It’s difficult to not take into consideration Tashi Duncan’s (Zendaya) body while watching Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers. Once we’re first introduced to the teenager tennis star, she walks onto the court in a white Adidas tennis dress that hugs her body perfectly. Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) ogle at her because the wind blows one side of her skirt up, revealing a glimpse of her right butt cheek. After her match, we again watch Art and Patrick stare upon Tashi while she dances at her Adidas party in a blue dress accentuating her slim frame. There are multiple moments like this within the film where we’re made to gawk (identical to Art and Patrick) at Tashi’s body and the way it moves. 

I wasn’t the just one who noticed this while watching Challengers. Countless people have remarked on Zendaya’s body being “tea” on X and claimed they might start understanding after seeing her within the film. But while watching Challengers, I wondered why Tashi’s body didn’t resemble other young tennis stars we all know from real life. From Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka to the young Serena and Venus Williams (all women who helped shape the character of Tashi), these sportswomen have a more muscular and broader physique than Tashi, difficult idealised notions about what women should seem like. Though Zendaya’s portrayal of Tashi was impressive, Challengers would have been more interesting, each visually and textually, if the thing of Art and Patrick’s desires was a lady who stood in opposition to idealised femininity quite than conforms to it, as so many ladies in sport do.

Sport is an arena where outdated notions about femininity are consistently challenged. It’s an area where women construct muscle and scream (at themselves, their teammates and their opposition). Also they are assertive and aggressive – all things we’re told women shouldn’t be. And for these acts of defiance, women in sports are punished. From the racist ridicule that was at all times levelled against Serena Williams due to her dark skin and muscular body to the questioning of Olympic runner Caster Semenya’s gender due to the high levels of testosterone in her body. All women, but especially Black women athletes, have always been bullied and seen as less desirable when their bodies and behavior go against traditional ideas of femininity. But Challengers had the chance to confront our normative understanding of who and what’s desirable – in the identical way the film presents another and queer view of how relationships can work. However the film chooses to not go that extra mile. 

“What they desired to do was make the thing of desire clear,” 24-year-old film buff Sandra explains to Dazed. “They wanted someone everyone would see as easily digestible and who everyone would understand to be a desirable figure.” In fact, Zendaya also produced Challengers, but her casting is paying homage to Jacob Elordi’s in Saltburn. They’re each so stereotypically beautiful that it’s difficult to call their attractiveness into query, but sooner or later, this fashion of casting is boring.  

This is the reason movies like Love Lies Bleeding, as Alex Rigotti writes of their recent feature for Dazed Beauty, are so exciting. The erotic thriller written by Rose Glass centres around a queer relationship between bodybuilder Jackie (Katy M O’Brien) and gym manager Lou (Kristen Stewart) and follows them as they get tousled with Lou’s criminal family. Jackie is the foremost object of desire in Love Lies Bleeding, along with her ripped, muscular body, sculpted six-pack and beefy arms showcased in multicoloured hues. She is, as Rigotti writes, “antithetical to the traits often considered ’feminine’ under the patriarchy,” and yet we will’t take our eyes off of her. While bodybuilding is far more complicated than being a revolutionary feminist act, the inclusion of ladies like O’Brien in such horny movies can disrupt our understanding of gender and desire in exhilarating and recent ways.    

It needs to be noted that not all sportswomen construct up muscle in the identical way as Williams or Gauff. That is something women athletes have expressed discomfort over, as they feel forced to make a choice from looking ‘strong’ or ‘feminine’. In an interview with Dr Alison Owen, Lecturer in Health Psychology for The Conversation, a female athlete confessed that she looks like “athletes are put into two categories: either they’re labelled as not trying hard enough because they don’t look strong or they’re shamed for looking manly and it’s an excessive amount of.”

There isn’t a singular way an athlete’s body should look, and lots of sportswomen share Tashi’s slender frame. Nevertheless, we should always call into query after we are being fed the identical kinds of bodies on film and tv, over and all over again, because not only do they impact how we take into consideration gender, but in addition they impact how we feel about our bodies and others.