garding all female athletics. The fear seems to have been that “respectable”
boys would not marry girls who could beat them at anything.
But whether mothers and educators liked it or not, by the 1920s huge
numbers of young women were regularly playing baseball, basketball, golf,
tennis, and volleyball. Unable to stem the tide, the educators and physi-
cians sought to turn it by stating that, although nothing preserved female
beauty so well as sport, there were certain sports that were better than oth-
ers and a few (including soccer and boxing) that were downright unlady-
like. Furthermore, competition and the development of unsightly muscles
could be minimized by new rules that made girls’ sports considerably less
exciting than boys’ sports.
These rules could be draconian. In 1922, for example, rules for a girl’s
basketball team at Martinez High School in San Francisco included the fol-
lowing: “No dancing, no soup, no milk, no candy, no ice cream; [hot]
chocolate while resting instead of oranges; two hours rest before each game;
eight hours sleep daily; no fried foods; no pastry; feet to be bathed three
times weekly in tannic acid” (Japan Times,March 29, 1922). Others were
simply inane, such as those requiring girls to essentially stand in one place
while playing basketball. Although the athletes protested (the Martinez
girls, for instance, said no dancing, no basketball team), hardly anyone,
least of all physical education teachers or school administrators, listened.686 Women in the Martial Arts: Britain and North America
Women boxers in Washington, ca. 1970. (Tacoma Public Library)