The most controversial part of Seles’s game was
her grunting as she hit each shot, and some of her
opponents objected to it as being distracting. In fact,
her loss to Steffi Graf at Wimbledon, the only major
she never won, may have been influenced by her de-
cision to refrain from grunting during the final
match. (One member of the British press even
claimed to have measured the loudness of her
grunts by a “gruntometer.”)
Having eclipsed Graf as the number one player in
women’s tennis, Seles was a distinct possibility for
winning all four grand-slam events in 1993, but after
winning again in Australia, her career was cut short
by Günter Parche, a Graf fan, who stabbed her at a
tennis match in Hamburg, Germany. Although she
soon recovered from the wound, she suffered from
post-traumatic stress disorder and did not resume
her career until 1995, when she was co-ranked num-
ber one with Graf. That year, she reached the finals
of the U.S. Open and was voted Comeback Player of
the Year by the Women’s Tennis Association. In the
remainder of the decade, she won one more grand-
slam tournament, the Australian in 1996, won her
fourth consecutive Canadian Open, and in 1999 was
a semifinalist at both the Australian and French
Opens.
Impact Seles’s comeback story from post-traumatic
stress disorder, especially in the light of the 1994 at-
tack on professional figure skater Nancy Kerrigan,
heightened public awareness of the vulnerability of
professional athletes, and the incredibly light pun-
ishment for her attacker brought worldwide con-
demnation. Security has since been increased at ath-
letic events, but professional athletes have found
that they are targets both on and off the field. Seles
also demonstrated that, as the titles of books about
her suggest, one can overcome adversity: She contin-
ued her tennis career into the next century.
Further Reading
Blue, Rose, and Corinne J. Naden.Monica Seles: Over-
coming Adversity. Philadelphia: Chelsea House,
2002.
Layden, Joe.Return of a Champion: The Monica Seles
Stor y. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.
Seles, Monica, with Nancy Ann Richardson.Monica:
From Fear to Victor y. New York: HarperCollins,
1996.
Thomas L. Erskine
See also Agassi, Andre; Kerrigan, Nancy; Sampras,
Pete; Sports; Tennis. Sex and the City
Identification Cable television dramedy
Creator Darren Star (1961- )
Date Aired from June 6, 1998, to February 22,
2004This groundbreaking comedy/drama chronicled the sex
lives of four New York City women and their friends.Sex and the Citywas based on a 1997 novel of the same
name by Candace Bushnell. Bushnell, a journalist
who wrote about sex and dating forThe New York Ob-
server, based the novel on her newspaper column.
The Home Box Office (HBO) television series, pro-
duced by Darren Star, followed the book closely for
the first season, using vignettes and documentary-
style interviews with various single people in New
York City. By the second season, the series began
to focus less on large numbers of characters and
more on the main four: Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah
Jessica Parker), a sex columnist based on Bushnell;
Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), a public relations
executive; Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), a law-
yer; and Charlotte York (Kristin Davis), an art gallery
curator.Impact The show was groundbreaking for pushing
the limits of sexuality on television. The characters
discussed all sexual topics; nothing was taboo. The
show displayed full nudity of both genders as well as
intimate sexual acts between heterosexual and ho-
mosexual partners. While critics felt that the series
was gratuitously sexual, supporters praised its frank
approach to women’s sexuality and their relation-
ships, especially the deepening friendships among
the women. It was nominated for more than fifty
Emmy Awards, winning seven, and more than
twenty-four Golden Globes, winning eight. A film
adaptation of the hit series was released in 2008.Further Reading
Akass, Kim, and Janet McCabe, eds.Reading “Sex and
the City.”New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004.
Bushnell, Candace. Sex and the City. New York:
Warner Books, 1997.
Leslie Neilan764 Sex and the City The Nineties in America