November 14, 2018 - 10:13 AMT
Serena Williams is GQ's "Woman" Of The Year

Serena Williams appeared on the cover of GQ this week as the magazine’s 2018 Woman of the Year, Deadspin says.

The issue had four covers. On hers, the word “Men” had been crossed out, with “Woman” scribbled above in quotation marks.

Some observers, including New York Times tennis writer Ben Rothenberg, were puzzled by this use of punctuation, which could be read as questioning Williams’s identity as a woman. That would be especially charged, given the well-known history of ugly criticism of Williams’s body type.

The quotation marks on that cover weren’t scare quotes, though. As the cover notes (albeit in fine print), the word “Woman” was handwritten by fashion designer Virgil Abloh, who also styled Williams for the GQ photo shoot. That punctuation is a signature mark of Abloh, whose streetwear brand Off-White collaborated with Nike to produce the Serena-themed “Queen Collection” this summer. Williams could be seen wearing Abloh’s designs all through the U.S. Open, quotation marks and all.