Serena Williams is continuing another epic run at Wimbledon. She'll play in the semifinals on Thursday (July 11) against Barbora Strýcová in the hope of making her 32nd Grand Slam final. (She was also in the hunt for the mixed doubles titles with British star Andy Murray, but they lost today.)
As always, she's shown off her incredible skill, fitness, and endurance on the court. But some fans think there's another key to her powers: her hair. During her Tuesday (July 9) match against fellow American Alison Riske, Williams initially wore her curls in what has become something of a signature look for her—a modified ponytail with a headband. After losing the second set and with the third tied at 3–3, she pulled her hair up into a tight bun.
Soon enough, Williams was once again dominating the match and ended up winning that set 6–3 and the match.
Before:
After:
"Well, today [my hair] was just in my way, and the wind. I was missing a shot because it's in my face," Williams said of the hair switch. "I was like, 'This is not happening.' I just needed to get it out of the way, put the business bun up and just get to business."
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She also called it her "emergency exit."
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Listen, I'm just a fan, and I've fully convinced myself that whether my hair is up or down has an effect on the sporting event I'm watching—so I'm totally with the people online who credit the "business bun" with changing the tide of the match. Even Williams's husband, Alexis Ohanian, weighed in. "#MamaStrength. What an amazing match between two women who went all out today. But the #BusinessBun means business," he wrote.
"As soon as the business bun came out, I knew it was gonna be lit. Sheer brilliance by Serena those last several games," one fan tweeted.
Another wrote: "It has become clear that the Business Bun is liminal, it is performative, it is an act of hair rather than a state of being. We must understand the Business Bun as a transcendence of time and space. It is a verb."
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Long live the power of the business bun—may we all harness it in our own lives.
