Speaker 1: Hey, listeners. This episode is part of our new playlist
Speaker 1: to help everybody get through these times we're living in.
Speaker 1: It's our host faves playlist. Yeah, these are just some
Speaker 1: of our personal favorites, ones that we had a particular
Speaker 1: affinity for, and because these are stressful and trying times,
Speaker 1: we tried to stick to the ones that weren't quite
Speaker 1: as dour. So hopefully they'll give you a little lift.
Speaker 1: Stay safe. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly fry So. Uh,
Speaker 1: summer's coming, at least in theory. I think I think
Speaker 1: summer has definitely arrived where you are. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess technically, it's still cooler than it usually would
Speaker 1: be this time of year. Uh, it is not warm
Speaker 1: at all. It's fifty seven degrees right now. We're recording
Speaker 1: this on May. Yeah, Like, I think our high today
Speaker 1: might be eighty, which sounds hot to some people, but
Speaker 1: for Atlanta at the end of May, that's really not. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's been a We've had an unseasonably cool um
Speaker 1: May up here in New England anyway, though at least
Speaker 1: in theory, summer is either on the way or here
Speaker 1: for most but not all of our listeners, so it
Speaker 1: seems like a good time talk about swimming. We yes, specifically,
Speaker 1: we are talking about Annett Kellerman, who gets a lot
Speaker 1: of the credit for developing the woman's one piece bathing
Speaker 1: suit and then for making it socially appropriate for women
Speaker 1: in a lot of the English speaking world to put
Speaker 1: on an outfit that you could actually swim in without
Speaker 1: drowning and then go out in public that way. Uh,
Speaker 1: and perhaps kind of ironically, she was Australian, where it
Speaker 1: is definitely not coming on summer. So Australians, we have
Speaker 1: some Australian history today that is uh, seasonally incongruous for
Speaker 1: where you actually live. Yeah, unless you happen to be uh,
Speaker 1: somebody who's downloading it late in the game, in which
Speaker 1: case store hooray summer for you as well. Annette Kellerman
Speaker 1: was born in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. She was
Speaker 1: coy about her birth date, and it's variously cited as
Speaker 1: July five or sixth of eighteen eighty six, eighteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: or eighteen eighty eight. The sixth is the most frequently
Speaker 1: cited date. Her father, Frederick, was a violinist born in Australia,
Speaker 1: and her mother, Alice, was a pianist and a music
Speaker 1: teacher who was originally from France. When she was young,
Speaker 1: Annette had to wear braces on her legs because of
Speaker 1: persistent weakness, and not only were these braces painful to wear,
Speaker 1: but she also found them embarrassing. The cause is unclear.
Speaker 1: A few sources site ricketts or polio, and later on
Speaker 1: in her life she speculated that hip might have been
Speaker 1: a calcium deficiency her a warning to her own account.
Speaker 1: Actual doctors at the time said that it was because
Speaker 1: she had been allowed to learn to walk too early,
Speaker 1: or that she had chalk in her bones. Neither of
Speaker 1: those are real things would have caused her to need
Speaker 1: leg braces. Um so totally unclear, but the braces were
Speaker 1: a real part of her life. That's what you get
Speaker 1: when you go to cartoon doctors. Like chalk in your
Speaker 1: bones sounds like such a cartoon diagnosis, and chalk bones
Speaker 1: is a nickname for like one congenital bone condition, but
Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with what she was experiencing.
Speaker 1: Is a totally different set of symptoms, so very weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whatever the cause of her disability, eventually her father visited
Speaker 1: a doctor who recommended swimming lessons, and at first and
Speaker 1: That was really terrified of this plan, possibly because it
Speaker 1: meant exposing her legs to people, which she did not
Speaker 1: want to do because they were visibly undeveloped, and she
Speaker 1: begged not to have to go. But her parents and
Speaker 1: the doctor were all certain that swimming would really help. Oh.
Speaker 1: She and her brothers were taken to Frederick Cavell's baths
Speaker 1: so they could learn to swim, and the Cavils were
Speaker 1: actually a whole family of swimmers there in the International
Speaker 1: Swimming Hall of Fame for their combined contributions to the sport.
