Battle of the Sexes

September 20, 2025

#OTD, September 20th, 1973: A record-setting 90 million Americans turned on their TVs to watch the highly anticipated “Battle of the Sexes.” In a gutsy, all-or-nothing move, tennis star Billie Jean King had accepted a challenge from self-proclaimed “male chauvinist pig” Bobby Riggs for a nationally televised contest to symbolically determine the supremacy of talent, stamina, and gamesmanship between women and men. A—mostly—good-natured (and certainly profitable for the network and tennis in general) test of women’s liberation and feminists’ claim of equality.

Winner of six Grand Slam titles, the 55-year-old Riggs had become the consummate hustler in retirement, playing exhibition matches in which he wore costumes and clowned around and still triumphed over his opponents. He’d also become an outspoken critic of women’s tennis and ranked players like King banning together to boycott national tournaments in which men were awarded eight times the amount paid their female counterparts.

Riggs had whipped up publicity for the showdown, quipping: “I want to prove women don't belong on the same court as a man...Don’t get me wrong. I'm a big lover of women—in the bedroom and in the kitchen. But these days they want to be everywhere.” He was—mostly—joking when he made this announcement to a gaggle of press. But thousands of men across the country took it seriously, placing bets, commenting on talk shows about how there was no way King could win—even though the 29-year-old had been ranked the number one female player for five years.

Everything about that match took on the patina of a Las Vegas extravaganza. King was brought into the jam-packed Houston Astrodome arena like Cleopatra, on a chaise carried by bronzed University of Houston football players in mini togas and gold chest plates. Riggs arrived in a chariot pulled by “Sugar Daddy” cheerleaders.

Their match had turned into such a frenzied national standoff, I knew I needed to include it in TRUTH, LIES, AND THE QUESTIONS IN BETWEEN as a scene—a room full of women hanging on every stroke and bounce of the ball, beyond anxious for Billie Jean to win, to vindicate them and ward off smug comments about female inferiority from bosses or boyfriends or fathers.

Throughout the match, the legendarily bombastic sports announcer Howard Cosell commented on King's dress and her hair: "If she just let her hair grow down to her shoulders, and took off her glasses” she might be pretty enough for a Hollywood screen test. He even said that she walked back to the baseline "more like a man than a woman" after she hit a real zinger across the net.

King won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. 

Women in the 30,000-spectator crowd jumped to their feet and sang along to Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman,"—the first explicitly feminist song to win a Grammy and become a gold record—which was piped into the arena. 

Of its lyrics and chorus, “I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore...I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman,” Reddy explained it felt important to make a positive statement. "I can't bear all those ‘take me back, baby or I'll just die’ songs that women are supposed to sing," she said. 

It was an extraordinary—and yes, empowering—moment.