Women's Bathing and Swimming Costume in the United StatesKidwell, Claudia Brush
History
Women's Bathing and Swimming Costume in the United States
Kidwell, Claudia Brush
Bathing suits -- History
In 1870 a reporter for _Leslie's_, who was describing two elegant large
bathhouses (the type described above) in New York City, stated that
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were set apart for ladies and Tuesdays,
Thursdays, and Saturdays for gentlemen. These baths became quite popular
in the large cities, particularly among people who could not afford the
time or money to make trips even to the near seaside resorts. By the
1880s they were so popular that bathing time was scheduled to allow many
sets of bathers to enjoy the water. Thus a number of women who had
probably never been completely covered with water before had the
opportunity to learn to swim.
While women were being encouraged to practice swimming as a healthful
exercise, this activity was being recognized as a recreation and sport
for men. The increasing affluence during the last three decades of the
19th century, which made possible the widespread popularity of summer
excursions, encouraged swimming as an individual pastime as well as a
growing spectator sport. This was true not only for swimming but for
nearly every sport we enjoy today. In 1871 a reporter wrote:
It is not underrating the interest attached to yachting or
rowing matches, to say that swimming clubs and swimming matches
can be made to create wider and more useful emulation among "the
Million" who can never participate in or benefit by those
notable trials of skill and muscle.[26]
[26] Ibid. (July 29, 1871), vol. 32, no. 826, p. 322.
By the 1890s this growing interest in spectator and individual sports
evidenced several interesting results. Separate sporting pages were
established in the formats of many newspapers. In addition to being a
summer pastime, "the art of swimming" became an intercollegiate and
Olympic sport, and was included on the roster of events for the 1896
revival of the Olympic Games held in Athens. Innovations in facilities
and techniques helped to alter the character of swimming. The most
notable of these were the development of the indoor pool and the
introductions of the crawl stroke into the United States.
It was in this time period that swimming for women was becoming socially
acceptable. In 1888, Goucher College, a prominent girls' school, built
its own indoor pool and the following year swimming was listed in its
catalog for the first time. Writers, in turn, no longer felt it
necessary to convince readers that women should be more active in the
water, but concentrated instead on what a woman should know when she
swims. This changing attitude gained world-wide recognition in 1912 at
Stockholm when the 100-meter swimming event for women was included in
the schedule.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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