Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly fry So. Uh,
Speaker 1: summer coming, at least in theory, sho. I think I
Speaker 1: think summer has definitely arrived where you are, which is Atlanta. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess technically it's still cooler than it
Speaker 1: usually would be this time of year. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: not warm at all. It's fifty seven degrees right now.
Speaker 1: We're recording this on May thirtieth. Yeah, like, I think
Speaker 1: our high today might be eighty, which sounds hot to
Speaker 1: some people, but for Atlanta at the end of May,
Speaker 1: that's really not. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's been a We've
Speaker 1: had an unseasonably cool um May up here in New
Speaker 1: England anyway, though, at least in theory, summer is either
Speaker 1: on the way or here for most but not all
Speaker 1: of our listeners. So seems like a good time talk
Speaker 1: about swimming. We yes, specifically, we are talking about Annette Kellerman,
Speaker 1: who gets a lot of the credit for developing the
Speaker 1: woman's one piece bathing suit and then for making it
Speaker 1: socially appropriate for women in a lot of the English
Speaker 1: speaking world to put on an outfit that you could
Speaker 1: actually swim in without drowning and then go out in
Speaker 1: public that way, and perhaps kind of ironically, she was Australian,
Speaker 1: where it is definitely not coming on summer. So Australians,
Speaker 1: we have some Australian history today that is uh, seasonally
Speaker 1: incongruous for where you actually live, unless you happen to
Speaker 1: be uh somebody who's downloading it late in the game,
Speaker 1: in which case store hooray summer for you as well.
Speaker 1: Annette Kellerman was born in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia.
Speaker 1: She was coy about her birth date, and it's variously
Speaker 1: cited as July five or sixth of eighteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty seven, or eighteen eighty eight. The sixth is
Speaker 1: the most frequently cited date. Her father, Frederick, was a
Speaker 1: violinist born in Australia, and her mother, Alice, was a
Speaker 1: pianist and a music teacher who was originally from France.
Speaker 1: When she was young, and Nett had to wear braces
Speaker 1: on her legs because of persistent weakness, and not only
Speaker 1: were these braces painful to wear, but she also found
Speaker 1: them embarrassing. The cause is unclear. A few sources site
Speaker 1: rickets or polio, and later on in her life she
Speaker 1: speculated that hip might have been a calcium deficiency her
Speaker 1: according to her own account, actual doctors at the time
Speaker 1: said that it was because she had been allowed to
Speaker 1: learn to walk too early, or that she had chalk
Speaker 1: in her bones. Neither of those are real things would
Speaker 1: have caused her to need leg braces. Um, so totally unclear,
Speaker 1: but the braces were a real part of her life.
Speaker 1: That's so she get when you go to cartoon doctors, like,
Speaker 1: chalk in your bones sounds like such a cartoon diagnosis,
Speaker 1: and chalk bones is a nickname for like one congenital
Speaker 1: bone condition, but it has nothing to do with what
Speaker 1: she was experiencing. Is a totally different set of symptoms.
Speaker 1: So very weird. Yeah, whatever the cause of her disability,
Speaker 1: eventually her father visited a doctor who recommended swimming lessons,
Speaker 1: and at first and that was really terrified of this plan,
Speaker 1: possibly because it meant exposing her legs to people, which
Speaker 1: she did not want to do because they were visibly undeveloped,
Speaker 1: and she begged not to have to go, but her
Speaker 1: parents and the doctor were all certain that swimming would
Speaker 1: really help, so she and her brothers were taken to
Speaker 1: Frederick Cavell's baths so they could learn to swim, and
Speaker 1: the Cavils were actually a whole family of swimmers there
Speaker 1: in the International Swimming Hall of Fame for their combined
Speaker 1: contributions to the sport. It took a Net a lot
Speaker 1: longer to get the hang of swimming than it took
Speaker 1: her brothers. They were both able to swim on their
Speaker 1: own after a handful of lessons, but it took a
Speaker 1: net close to twenty But once she knew how to
Speaker 1: do it, as predicted, it really did help her build
Speaker 1: her strength up and her legs, and with the water
Speaker 1: supporting her, she could move around without having to wear
Speaker 1: the braces, and that would later describe her gradual improvement
Speaker 1: through swimming as a process of intense joy. By the
Speaker 1: time she reached the age of thirteen, her muscle development
Speaker 1: was more or less typical for a child her age,
Speaker 1: although she was susceptible to muscle strains and had to
Speaker 1: wear very tightly laced boots until she was eighteen. A
Speaker 1: lot of the swimming strokes that are recognized and used
Speaker 1: competitively today were still new or in the process of
Speaker 1: being developed and refined. So what a Net learned at
Speaker 1: first was basically the breaststroke, and that was the stroke
Speaker 1: that she used mostly when she was exercising at first.
