MARC21: “A particularly desirable exercise for girls and women”: Swimming and Modern Female Bodies in the United States, 1900s–1930s

“A particularly desirable exercise for girls and women”: Swimming and Modern Female Bodies in the United States, 1900s–1930s

Swimming in the USA was booming during the early 20th century. It held an important part in ongoing health and fitness debates, it was popular as a spare time activity, and many considered it as a particularly democratic sport. Moreover, and this marks the key argument of this essay, was swimming at...

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Pubblicato in:	URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles,
Autore principale:	Stieglitz, Olaf
Natura:	Article ou chapitre numérique
Lingua:	Anglais
Pubblicazione:	Angles 2020
Soggetti:	États-Unis corps genre natation modernité United States gender swimming modernity bodies
Accesso online:	Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM

id	openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_1126
record_format	openedition
spelling	openedition-oai:revues.org:angles_1126 https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.1126 urn:doi:10.4000/angles.1126 en https://journals.openedition.org/angles/1126 2020-07-16T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/9mzg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ “A particularly desirable exercise for girls and women”: Swimming and Modern Female Bodies in the United States, 1900s–1930s Angles Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/2274-2042 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles Stieglitz, Olaf États-Unis corps genre natation modernité United States gender swimming modernity bodies Swimming in the USA was booming during the early 20th century. It held an important part in ongoing health and fitness debates, it was popular as a spare time activity, and many considered it as a particularly democratic sport. Moreover, and this marks the key argument of this essay, was swimming at that point charged with marking human bodies as explicitly ‘modern,’ as a practice that made normative notions and ideals of ability, competence and beauty especially visible. These attributions were closely linked to both gendered and racialized codes. Swimming, this essay argues, was supposed to create idealized male and female bodies. The development of the new crawl style stood at the center of that process. The article offers a close reading of the style’s genealogy within the American context. Next to photographs, it analyses swimming textbooks but also letters and reports written by young women swimmers that allow for a closer look at the actual practice of swimming and how it was part of negotiating modernity in the US. La nage aux Etats-Unis était une activié florissante au début du XXe siècle. Elle jouait un rôle important dans les débats de l’époque sur la santé et l’exercice physique ; c’était une activité de loisirs populaire et beaucoup la considéraient comme un sport particulièrement démocratique. La nage à ce moment-là marquait les corps humains comme explicitement « modernes », une pratique qui rendait particulièrement visibles les notions normatives et les idéaux de capacité, de compétence et de beauté. Ces qualités étaient étroitement liées aux codes genrés et racialisés. Cet article cherche à montrer comment natation était censée créer des corps masculins et féminins idéalisés. Le développement du crawl était au centre de ce processus. L'article propose une lecture précise de la généalogie du style dans le contexte américain. En plus des photographies, il analyse les manuels de natation, mais aussi les lettres et les rapports rédigés par de jeunes nageuses qui permettent d'examiner de plus près la pratique réelle de la natation et la façon dont elle s'inscrivait dans le cadre des négociations sur la modernité aux États-Unis.
collection	OpenEdition Journal
language	Anglais
format	Article ou chapitre numérique
building	0/Bibliothèque numérique/ 1/Bibliothèque numérique/OpenEdition Journals/
topic	États-Unis corps genre natation modernité United States gender swimming modernity bodies
spellingShingle	États-Unis corps genre natation modernité United States gender swimming modernity bodies Stieglitz, Olaf “A particularly desirable exercise for girls and women”: Swimming and Modern Female Bodies in the United States, 1900s–1930s
description	Swimming in the USA was booming during the early 20th century. It held an important part in ongoing health and fitness debates, it was popular as a spare time activity, and many considered it as a particularly democratic sport. Moreover, and this marks the key argument of this essay, was swimming at that point charged with marking human bodies as explicitly ‘modern,’ as a practice that made normative notions and ideals of ability, competence and beauty especially visible. These attributions were closely linked to both gendered and racialized codes. Swimming, this essay argues, was supposed to create idealized male and female bodies. The development of the new crawl style stood at the center of that process. The article offers a close reading of the style’s genealogy within the American context. Next to photographs, it analyses swimming textbooks but also letters and reports written by young women swimmers that allow for a closer look at the actual practice of swimming and how it was part of negotiating modernity in the US.
author	Stieglitz, Olaf
author_facet	Stieglitz, Olaf
author_sort	Stieglitz, Olaf
title	“A particularly desirable exercise for girls and women”: Swimming and Modern Female Bodies in the United States, 1900s–1930s
title_short	“A particularly desirable exercise for girls and women”: Swimming and Modern Female Bodies in the United States, 1900s–1930s
title_full	“A particularly desirable exercise for girls and women”: Swimming and Modern Female Bodies in the United States, 1900s–1930s
title_fullStr	“A particularly desirable exercise for girls and women”: Swimming and Modern Female Bodies in the United States, 1900s–1930s
title_full_unstemmed	“A particularly desirable exercise for girls and women”: Swimming and Modern Female Bodies in the United States, 1900s–1930s
title_sort	“a particularly desirable exercise for girls and women”: swimming and modern female bodies in the united states, 1900s–1930s
publisher	Angles
publishDate	2020
container_title	URI:https://journals.openedition.org/angles
url	https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/angles.1126 https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/angles/1126
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“A particularly desirable exercise for girls and women”: Swimming and Modern Female Bodies in the United States, 1900s–1930s

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