GQ “Woman of the Year” Magazine Cover For Serena Williams Sparks Controversy

It isn’t the accolades being bestowed upon her that are bugging some people. Instead, it’s the magazine’s cover that has ignited all kinds of social media buzz because of one word used in quotes.

GQ Magazine is getting skewered from all sides regarding recent grammar used in naming tennis star Serena Williams, 37, as its annual “GQ Woman of the Year” title. On Monday, popular online sites like Twitter lit up blasting the publication for the quotation marks and wondering why the punctuation was wrapped around the word “WOMAN.”

According to CNN.com, the typography chosen was actually handwritten by Serena Williams’s designer friend Virgil Abloh. Abloh’s signature style often features quotation marks in his work. It was his striking Nike tennis tutus that Serena Williams wore for the US Open.

Some social media users believe that the quotation marks are still insensitive and insulting to the tennis ace because she has often been slammed for her overly muscular appearance on the court and deliberately misgendered for a number of years.

Serena Williams has dealt with the nastiness and even took to Reddit last year to discuss accusations that she’s a man and belongs in men’s sports because of her powerful build. Williams was quoted in Reddit as saying she will not apologize for being a great tennis star because she got that way by working hard, and “I was born with this badass body and proud of it.”

Serena Williams is married to tech entrepreneur, author and millionaire Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian. The couple has a baby girl Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr, age one.

The adorable daughter even has her own Instagram with close to 500,000 social media followers. The family features lots of photographs at the social media site of little Alexis going about her daily life, and fans cannot seem to get enough.

GQ is also featuring three more magazine covers for the “Men of the Year” titles. Those winners include Michael B. Jordan, Jonah Hill and Henry Golding. None of their covers feature quotation marks around the word “MEN.”

So far, Serena Williams has not commented about her GQ Woman of the Year recognition. Her magazine cover shows the athlete dressed in a black, long-sleeve turtleneck leotard.