She's a Knockout!

by L. A. Jennings

  The Chicago Tribune declares the fight between Livingstone and Harris the “most disgraceful thing of the kind ever seen in Chicago.” As always, the costuming of the women was part of the critique: They wore tights showing off their legs to a shocking degree. Furthermore, the Tribune was disturbed by the animosity between the ladies; their obviously strained relationship was not drama for the sake of entertainment. Yet, again, Livingstone’s challenge was to throw Harris within ten minutes or forfeit the $25 prize. Says the report, Harris was the crowd favorite because Livingstone displayed some rather unsportsmanlike conduct, including biting, clawing, and eye-gouging.[50] O’Donnell explains that the “show was offensive and that the women, especially Miss Livingstone, roughed it considerably.”[51] The police stepped in, and the fight was effectively over. Both women were charged with disorderly conduct, which, in this case, it sounds like the feisty Livingstone deserved.

  Livingstone had a long and busy career as a wrestler, fighting for more than fifteen years in venues throughout the United States. The Richmond Times-Dispatch notes that in 1919, she wrestled Miss May Wilson in an unprecedented bout for the city, which had never seen two women meet in combat before. The paper pours complements on the two women, declaring that “both women have been in the wrestling game for a number of years and have just as good a knowledge of the game as the men.”[52] The women came back to Richmond for a highly anticipated rematch in 1920. The Times-Dispatch explains that while many wrestling fans believed that women did not understand the game, these particular ladies were as “handy in the art of catch-as-catch-can as any of the masculine mat artists ever seen in action in [the] city.”[53] The article promises that “their match will be one of the most hard-fought contests ever witnessed and will be full of pep from the tap of the gong.”[54]

  At the last minute, however, Wilson dropped out, and Livingstone met Grace Brady on the mat instead. The two had fought at a previous event, in which Brady almost took the championship belt from the championess. Brady spoke with the Charlotte Observer, saying, “The last time we wrestled here I came within a hair’s breadth of beating Miss Livingstone, and this time I mean to finish the job.”[55]

  Livingstone dominated the mat during the bout, although her challenger apparently gave her some trouble. Livingstone started off the first round by throwing Brady to the mat so hard that it took the woman several minutes to get off the floor. When she returned to standing, Brady was shaky, but she managed to get at least one fall using a “crotch hold and deadlock.” Livingstone, however, still came off with a decisive victory using several hard throws and pins. Two years later, she was still considered the champion. Several papers ran the following line about her in 1922: “Notwithstanding many strenuous years spent in the wrestling game, Cora Livingstone is still the cleverest of female grapplers.”[56]

  One of the most interesting aspects of researching Livingstone and other female wrestlers of the early twentieth century was the divergent attitudes toward female fighters throughout the country during that time. The Chicago Tribune spat vitriol on the women in 1910, but by 1920, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, a southern newspaper, was praising them as skilled fighters. Newspapers are, of course, the product of publishers, as well as the location and moment in time in which they are published, but the varying feelings toward female grapplers, especially the popularity of the sport in the conservative South, demonstrate the growing acceptance of women in fighting sports in the 1920s.

  Cora Livingstone passed away in 1957, but not before imparting much of her wrestling knowledge to future generations of female fighters. The famous Mildred Burke called Livingstone her mentor. There is a charming photo of the two women, with Livingstone looking like a prosperous matron and Burke in her usual costume and wearing her championship belt in 1955. Burke is clutching Livingstone’s arm, looking delighted at the sight of her mentor’s diamond bracelet, while the older woman, dressed in furs and a smart hat, is staring off to the side. Some wrestling histories claim that Livingstone retired from the sport with an undefeated record, but the actual source material seems to reject that idea. Her wrestling career was certainly long and worthy of celebration, but it is unclear exactly how many bouts she won, especially since two papers oftentimes claim a different outcome for the same fight. Regardless, Livingstone forged a path in the early twentieth century for wrestling as not just a form of entertainment and spectacle, but as a legitimate sport.

  Cultural History between the Wars

  During both World War I and World War II, women helped on the home front through various types of work. In the early days of World War I, men left in droves to sign up for battle, and their places on farms and in factories and businesses were filled by those left behind. Many of these positions became occupied by young women who were both eager to help in the war effort and ready for some semblance of financial independence. Although the United States did not use its female population to the same extent as Britain, many young women entered the workforce. The women who moved to large cities certainly helped the country during a time of war, but they also gained a type of financial and social independence that seemed unattainable on family farms or in small, close-knit towns.

  When the war ended, many of these women did not return to their small-town homes and instead opted to remain in the cities, where they were more socially mobile and self-sufficient; however, at the war’s end, many women in the United States and Britain felt discouraged that their governments still did not feel the need to grant them the right to vote. In 1918, British women thirty years and older were granted voting rights. Years later, women twenty-one and older received the ability to cast their vote. In the United States, women of all ages were granted the right to vote in 1920, a sign that the times had indeed changed and that women were gaining unprecedented freedoms.

  The period between World War I and World War II is often described as a time of explosive growth of consumerism. The Victorians certainly had their own brand of consumerism, which manifested in home decor and intricate clothing, but after World War I, goods became more readily available to all classes of women in the United States and Britain. It may seem odd to discuss conspicuous consumption in a book about fighting sports, but the underlying ideologies that supported or criticized this interwar consumerism reveal a great deal about gender expectations and the simultaneous restriction and release of gendered social norms, especially those surrounding female sexuality.

