Last week, Serena sent out an unexplained snap reading “20 weeks” over a photo of her enlarged belly. This obviously seemed to suggest she was pregnant, though it seemed a bit odd she hadn’t just said that.
Serena's snap suggests that she won the Australian Open without dropping a set while pregnant. pic.twitter.com/ltPndJRJBq
— Bryan Armen Graham (@BryanAGraham) April 19, 2017
Later in the day, Williams’ publicist confirmed that the tennis legend was pregnant, but we were left with the question of why Serena had announced her baby in a matter-of-fact message on Snapchat.
Well it turned out, the snap was accidental.
In an interview with TED, Williams explained that she was taking the photo for her own use but pressed the wrong button and wound up sending it out to the world.
“I was on vacation, taking time for myself, and I have this thing where I’ve been checking my status and taking a picture every week,” she says. “I’ve been just saving it, but you know how social media is — you press the wrong button and…” Williams shrugs. “My phone doesn’t ring that much, and thirty minutes later, I’d missed four calls. So I picked it up and realized, ‘Oh no.’”
Williams also addressed how her pregnancy affected the Australian Open, which she won in January without dropping a set. She apparently found out he was pregnant just before the tournament but got clearance to play anyway.
“I was nervous,” she says. “I wasn’t sure what to do. Can I play? I know it’s very dangerous in the first 12 weeks or so, so I had a lot of questions.” But she decided she needed to. “I knew that at that moment, it was important for me to just focus,” she says. “I had to take all that energy and put it in a paper bag and throw it away. I really felt like I didn’t have time to deal with any extra emotions — any extra anything.” She felt immense pressure. “Pregnant or not, no one knew,” she says. “Every tournament where I show up, I’m expected to win. If I don’t win, it’s actually bigger news.”
Of course, Williams’ pregnancy was going to become public one way or another, so it’s not the worst thing that it first got out over Snapchat. It just probably wasn’t exactly how she planned it.
As we have seen repeatedly over the years, star athletes are just as incompetent on social media as the rest of us.
[TED]
