Qualifying times : points of change in U.S. women's sport / Jaime Schultz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schultz, Jaime, author.

Series:

Sport and society

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sports for women--United States--History.

Sports for women.

Sports for women--Social aspects--United States.

Women athletes--United States--History.

Women athletes.

History.

Sports for women--Social aspects.

United States.

Physical Description:

xiv, 280 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2014]

Summary:

This perceptive, lively study explores U. S. women's sport through historical "points of that dramatically influenced both women's participation in sport and cultural responses to women athletes. Beginning with the seemingly innocent ponytail, the subject of the Introduction, scholar Jaime Schultz challenges the reader to look at the historical and sociological significance of now-common items such as sports bras and tampons and ideas such as sex testing and competitive cheerleading. Tennis wear, tampons, and sports bras all facilitated women's participation in physical culture, while physical-educators, the aesthetic fitness movement, and Title IX encouraged women to challenge (or confront) policy, financial, and cultural obstacles. While some of these points of change increased women's physical freedom and sporting participation, they also posed challenges. Tampons encouraged menstrual shame, sex testing (a tool never used with male athletes) perpetuated narrowly defined cultural norms of femininity unity, and the late-twentieth-century aesthetic fitness movement fed into an unrealistic beauty ideal. Ultimately, Schultz finds that U.S. women's sport has progressed significantly but ambivalently. Although participation in sports is no longer uncommon for girls and women, Schultz argues that these "points of change" have contributed to a complex matrix of gender differentiation that marks the female athletic body as different than-as less than-the male body, despite the advantages it may confer. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 What Shall We Wear for Tennis? 15

2 Commercial Tampons and the Sportswoman, 1936-52 47

3 Rules, Rulers, and the "Right Kind" of Competition 73

4 Women's Sport and Questionable Sex 103

5 From "Women in Sports" to the "New Ideal of Beauty" 123

6 A Cultural History of the Sports Bra 149

7 Something to Cheer About? 167.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780252038167

0252038169

9780252079740

0252079744

OCLC:

855977455