Billie Jean King Changed the World
I read an article about Billie Jean King the other day, and it talked about how she had changed tennis and women’s sports. That was such a limited and narrow view. In reality, Billie Jean King changed the world.
Think that’s a radical claim? Not at all. I’ll tell you a personal story now.
Remember that match with Bobby Riggs? The Battle of the Sexes? How Billie Jean King beat him, despite predictions. It was fantastic. In that brief match, she managed to change the world in a very profound way.
I was 12 or so then, and it changed how I looked at the world. I was growing up in small town America, and in junior high. I had complained to my mother about how the boys had sports in junior high, but the girls didn’t…despite state laws requiring equality in the schools. My mother’s reaction was that if I didn’t think it was fair, I needed to work to change it. Her suggestion for changing it was a letter to the editor for a first step.
I thought it was a good idea, and recruited my younger sister to the project too. We wrote our letters, sent them off…and a few days later, there they were…in black and white, for the entire town to read.
Oh boy, did we start the ball of change rolling in our small town. At twelve, I had no idea what I was about to endure, or the changes that it would cause in me. It meant I spent my years in junior high school labeled a “women’s libber” and assorted other sins, being publicly humiliated by most of my teachers as I was targeted as a revolutionary on a daily basis.
I developed a thick skin fast. I couldn’t burst into tears as I was brought to the front of the class as an example of a “women’s libber” and an “unfeminine girl.” I couldn’t let on that I was awkward with my own body, with its rapid changes, and that I WAS different from the boys all of a sudden. Cast by a desire to play basketball into a role as the junior high rebel, I learned fast to stand up for what I wanted and believed in, and to choose my battles carefully.
After that first year of the painful humiliation, we had girl’s basketball in both seventh and eighth grade. I think we had a whole four or five games against other schools. Did I like basketball? Not as much as I thought I would, but after all of that, I HAD to play. Was I good at it? Not really. But that didn’t matter; I had fought long and hard to get here. I was GOING to play.
I learned a lot as a result of Billie Jean King. Billie Jean made me learn that I didn’t have to grow up expecting to be a secretary or school teacher, earning half the pay of my male counterparts. She made me learn that some things are worth standing up for, and that following the herd was not required.
I learned to have Expectations. I learned that I could make choices. I learned to have opinions and to voice them. I learned that being female did not take away the validity of my knowledge, ability, and opinions. I learned that gender didn’t have to define us professionally in a limiting manner.
Okay, so how do these changes in me pertain to Billie Jean King changing the world? I was a small ripple in a small pond. I was not important, I didn’t make headlines anywhere, and I didn’t find a cure for anything.
But Billie Jean King caused those ripples to occur in thousands of small towns across America. Each of these people who were touched by these small ripples felt the changes those ripples left on their own perception of the world.
Billie Jean King changed the world by changing the expectations of thousands upon thousands of young girls with that tennis match. We all grew up, we all had jobs or raised families or otherwise touched other people’s lives, perpetuating that ripple effect until guess what?
Equality was starting to happen, all because of a tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs that was played way back in the early 70s, long before most of the beneficiaries of her efforts towards equality were even born. Did Ms. King intend to cause all of this change?
It doesn’t matter…she did.
Gia Scott
http://exogenynetwork.com
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Gia Scott
(504) 621 2851
The Dawn of Shades, Tuesdays, 7-9 pm Central
www.exogenynetwork.com
