Welcome to the Tweed Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl. And you are tuned in to Tweed Trends.
It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today. Let's talk Serena Williams. Let's get started. Okay, let's start off two questions.
First question is, did you see the US Open on Monday night? Second question, did you see Serena Williams on the US Open on Monday night? Okay, so if you answered yes to the first question, but no to the second, you must have been awful tired because you missed the main event. If you said no to the first one, but yes to the second, then something is especially with your story because you had to be watching the US Open to then see her unless you caught it on the news.
If you said no to both, then this episode is probably not your cup of tea. And if you listen to it, I appreciate you. If you don't, I understand. If you said yes to both, pull up a chair.
Let's talk. First off, never have I ever seen someone walk out onto a tennis court with a train. A sequence train at that. I was awestruck.
I'm looking at her and all I can think of is black girl magic. And not just because she's a black girl and seems like when she gets out on the tennis court is magic, but literally her outfit looked like magic. It was a black long sleeve. I guess it was a sheer material.
Everybody kept saying that it had to have been a hot outfit, but it looked like sheer material to me. So I can't imagine what would have made it so hot, but neither here nor there. It had like what I would imagine if somebody had a magic wand and they just like kept tapping the material, just tap, tap, tap. And there were these little stars that just appeared in rhinestones and glitter.
And she had the glittery thinkies in her hair and it was like a fairy tale. And then on top of that, her mini me was dressed just like her down to the shoes and socks, I tell you. Oh my gosh. It was a spectacle to be seen.
And I thoroughly enjoyed it. I enjoyed the match, everything, the visuals, the celebration at the end. It was all absolutely amazing. So if you haven't figured it out already, I was in awe of Serena.
I was blown away. I was loving it. It was the theatrics, the glamour, the glitz, the I love sparkles. So all of that stuff was like, ah, yes.
But when I tell you, when I read the Vogue article, I was heartbroken. I felt like she was breaking up with me. And then I had to stop and realize it wasn't about me. Don't try to make everything about myself.
This was actually her breaking up with tennis. And just the idea is hard to imagine tennis without Serena at this point in time. She's been there. She's been doing a darn thing.
And now she's walking away and she's telling us about how this decision was so difficult for her to make to actually walk away. But she wants to work on family. She wants to take this next step. And she even said that, you know, if I had been a guy, I could still do all of this and have the family.
I could have it all. But because I'm a woman, I can't. And so I choose family. It's like, wow, because on top of that, with the money that she makes, she could have a surrogate do it all for her.
She could still play tennis and let somebody else carry the baby. But when you think about that, she said in the article that she actually enjoyed being pregnant, she enjoyed all of the stuff about being pregnant. So when you think about that and the idea of having a surrogate, well, a surrogate gets to carry the baby for you. And some people, that's the worst part about pregnancy and having children, they hate that part.
But for those people that enjoy it, it's kind of like, well, I gave birth to the first child. Is it fair to the second child that I let somebody else give birth to them? Because now, will my bond with them be the same? Because I didn't feel them in my belly and all that good stuff.
I didn't push them out and have some cool story to tell them about how long it took for all of that to take place. So I get it. I understand that it was heartbreaking. I mean, like, I was on the verge of tears reading this article.
So if you haven't read it, definitely check out this Vogue essay that Serena wrote. Because for me, it was heart-wrenching. I could feel her emotion in the essay with the words that she chose to use, to describe things. I hurt for her.
Now, the whole idea of this walking away from tennis, it's been so hard for her. She doesn't even call it retirement. She looks at it more as an evolution. So this is Serena 2.0 that we're about to experience.
And once again, though, guys, it's difficult imagining tennis without her. But I get it. So before I wrap up this episode, I do want to talk about a couple things that I noticed during this whole evolution. And yeah, I just want to point these things out.
Some of them were kind of weird. So let's talk about this. First off, I love the story that Billie Jean King told about meeting six-year-old Serena back in 1988 at a tennis clinic in Long Beach. I absolutely love that story where she asked her, can you serve?
Can you show me? And then tells this little six-year-old, hey, don't change anything about your serve. How amazing is that? Is Billie Jean King a Succier or something?
