Damned If They Do, Damned If They Don't

Serena Williams was named the Sports Illustrated Sportsman (or Sportsperson) of the year.

It is still an honor—even if the sports media landscape is much more crowded now than it was when the magazine and the award were created.

Of course, because of a plurality of opinions and opinion makers, there are no shortage of HOT and lukewarm takes available on this topic.

Let us leave aside the concept of a "Horse" winning Sportsman of the year for a second. Yes, the horse accomplished something that literally had not been accomplished in my lifetime before this year. However:

1) Even the horse that many would regard as the greatest of all time, Secretariat, didn't win the award the year he won the Triple Crown, and;

2) It's a horse

With that being said, I wanted to focus on a particular aspect of the coverage surrounding Serena.

It has to do with what some people thought of the cover photo.

It's here, at the top of this piece, in part because there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Except, in 2015, there apparently are issues with it.

Rick Morrissey of the Chicago Sun-Times doesn't think it helps women athletes because it's objectifying women.

In fact, he says, "You can argue that the only thing that matters is what Williams thinks of the photo. But that would be pretending an ogling audience isn't there, and that's ridiculous."

I wonder if Morrissey knew, when he wrote that, that the photo was Serena's idea.

The cover? Serena's idea, intended to express her own ideal of femininity, strength & power https://t.co/SySVOIbOxx pic.twitter.com/eGFCQWQtzq

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) December 14, 2015

Would he still so casually devalue her opinion of the photograph?

I think it speaks to a larger issue, though: Sometimes female athletes are caught in a can't win situation.

Either they glam up and are too attractive, and only using sex appeal to gain interest and attention for their sports, or they are viewed (wrongly) as not being attractive enough and, well, can't you TRY and be more ladylike or feminine and, you know, if you do that then maybe we can get some more coverage for your sport.

Serena's looks in particular have been a talking point, especially this year in a now infamous New York Times story on body image and ambition in tennis. She's been called a "gorilla" on social media and has been described as being overly muscular and having a man-ish build.

All of that as relates to Serena specifically and to female athletes in general is ludicrous. It's absurd. It's flat out wrong.

This antiqued, patriarchal notion about whether or not it is okay for a female athlete to be viewed as sexy needs to go away. This obsession over the femininity of female athletes and whether they meet some absurd standard of "beauty" or "attractiveness" needs to go away, too.