Speaker 1: It took a net a lot longer to get the
Speaker 1: hang of swimming than it took her brothers. They were
Speaker 1: both able to swim on their own after a handful
Speaker 1: of lessons, but it took a net close to twenty
Speaker 1: But once she knew how to do it, as predicted,
Speaker 1: it really did help her build her strength up and
Speaker 1: her legs and with the water supporting her, she could
Speaker 1: move around without having to wear the braces and that
Speaker 1: would later describe her gradual improvement through swimming as a
Speaker 1: process of intense joy. By the time she reached the
Speaker 1: age of thirteen, her muscle development was more or less
Speaker 1: typical for a child her age, although she was susceptible
Speaker 1: to muscle strains and had to wear very tightly laced
Speaker 1: boots until she was eighteen. A lot of the swimming
Speaker 1: strokes that are recognized and used competitively today were still
Speaker 1: new or in the process of being developed and refined,
Speaker 1: So what Annett learned at first was basically the breaststroke,
Speaker 1: and that was the stroke that she used mostly when
Speaker 1: she was exercising at first. At about the age of fifteen,
Speaker 1: she started branching out into learning other strokes, putting dedicated
Speaker 1: effort into practicing them and getting better at them, and
Speaker 1: soon she told her parents that she wanted to start
Speaker 1: competing in swimming. Her first swimming race was a local event,
Speaker 1: and she won it. Annette's father had been incredulous when
Speaker 1: she said she wanted to enter a swimming race. He
Speaker 1: had thought of swimming as something she was doing because
Speaker 1: of her disability, not as something she would seriously pursue
Speaker 1: for her own sake. But once she had that first
Speaker 1: win under her belt. He was instrumental in her progress
Speaker 1: as a competitive swimmer, essentially becoming both her trainer and
Speaker 1: her coach. As soon as she started seriously competing, a
Speaker 1: net started winning races and setting records. In nineteen o two,
Speaker 1: at the age of about sixteen, she won a one
Speaker 1: hundred yard championship for New South Wales and also set
Speaker 1: a world record for swimming a mile with a time
Speaker 1: of thirty two minutes and twenty nine seconds. That same year,
Speaker 1: she started participating in long distance swimming races and public
Speaker 1: diving demonstrations. 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: herself as a competitive swimmer, she wasn't really able to
Speaker 1: earn an income from doing so. So Annette and her
Speaker 1: father moved to England with the hope of finding more
Speaker 1: lucrative opportunities to compete and perform. Once they arrived in England,
Speaker 1: they had a really hard time getting started. Although Annette
Speaker 1: already held multiple records and swimming. They didn't know anyone,
Speaker 1: and Annette didn't have a local reputation to try to
Speaker 1: build on, so her father hatched a plan to drum
Speaker 1: up some publicity. She would swim twenty six miles, which
Speaker 1: was forty two kilometers down the Tims from Putney to
Speaker 1: black Wall. In nine five. Annett, 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'd also had
Speaker 1: to dodge a lot of flotsam, garbage, tugboats and barges
Speaker 1: along the way. But afterward, a sports editor from the
Speaker 1: Daily Mirror approached her with another idea. The Daily Mirror
Speaker 1: was the first paper in the UK to use photographs
Speaker 1: rather than illustrations, and the editor thought that articles on
Speaker 1: a net complete with photographs of her in the scandalous
Speaker 1: swimwear that we're going to talk about a little bit
Speaker 1: more later, if you thought that would sell a lot
Speaker 1: of papers. So we offered to back her in attempts
Speaker 1: in an attempt to swim across the English Channel, along
Speaker 1: with paying for and writing about swims along the coast
Speaker 1: to train for it. This entire enterprise was wildly successful
Speaker 1: in almost every way. Annett's training swims down the coast
Speaker 1: drew huge crowds, and the articles and their corresponding photos
Speaker 1: sold lots of papers. She swam an average of forty
Speaker 1: five miles or seventy two kilometers per week, increasing the
Speaker 1: distance of each swim until she had done the twenty
Speaker 1: four miles stretch from Dover to Ramsgate. At that point
Speaker 1: she thought she was ready to try to conquer the Channel.
Speaker 1: Although that's a slightly shorter distance than her swim down
Speaker 1: the Thames, swimming in the English Channel is far more
Speaker 1: difficult due to the very cold water, the waves, and
Speaker 1: the tides. She made her first attempts to swim across
Speaker 1: the English Channel along with six men on August five.
