Just look at all that gorgeous skin! lol.. Black is indeed beautiful! Serena in a recent piece by Harpers Bazaar where they aimed to celebrate women who live by their own rules and are brave enough to take flight!
She opens up on work life and things in between..
Ask her the secret to this calm and Williams hoots, "Girl!" Huddled under a blanket in a Toronto hotel, she elaborates: "I think it started last year when I won the US Open," she says. "I was so stressed to get to number 18 the whole year before." Eighteen refers to the count of major titles, sealing Williams's legend status as the greatest female player of all time, tying Martina Navratilova's and Chris Evert's records.
Get there Williams did, and then some. There's something in that security—and at 34, not being a baby anymore—that has granted her a certain exhalation. "I've made it a point to be calmer," Williams says, sipping sparkling water while toying with a moules frites. "You know me, I'm really intense and really crazy, but in my career I want to be more calm." Her reasons are physical as well as emotional. "When I went through all of that stuff with my lungs [she suffered a life-threatening pulmonary embolism in 2011], that's when I decided to be more calm on the court."
When you think about it, most of us can work if we're not feeling so hot. Williams can't. Her career depends on every single part of her body functioning at peak capacity. All the time. "Yeah," she agrees. "But you know what? I think I was prepared for this for so many years, practicing, training. I'm 34. I've been training and doing this …" Since she was a kid. She corrects me. "Since I was three."
While 34 is commonly celebrated as a woman's prime, it is not in tennis. It's positively geriatric. Unless you're Williams. "I have so much more perspective; I'm more clear," she says. "It's like I can see the game better." She lets out one of her goofy laughs. "Which is so weird."
More when you continue..
Today, Williams is wearing a Nike T-shirt that reads, in bold black font, IT'S ON. She adores fashion, recently hosting a sexy, fringe-filled presentation of her line, Serena Williams Signature Statement, at New York Fashion Week (with rumored boyfriend Drake, who provided the soundtrack, in the audience), and occasionally jazz-handing on HSN. While Williams can "swerve" in body-conscious Victoria Beckham, she's most comfortable at home in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, "walking around without makeup. I like the feeling of being stripped of everything and just being myself." She grins. "Watching Netflix."
Williams is rarely intimidated, apart from on the red carpet. "Every time I go down a red carpet, I get a little nervous," she says with a sigh. "I've done it 20,000 times, but you'd be surprised. I always have to take a deep breath before I go out there. Put on a brave, bold pose."
he spirit of daring defines Williams, a trait so innate that she shrugs it off. "Daring to me is taking a chance but not doing it blindly," she explains. "A very calculated chance. Think of amazing women like Sheryl Sandberg and Oprah Winfrey—they're daring, but they're not jumping off a building without a parachute, you know?" Again, this perspective comes with growing up. "You have to be smart about it. You can't be afraid to be a pioneer and take a chance and speak up and just be bold." Williams characterizes her tennis game as "built around chances. I don't know any other way."
Personally, Williams characterizes herself as a "daredevil. Except I don't like heights." She shows off the recent New York magazine photograph of her doing perfect splits on parallel bars. "If only I got the toe point!" She casually adds that she's working on "no-hand backflips," which must give members of her team a stroke. "I landed on my neck the other day," she says. So why do it? "Because I want to."
Williams is the first to call other female athletes daring. "Venus is daring," she says of her sister. "And Ronda Rousey, the UFC fighter. The way she speaks up for herself is bold and inspiring." For Williams, there is no choice but to live, and play, boldly. "I feel stronger now," she says before heading off, with a little shrug, to training. "Some people are born to do certain things, and I think I was born to do tennis. I definitely didn't miss my calling!" She laughs. "I think all that training just comes together."
She adds, "I also think I'm maybe pretty good at what I do. You know?"
Of course you are! with the number of Grand slams under her belt?! are you joking Serena lol!