Speaker 1: At about the age of fifteen, she started branching out
Speaker 1: into learning other strokes, putting dedicated effort into practicing them
Speaker 1: and getting better at them, and soon she told her
Speaker 1: parents that she wanted to start competing in swimming. Her
Speaker 1: first swimming race was a local event, and she wanted
Speaker 1: Annette's father had been incredulous when she said she wanted
Speaker 1: to enter a swimming race. He had thought of swimming
Speaker 1: as something she was doing because of her disability, not
Speaker 1: as something she would seriously pursue for her own sake.
Speaker 1: But once she had that first win under her belt,
Speaker 1: he was instrumental in her progress as a competitive swimmer,
Speaker 1: essentially becoming both her trainer and her coach. As soon
Speaker 1: as she started seriously competing, a Net started winning races
Speaker 1: and setting records. In nineteen o two, at the age
Speaker 1: of about sixteen, she won a one hundred yard championship
Speaker 1: for New South Wales and also set a world record
Speaker 1: for swimming a mile with a time of thirty two
Speaker 1: minutes and twenty nine seconds. That same year, she started
Speaker 1: participating in long distance swimming races and public diving demonstrations.
Speaker 1: Her time in the water wasn't only about competition, though,
Speaker 1: She started doing mermaid shows in Australian aquariums along with
Speaker 1: other aquatic performances while she was still in her teens.
Speaker 1: Although she was winning races and making a name for
Speaker 1: her self as a competitive swimmer, she wasn't really able
Speaker 1: to earn an income from doing so. So Annette and
Speaker 1: her father moved to England with the hope of finding
Speaker 1: more lucrative opportunities to compete and perform. Once they arrived
Speaker 1: in England, they had a really hard time getting started.
Speaker 1: Although Annette already held multiple records and swimming, they didn't
Speaker 1: know anyone and Annette didn't have a local reputation to
Speaker 1: try to build on, So her father hatched a plan
Speaker 1: to drum up some publicity. She would swim twenty six miles,
Speaker 1: which was forty two kilometers down the Thames from Putney
Speaker 1: to black Wall in five Annette, at about age eighteen,
Speaker 1: became the first woman to make this swim, Although it
Speaker 1: did indeed bring in a lot of media attention. The
Speaker 1: swim itself was terrible. The Thames was filthy, and Annette
Speaker 1: later said she felt like she'd swallowed big mouthfuls of
Speaker 1: oil from the surface of the river. She had also
Speaker 1: had to dodge a lot of flotsam, garbage, tugboats and
Speaker 1: barges along the way. But afterward a sports editor from
Speaker 1: The Daily Mirror approached her with another idea. The Daily
Speaker 1: Mirror was the first paper in the UK to use
Speaker 1: photographs rather than illustrations, and the editor thought that articles
Speaker 1: on a net complete with photographs of her in the
Speaker 1: scandalous swimwear that we're going to talk about a little
Speaker 1: bit more later, if you thought that would sell a
Speaker 1: lot of papers. So we offered to back her in
Speaker 1: attempts and an attempt to swim across the English Channel,
Speaker 1: along with paying for and writing about swims along the
Speaker 1: coast to train for it. This entire enterprise was wildly
Speaker 1: successful in almost every way, and that's training. Swims down
Speaker 1: the coast threw huge crowds, and the articles and their
Speaker 1: corresponding photos sold lots of papers. She swam an average
Speaker 1: of forty five miles or seventy two kilometers per week,
Speaker 1: increasing the distance of each swim until she had done
Speaker 1: the twenty four miles stretch from Dover to Ramsgate. At
Speaker 1: that point she thought she was ready to try to
Speaker 1: conquer the Channel. Although that's a slightly shorter stints than
Speaker 1: her swim down the Thames, swimming in the English Channel
Speaker 1: is far more difficult due to the very cold water,
Speaker 1: the waves and the tides. She made her first attempts
Speaker 1: to swim across the English Channel along with six men
Speaker 1: on August nine oh five. They all started their swim
Speaker 1: at about three in the morning, all from different points
Speaker 1: along the coast, based on where they thought the currents
Speaker 1: and the tides would be the most advantageous. Each swimmer
Speaker 1: was accompanied by a steam tug in a row boat
Speaker 1: in case they fell into some distress along the way,
Speaker 1: and then periodically hot chocolate or food could be handed
Speaker 1: down to the swimmers from these boats to keep their
Speaker 1: energy up. An advertiser had given a net chocolate to
