Olivia: Most people think the 'Battle of the Sexes' was about a tennis match. The truth is, it was the least important part. The real battle started when an 11-year-old girl was kicked out of a group photo for wearing shorts. That's where the revolution began. Jackson: Whoa, hold on. Shorts? Not a uniform violation, not a tantrum, but just… shorts? That sounds almost comically absurd from today's perspective. Olivia: It’s the perfect entry point into the world we're exploring today through Billie Jean King's incredible autobiography, All In. It’s a world where every detail of a woman's life was policed. Jackson: And this book is so much more than a sports memoir. It's highly-rated, a huge bestseller, but what struck me is that King herself said she wrote it as a final step in her own liberation, to tell the whole story, warts and all, for the first time at age 77. Olivia: Exactly. And that unflinching honesty is what makes it so powerful. It all starts with these early moments that seem small but are anything but. They are the kindling for the fire that was to come.

Jackson: Okay, so you have to start with the shorts story. I need to hear this. How does an 11-year-old get ejected from a photo for her outfit? Olivia: Picture this: it's 1955. Billie Jean is at her first big tournament at the Los Angeles Tennis Club. She's thrilled, she's in a group photo with all the other junior players. But the man in charge, a local tennis official named Perry T. Jones, who was basically the czar of Southern California tennis, spots her. She’s wearing white shorts her mother made for her. He physically yanks her out of the lineup. Jackson: Yanks her? Like, physically removes her? Olivia: Yes. In front of everyone. He tells her the rules are white skirts or dresses for girls. No exceptions. Her mother was mortified and immediately started sewing her a proper tennis dress, but for Billie Jean, that moment was a lightning bolt. She writes that she stood there, fuming, and thought to herself, "Everybody else is wearing tennis clothes... I am too. Someday I'm going to show you." Jackson: That's incredible. It’s not just about the clothes; it's about being told your version of belonging is wrong. And was this a one-off, or was this just... the air she breathed? Olivia: It was the air she breathed. This is what the book does so well—it shows it was a constant drip, drip, drip of slights. In elementary school, her teacher sent a note home marking her down a grade. The reason? She "occasionally takes advantage of her superior ability" during playground games. Jackson: Wait, let me get this straight. They penalized her for being too good at recess? That is the complete opposite of how we treat talented boys. We put them on a pedestal. Olivia: Precisely. The message was clear: don't be too ambitious, don't be too competitive, don't stand out. It continued at the Los Angeles Tennis Club. The top-ranked teenage boys would get free meals at the lunch counter. Billie Jean, also a top junior player, had to sit outside on a bench with her mom, eating a brown-bag lunch. Jackson: That's just brutal. It’s so systemic. It’s not one person being a jerk; it’s the entire structure reinforcing that you are less-than. Did her parents see this? Were they supportive? Olivia: They were, and that’s a key part of her story. There's a fantastic anecdote where her elementary school principal refused to sign a permission slip for her to miss a week of school for a major tennis tournament. Her mom, a supportive but traditional woman, marched into the office. She pointed out that Billie Jean was a straight-A student and demanded to know why a boy would be allowed to go, but not her daughter. The principal relented. Jackson: Ah, so the fighting spirit was in the family. Olivia: It was. But these experiences forged her own. As she says in the book, "Even if you’re not a born activist, life can damn sure make you one." Each of these moments—the shorts, the bad grade, the lunch counter—was a lesson. A lesson that the system was rigged, and that if she wanted to change it, she'd have to get to a position where people had no choice but to listen.

Jackson: And that position, of course, was becoming the number one tennis player in the world. Which sets the stage for the event everyone knows her for: the Battle of the Sexes. Olivia: Exactly. And that constant drip, drip, drip of injustice we talked about eventually fills a reservoir of resolve. By the time Bobby Riggs, a 55-year-old former champion turned self-proclaimed "male chauvinist pig," comes along in 1973, she's not just a tennis player. She's ready for a fight that's been brewing in her for 20 years. Jackson: But she initially said no to him, right? What changed? Olivia: She did. She thought it was just a silly spectacle. But then Riggs played the number one player at the time, Margaret Court, and absolutely demolished her. It was dubbed the "Mother's Day Massacre." Suddenly, the narrative shifted. Riggs was on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Time. His argument that women were emotionally fragile and couldn't handle the pressure seemed, to many, to have been proven. Jackson: Oh, so the stakes got astronomically higher. It wasn't a joke anymore. Olivia: Not at all. King knew she had to play him. She says in the book, "I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn’t win that match." This was happening right after Title IX was passed, the landmark legislation mandating gender equity in education. She felt that a loss would give ammunition to everyone who wanted to defund women's sports and roll back women's rights. Jackson: This is what I can't wrap my head around. It's not just a game anymore. It's a proxy war for the entire women's liberation movement, played out in front of 90 million people worldwide. How do you even practice for that kind of pressure? Olivia: You practice by being strategic in every facet of your life. And this is where King’s genius shines. She understood that the match wasn't about tennis; it was about theater. Riggs wanted to get in her head with his non-stop chauvinistic antics. So, she largely ignored him. She focused on her preparation. She studied his game, talked to his old opponents, and realized he was a master of "junk" shots but his body, at 55, couldn't handle a long, grueling match. Her game plan wasn't to out-hit him, but to out-run him. Jackson: So while he was doing publicity stunts, she was training to exploit his physical weakness. That's brilliant. Olivia: It was. And she was fighting these battles on multiple fronts. Just months before the Riggs match, the men's tennis union boycotted Wimbledon. King saw an opportunity. She called a meeting of all the women players in a hotel room in London and said, "This is our moment. We need our own union." And right there, they formed the Women's Tennis Association, the WTA. She became its first president. Jackson: Wow. So she's organizing a players' union, preparing for the most high-stakes match in history, and carrying the weight of a social movement on her shoulders, all at the same time. Olivia: All at the same time. She famously said, "Pressure is a privilege." She saw that moment of intense pressure not as a burden, but as a rare opportunity to use her platform for something much, much bigger than herself.

