"Like any young person, I do what I want"
About this Quote
Breezy and a little defiant, the line lands as both a shrug and a shield. It announces autonomy in the most casual way, collapsing the gulf between a global celebrity and the ordinary teenager who pushes against curfews and expectations. Coming from Anna Kournikova, who vaulted into fame as a teenager and lived under a magnifying glass, the insistence on doing what she wants functions as a claim to ordinary youth in an extraordinary life.
Kournikova became a sensation in the late 1990s, reaching the Wimbledon semifinals at 16 and later winning major titles in doubles, all while her marketability and appearance drew as much attention as her tennis. The public wanted multiple, sometimes conflicting versions of her at once: prodigy, role model, fashion icon, relentless competitor. That chorus of demands easily hardens into surveillance, and surveillance invites judgment. By stressing likeness to any young person, she refuses special moral scrutiny and sidesteps the burden of exemplary behavior that is so often placed on women athletes.
There is also a note of strategy here. Celebrity culture rewards the performance of individuality while policing it. Sponsors sell the myth of freedom; tabloids punish the reality of it. To say I do what I want is to flip the script, converting a perceived liability—independence, dating choices, photo shoots—into a stance. It insists that personal life is not a public referendum and positions agency, not notoriety, at the core of her identity.
Yet the statement does not deny discipline or ambition. It punctures the narrative that a young woman’s choices must be justified to prove seriousness. The line normalizes self-direction, acknowledges the intensity of youth, and critiques the gendered double standard that frames a young man’s experimentation as growth but treats a young woman’s as scandal. Assertive, offhand, and pragmatic, it captures the perennial push for freedom that makes youth feel both universal and contested.
Kournikova became a sensation in the late 1990s, reaching the Wimbledon semifinals at 16 and later winning major titles in doubles, all while her marketability and appearance drew as much attention as her tennis. The public wanted multiple, sometimes conflicting versions of her at once: prodigy, role model, fashion icon, relentless competitor. That chorus of demands easily hardens into surveillance, and surveillance invites judgment. By stressing likeness to any young person, she refuses special moral scrutiny and sidesteps the burden of exemplary behavior that is so often placed on women athletes.
There is also a note of strategy here. Celebrity culture rewards the performance of individuality while policing it. Sponsors sell the myth of freedom; tabloids punish the reality of it. To say I do what I want is to flip the script, converting a perceived liability—independence, dating choices, photo shoots—into a stance. It insists that personal life is not a public referendum and positions agency, not notoriety, at the core of her identity.
Yet the statement does not deny discipline or ambition. It punctures the narrative that a young woman’s choices must be justified to prove seriousness. The line normalizes self-direction, acknowledges the intensity of youth, and critiques the gendered double standard that frames a young man’s experimentation as growth but treats a young woman’s as scandal. Assertive, offhand, and pragmatic, it captures the perennial push for freedom that makes youth feel both universal and contested.
Quote Details
| Topic | Youth |
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