Speaker 1: eat along the way, but the combination of chocolate and
Speaker 1: the choppy water really made her sea sick. The further
Speaker 1: she went, the bigger her pay day would be those
Speaker 1: so she kept herself going through that seasickness by thinking
Speaker 1: the longer you stick, the more you get. She stuck
Speaker 1: it out for about six and a half hours, and
Speaker 1: she was paid thirty pounds. This was the first of
Speaker 1: Kellerman's three attempts to swim that swim the English Channel,
Speaker 1: and as with her swim down the Thames, she was
Speaker 1: the first woman to make the attempt. The closest she
Speaker 1: came in these three attempts to actually crossing was about
Speaker 1: three quarters of the way, which took ten and a
Speaker 1: half hours. Later, Killerman would say she thought she had
Speaker 1: the endurance to swim the channel, but not the raw strength.
Speaker 1: In her book How to Swim, she wrote that she
Speaker 1: didn't think a woman would ever successfully swim the English Channel.
Speaker 1: She was proven wrong in six when Gertrude utterly crossed
Speaker 1: in fourteen hours thirty nine minutes, not only swimming the
Speaker 1: channel but beating the previous record time by more than
Speaker 1: two hours. Today there are lots of women swim across
Speaker 1: the English Channel, including swimming at three consecutive times, like
Speaker 1: swimming it across one way and then going back and
Speaker 1: then going back across again, which is astounding to me.
Speaker 1: So in kellerman first attempt to swim across the English Channel.
Speaker 1: The male swimmers who were swimming that night were allowed
Speaker 1: to be nude, but she had to wear a swimsuit
Speaker 1: that chafed her skin just terribly. And this brings us
Speaker 1: to her efforts to make suitable swimwear for women, which
Speaker 1: we will talk about more after a sponsor break. That
Speaker 1: swim down the Thames and the attempts to cross the
Speaker 1: English Channel, We're not Annette Kellerman's only long distance races
Speaker 1: in the nineteen hundreds. Before leaving Australia, she had taken
Speaker 1: multiple long distance swims down the Yarra River, including becoming
Speaker 1: the first woman to complete a ten mile stretch. In
Speaker 1: nineteen o five, she participated in a race down the
Speaker 1: sin where she tied for third with with Thomas William Burgess.
Speaker 1: And her account of this race and how to swim,
Speaker 1: she wrote that well, meeting spectators kept calling out that
Speaker 1: she was almost there and had just two bridges more,
Speaker 1: and when she alized she was not almost there, and
Speaker 1: she became just really discouraged because she had worn herself
Speaker 1: out doing what she thought was her final push to
Speaker 1: the finish line. So when Burgess caught up to her
Speaker 1: and saw that she was crying in a very lovely
Speaker 1: show of sporting behavior. He stayed with her and encouraged
Speaker 1: her for the rest of the of the race, and
Speaker 1: that is how they came to tie. In June of six,
Speaker 1: Kellerman also won a twenty two mile or thirty six
Speaker 1: kilometer race down the Danube. I think anyone also who
Speaker 1: has ever run a race knows the the ire of
Speaker 1: please don't tell me if you're almost there, when you're not,
Speaker 1: when you're not know anyway, it was a little bit
Speaker 1: unclear to me whether these were the people in the
Speaker 1: guide boat or the people who were just spectators who
Speaker 1: were saying this, but like she they got her a
Speaker 1: couple of times, and then in like time number three
Speaker 1: of them being like, you're almost there, she was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not well right. And it's almost always well intentioned,
Speaker 1: like if you but let this be a note if
Speaker 1: you're ever spectating and sporting that please don't fimb to
Speaker 1: the participant because it does more to harm their head
Speaker 1: game than than help. And in most of these events,
Speaker 1: Kellerman was one of very few women, and sometimes she
Speaker 1: was the only woman, and she typically swam them wearing
Speaker 1: a swimsuit that was actually made for men, so this
Speaker 1: was not unheard of in Australia at this point. Uh
Speaker 1: swimming was already a more established sport in Australia than
Speaker 1: it was in the United Kingdom or the United States,
Speaker 1: but it was astonishing in a lot of the rest
Speaker 1: of the English speaking world, where water was for bathing,
Speaker 1: not for swimming. Bathing meant getting into the water a
Speaker 1: little way and you might wait or play or maybe
Speaker 1: float a little out there, but you didn't really swim,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people didn't even know how to swim.
