Unlike other players – who arrived at the sport because their class and place in society afforded them the possibility – the Williamses fought their … - Anne Helen Petersen

The fixers would erase all traces of the incident: the police would be paid off; the report would disappear. To the public at large, he’d continue to be a gallant husband, doting father, and responsible citizen — the very paragon of contemporary masculinity. Any whispers of chronic drunkenness would be silenced by well-placed mentions in the gossip columns concerning his commitment to his adoring children and devoted wife.

It’s as if each of these women is constantly igniting the line of acceptable behavior: you don’t know where it is until she steps over it, at which point it bursts into flames.

Their bodies, words, and actions have become a locus for the type of inflammatory rhetoric usually reserved only for political figures.