!Heningraf In her pre-final presser this morning, Justine Henin made a confession that took by surprise those of us to tend to see her as the most devout member in the order, Sisters of No Mercy, a wearer of hair shirts and lighter of votive candles before the statue of Ivan Lendl, who belongs to the male division of the same outfit.
Now there's an odd couple for you.
Justine wore a pumpkin-colored Adidas warm-up jacket, which for her is a fashion statement on the order of the famous Hrbaty pink shirt. She had her hair pulled back in the usual, scalp-tugging pony tail (pain is good; pain is your friend!) And someone really ought to tell Justine that the Order now allows for a bit of make-up, and that hair coloring is no longer an act of heresy punishable by immolation at stake..Her fine features had more of a glow than usual, perhaps because she is traveling these days through the previously uncharted (for her) waters of Happiness. Of course, you can't ask her too much about why she is so happy; that, she resolutely maintains, touches on her "private life."
Anyway, I made a little speech about how serious and almost severe Justine appears to be out her profession and ambitions, and wondered if she allowed herself any luxuries or indulgences at all. She replied.
Now, as I just mentioned, you probe further in this department and all you're going to get is abstractions and platitudes - what's Justine gonna do, admit that her guilty pleasure is reading Kierkegaard? Eating Belgian chocolates, a crate at a time? Photo-shopping images of Champagne Kimmy Clijsters to create a thought-bubble that reads: Oh, no, nuclear war! There goes my bridal shower! When it comes to Justine and her pressers, no detail goes unhidden, although she did mention near the end of the chat that she loves to sing. Do you also get the feeling that her favorite tune, in the shower, is David Bowie's bad acid-trip of a song, Fame?
But all of these things underscore something about Henin: that she is absolutely indifferent to the lure or trappings of fame and as focused on her mission, and as protective of her vision of life, as any top tennis player who ever lived. And this makes her a woman in command. In fact, you could ramrod 25 feminists into a crack vial and still fall short of having a comparably nuclear essence of self-empowerment. Justine don't need no stinkin' hair and make-up chick, not does she have to pander to anyone else's idea of empowerment. In spite of myself and Justine's well-documented transgresssions against the concept of sportsmanship, I find her increasingly appealing. She is nothing if not authentic, if not always in a good way.
In case you hadn't noticed, she is also well-established as the greatest French Open player since Steffi Graf, although the comparison doesn't exactly impel her to do cartwheels. When I suggested it in her post-Jankovic-beatdown presser yesterday, she replied:
And when I followed with the observation that she may not be getting full credit for her status, she added:
