Read Online Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World by Glenn Stout - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Glenn Stout
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bare thighs to onlookers. Shocked local officials charged her with public nudity. Kellerman fought the case, arguing that the modification had nothing to do with morality but everything to do with women's rights—it was safer for her to swim unrestricted by heavy stockings—and the case was dismissed. The notoriety of the case made Kellerman both more notorious and more heroic, part sex symbol and part suffragette, a combination that was both tantalizing and—to some—threatening.
Dudley Sargent, the longtime director of Harvard University's Hemenway Gymnasium, was obsessed with measuring the human body and convinced Kellerman to allow him to take her measurements. He then declared that out of ten thousand women he had measured, she was the first whose proportions matched those of Venus de Milo.
Kellerman soon began appearing in the movies and her fame only increased as she now could be seen all over the world. She created one last sensation when, in the film
Daughter of the Gods,
the movie industry's first million-dollar-plus production, Kellerman's character went skinny-dipping and she became the first big-name screen actress to appear nude.
Those who hoped to make swimming a respectable activity for women in the United States first had to overcome the licentious image created by Kellerman, one that, rightly or wrongly, found every fear confirmed by her curvaceous figure and left the impression that women's swimming—as a sport—was destined to be as much about titillation as competition.
Yet while modest men—and many women—found Kellerman threatening, other young women found her both inspirational and liberating, not for the way she exposed her body but for the way she exposed contradictions and inequality in the way women were treated. One after another, they followed her into the water.
Charlotte Epstein wanted to swim. The Jewish-born native of New York was only twenty years old when the
Slocum
burned and sank, and Epstein was mortified. A graduate of the Ethical Culture School, a nonsectarian, nontheistic religious and educational movement still in existence today, Epstein was unfettered by the restrictions and prejudices that kept most women her age in their place—at home. She firmly believed in the group's three major precepts: to teach the supremacy of moral ends above all human ends and interests; to teach that the moral law has an immediate authority not contingent on the truth of religious beliefs or of philosophical theories; and to advance the science and art of "right living," a life lived according to those standards.
To that end, Epstein was a rarity—an independent, single woman with a career. She worked as a court stenographer and was involved in women's rights and the suffragist movement, something "right living" made a moral prerogative.
For most young women of the time there were absolutely no outlets for sports of any kind, not to mention swimming. While there was still staunch resistance to teaching women to swim simply for pleasure, in the wake of the
Slocum
disaster, instruction in "lifesaving," was another thing entirely. Reluctantly, the United States Volunteer Life Saving Corps (USVLSC), a group formed after the Civil War that previously had trained male swimmers in lifesaving techniques, began to allow women to join the group.
Epstein was fully aware that being allowed to join the group was an important step in the fight for equal rights for women. An unlikely pioneer, beneath her mouse-colored hair and behind her wide-set brown eyes, the slightly built Epstein appeared quiet and demure, the model of restraint and decorum, the polar opposite of someone like Annette Kellerman. Yet in the sport of swimming and in women's athletics, Epstein would prove to have a more profound impact than the Australian bathing beauty. She immediately joined the group and soon became the Susan B. Anthony of swimming.
Epstein was one of the first of a small contingent of women who were taught to
Dudley Sargent, the longtime director of Harvard University's Hemenway Gymnasium, was obsessed with measuring the human body and convinced Kellerman to allow him to take her measurements. He then declared that out of ten thousand women he had measured, she was the first whose proportions matched those of Venus de Milo.
Kellerman soon began appearing in the movies and her fame only increased as she now could be seen all over the world. She created one last sensation when, in the film
Daughter of the Gods,
the movie industry's first million-dollar-plus production, Kellerman's character went skinny-dipping and she became the first big-name screen actress to appear nude.
Those who hoped to make swimming a respectable activity for women in the United States first had to overcome the licentious image created by Kellerman, one that, rightly or wrongly, found every fear confirmed by her curvaceous figure and left the impression that women's swimming—as a sport—was destined to be as much about titillation as competition.
Yet while modest men—and many women—found Kellerman threatening, other young women found her both inspirational and liberating, not for the way she exposed her body but for the way she exposed contradictions and inequality in the way women were treated. One after another, they followed her into the water.
Charlotte Epstein wanted to swim. The Jewish-born native of New York was only twenty years old when the
Slocum
burned and sank, and Epstein was mortified. A graduate of the Ethical Culture School, a nonsectarian, nontheistic religious and educational movement still in existence today, Epstein was unfettered by the restrictions and prejudices that kept most women her age in their place—at home. She firmly believed in the group's three major precepts: to teach the supremacy of moral ends above all human ends and interests; to teach that the moral law has an immediate authority not contingent on the truth of religious beliefs or of philosophical theories; and to advance the science and art of "right living," a life lived according to those standards.
To that end, Epstein was a rarity—an independent, single woman with a career. She worked as a court stenographer and was involved in women's rights and the suffragist movement, something "right living" made a moral prerogative.
For most young women of the time there were absolutely no outlets for sports of any kind, not to mention swimming. While there was still staunch resistance to teaching women to swim simply for pleasure, in the wake of the
Slocum
disaster, instruction in "lifesaving," was another thing entirely. Reluctantly, the United States Volunteer Life Saving Corps (USVLSC), a group formed after the Civil War that previously had trained male swimmers in lifesaving techniques, began to allow women to join the group.
Epstein was fully aware that being allowed to join the group was an important step in the fight for equal rights for women. An unlikely pioneer, beneath her mouse-colored hair and behind her wide-set brown eyes, the slightly built Epstein appeared quiet and demure, the model of restraint and decorum, the polar opposite of someone like Annette Kellerman. Yet in the sport of swimming and in women's athletics, Epstein would prove to have a more profound impact than the Australian bathing beauty. She immediately joined the group and soon became the Susan B. Anthony of swimming.
Epstein was one of the first of a small contingent of women who were taught to
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