Speaker 1: The idea of uh man made swimming pool was also
Speaker 1: still quite recent at this point, like there had not
Speaker 1: even been one built for the Olympics yet. So like
Speaker 1: bathing was a thing that happened at a beach, whether
Speaker 1: it was like a lakeside beach or a seashore beach,
Speaker 1: it did not really happen in a pool. And even
Speaker 1: if you wanted to swim, if you were a woman
Speaker 1: around the turn of the twentieth century, your bathing entire
Speaker 1: was not something you could actually swim in. The standard
Speaker 1: bathing costume for women was essentially a dress with a
Speaker 1: length that ranged within a couple of inches above or
Speaker 1: below the knee. It had a blousey top and puffy,
Speaker 1: usually short sleeves, sometimes with the sailor's collar. It was cinched,
Speaker 1: belted or ribboned at the waist and worn with stockings
Speaker 1: and bathing slippers or sometimes even bathing boots that went
Speaker 1: all the way up the calves, and many women wore
Speaker 1: their bathing clothes with corsets and other underpinnings. Here is
Speaker 1: what a net Kellerman had to say about these outfits.
Speaker 1: Quote there is no more reason why you should wear
Speaker 1: those awful water overcoats, those awkward, unnecessary, lumpy quote bathing suits.
Speaker 1: Then there is that you should wear lead chains. Heavy
Speaker 1: bathing suits have caused more deaths by drowning than cramps.
Speaker 1: I am certain there isn't a single reason under the
Speaker 1: sun why everybody should not wear lightweight suits. Anyone who
Speaker 1: persuades you to wear the heavy skurty kind is endangering
Speaker 1: your life. Just thinking about wearing tights into the water
Speaker 1: is a horrifying prospect to me. Oh, I don't know why.
Speaker 1: It just kind of grosses me out. Uh. For competitive
Speaker 1: women's swimmers, there was a grudging exception to the standard
Speaker 1: of dress they could wear. A men's bathing suit, which
Speaker 1: was more like a T shirt and shorts, sometimes constructed
Speaker 1: all is one piece, But this also starts a whole
Speaker 1: chicken and egg situation. Women weren't supposed to be seen
Speaker 1: in a tired that they could actually swim in, which
Speaker 1: created a huge barrier for entry for the sport of swimming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if people were like, well, I guess you can wear
Speaker 1: a men's suit for this race, that left the question of, like,
Speaker 1: all the training you would need to do to be
Speaker 1: able to compete in the race in the first place.
Speaker 1: It was this whole social standard of what was acceptable
Speaker 1: for women to wear that led Kellerman to invent a
Speaker 1: new swimsuit. In five she was scheduled for a swimming
Speaker 1: performance at London's Bath Club and some of the royal
Speaker 1: family was to be in attendance. The men's bathing suit
Speaker 1: that she had been wearing was determined to be inappropriate
Speaker 1: because it was two revealing. So Kellerman bought a pair
Speaker 1: of black stockings and she sewed them to the legs
Speaker 1: of her men's bathing suit, creating what was effectively a
Speaker 1: one piece garment that covered her from her shoulders to
Speaker 1: her feet. From there, she began tweaking and refining this
Speaker 1: original design, eventually developing a one piece, form fitting garment
Speaker 1: without sleeves. The lengths of the legs varied from full
Speaker 1: length and stalking like to stopping at the thigh. Although
Speaker 1: this would be considered pretty modest swimwear by a lot
Speaker 1: of today's standards, it was not at all all modest
Speaker 1: by the standards of the day. Like we said before
Speaker 1: the first break, the very idea of a woman in
Speaker 1: public and such a garment was enough to sell newspapers.
