Women and Sports in the United States: A Documentary Reader

ARE ATHLETICS MAKING GIRLS MASCULINE?

56 WOMEN AND SPORTS IN THE UNITED STATES y ARE ATHLETICS MAKING GIRLS MASCULINE? A Practical Answer to a Question Every Girl Asks Dudley A. Sargent, M.D. Many persons honestly believe that athletics are making girls bold, masculine and overassertive; that they are destroying the beautiful lines and curves of her figure, and are robbing her of that charm and elusiveness that has so long characterized the female sex. Others, including many physicians , incline to the belief that athletics are injurious to the health. This double charge, of course, gives a serious aspect to the whole question, and it should be met. What Athletics Really Are Now, what are athletics and how are women affected by them? An athlete is one who contends against another for a victory; athletics are the events in which one contends. A gymnasium is a place for the performance of athletic exercises; a gymnast is a person who trains athletes, and gymnastics are the exercises practiced in the gymnasium for the purpose of putting one’s self in proper condition for competing in the athletic contests . In our times the terms athletics, gymnastics and physical training are often used synonymously, while actually they are not alike and may bring about very different results. If a schoolgirl practices jumping a bar with other girls, as one of the physical exercises prescribed for general development, she is engaging in gymnastics. If, however, the bar is jumped with the purpose of finding out which girl can clear the bar at the greatest height the performance becomes an athletic one. In the first instance the exercise would be undertaken as a means of physical improvement for its own sake. In the second instance, if the spirit of emulation ran high the girls would be engaging in a course of special physical training, not primarily to benefit themselves physically but for the set purpose of improving their jumping powers so as to vanquish their nearest competitor. Excerpted from Dudley Sargent, “Are Athletics Making Girls Masculine? A Practical Answer to a Question Every Girl Asks,” Ladies’ Home Journal, March 1912. This distinction, that gymnastics are pursued as a means to an end, and athletics as an end in themselves, would apply equally well to such forms of exercise as walking, running, vaulting, swimming and skating, which may be measured in time or space and thus be made competitive. The element of competition and “sport” must, therefore, enter into what we now term athletics. [. . .] These Make Women More Masculine Physically all forms of athletic sports and most physical exercises tend to make women’s figures more masculine, inasmuch as they tend to broaden the shoulders, deepen the chest, narrow the hips, and develop the muscles of the arms, back and legs, which are masculine characteristics. Some exercises , like bowling, tennis, fencing, hurdling and swimming, tend to broaden the hips, which is a feminine characteristic. But archery, skating and canoeing, which are thought to be especially adapted to women, tend to develop respectively broad shoulders, long feet and deep muscular chests, which are essentially masculine; while rowing, which is thought to be the most masculine of all exercises, tends to broaden the hips, narrow the waist, develop the large front and back thighs and give many of the lines of the feminine figure. Just how all-round athletics tend to modify woman’s form may be judged by comparing the conventional with the athletic type of woman. The conventional woman has a narrow waist, broad and massive hips and large thighs. In the athletic type of woman sex characteristics are less accentuated, and there is a suggestion of reserve power in both trunk and limbs. Even the mental and moral qualities that accompany the development of such a figure are largely masculine, but this is because women have not yet had as many opportunities to exercise them. Sports Should Be Adapted to Women Some of the specific mental and physical qualities which are developed by athletics are increased powers of attention, will, concentration, accuracy, alertness, quickness of perception, perseverance, reason, judgment, forbearance , patience, obedience, self-control, loyalty to leaders, self-denial, submergence of self, grace, poise, suppleness, courage, strength and endurance . These qualities are as valuable to women as to men. While there is some danger that women who try to excel in men’s sports may take on more marked masculine characteristics [. . .] this danger is greatly lessened if the sports are modified so as to meet their peculiar...