Did she call Cleo? How did she know that that little six-year-old with that serve back then could be this tennis bean-on with what we already know is one of the best serves in the game? Hello, Billie Jean, you have my respect. Another thing I thought was amazing, awesome, super that they had Oprah read the letter to Serena.
It's something about Oprah's voice that is just soothing and just makes you think of that calm auntie that talks you off the ledge every time that you are ready to act as straight and donkey. And so the fact that they had over-read that I thought that was great, on the other hand, Oprah's bestie Gail, she needs to stick to her script. She said a number of things that had me cringing when they got to the ceremony afterwards. I was kind of like, oh, why is she saying that?
The first part was when they first, when she first started talking and she was kind of referring to the match and Serena winning and that sort of thing. That was a little cringe-worthy for me just because I felt like she was putting the other girl down. I know she was building Serena up, but just her choice of words. Yeah, stick to the script Gail.
And speaking of sticking to the script, did you catch when Gail threw Oprah under the bus? She mentioned that Oprah has a tennis court, but doesn't know if she's ever used it. Did you have to tell us that about Oprah? This is Oprah we're talking about.
If she wants to heard Lama on her tennis court, that's Oprah's business. Why? Why Gail? Why did you have to say that?
Anyway, I digress. Let's keep moving. Serena gave some words of encouragement, advice and whatnot. She was like, I know it sounds cliche, but what I stand by, what I live by is never give up.
I can agree with it. I can go along with it. I don't know why I got choked up just now. But sure, it does sound cliche, but it's a good rule of thumb.
Never give up. Period. Point blank. End of story.
Now, one thing I thought was interesting though, when asked, Serena didn't say whether or not she was done with singles with Venus. She kind of danced around that. She never came out and said, oh no, if my sister needs a doubles partner, I'm there for her. She didn't say that.
And I can only imagine that to prepare for doubles is no different from preparing for a match on your own. And therefore, the preparation that it would take for her to get in shape to be able to play doubles with her sister, that would just be a little too much for her to be running her business and her family and all that other stuff. So it was almost kind of like, ah, just like I don't want to talk about this R-word thing, I don't want to talk about leaving my sister on the doubles court by herself, having to find somebody else to play with. So I'm just going to kind of sort around it and keep it moving.
There was something else. Oh, the fact that Serena seems to think that she can blend in in a crowd? Really girlfriend? I hope I'm in the crowd where you're blending in one day because guess what's going to happen?
I'm going to chat you up. We're going to exchange numbers and then we're going to be hanging out the following weekend because we're going to be besties. We're already besties. She just doesn't know it yet.
So eventually she'll find out though. Her and the rest of my Black Girl Magic crew, they don't know it yet, but we're tight. We're tight. Was that it?
Was that it? Was that it? Oh, so my own little conspiracy theory. I'm just throwing this out there.
I don't know because we aren't besties or anything, but I was checking out the way that Serena's outfit was kind of hanging on her. And so looking at the pictures from her in the Vogue piece and looking at her on the tennis court. I'm suspicious. I'm wondering if she might not already be pregnant as we speak.
Just saying. Just saying. But I'm suspicious. We'll see.
Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode, conspiracy theories and all. You know, I really love Serena and I don't know her, but I love her for what she did for tennis. She changed the face of it and not only just the face, she changed the face, she changed the fashion, she changed the form. She changed everything.
She took tennis and turned it upside down on his head because nobody expected her and her sister, two little black girls from Compton, California to come in and do what they did to the sport of tennis. But tennis will never be the same, but it's going to be better and get better and just continue on. And we have in a lot of ways, Serena to thank for it. She fought for diversity, equity, inclusion, not just for women, but also women of color.
And that means something because just by her being there and people seeing her, it lets other people know that they can do amazing things as well. So I could talk about this all day. You know what if I mean Twitter and Instagram at he. That's at h-e-e-t-t-e or just look for the hashtag tweet trends hit me up because I want to talk about this.
Did you pick up on anything else? That was a little weird. I want to hear what you got to say. Hit me up.
Have a good one. And I'll see you back here again on Thursday.