Speaker 1: It's widely reported that in seven Kellerman was arrested for
Speaker 1: indecency on Revere Beach in Massachusetts while wearing one of
Speaker 1: these swimsuits. Although there's no arrest in the log books,
Speaker 1: it's a story that came up again and again and
Speaker 1: again during her own lifetime, including from her own mouth,
Speaker 1: like I don't think she made this up, but people
Speaker 1: have noted that, like they can't find a document that
Speaker 1: actually details the arrest. In spite of heavy resistance to
Speaker 1: the idea of women being out in public so relatively unclothed,
Speaker 1: Kellerman persisted. She launched her own line of women's swimwear,
Speaker 1: some of which came with a modesty panel, which was
Speaker 1: a close fitting skirt that went from waste to knee,
Speaker 1: covering the thighs but bringing along far less fabric and
Speaker 1: weight than the previous era of swimsuits. She became so
Speaker 1: closely associated to this type of swim where that soon
Speaker 1: people were calling anything that looked like it in a
Speaker 1: net Kellerman or just a Kellerman, although it was a
Speaker 1: name she trademarked and went to court to defend when
Speaker 1: she needed to, and at some beaches, Kellerman type suits
Speaker 1: were actually banned. As Kellerman became more famous and her
Speaker 1: swimsuits became more widely adopted, it gradually became more acceptable
Speaker 1: for women to be seen in them and for women
Speaker 1: to participate in the sport of swimming, and compounding that,
Speaker 1: for swimming in general to be seen as a recreational activity.
Speaker 1: Some of this was part of an overall growth in
Speaker 1: the popularity of swimming, but it wasn't just happenstance. Kellerman
Speaker 1: was an active advocate for women to learn to swim
Speaker 1: and for swimming to be seen as an acceptable form
Speaker 1: of exercise, recreation, and competition for women. She wrote quote,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to shut men out of swimming there's
Speaker 1: enough water in the world for all of us. But
Speaker 1: as men can indulge in so many others sports where
Speaker 1: women can make a poor showing or cannot compete at all,
Speaker 1: Swimming may well be called the women's sport. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: this progress did not apply to all women. Even though
Speaker 1: Kellerman herself wrote things like quote, there is nothing more
Speaker 1: democratic than swimming, and a clean, cool, beautiful, cheap thing
Speaker 1: we all from cats to kings can enjoy, swimming was
Speaker 1: not actually accessible to everyone. In the United States, public
Speaker 1: beaches and as they were built, public swimming pools were
Speaker 1: often racially segregated, and the Indigenous population was barred from
Speaker 1: many public swimming areas in Australia, So while Kellerman was
Speaker 1: a staunch advocate for making swimming accessible to women, that
Speaker 1: was really most applicable to white women. And to add
Speaker 1: another layer to all of this, a lot of the
Speaker 1: swimming strokes that she learned as a child and then
Speaker 1: helps to popularize and as an adult were either patterned
Speaker 1: after or directly taught to white swimmers by Indigenous Australians
Speaker 1: and indigenous people from elsewhere in the Pacific. So like
Speaker 1: a lot of the art and skill of swimming drew
Speaker 1: from indigenous knowledge, but Indigenous people were excluded from a
Speaker 1: lot of public swimming locations. In addition to contributing to
Speaker 1: the popularity and at least for some accessibility of swimming,
Speaker 1: Annette Kellerman's fame and skill led to a completely different
Speaker 1: aspect of her career Vaudeville and Hollywood. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about that after we pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: A lot of Annette Kellerman's fame as a swimmer came
Speaker 1: because she was naturally a performer. She was definitely talented.