Speaker 1: They all started their swim at about three in the morning,
Speaker 1: all from different points along the coast, based on where
Speaker 1: they thought the currents and the tides would be the
Speaker 1: most advantageous. Each swimmer was accompanied by a steam tug
Speaker 1: in a rowboat in case they fell into some distress
Speaker 1: along the way, and then periodically hot chocolate or food
Speaker 1: could be handed down to the swimmers from these boats
Speaker 1: to keep their energy up. An advertiser had given a
Speaker 1: net chocolate to eat along the way, but the combination
Speaker 1: of chocolate and the choppy water really made her seasick.
Speaker 1: The further she went, the bigger her pay day would be.
Speaker 1: Those so she kept herself going through that seasickness by
Speaker 1: thinking the longer you stick, the more you get. She
Speaker 1: stuck it out for about six and a half hours,
Speaker 1: and she was paid thirty pounds. This was the first
Speaker 1: of Kellerman's three attempts to swim swim the English Channel,
Speaker 1: and as with her swim down attempts, she was the
Speaker 1: first woman to make the attempt. The closest she came
Speaker 1: in these three attempts to actually crossing was about three
Speaker 1: quarters of the way, which took ten and a half hours. Later,
Speaker 1: Kellerman would say she thought she had the endurance to
Speaker 1: swim the channel, but not the raw strength. In her
Speaker 1: eighteen book How to Swim, she wrote that she didn't
Speaker 1: think a woman would ever successfully swim the English Channel.
Speaker 1: She was proven wrong in when Gertrude utterly crossed in
Speaker 1: fourteen hours thirty nine minutes, not only swimming the channel,
Speaker 1: but beating the previous record time by more than two hours.
Speaker 1: Today there are lots of women swim across the English Channel,
Speaker 1: including swimming at three consecutive times, like swimming it across
Speaker 1: one way and then going back and then going back
Speaker 1: across again, which is astounding to me. So in Kellerman's
Speaker 1: first attempt to swim across the English Channel, the male
Speaker 1: swimmers who were swimming that night were allowed to be nude,
Speaker 1: but she had to wear a swimsuit that chafed her
Speaker 1: skin just terribly. And this brings us to her efforts
Speaker 1: to make suitable swimwear for women, which we will talk
Speaker 1: about more after a sponsor break. That swim down the
Speaker 1: Thames and the attempts to cross the English Channel, we're
Speaker 1: not an at Kellerman's only long distance races in the
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. Before leaving Australia, she had taken multiple long
Speaker 1: distance swims down the Yarra River, including becoming the first
Speaker 1: woman to complete a ten mile stretch. In nineteen o five,
Speaker 1: she participated in a race down the sin where she
Speaker 1: tied for third with with Thomas William Burgess in her
Speaker 1: account of this race and How to Swim, she wrote
Speaker 1: that well meeting spectators kept calling out that she was
Speaker 1: almost there and had just two bridges more, and when
Speaker 1: she realized she was not almost there, and she became
Speaker 1: just really discouraged because she had worn herself out doing
Speaker 1: what she thought was her final push to the finish line.
Speaker 1: So when Burgess caught up to her and saw that
Speaker 1: she was crying in a very lovely show of sporting behavior,
Speaker 1: he stayed with her and encouraged her for the rest
Speaker 1: of the of the race, and that is how they
Speaker 1: came to tie. In June of nine six, Kellerman also
Speaker 1: won a twenty two mile or thirty six kilometer race
Speaker 1: down the Danube. I think anyone also who has ever
Speaker 1: run a race knows the the ire of please don't
Speaker 1: tell me if you're almost there, when you're not, when
Speaker 1: you're not now. And it was a little bit unclear
Speaker 1: to me whether these were the people in the guide
Speaker 1: boat or the people who were just spectators who were
Speaker 1: saying this. But like she they got her a couple
Speaker 1: of times, and then like time number three of them
Speaker 1: being like, you're almost there, she was like, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not well, right, and it's almost always well intentioned, like
Speaker 1: if you but let this be a note if you're
Speaker 1: ever spectating a sporting event, please don't fib to the participant,
Speaker 1: because it does more to harm their head game than
Speaker 1: than help. UH. And in most of these events, Kellerman
Speaker 1: was one of very few women, and sometimes she was
Speaker 1: the only woman, and she typically swam them wearing a
Speaker 1: swimsuit that was actually made for men. So this was
Speaker 1: not unheard of in Australia at this point. UH swimming
Speaker 1: was already a more established sport in Australia than it
Speaker 1: was in the United Kingdom or the United States, but
Speaker 1: it was astonishing in a lot of the rest of
Speaker 1: the English speaking world, where water was for bathing, not
Speaker 1: for swimming. Bathing meant getting into the water a little
Speaker 1: way and you might wait or play or maybe float
Speaker 1: a little out there, but you didn't really swim, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people didn't even know how to swim.
