1902 article - The Athletic Girl Not Unfeminine

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(Ed. Note: This is part of a continuing series of posts about articles and illustrations originally published over a century ago, depicting a burgeoning American sports scene and a keen interest in women’s physical fitness. Although often sexist by modern standards, the posts are indicative of their era and provide the social context for the limitations imposed upon athletic women of that period.)

September, 1902 – Outing magazine

The tide of comment has for some time been swirling about athletics for women. Whatever arguments the opponents of the movement may have to bring against it, it is a significant fact that the private schools for girls are everywhere introducing athletics into their course. This means far more than does any amount of athletics in women’s colleges, which might be simply imitating prominent features of the colleges for men.

That the exclusive “Finishing Schools for Young Ladies” should include a systematic course in athletics in their curriculum goes to show that the movement is something more than a mere fad. Its advocates declare that the physical features of such a course, great as they undoubtedly are, are little compared with the moral results wrought in the girl by her athletics.

…One of the facts that most impressed me in studying girls who are proficient in athletics is their ease of carriage. As a girl finds herself physically, she acquires grace of movement. This is altogether different from that which she had been taught by admonition and by dancing lessons. That was artificial—an assumed manner. This comes from the perfect control of the muscles and limbs and is as great a contrast to the other as a natural flower to one made of wax. The assumed grace may be forgotten; this other is a part of the girl and will be a part of the woman.

Another physical point gained by the girl is the ability to use her strength so as to secure the best results with the least expense. Women all over the country are suffering to-day because they were never taught how to use their muscles, how to put forth their force. Women stand wrong, walk wrong, lift wrong, work wrong. The girl who has learned in a gymnasium what her muscles are and how to get the good of them will be a healthier woman than her predecessors. The good athlete is not of necessity the man who has the most strength, but the man who knows how to use what strength he has.

According to this definition, any tolerably healthy girl may hope to be an athlete or to have an athlete’s knowledge, even if she does not make his record. It goes without saying that it is impossible for a girl to have this training in things physical and moral without her mental powers reaping the benefit.

…The woman of the past generations was not such a shining success in the matter of physical health that we of this day may be willing to put away lightly the chance of making a better thing of the girl who is growing up. If she becomes wife and mother, housekeeper and homemaker, she will need all the strength she can accumulate in school days. Should she follow the example of many young women of this time and take care of herself, she will require a share of the physique a man require to win success.

No matter what her work in life may be, I firmly hold that she is far better fitted to fill it with satisfaction if she has laid in a store of physical strength and mental and moral balance than if she is turned loose, equipped with only such a share of these as she has been able to collect for herself.

The woman who by her athletics has learned respect for others, and for herself logic, proportion, accuracy, self-control, patience, conscientiousness, honor, moderation, and the ability to make the best of what bodily powers she possesses, has acquired more from this method of culture than she is likely to gain from any other one branch of training.

From “Daughters of the Lost Century”

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