with events even she was involved in.
In the piece published by Variety this month, Williams claims that she realized she would not be paid the same as men when she was 16.
“Getting there and realizing, ‘Wow, I’m not being paid equally,’ was just definitely a slap in the face to a 16-year-old. … It hit me hard,” she insisted, according to the article.
The magazine goes on to say that Williams claims women are typically paid 82 cents for every dollar earned by men, but the pay gap is worse outside the U.S. “At least in the United States you can have the conversation. Outside of the United States, it’s very difficult to have these conversations,” she said.
Williams added that her mother was her inspiration to fight for equal pay. Williams said that her mother, Oracene Price, “impressed upon us the importance of telling the truth and living the truth.”
Oracene Price, mother of Venus and Serena Williams at Wimbledon (Getty Images)
But both Venus and her famous sister Serena have already been involved in a game that shows the disparity between the level women play and the caliber of play men can reach. In 1998, the two sisters played an exhibition game with male tennis player Karsten Braasch.
The male player was already past his prime playing years at 31 years of age and at the time was ranked World No. 203 male player. But when the Williams sisters brashly claimed that they could beat any male player ranked in the top 200 players, Braasch stepped up and played the girls. And he wallopped them.
Braasch first beat Serena 6-1 in a single-set, winner-takes-all game. And when it was time for Venus to face him, Braasch trounced her 6-2. It turned out that, even as a lowly 203 ranked player, he was just faster and could hit harder than the spry, young girls. As good as the girls were, they couldn’t even beat a man who was never exactly a contender.
Venus Williams and her new truth might seem to be a different “truth” than she experienced in 1998. But it is also different than the one her own sister Serena was offering fans back in August of 2013 when she appeared on the David Letterman Show and admitted that even as a top world women’s tennis player, she could not beat men’s tennis star, Andy Murray.
Serena Williams told Letterman that she heard tennis star Andy Murray “joking” about having a match against Williams. But Williams was not a big fan of the idea.
“Andy, seriously. Like, are you kidding me?” she said about the idea. “For me, men’s tennis and women’s tennis are completely almost two separate sports.”
“So, if I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose, 6-0, 6-0, in 5 to 6 minutes, maybe 10 minutes,” Williams said.
“No, it’s true,” she added when Letterman tried to protest, “it’s a completely different sport. Men are a lot faster, and they serve harder and hit harder, it’s just a different game, and I only want to play girls, I don’t want to be embarrassed… So, Andy, I’m not going to let you kill me.”
In reply, Letterman joked that he only wanted to “play girls,” too.
WATCH:
Both Venus and Serena should have learned the lesson that men and women simply don’t play the same game.
In 1998, Venus Williams readily saw that men’s tennis was a harder, faster game and that women could not compete at the same level as men. But now, suddenly, she is jumping into this nakedly political pay equity movement to force pro tennis to pay men and women the same.
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