The most striking aspect for me regarding the discussions that have taken place in recent days about Jannik is the juxtaposition between his growth and development as a person and competitor and the difficulty many people seem to have in allowing their perception of him to evolve accordingly.
There is often a noticeable gap between the person Jannik has become and the version of him that continues to dominate public perception. On one hand, there is the “real” Jannik: a tennis player who continues to grow, gain experience, and move through different stages of life. On the other hand, there is a version of him that seems frozen in time, a picture from when he was younger. This frozen version often carries more weight than the real one. It’s the altered version of the image some people first became attached to, the one that shaped early narratives about him, and the one reinforced and exasperated through media, fandom spaces, RPF, and fan content. Because it is tied to first and sometimes superficial impressions, it often resonates more strongly than the person he is today, even if it’s outdated.
This is one of the consequences of becoming famous at a young age. First impressions tend to stick, becoming the reference point against which every later version is measured. Or ignored.
The problem is that nobody remains the same between 17 and 24, or between 23 and 24, and those years are precisely when people change the most. So it’s important to allow him to grow and change in our heads too, as our dear @cloudycluster wisely pointed out
That’s why I sometimes find it strange when discussions about Jannik remain rooted in an older image of him. Not because that version never existed, but because he simply isn’t that same person anymore. And it’s normal, he has grown up, lives in a different contest, has accumulated experiences, and dealt with a level of pressure and scrutiny most people never face.
Yet many conversations about him still resist acknowledging that change. I repeat, you can see it in the way he is talked about and portrayed by media and especially in fandom spaces (characterisation and all that). It often feels as though perception stopped around 2023, while he kept moving forward.
What makes this particularly frustrating is that growth should be the most interesting part about a sport blorbo. Watching someone evolve, gain confidence, and transform before our eyes is far more compelling than keeping a static image of who they used to be I think. People are not interesting because they stay the same, but because they change trying to became the better version of themselves (sport-related and non)
This applies to his physical image as much as to his personality. For years narratives around Jannik focused on what he supposedly lacked: too skinny, too fragile, too weak. Those labels became so common that they fused with his public image, even in fandom spaces and fanfiction, remaining a lot present even now. And those who became fans later joined fandom spaces where Jannik’s portrayal already reflected all of this, creating a vicious cycle in which that image keeps being reinforced and validated over and over again
But bodies change and grow, especially athletes’ ones. Looking at him today compared to a few years ago the difference is so obvious. The skinny teenager many people still picture is no longer the reality in front of them (there’s a reason everyone who meets him in person says he’s huge and a lot bigger than he looks on screen, I’m adding my testimony). His build, presence, and even his game have changed. And yet many still seem attached to that earlier image (not every single one but many fan arts are proof of it)
The same happens with his personality. People still refer to things he said as a teenager as if they define him today. That way of thinking ignores the basic reality of growing up: interests, habits, and perspectives naturally evolve. Using his teenage comments as fixed identity markers feels less like understanding him and more like refusing to allow him to grow.
This becomes even clearer in the way some people react to the idea of him behaving like a normal man in his twenties. There seems to be a need to keep him confined to a very specific role assigned to him: shy, innocent, delicate, uncomplicated, awkward everything he does, almost detached from ordinary adulthood, that revolves around a stereotypical correspondence between his infantilised image and his infantilised personality.
This lead to situations where people tend to blame himfor everything and situations where people victimise him a lot
When people defend him by saying “he wasn’t even at a club, he doesn’t like them” when he recently said that it is normal to go clubbing, they accept the idea that it would be wrong in the first place. But why would it be? We are talking about a grown man that can have fun like every human on this planet Both criticism and defence often share the same assumption: a reluctance to fully see him as millionaire white cis 24 yo man who does things every 24 yo guy does and to separate the real person from an image that is artificial and not real (also the whole argument that if you don’t focus solely on tennis, you can’t achieve results, but that’s already being addressed).
Maybe that is also the reason fandom spaces and RPF can unintentionally contribute to this stagnation that eventually feels more convenient than reality.
But real people do not stay frozen in time and this is the point. To me #tome it is far more worth paying attention to the way Jannik evolves than clinging to an outdated image that, in the end, is even embraced by those who constantly use it to degrade him
Bonus video of the so called skinny for those who read everything🫶🏻:
