Billie Jean King

In 1973, one woman stood on the white line marking the end of an era and the breaking point of at least one stereotype; that men were better than women.  Billie Jean King, in a match known as the Battle of the Sexes, was about to change the world of sports and athletics for women for all time.  And at the end of the match, when she had beaten Bobby Riggs, she had done just that and more.

King accepted Riggs’ challenge to a match after Margaret Court of Australia and one of the best tennis players of all time lost to Riggs in a similar match.  King’s was concerned with promoting women’s equality on and off the court, to help prevent any repeal of Title IX legislation that guaranteed that all schools receiving federal money would spend it equally on girls and boys or women and men, and to further promote tennis as a sport for all players with entertainment value as well. 

In her new book, Pressure is Privilege: Lessons I’ve Learned from Life and the Battle of the Sexes, King says before Margaret Court’s match with Riggs she asked her, “Do you understand what this is about?  This is just about tennis.  This is about social change, about women’s sports, and women’s rights.” She also added that she played the match against Riggs to prove that women had equal entertainment value and should be paid equally and as of March 2007, all four of the Grand Slam events do just that.

 But Pressure is Privilege is not really about sports or even tennis as you might expect considering the author.  Pressure is Privilege is about life lessons Billie Jean King learned from the Battle of the Sexes and much of the rest of her life as well.

Each chapter is named for a different life-coaching tip or hint that King shares with the readers through anecdotes from her life and career.  Many of these are simple and we should all know them but sometimes it takes an outsider to tell us to pay attention to the lessons the universe is offering us. At the end of each short chapter is an “Instant Replay” of the tip or concept King is conveying.

The stories, history, and anecdotes are fascinating coming from a woman who has been typecast in our time as a woman who gloriously proved herself in a man’s world and nine years later was disgraced and bankrupted when she was outed as a lesbian in court documents for a lawsuit.  Nothing has ever slowed this woman down.  She has nearly always accomplished what she set out to do.

Billie Jean King has lived a remarkable life, beyond the 39 Grand Slam single, doubles, and mixed doubles titles she won over the course of her career in competitive tennis.  Today, in addition to her involvement with World Team Tennis, the co-ed tennis league she helped co-found, King continues to be a leader in the fight for equality and recognition of the LGBTQ community.

She currently serves on the board of both the Women’s Sports Foundation and the Elton John AIDS Foundation.  Her most recent cause is GreenSlam, an environmental initiative, which she launched in 2007.  Through GreenSlam, King has issued a challenge for the sports industry to become more proactive about going green.

In one of the last chapters of Pressure is Privilege, King states, “Each generation’s job is to be on the cutting edge, to push the envelope for the next generation. A stronger connection between generations makes us all stronger…wiser and it improves our quality of life.”  King’s life has been an example of that and the lessons she has learned, she is now passing down to the next generation.  All we need to do is pay attention.