Does Melanie Oudin have the physical assets to become a tennis sex symbol?
Let’s face it, the only thing that interests many fans of women’s tennis is the women, and the interest is not in their tennis. Anna Kournikova is still one of tennis’s biggest names and she never won a tennis tournament in her career. Maria Sharapova has only won three grandslam championships by comparison to former world number one and now retired Justine Henin who won 7, Venus Williams who also won 7 and Serena Williams who has so far won 11, but she’s the highest paid woman in sports as of 2008. The reason Kournikova was such a big name in tennis even though she never won anything and Sharipova makes more money than anyone else in tennis is because both are hot blondes that lots of guys lust after.
If you’re a blonde in women’s tennis you are automatically elevated above everyone else in worth, unless of course you don’t happen to have a sleek super-model figure ( Svetlana Kuznetsova) or you’re too intelligent to court or respond enthusiastically to the attention the media tries to heap on you (Elena Dimentieva).
The world is already watching hottie Caroline Wozniacki. Unlike in the past when the media stood by and waited for the blonde hottie to win something before pouncing on her, Wozniacki is already well in the limelight; and now there’s a new blonde on the rise, seventeen year old American Melanie Oudin. Oudin is knocking out top seeds in major tournaments, but the diminutive teen with the blonde hair and blue eyes is not built to knock the breath out of the lungs of millions of men worldwide. She doesn’t have the figure of a Sharapova or a Kournikova. It might be harder for the media to make her out to be a sex symbol; but maybe that will be good for Oudin and good for women’s tennis and for American women’s tennis. Maybe having people more interested in her tennis and less interested in looking up under her skirt will help Oudin to live up to the phenomenal promise she has shown.
