atrium-issue-12-BadGirls

Bad Girls Can't Win
12
Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in an obviously-staged photograph circa 1973, when the two engaged in the so-called
“Battle of the Sexes” tournament. AP Images/Anthony Camerano
Pam R. Sailors, Sarah Teetzel, and Charlene Weaving
Since the beginning of women’s participation in modern
athletics, sports have been used as an excuse to medicalize
women’s bodies, to enforce heterosexual norms, and to
define strictly who will count as a “real” woman. Yet for
their part, athletic girls and women have (intentionally
and unintentionally) used sport to subvert and even defy
gender-based discrimination.
The late 1800s saw a significant increase in women’s
participation in modern sport, especially in cycling. In order
to cycle with efficiency and comfort, women moved away
from traditional long and heavy skirts that could easily get
caught in wheels or spokes. Instead, they wore tight fitting
knee-length hose called “bloomers.” Naming this innovative
clothing after American women’s rights advocate Amelia
Bloomer made sense, as the bicycle had a significant impact on
allowing women new independence.
Besides allowing
women to physically distance
themselves from home, the
bicycle provided women with
the opportunity to distance
themselves from the early
Victorian ideal of weak and
passive females and to gain
empowerment through
outdoor sport.
Even though it became
more acceptable over time
for women to participate in
cycling, they were still expected
to display restraint and refinement
in order to conform to
socially prescribed notions
of ‘ladylike’ behavior. If they
did not subscribe to this ideal,
they were considered ‘bad’ or
‘deviant’. Some men (both
physicians and laymen)
were so opposed to women’s
involvement in sporting
bicycling clubs that they
invented pseudo-medical and
moral reasons why women
should not cycle. Writing about the American cultural history
of women in sports, Mariah Burton Nelson has noted that:
Cyclists’ saddles […] were said to induce menstruation
and cause contracted vaginas and collapsed
uteri. While appearing to enjoy an innocent, healthful
ride, female cyclists might use the upward tilt of the
saddle to engage in the ‘solitary vice’ of masturbation.
And, skirts hiked provocatively above the ankle,
female cyclists might contribute to immorality by
inciting lewd comments from male pedestrians. 1
Women could not simply enjoy the act of cycling for its
own sake. Unable to tolerate women’s participation in physical
activity, some nineteenth-century physicians linked athletics
to childbirth complications, stating that strong developed
arms and legs would be detrimental to child birthing. Writing
in the British Medical Journal in 1867, one physician stated