Speaker 1: The idea of man made swimming pool was also still
Speaker 1: quite recent at this point, like there had not even
Speaker 1: been one built for the Olympics yet, So like bathing
Speaker 1: was a thing that happened at a beach, whether it
Speaker 1: was like a lakeside beach or a seashore beach. It
Speaker 1: did not really happen in a pool, and even if
Speaker 1: you wanted to swim, if you were a woman around
Speaker 1: the turn of the twentieth century, your bathing entire was
Speaker 1: not something you could actually swim in. The standard bathing
Speaker 1: costume for women was essentially a dress with a length
Speaker 1: that ranged within a couple of inches above or below
Speaker 1: the knee. It had a blousey top and puffy, usually
Speaker 1: short leaves, 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 and that 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 scurty 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 as one piece. But this also starts a whole
Speaker 1: chicken and egg situation. Women weren't supposed to be seen
Speaker 1: and attired that they could actually swim in, which created
Speaker 1: 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,
Speaker 1: like all the training you would need to do to
Speaker 1: be 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 revealings. 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 modest by
Speaker 1: the standards of the day. Like we said before the
Speaker 1: first break, the very idea of a woman in public
Speaker 1: and such a garment was enough to sell newspapers. It's
Speaker 1: widely reported that in seven Kellerman was arrested for indecency
Speaker 1: on Revere Beach in Massachusetts while wearing one of these swimsuits.
Speaker 1: Although there's no arrest in the log books, it's a
Speaker 1: story that came up again and again and again during
Speaker 1: her own lifetime, including from her own mouth like at
Speaker 1: don't think she made this up, but people have noted that,
Speaker 1: like they can't find a document that actually details the arrest.
Speaker 1: In spite of heavy resistance to the idea of women
Speaker 1: being out in public so relatively unclothed, Kellerman persisted. She
Speaker 1: launched her own line of women's swimwear, some of which
Speaker 1: came with a Modesty Panel, which was a close fitting
Speaker 1: skirt that went from waste to knee, covering the thighs
Speaker 1: but bringing along far less fabric and weight than the
Speaker 1: previous era of swimsuits. She became so closely associated to
Speaker 1: this type of swimwear that soon people were calling anything
Speaker 1: that looked like it and a net Kellerman or just
Speaker 1: a Kellerman, although it was a name she trademarked and
Speaker 1: went to court to defend when she needed to, and
Speaker 1: at some beaches, Kellerman type suits were actually banned. As
Speaker 1: Kellerman became more famous and her swimsuits became more widely adopted,
Speaker 1: it gradually became more acceptable for women to be seen
Speaker 1: in them, and for women to participate in the sport
Speaker 1: of swimming, and compounding that for swimming in general to
Speaker 1: be seen as a recreational activity. Some of this was
Speaker 1: part of an overall growth in the popularity of swimming,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't just happenstance. Kellerman was an active advocate
Speaker 1: for women to learn to swim, and for swimming to
Speaker 1: be seen as an acceptable form of exercise, recreation, and
Speaker 1: competition for women. She wrote quote, I am not trying
Speaker 1: to shut men out of swimming. There's enough water in
Speaker 1: the world for all of us. But as men can
Speaker 1: indulge in so many other sports where women can make
Speaker 1: a poor showing or cannot compete at all, swimming may
Speaker 1: well be called the women's sport. But unfortunately this progress
Speaker 1: did not apply to all women. Even though Kellerman herself
Speaker 1: wrote things like quote there is nothing more democratic than swimming,
Speaker 1: and a clean, cool, beautiful, cheap thing we all from
Speaker 1: cats to kings can enjoy, swimming was not actually accessible
Speaker 1: to everyone. In the United States, public beaches and as
Speaker 1: they were built, public swimming pools were often racially segregated,
Speaker 1: and the Indigenous population was barred from many public swimming
Speaker 1: areas In Australia, So while Kellerman was a staunch advocate
Speaker 1: for making swimming accessible to women, that was really most
Speaker 1: applicable to white women. And to add another layer to
Speaker 1: all of this, a lot of the swimming strokes that
Speaker 1: she learned as a child and then helps to popularize
Speaker 1: and as an adult were either patterned after or directly
Speaker 1: taught to white swimmers by Indigenous Australians and indigenous people
Speaker 1: from elsewhere in the Pacific. So like a lot of
