Increasing Flex Appeal on Women’s Tour

Muscles for women are in. So it’s OK to flex them.

Nadia Petrova did after she upset Jennifer Capriati on Sunday at the French Open. She stood in the middle of center court, turned to her coach and friends in the stands, made a fist with her right hand and got the muscles in her forearm to ripple.

When top-seeded Serena Williams and fifth-seeded Amelie Mauresmo play their French Open quarterfinal today at Roland Garros it, too, will be all about power. Both athletes are proud of their broad shoulders, strong thighs and rock-solid arms.

It’s cool to be Popeye in a pony tail.

A couple of years ago, Martina Hingis dismissed Mauresmo as “half a man,” a knock at both the Frenchwoman’s physique and her open acknowledgment of her homosexuality.

But now a golfer such as Annika Sorenstam can spend her off-season working with weights and building her muscles, the better to play against men and women, and be applauded.

It’s fine to be Schwarzenegger in hoop earrings.

Vera Zvonareva, the 18-year-old who shocked Venus Williams on Sunday, is 5 feet 7, solidly built and proud of her strength. She outslugged Williams, even though she said Venus served “like a man.”

“Like a man” used to be an insult. Now it’s a compliment.

Twenty years ago, Martina Navratilova committed herself to losing weight, to getting fit, to building muscles. Her goal was to beat Chris Evert.

And after Navratilova transformed herself from a pudgy Czech immigrant into a strong, fit, muscular woman, she did. She beat Evert. Not everyone appreciated this powerful woman beating the smaller, daintier Evert, but Navratilova didn’t care.

Now Navratilova is 46 and still playing professional tennis. She and partner Svetlana Kuznetsova nearly filled Court 1 Monday for a third-round doubles match, a 6-4, 3-6, 7-5 loss to Chanda Rubin and Daniela Hantuchova.

Navratilova is lean and fit and still proud of her muscles. Middle-aged women stop her at country clubs, Navratilova said, “and they’re going, ‘Martina, we love you. You make me want to get out there.’ It’s so nice to see that, that I can motivate people to want to do better, to want to be in better shape.”

Lots of women want to be like Martina.

“The public perception and the press is much more accepting now of women athletes,” Navratilova said. “It’s OK to be a woman athlete and to be aggressive and to be in great shape.

“Too muscular? What’s too muscular? I think body builders are too muscular. You wouldn’t say that about a guy, that he’s too muscular. Shouldn’t say it about a woman either.”

Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sports at the University of Minnesota, said, “I think there has been some movement away from traditional notions and expectations regarding muscle, bulk and definitions of femininity and masculinity. Much of it is due to the fundamental cultural shift regarding women’s sports participation in the wake of Title IX.”

Serena Williams, who has proudly worn tight-fighting clothing such as her one-piece “cat suit” at last year’s U.S. Open, and Mauresmo, who sports attention-drawing tattoos on her bulky forearms, will play a brand of rollicking, all-out, power-hitting tennis today that would have been unimaginable a decade ago.

Back then, the grunting power of Monica Seles was considered a little unpleasant, a little unseemly and likely to lead to a brand of tennis playable only by 6-foot-tall women.

Then the Williams sisters came along. Venus is 6-2 and much quicker than Seles. Serena is 5-11 and both quick and powerful. In the last 18 months, Serena has won four consecutive Grand Slam tournaments and played Venus in the final of each. Venus is out, though, beaten by a shorter but stronger and more motivated young woman.

Kim Clijsters, who plays 31-year-old Conchita Martinez today, has broadened her shoulders and her legs in the last two years as she has risen to No. 2 in the world rankings. Justine Henin-Hardenne, who meets Rubin in a quarterfinal, has said often this year that she is working on gaining strength and muscle.

“If the female athlete in question were a rugby player, the body type would be more problematic,” Kane said. “So, in that sense, I don’t think we should overstate the level of social acceptance. But, yes, I do believe there has been some change, a broadening of the scope and definition of what is considered acceptable for women and their bodies.”

The way to beat the Williams sisters, it became clear, was to get stronger and more muscular. So they did.

And it has worked. As Navratilova said, “the aura of invincibility” around Serena and Venus has shrunk. The other women have more strength and more confidence. The game is better for that.

Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com

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French Open Women

*--* * On TV: 5 a.m., ESPN2; 9 a.m., ESPN TODAY’S QUARTERFINALS * Conchita Martinez (24), Spain, vs. Kim Clijsters (2), Belgium * Justine Henin-Hardenne (4), Belgium, vs. Chanda Rubin (8) * Nadia Petrova, Russia, vs. Vera Zvonareva (22), Russia * Serena Williams (1) vs. Amelie Mauresmo (5), France

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