Jackson: It's just incredible. She wins this massive public victory for women everywhere. The images are iconic. But the book makes it painfully clear that while she was fighting for everyone else's freedom, she was living in her own kind of prison. Olivia: That’s the heartbreaking paradox at the center of the book. To understand it, you have to remember the 1970s. Being gay wasn't just taboo; it was seen as a sickness, a perversion. There were no legal protections. Athletes who were outed lost everything. She mentions the story of NFL player Dave Kopay, who came out in 1975 and was immediately blackballed from coaching. That was the reality. Jackson: So the fear was completely rational. Olivia: It was paralyzing. And this is where the story takes a tragic turn. In 1981, her former partner, Marilyn Barnett, filed a lawsuit against her. It was essentially a palimony suit, but in the process, it outed Billie Jean to the world. Jackson: And it wasn't a coming out on her own terms. It was a forced outing through a lawsuit. Olivia: A brutal one. The book details the shock and the panic. Her lawyers, her publicist, everyone told her the same thing: deny it. Deny everything. They said admitting to a same-sex affair would be career suicide. She would lose all her endorsements, her reputation, everything she'd built. Jackson: Which is exactly what happened, right? Olivia: It is. She lost all her endorsements, worth millions, within 24 hours. But here’s the most powerful part of the story. After a sleepless night, she told her team she couldn't do it. She couldn't lie. She had spent her life fighting for truth and authenticity, and she refused to deny her own. Jackson: Even knowing it would cost her everything. Olivia: Even then. And she describes the press conference as the hardest thing she's ever done. She's sitting there, with her husband Larry on one side and her parents, who didn't know, on the other, and she has to admit to the world that she had an affair with a woman. Jackson: I can't even imagine the courage that took. What was her husband's reaction in private? Olivia: This is one of the most surprising and moving parts of the book. Larry, despite their complicated marriage, was the one who told her to do it. He said to her, "For once in your life, Billie Jean, do exactly what you want to do for yourself." He knew the cost, but he prioritized her peace of mind. It’s a moment of profound grace. Jackson: Wow. To have that support in that moment is everything. It's devastating that the woman who proved to 90 million people that women are strong and capable was then punished so severely for a private matter. It's such a cruel twist. Olivia: It is. And she says the hardest part wasn't the money, but the shame she felt for how her parents found out. She wasn't ashamed of who she was, but she was ashamed of the pain it caused them. It took her years to fully come to terms with her own identity and to be able to live openly and freely. The public icon of freedom had to fight her longest battle for her own.

Olivia: When you step back and look at the whole story in All In, you see that her activism was never an abstract choice. It was forged in the fire of personal pain, acted upon in these incredibly high-stakes public arenas, and paid for with immense personal sacrifice. Jackson: It really reframes her entire legacy. The "Battle of the Sexes" wasn't the main event; it was a culmination of a thousand smaller battles she had already been fighting since she was a little girl. It makes you think about the small injustices we all see or experience. Her story is a testament to the fact that not letting those small things slide is how you build the muscle to fight the big battles. Olivia: Absolutely. And she ultimately became a pioneer for LGBTQ+ rights, not because she planned to, but because life forced her hand. Her journey shows that sometimes the most powerful advocacy comes from simply choosing to live your truth, even when it's terrifying. Jackson: It’s a powerful lesson in resilience. She took the worst-case scenario—a public outing meant to destroy her—and eventually turned it into another platform for change. Olivia: And it leaves us with a question, really. What platforms do we all have, big or small, to stand up for something we believe in? Jackson: That's a great question for all of us to think about. We'd love to hear your thoughts. What part of Billie Jean King's story resonates most with you? Find us on our socials and let us know. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.