Over decades, Serena Williams was known and praised for her resilience and hard work. For years, she has been celebrated for her muscular and perhaps less conventional body type compared to other elite athletes in her sport. However, recently Williams has been criticized for publicly admitting and actively endorsing weight-loss medication. The backlash that followed was not entirely surprising considering the foundation on which her legacy had been built.
In a recent interview with People, she shared, ”I never was able to get to the weight I needed to be no matter what I did, no matter how much I trained”. And yes, her frustration is palpable and easy to empathize with. Many of us know what it means to work relentlessly toward a body ideal that remains elusive. However, on another level, I cannot help but think of bell hooks words who argued that ”if any female feels she needs anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency”. In fact, I’d like to borrow hook’s take and rewrite it to ”if any female feels she needs GLP-1 to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency”. Harsh, but let’s us dive deeper to untangle this argument.
In fact, it is not just bell hooks who comes to mind when reading about Williams. In William’s case, it seems that Foucault’s concept of biopower has never been more relevant. GLP-1 therapy, marketed as a personal health choice, is also a tool of bodily regulation: an instrument through which institutions (medical, commercial, cultural) exert control over populations by managing bodies. William’s admission that she ”could never get down to where I needed to be” reveals how deeply internalized these norms are. While the ”need” is also hinted at to be medical (e.g. Williams argued that she was suffering from body aches due to her weight), it is fairly obvious that most of it seems to be aesthetic, performative, disciplinary. Her body, once celebrated for its defiance of convention, is now being reshaped to conform to a different regime of acceptability. And that regime is not neutral. In fact, it is governed by what Foucault would call the normative gaze, which surveils and disciplines bodies into compliance.
The Rewriting of Athletic Femininity
This shift isn’t unique to Williams. At the same time, I have started to notice retired/retiring female CrossFit athletes like Amanda Barnhart and or Jessica Cahoy changing their narratives from what used to be stories of ”strong is beautiful” to actively promoting low-intensity and gentler approaches to fitness. At a glance, these stories are harmless and even promoting sustainable fitness regimes for hobby athletes all around the world. However, in one of her more recent Instagram posts, Cahoy actively promotes her business with something along the lines of ”if you want to get smaller and still look toned try my low-intensity fitness programme”. Frankly, the idea of promoting ”small” and ”toned” left a bad taste in my mouth.
Now, let’s be clear: women, their bodies and the narratives around them are allowed to change. CrossFit Games veterans or tennis legends do not owe us a lifetime of the same story. What is striking is not the change itself, but the discomfort it provokes. When athletes who once stood for one thing begin to promote another… we, particularly women, might even feel betrayed. Rightfully so, if their rewritings begin to echo dominant beauty ideals, such as thinness, softness, smallness. We have to ask: is this evolution, or is it capitulation?
Luckily, Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and capital helps us understand this shift. In elite sport, muscularity once conferred symbolic capital: strength, discipline and resistance to gender norms. But in retirement, that capital is often lost. Now, thinness and being ”toned” – not muscular and femininity are the currencies that sell. As such, athletes are not just changing their training styles. They are recalibrating their habitus to align with a new market logic. Their bodies are being re-coded to maintain relevance, profitability and legitimacy in the wellness industry.
The Commodification of Change
Muscularity in women has always been a gendered transgression. It disrupts the norms that define femininity as small, soft and passive. Butler’s theory of gender performativity reminds us that gender is not a stable identity but a repeated performance. These performances are policed, rewarded and monetized. When Cahoy jokes about wanting to lose muscle more than wanting to have it, it is not just a personal anecdote. It is a performative act that reaffirms the cultural script: femininity must be reclaimed through reduction. When muscularity and strength is treated as a temporary costume, something worn during competition and then discarded in favor of a more socially acceptable softness, it sends a message. Once the medals are won and the cameras turned off, the body must return to its normative and desirable state.
Again, nobody is expecting Cahoy to look a certain way or that Williams is not allowed to lose weight. The problem is how these stories are framed and monetized, and what they imply about the value of certain bodies once the party is over. The same bodies that once sold protein powders and performance gear now sell hormone-friendly fitness programs and pharmaceutical weight-loss solutions. As such, their transformations are not only physical or mental. They are commercial.
What we are witnessing is the commodification of bodily change. The post-muscular, post-athletic-career body is not simply a personal evolution. It is a product sold with the same persuasive force that once marketed opposing values. Or as Bourdieu would argue: their habitus is being recalibrated to maintain symbolic and economic capital. Their actions are not free, but rather policed, monetized and rewarded.
Yes, female athletes have all the right to rewrite their stories as they move through different phases of life. But alongside that right comes our responsibility to critically examine the cultural scripts they are handed – and reproduce – and to remain alert to the industries that profit from these narrative shifts. If a particular body is the ultimate destination, the rewrite becomes less about liberation and more about oppression and marketability.
Summary: This blog post explores how retired female athletes, such as Serena Williams and CrossFit figures like Jessica Cahoy, are reshaping their public narratives and bodies in ways that increasingly align with dominant beauty ideals. While these women have every right to evolve, their narrative shifts raise critical questions about agency, cultural pressure and commercialization. Drawing on theorists like Foucault, Bourdieu and Butler, the piece argues that these transformations are not purely personal but shaped by systems of biopower, market logic and gender norms as the post-athletic body, once a symbol of strength and resistance, is now being commodified.
A selection of references I am referring to in this post:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/tennis/article-15021529/Serena-Williams-weight-loss-drug-concern.html
https://www.millersville.edu/africanamericanstudies/jackson-lecture1/bell-hooks.php