Speaker 1: I don't want to overlook that at all. She legitimately
Speaker 1: won races, and she set records, and she was one
Speaker 1: of the best swimmers of her era. But a lot
Speaker 1: of the attention that she got for those successes was
Speaker 1: due to showmanship and an openness with her body that
Speaker 1: was not really typical for the time. A woman swimmer
Speaker 1: was already relatively novel in a lot of places, and
Speaker 1: a woman swimmer who flaunted social expectations to proudly wear
Speaker 1: a scandalous swimsuit was a real attention getter. This attention
Speaker 1: actually led her to a career in Vaudeville. In nineteen
Speaker 1: o six, Having performed at the London Hippodrome and won
Speaker 1: numerous races in Europe, she sailed for the United States
Speaker 1: to perform an amusement parks and theaters. Her vaudeville act
Speaker 1: involved a combination of swimming, high diving, water stunts, and
Speaker 1: mermaid shows, for which she often designed all of her
Speaker 1: own costumes. She would eventually donate all of her costumes
Speaker 1: and memorabilia to the Sydney Opera House. We will put
Speaker 1: a link in the show notes where you can go
Speaker 1: look at them. There's a lot. There are lots and
Speaker 1: lots of pictures of this collection that you can browse through,
Speaker 1: and they are fascinating. Although water shows already existed in Vaudeville,
Speaker 1: Kellerman added a lot of her own flare and incorporated
Speaker 1: ballet and other movement in what would become a precursor
Speaker 1: to synchronize swimming. Her biggest production at the New York
Speaker 1: Hippodrome included a core of two hundred mermaids, all swimming
Speaker 1: in tandem. She also tried her hand at other types
Speaker 1: of performance, including male impersonation and high wire walking. By
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen, Kellerman had become one of the highest paid
Speaker 1: performers in vaudeville. Also during her time in vaudeville, she
Speaker 1: got married after proposing to her manager, Louis Sullivan, who
Speaker 1: was known as Jimmy in ve Running parallel to her
Speaker 1: time in vaudeville, Kellerman also began acting in films. Her
Speaker 1: first films were a series of silent shorts made while
Speaker 1: she was trying to work out a contract dispute between
Speaker 1: two different theater managers. Later on, when other people started
Speaker 1: to copy her water act and her pay in vaudeville
Speaker 1: consequently plummeted, she turned to film almost entirely. Kellerman's film
Speaker 1: roles involved lots of water and swimming, and sometimes also
Speaker 1: played off the fact that the South Pacific was pretty
Speaker 1: exotic two American audiences, which meant that Kellerman herself was
Speaker 1: often seen as exotic as well. Her first full length
Speaker 1: movie was Neptune's Daughter, which came out in nineteen fourteen.
Speaker 1: She played a mermaid wearing sheer body suits that matched
Speaker 1: her skin tone. In nineteen sixteen, she started a film
Speaker 1: called The Daughter of the Gods, which was a fantasy drama.
Speaker 1: She played Anisia, who was the daughter in question. In
Speaker 1: this film, she had a scene in which she was
Speaker 1: completely nude, although part of her body was covered by
Speaker 1: her hair. It was one of the first fully nude
Speaker 1: appearances by a major star in a non pornographic movie.
Speaker 1: Her final film, Venus of the South Seas, came out
Speaker 1: in nine four. There are definitely people who call the
Speaker 1: Daughter of the Gods role like the first nude appearance
Speaker 1: by a woman in film, and that seems a little there.
Speaker 1: It needs a little more caveats in that um Kellerman
Speaker 1: mostly retired from performing in the nineteen thirties. She and
Speaker 1: her husband moved to California, where she opened a health
Speaker 1: food store. She's apparently a vegetarian her whole life. By
Speaker 1: this point she had published books on swimming and on fitness,
Speaker 1: and one called Physical Beauty and How to Keep It.
Speaker 1: This one, to a modern reader, is maybe a little weird.
Speaker 1: It's simultaneously acknowledges the double standards that women face regarding
Speaker 1: our bodies and appearances. But at the same time it
Speaker 1: is a how to manual for how to have an
Speaker 1: ideal body, and it clearly spells out that the point
Speaker 1: in doing so is to keep from losing your figure
Speaker 1: and consequently your husband as you age. So in some ways,
Speaker 1: Like in some ways she was way ahead of her time,
Speaker 1: and in some ways she was squarely a product of it.
Speaker 1: The system is really bad, but here's how to buy in.
Speaker 1: Yeah that yeah, uh that book also, like it's a
Speaker 1: little I don't know what what Annette Kellerman's racial views
Speaker 1: were about, like the contributions of indigenous swimmers swimming and
Speaker 1: all of this sort of stuff, But she has a
Speaker 1: couple of lines in this book that, like, you can
Speaker 1: tell there are some problematic racial and and racist views
Speaker 1: in there, Like at one point she says it's the
Speaker 1: only people who need corsets are children and savages, and
Speaker 1: by savages in quotation marks, she means Africans, Like I
Speaker 1: don't want to I don't want to gloss over that.
Speaker 1: But like that, it's a weird intrusion in a book
Speaker 1: that's definitely about um, you know, middle class white women
Speaker 1: retaining their figures, which has its own set of social play.