Speaker 1: the art and skill of swimming drew from indigenous knowledge,
Speaker 1: but indigenous people were excluded from a lot of public
Speaker 1: swimming locations. In addition to contributing to the popularity and
Speaker 1: at least for some accessibility of swimming, and that Kellerman's
Speaker 1: fame and skill led to a completely different aspect of
Speaker 1: her career, Vaudeville and Hollywood. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: that after we paused for a sponsor break. A lot
Speaker 1: of Annette Kellerman's fame as a swimmer came because she
Speaker 1: was naturally a performer. She was definitely talented. I don't
Speaker 1: want to overlook that at all. She legitimately won races
Speaker 1: and she set records, and she was one of the
Speaker 1: best swimmers of her era. But a lot of the
Speaker 1: attention that she got for those successes was due to showmanship.
Speaker 1: And an openness with her body that was not really
Speaker 1: typical for the time. A woman's swimmer was already relatively
Speaker 1: novel in a lot of places, and a woman swimmer
Speaker 1: who flaunted social expectations to proudly wear a scandalous swimsuit
Speaker 1: was a real attention getter. This attention actually led her
Speaker 1: to a career in vaudeville. In nineteen o six, having
Speaker 1: performed at the London Hippodrome and one numerous races in Europe,
Speaker 1: she sailed for the United States to perform at amusement
Speaker 1: parks and theaters. Her vaudeville act involved a combination of swimming,
Speaker 1: high diving, water stunts, and mermaid shows, for which she
Speaker 1: often designed all of her own costumes. She would eventually
Speaker 1: donate all of her costumes and memorabilia to the Sydney
Speaker 1: Opera House. We will put a link in the show
Speaker 1: notes where you can go look at them. There's a lot.
Speaker 1: There are lots and lots of pictures of this collection
Speaker 1: that you can browse through, and they are fascinating. Although
Speaker 1: water shows already existed in vaudeville, Kellerman added a lot
Speaker 1: of her own flare and incorporated ballet and other movement
Speaker 1: in what would become a precursor to synchronize swimming. Her
Speaker 1: biggest production at the New York Hippodrome included a core
Speaker 1: of two hundred mermaids, all swimming in tandem. She also
Speaker 1: tried her hand at other types of performance, including male
Speaker 1: impersonation and high wire walking. By Kellerman had become one
Speaker 1: of the highest paid performers in vaudeville. All during her
Speaker 1: time in vaudeville, she got married after proposing to her manager,
Speaker 1: Louis Sullivan, who was known as Jimmy, in nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: Running parallel to her time in vaudeville, Kellerman also began
Speaker 1: acting in films. Her first films were a series of
Speaker 1: silent shorts made while she was trying to work out
Speaker 1: a contract dispute between two different theater managers. Later on,
Speaker 1: when other people started to copy her water act and
Speaker 1: her pay in vaudeville consequently plummeted, she turned to film
Speaker 1: almost entirely. Kellerman's film roles involved lots of water and swimming,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they also played off the fact that the
Speaker 1: South Pacific was pretty exotic to American audiences, which meant
Speaker 1: that Kellerman herself was often seen as exotic as well.
Speaker 1: Her first full length movie was Neptune's Daughter, which came
Speaker 1: out in nineteen four She played a mermaid wearing sheer
Speaker 1: body suits that matched her skin tone. In nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: she started a film called The Daughter of the Gads,
Speaker 1: which was a fantasy drama. She played Anisia, who was
Speaker 1: the daughter in question. In this film, she had a
Speaker 1: scene in which she was completely nude, although part of
Speaker 1: her body was covered by her hair. It was one
Speaker 1: of the first fully nude appearances by a major star
Speaker 1: in a non pornographic movie. Her final film, Venus of
Speaker 1: the South Seas, came out in There are definitely people
Speaker 1: who call the Daughter of the Gods role like the
Speaker 1: first nude appearance by a woman in film, and that
Speaker 1: seems a little there. It needs a little more caveats
Speaker 1: than that. Um Kellerman mostly retired from performing in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties. She and her husband moved to California, where
Speaker 1: she opened a health food store. She was apparently a
Speaker 1: vegetarian her whole life. By this point she had published
Speaker 1: books on swimming and on fitness, and one called Physical
Speaker 1: Beauty and How to Keep It. This one, to a
Speaker 1: modern reader is maybe a little weird. It's simultaneously acknowledges
Speaker 1: the double standards that women face regarding our bodies and appearances.
