Canadian tennis player Eugenie Bouchard just became the first woman from her country to advance to the semis of the Australian Open in over three decades. Way to go, Eugenie! What do you want to know about her history-making game? How she prepped before facing Ana Ivanovic? What she thinks put her over the edge in this match? How high she thinks she can rise in this tournament? Duh, of course not, you want to know what man she’d date if she could date any man in the whole wide world. Because that’s so relevant to tennis!
That’s what British sports reporter Samantha Smith, herself a former tennis player who really ought to know better, asked Bouchard seconds after the match ended. A lot of people are pissed off about what Smith asked, and rightly so – it completely disregarded Bouchard’s abilities and achievements as a tennis player – but I want to focus on how she asked it. Check out this “I don’t mean it, the boys made me” sexism in action:
“You’re getting a lot of fans here. A lot of them are male, and they want to know: If you could date anyone in the world of sport, of movies – I’m sorry, they asked me to say this – who would you date?”
They asked me to say this. It’s not my fault. I’m just giving the guys, who have been ogling you as you’ve been slogging it out on the tennis court in the 30-something degree heat, what they want. Men, amirite? Always disrespecting lady athletes, and who am I to intervene and ask appropriate questions? It’s not like I’m a professional sports journalist or something.
In other words, Samantha Smith did know better, and she did it anyway.
Chloe Angyal cannot believe Smith asked that question in 2014.
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