and more than I knoew or wantd to knew about Patty SChnyder's freak cult boyfriend guy. How can Hantuchova play like that? Sad.
Helping Hantuchova
Over the past few weeks we've received a lot of mail sounding a similar theme. What was an open secret a few months ago has become a cause célèbre. As we predicted, the tabs are all over this. One headline the other day: "Babe of Bratislava becomes Spindles of Slovakia to spark health fears." Hantuchova, not surprisingly, denies -- adamantly -- that she has an eating disorder, but her appearance indicates otherwise and is cause for serious concern.
Hantuchova's build has caused much concern. \Intervention, however, is a tricky business. The core issues: What is the role of the tour? And what are the parameters of its authority? Unlike drugs, an eating disorder isn't illegal or something expressly forbidden by the tour's rules and regulations. While Hantuchova unquestionably looks terribly unhealthy, she has a certain autonomy over her body. If this were a team sport, the franchise or league could demand that the player seek help -- or at least forbid him from taking the field/court/ice until he returned to "playing shape." But Hantuchova is an indep! en! dent contractor; so long as her ranking is sufficient for entry in events, I'm not sure the tour or the tournament organizers have any power to forbid her from competing.
The situation is comparable to the travails of Patty Schnyder several years ago. Schnyder, you'll recall, was a rising star when she fell under spell of a bizarre "guru" whose methods included making her consume ungodly quotients of orange juice and pierce her skin with unsanitized needles. Many called upon the tour to assert its authority and act on her behalf. While administrators and other players tried to speak with Schnyder, they couldn't do much formally. As one staffer explained to me at the time, "Look, it's a horrible situation. But she's over 18, she's made a decision, and we can't start banning players because they have creepy boyfriends." Inherent in this, I think, is a philosophical tension. If you're the leading women's sport and trumpet your tour as a collection of empowered females, how do you then turn around and play the paternalistic role of Big Sister with your constituents?
Of course, just because the WTA can't necessarily take formal action doesn't mean it can't bend over backward to help Hantuchova. Offer her the services of a counselor and nutritionist, for starters. Make sure that her mentor (Martina Navratilova, I believe) is on the case. Let Carling Bassett-Seguso tell Hantuchova how anorexia wreaked havoc on Bassett-Seguso's career. Get Hantuchova a copy of Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth. (We assume the tour is doing some or all of these already.)
It would also be nice if the tour stopped selling Hantuchova as the Alternative Anna. I know some of you think we're obsessed with this issue, but when WTA staffers tell reporters that "[Hantuchova] is way hotter than Anna," when they oversee her posing spread eagle for a men's magazine or make her the focal point of their terminally cheesy calendars, how can the tour be surprised that she clearly has body-image issues?
Anyway, this is as much a psychological as a physical issue. Let's hope that Hantuchova gets some help from whatever sources, in or out of tennis.