Speaker 1: But at the same time it is a how to
Speaker 1: manual for how to have an ideal body, and it
Speaker 1: clearly spells out that the point in doing so is
Speaker 1: to keep from losing your figure and consequently your husband
Speaker 1: as you age. So in some ways, like in some
Speaker 1: ways she was way ahead of her time, and in
Speaker 1: some ways she was squarely a product of it. The
Speaker 1: 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 really know what what Annett Kellerman's racial
Speaker 1: views were about, like the contributions of indigenous swimmers to
Speaker 1: swimming and all of this sort of stuff. That she
Speaker 1: has a couple of lines in this book that, like
Speaker 1: you can tell there are some problematic racial and racist
Speaker 1: views in there, Like at one point she says that
Speaker 1: the only people who need corsets are children and savages,
Speaker 1: and by savages in quotation marks, she means Africans, Like
Speaker 1: I don't want to I don't want to gloss over that.
Speaker 1: But like that's 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 at 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 this bathing suit. In nineteen thirty five, an
Speaker 1: Associated Press reporter tractor down and got her opinion on
Speaker 1: some subtorial hubbub and Yonkers New York that was over
Speaker 1: women wearing shorts. She recalled that it had only been
Speaker 1: a couple of decades since that time. She was arrested
Speaker 1: and then said, quote, but I've always preached the importance
Speaker 1: of caring for the female figure, so the girls will
Speaker 1: have to look to their shapes and not to the
Speaker 1: courts when they appear in suits. But remember, please, I
Speaker 1: am not a nudist. Uh An Associated Press headline from
Speaker 1: seven read quote and that Kellerman still draws crowd legs
Speaker 1: of diving venus holed former beauty so like people were
Speaker 1: still basically writing about her body years after she stopped
Speaker 1: be performing with it, like she was still the go
Speaker 1: to person to talk to you about scandalous swimwear and
Speaker 1: women's figures. Kellerman and her husband returned to Australia a
Speaker 1: couple of times during the nineteen forties, including during World
Speaker 1: War Two when she entertained troops in the South Pacific.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty two, Esther Williams played her in the
Speaker 1: film Million Dollar Mermaid. Kellerman was not a fan of
Speaker 1: this film. They called it quote a silly little yarn
Speaker 1: and also quote a namby panby attempt. She was frustrated
Speaker 1: that she was played by an American in this movie,
Speaker 1: and also that the film was more of a swimming
Speaker 1: spectacular than an actual biography of her. As kind of
Speaker 1: a side note, she was also not a fan of
Speaker 1: the bikini after it was introduced, calling it far too
Speaker 1: revealing and noting that almost nobody had the figure to
Speaker 1: actually wear one. Kellerman and her husband moved back to
Speaker 1: Australia for good in nineteen seventy. She was inducted into
Speaker 1: the International Swimming Hall of Fame in nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: and she died on November six, nineteen seventy five, at
Speaker 1: the age of roughly eighty 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 episode with poems lately. This poem ran in
Speaker 1: the Boston Post on November seven. No more the Gibson
Speaker 1: bathing girls shall grace the Newport's summer World. Annett declares
Speaker 1: her garments wrong at both ends, too extremely long. The
Speaker 1: 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 raiment for the race. Thank you, she will
Speaker 1: consent to dress in such approach to nothingness. Uh Callerman.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you will see her name spelled with two ends
Speaker 1: instead of one end, which was apparently a nod to
Speaker 1: her German heritage that she used when she published her books.
Speaker 1: But most sources and as biographies have it just with
Speaker 1: one end. Thank you so much for joining us today
Speaker 1: for this classic. If you have heard any kind of
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Speaker 1: the course of the episode, that might be obsolete. It
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