Speaker 1: Kellerman also established health spas. She wrote newspaper columns on
Speaker 1: health and beauty. She stridently advocated for women to be
Speaker 1: encouraged to be fit and active, and she wrote eight
Speaker 1: children's book called fairy Tales of the South Seas but
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways she had become famous for
Speaker 1: her bathing suits and for the body under them. In
Speaker 1: nine Dr Dudley, Sergeant of Harvard, had taken the measurements
Speaker 1: of about one thousand women and compared them to the
Speaker 1: measurements of the Venus de Milo. Kellerman's were closest, and
Speaker 1: he dubbed her the perfect Woman, which, along with that
Speaker 1: Revere Beach arrest, became part of her ongoing marketing. In
Speaker 1: the Harvard Collections, like the Harvard Special Collections, are still
Speaker 1: boxes and boxes of these women's measurement cards that were
Speaker 1: part of this study, which baffles me on a number
Speaker 1: of different It doesn't baffle me that the cards are
Speaker 1: still in the collection. It baffles me that, like, let's
Speaker 1: measure a thousand women and compare them to a statue
Speaker 1: was a study in the first place. So her fame
Speaker 1: for her figure and the clothing being bathing suits on
Speaker 1: it persisted long after the first decade of the nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: which was really when Annette Kellerman had introduced and become
Speaker 1: famous for the s bathing suit. In nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: an Associated Press reporter tractor down and got her opinion
Speaker 1: on some subtorial Hubbub and Yonkers, New York that was
Speaker 1: over women wearing shorts. She recalled that it had only
Speaker 1: been a couple of decades since that time she was
Speaker 1: arrested and then said, quote, but I've always preached the
Speaker 1: importance of caring for the female figure, So the girls
Speaker 1: will have to look to their shapes and not to
Speaker 1: the courts when they appear in suits. But remember, please,
Speaker 1: I am not a nudist. Uh An Associated Press headline
Speaker 1: from ninety seven read quote and nett Kellerman still draws
Speaker 1: crowd legs of diving Venus hold former beauty so like
Speaker 1: people were still basically writing about her body years after
Speaker 1: she stopped be performing with it, like she was still
Speaker 1: the go to person to talk to you about scandalous
Speaker 1: swimwear and women's figures. Kellerman and her husband returned to
Speaker 1: Australia a couple of times during the nineteen forties, including
Speaker 1: during World War Two when she entertained troops in the
Speaker 1: South Pacific. In nineteen fifty two, Esther Williams played her
Speaker 1: in the film Million Dollar Mermaid. Kellerman was not a
Speaker 1: fan of this film. They called it quote a silly
Speaker 1: little yarn and also quote a namby panby attempt. She
Speaker 1: was frustrated that she was played by an American in
Speaker 1: this movie, and also that the film was more of
Speaker 1: a swimming spectacular than an actual biography of her. As
Speaker 1: kind of a side note, she was also not a
Speaker 1: fan of the bikini after it was introduced, calling it
Speaker 1: far too revealing and noting that almost nobody had the
Speaker 1: figure to actually wear one. Kellerman and her husband moved
Speaker 1: back to Australia for good in nineteen seventy. She was
Speaker 1: in did into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in
Speaker 1: nineteen four, and she died on November six, ninety five,
Speaker 1: at the age of roughly seven. Both sources say eighty
Speaker 1: seven or eighty eight. It's uh, it's a little her
Speaker 1: late eighties, her late eighties. Who wants to end with
Speaker 1: a poem? I do. I'm really excited We've gotten to
Speaker 1: end some episodes with pemns lately. This poem ran in
Speaker 1: the Boston Post on November seven, of Night No More,
Speaker 1: The Gibson Bathing Girls shall grace the Newport's Summer World.
Speaker 1: Annette declares her garments wrong at both ends too extremely long.
Speaker 1: The Gibson Girl maybe a peach as she perambulates the beach.
Speaker 1: But now if in the swim she'd be she must
Speaker 1: with sweet Annette agree her heavy skirt she must replace
Speaker 1: with filmy Raymon for the race. Thank you, she will
Speaker 1: consent to dress in such approach to nothing us he
Speaker 1: uh sus Kellerman. Sometimes you will see her name spelled
Speaker 1: with two ends instead of one end, which was apparently
Speaker 1: a nod to her German heritage that she used when
Speaker 1: she published her books, But most sources and as biographies
Speaker 1: have it just with one end. Do you have some
Speaker 1: listener mail with any number of ends in it? I
Speaker 1: sure do. It is from Shannon. It's called a few
Speaker 1: Rambling Thoughts. I'm not going to read all the thoughts
Speaker 1: because some of them are episode suggestions. I've been listening
Speaker 1: to your podcast for a while now. This is my
Speaker 1: first time writing to you, though I've often wanted to.
