Billie Jean King: Taking on the Battle of the Sexes
Published to Golden Globes on October 16, 2017
It’s hard to understand that such a seminal event as Billie Jean King, the number one Women’s Tennis player at the time, taking on a man and beating him at the height of the woman’s movement, has faded from popular culture to such an extent that many young women are unaware who this iconic figure is. Battle of the Sexes, a new movie about King’s life at that time should put her and the event back into the public zeitgeist. It’s not just that she beat a guy who the former women’s #1 tennis player, Margaret Court, had crumbled against, or that she was determined to challenge many of the biases that unfortunately are still associated with women – ‘not as tough’, ‘lacks endurance’, ‘no woman ever has – so no woman should’.