A teenage girl whose natural and healthy body type doesn’t fit into a size zero, or onto the cover of a magazine, is already under enough pressure. You cannot tell her that her problem is “fitness” without her hearing the word “fatness.”
You can’t add punishment for it, hold back money for her future, threaten her family’s finances. Bluntly: You can’t be sure if that action will push her to train harder or force her to put a finger down her throat.
And if you’re the United States Tennis Association, having had a disastrous relationship with black tennis prodigy Donald Young, you cannot play this loosely or obliviously with the psyche of 16-year-old Taylor Townsend, an African-American girl who is the No. 1 ranked junior in the world.
On Monday, Serena Williams called it a tragedy.
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