Slate article which has come under criticism the last few days
Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian Are Extremely Good at Performing Their Happy Relationship Online. Why Do They Do It?
What exactly are they trying to prove? Williams has more money than she could ever need, and Ohanian has millions of his own. So why are they so intent on packaging their family life into social media–friendly morsels of content? It’s true that the work of building a brand is never done—maybe the more perfect Williams’ personal life looks, the more endorsement dollars she’ll be able to get Nike to cough up. Maybe Williams and Ohanian are hoping to burnish their public personas in preparation for whatever comes after tennis. Or maybe it’s cynical to consider the financial upsides, and this is just what it looks like to fall in love and start a family with a fellow cajillionaire who just so happens to have built his fortune on the social internet. What makes this question so endlessly compelling is that we’ll never really know.
Serena Williams and Alexis Ohanian Are Extremely Good at Performing Their Happy Relationship Online. Why Do They Do It?
What exactly are they trying to prove? Williams has more money than she could ever need, and Ohanian has millions of his own. So why are they so intent on packaging their family life into social media–friendly morsels of content? It’s true that the work of building a brand is never done—maybe the more perfect Williams’ personal life looks, the more endorsement dollars she’ll be able to get Nike to cough up. Maybe Williams and Ohanian are hoping to burnish their public personas in preparation for whatever comes after tennis. Or maybe it’s cynical to consider the financial upsides, and this is just what it looks like to fall in love and start a family with a fellow cajillionaire who just so happens to have built his fortune on the social internet. What makes this question so endlessly compelling is that we’ll never really know.