Speaker 1: I absolutely love your podcast and listen to it while
Speaker 1: I'm driving, while I cleaning, cook et cetera. So thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you for all the awesome work you do and
Speaker 1: for always being conscientious and respectful about whatever subject you cover.
Speaker 1: I wanted to write for a couple of reasons. First
Speaker 1: of all, in your most recent podcast The Ladies of
Speaker 1: ben gothlind You mentioned that Eleanor and Sarah were top hats.
Speaker 1: In traditional Welsh costume, which seems to originated in the
Speaker 1: late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, women wore top hats
Speaker 1: below or a couple of links for you to look at.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this has anything to do with
Speaker 1: Eleanor and Sarah's decisions to wear top hats, but I
Speaker 1: think it's definitely worth mentioning. I don't think it was
Speaker 1: completely unheard of for Welsh women, even if they were
Speaker 1: originally Irish of this time period, to be wearing top hats.
Speaker 1: And she has a couple of links, and I ran
Speaker 1: into some other stuff and we will put things into
Speaker 1: the show notes with some links for folks to go
Speaker 1: look at it. So yes, Uh, there is a Welsh
Speaker 1: hat that is part of Welsh national dress which looks
Speaker 1: kind of like a top hat, except it's even taller
Speaker 1: and a little skinnier. It's like a chimney hat um.
Speaker 1: And it seems as though this was really adopted as
Speaker 1: part of Welsh national dress after uh the deaths of
Speaker 1: the Ladies of Bengal of thank God, So like they
Speaker 1: may have been wearing these hats as part of what
Speaker 1: was the fact and where they were living in Wales,
Speaker 1: but in terms of it being adopted as an actual
Speaker 1: part of Welsh national dress, the hat itself was a
Speaker 1: little bit different from what they're wearing in engravings that
Speaker 1: show them in hats. Um. And then that standard seems
Speaker 1: to have come into play starting right around the time
Speaker 1: that they died, but then more definitely by the eighteen forties,
Speaker 1: which would have been a little bit after them. So
Speaker 1: that's definitely worth talking about because it's, um, it's totally
Speaker 1: possible that there were people wearing this is sort of
Speaker 1: a local custom, and I my conclusion would be that
Speaker 1: it's probably simultaneously both local custom and then also it
Speaker 1: was also like the fashion in France at a time
Speaker 1: to have on little hats, top hats. I think top
Speaker 1: hats are good all the time. Sure, I think we
Speaker 1: should bring them back as fairly standard. Fine by me.
Speaker 1: Perhaps I will start wearing and I will look terribly pretentious,
Speaker 1: but it will be so fun. That does sound fun? Um,
Speaker 1: it is it is. The welch had is a slightly
Speaker 1: different shape from what you would think of as a
Speaker 1: as a top hat, so we will put links the
Speaker 1: show notes so people can go check that out for themselves,
Speaker 1: and then I'm the rest of the letter uh included
Speaker 1: some episode suggestions also, so thank you so much Shannon
Speaker 1: for writing in with that. If you would like to
Speaker 1: write to us about this or any other podcast or
Speaker 1: a history podcast, at how stuff works dot com. We're
Speaker 1: also on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash miss in history,
Speaker 1: and on Twitter at miss in History, our tumbler and
Speaker 1: our Instagram and our pinterest name we are Missing History
Speaker 1: and all of those places. You can come to our
Speaker 1: parent company's website, which is how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: to look up information on anything your heart desires. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's lots of cool stuff there about swimming. You
Speaker 1: can come to our website, which is missing history dot com,
Speaker 1: and you will find a total archive of everything Holly
Speaker 1: and I have ever done on the show, and all
Speaker 1: of the work of past hosts, of which they were many.
Speaker 1: You'll find show notes for all the episodes that Holly
Speaker 1: and I have worked on together. We will find some
Speaker 1: other cool stuff there too, so you can do all
Speaker 1: that and a whole lot more at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com or missed in history dot com For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. VI is it
Speaker 1: how stuff works? Dot com