Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water

One of the new offerings in the rebooting of Liveright Publishing, Vicki Valosik's Swimming Pretty hits the mark. As a university writing teacher, a historian, and a masters synchronized swimmer, she is well suited to the task. Her prose is vivid and flows and makes for an easy read, backed by prodigious research over the past decade. The book is awash in primary sources, copiously illustrated, and is a welcome contribution to sport history and women's history.The book is arranged chronologically, starting with the prominence of swimming among the ancient Greeks and Romans, before addressing the earliest swimming texts of the early European Renaissance. Benjamin Franklin's scientific approach to the practice follows with actual swimming competitions appearing in the nineteenth century. In 1875, Matthew Webb was the first to swim across the English Channel; but women, notably Agnes Beckwith, soon produced endurance records of their own in indoor tanks.Indoor swimming events attracted paying spectators and became staple attractions on the vaudeville circuit of the late nineteenth century. Female performances challenged Victorian beliefs in women's physical capabilities. Foremost among the female swimmers and divers was Annette Kellerman, who was born in Australia but became an international star of the swimming circuit and in aquatic films by the early twentieth century. Valosik writes, “Kellerman served as a reassuring example that the emerging ‘New Woman’ of the twentieth century could be physically active without losing her femininity or sexual allure” (80).Esther Williams, who began her career as a competitive swimmer, followed Kellerman as a movie star, one of the most popular throughout the mid-twentieth century. The transition from competitive swimming to performative exhibitions raised the question of whether the activity was sport or art, and the author delves deeply into the discussion.The increasing popularity of swimming as a leisure activity required greater attention to lifesaving skills. Wilbert E. Longfellow proved instrumental in the development of the lifesaving corps throughout the United States. Such skills became even more important for the military as wars erupted throughout the twentieth century.The Olympic Games included women's swimming by 1912. By the 1920s, competitive women swimmers upset the gender hierarchy with their performances, as collegian Sybil Bauer surpassed the men's world record in the 400-yard backstroke event by four seconds in 1924. Two years later Gertrude Ederle beat the men's record by more than two hours in her English Channel swim. Valosik notes the concern in a 1925 article: “‘The women of sport will eventually prove whether or not the weakness of the weaker sex may not have been a trifle exaggerated.’ And if women were no longer the weaker sex, what did that say about men?” (178)Competitive synchronized swimming started before World War II, and the Amateur Athletic Union authorized separate male and female contests. By 1984, the activity had been elevated to an Olympic event. Thereafter, as more international teams took to the pool, the International Olympic Committee struggled to accommodate the growth. In 2017, a name change from “synchronized swimming” to “artistic swimming” combined the perceptions of athleticism and aesthetics inherent in the sport.