Created September 1976 | ||
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The Tennis Girl is a British poster that has become a pop icon. It shows a young woman from behind walking towards the net of a tennis court with a tennis racquet in her right hand and her left hand reaching behind lifting her short tennis dress, showing she is not wearing any underwear.
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Athena tennis girl censored after feminist hissy fit
Creation
The photograph was taken by Martin Elliott in September 1976 and features 18-year-old Fiona Butler (now Walker), his girlfriend at the time. The photo was taken at Birmingham University tennis courts in Edgbaston, England. The dress was hand-made by Butler's friend Carol Knotts, from a Simplicity Pattern with added lace trim. Knotts also supplied the tennis racquet, with all of the borrowed items later returned by Butler to Knotts after the shoot with a box of chocolates. Butler borrowed the plimsolls from her father, whilst the tennis balls were those used as playthings by her family's pet dog.
History
The image was first published as part of a calendar by Athena for the 1977 Silver Jubilee, the same year Virginia Wade achieved the Wimbledon ladies' singles title. Athena then negotiated a licence to distribute the image as a poster, where from 1978 it achieved widespread distribution, selling over 2 million copies at £2 per poster. Although Athena went into administration in 1995, the picture remains a popular print to buy and can be found at other retailers like Amazon, AllPosters & King and McGaw.
Butler, who broke up with Elliot three years later, said in retrospect that she was not embarrassed about posing, nor bitter that she did not receive any royalties from the photo. Butler (now Walker) is a mother of three, who works as a freelance illustrator in Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire. Elliott died on 24 March 2010. Knotts, now a barrister living in Gloucestershire, put the dress and racquet up for sale at an auction on 5 July 2014, the day of the 2014 Wimbledon Championships – Women's Singles final. The racquet was sold for £15,000, while the dress went for between £1000-£2000.
Subject doubts
In February 2015, Peter Atkinson from Marsh Gate, Cornwall, came forward to insist the photo was actually of his ex-wife, producing in evidence two items, one showing the same image and the other a close variant (seemingly taken on the same occasion), both of which were dated 1974, two years before Fiona Butler's photo shoot.
Parody
Over the years the picture has been parodied by various people as diverse as former tennis star Pat Cash, comedian Alan Carr and singer Kylie Minogue, with actor Keith Lemon featuring his parody in his 2012 calendar.
It was also imitated in an advertisement for a tennis video game called Davis Cup World Tour for the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive.
As an election promise for the 2012 Belgian elections, a 22-year-old Belgian woman from Sint-Truiden promised to publish a nude photo shoot when receiving 1,000 votes. She released a picture of her in the Tennis Girl pose prior to the elections.
In 2009, the series "Shameless" featured a parody in the closing scene of its sixth season's twelfth episode. In this scene, Alice Barry's character, Lillian Tyler, rises and walks towards the door, mimicking a victory gesture after winning a game console version of tennis.
On May 9, 2016 it was displayed by Mark Hamill on Twitter from his @HamillHimself account as Princess Leia walking toward Tatooine buildings with a blaster in her hand instead of a tennis racquet.