  In Europe and, more specifically, England, World War I devastated the landscape, as well as the rigid social order established most recently by the Victorians and Edwardians. The structures that divided the aristocracy, gentry, and working class started to crumble, although older generations grasped at those social delineations with wizened hands. The most prominent character to emerge from this period was the “modern girl,” a sort of prototype flapper who exemplified everything that was new in this postwar era. With short hair and a boyish figure, this girl was skilled in typically upper-class masculine pursuits, for example, race-car driving, dancing, golfing, and drinking American cocktails. The new girl featured in advertisements was the epitome of leisure who was pictured as being removed from rank and social hierarchy, although that was almost certainly not the case.

  The marketing of the new girl made it appear that anyone, regardless of social position, could live this luxurious and leisurely lifestyle, but these advertisements were promoting a lifestyle unattainable by most. The type of youth, male or female, who had the time to pursue sports, travel, dancing, and drinking was almost exclusively part of the aristocracy. And while the young British lords and ladies or American blue bloods might have made pretentious and feigned attempts to create distance from their titled and moneyed families, these social codes remained in place. Conspicuous consumption, mass production, and the mythology of the American dream created the narrative that social freedom was available to everyone; however, not everyone could afford to travel to the Riviera, gamble in exclusive clubs, purchase design
er frocks, and drink expensive champagne. But the pursuit of sporting activities was one of the few elements of the upper-class lifestyle that became part of nearly every social stratum. One might not have been able to purchase a yacht, but he or she could certainly spend their leisure time playing baseball.

  Sport, Leisure, and Fashion

  Women’s involvement with sports became even more widely accepted in the post–World War I era, since physical activity was linked, through advertising, to health and, more importantly, beauty. But young women of any social standing were only supposed to play sports appropriate to their class and gender. Golf and tennis were the most popular sports for young middle- and upper-class women, in part because they were activities that involved social interaction with young men. Gone were the critiques claiming that women who played sports would gain absurd amounts of muscle, lose their breasts, and grow mustaches, at least within the confines of these socially acceptable activities. Field hockey, football, and rugby were still considered male sports, and the women who chose to participate in these activities did so with the knowledge that their actions placed them outside of the status quo. Fighting sports remained sordid activities practiced by lower-class and presumably amoral women.

  The new woman was a figure of independence (of a sort) and leisure, but she was also quite literally a figure of fashion. The interwar period introduced sartorial changes that shocked and scandalized grandmothers in drawing rooms throughout England and the United States. Female attire for the middle and upper classes typically confined women from activity, whether through the use of delicate fabrics, voluminous skirts, restrictive corsets, or precarious high-heeled shoes. Unwieldy fashions that bordered on the absurd and effectively hobbled women were popular prior to the war, but afterward, apparel reflected serious social change and the independence of the new woman. Silhouettes were clean and simple, with shorter hemlines and sleeves. These designs not only used less fabric than those popular during the Edwardian period, they allowed more movement and created the concept of women’s sportswear, a new subset of the fashion industry that consisted of sleek suits rather than the stretchy pants commonly associated with sportswear today.

  But there was a need for actual sportswear as well, and fashion changed rapidly during this time. The image of the sports woman, dressed in white with short hair and a lean physique, was often used to sell sports products, of course, but also items that had nothing to do with athletics, for instance, chocolates. Since the new woman was the symbol of modernity, her image proliferated in advertising for products that wished to demonstrate their adherence to this new period of innovation and creativity. Advertisements for cars, beauty products, household products, and cigarettes often included the modern girl as a sexualized figure, desperate to distance herself from the restrictive past and naïve about what that type of independence truly meant.

  Trends were similar in the United States, where certain frivolities of the prewar period ended, even in a landscape relatively unscathed by the horrors of World War I. Nonetheless, the end of the war gave way to new forms of frivolity. The 1920s are remembered as a time of hedonistic celebration that seems almost fey considering the decimation of the stock market in 1929. Scholar Marilyn Morgan describes the two images of the modern woman proclaimed by magazines and featured in newspapers and popular fiction: the flapper and the athletic girl.[57] While the flapper rebelled against social mores by drinking, smoking, dancing, and bobbing her hair, she did not really threaten traditional masculine authority because the type of girls who tried to follow this lifestyle needed financial independence. Upper-class girls already had the means to live as hard-partying flappers, as exemplified in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, but most women relied on wealthy men to follow this new, rather hedonistic lifestyle. That did not necessarily mean that flappers living off rich men had no self-authorizing power. Instead, it indicates that the life of the flapper was contingent on economic status above all else.

  Female athletes, meanwhile, forever linked athleticism and strength to beauty, an innovative idea given the preference for weak, pale women in the nineteenth century. Women’s magazines encouraged readers to exercise and play sports to eliminate fat or increase curves. Magazines also incorporated advertisements for the proper clothing to wear in this new sporting environment. The new athletic attire, from short tennis skirts to bathing costumes, was designed to fit snuggly (and protect the swimmer, since previous swimming costumes made of heavy wool could easily cause drowning). Female swimmers featured heavily in ads because of their bathing costumes and physical ideal of womanly beauty. In addition, because of her athletic attire, which was much more form-fitting compared to any vestments previously worn, the athletic woman was also sexualized.

  The new female athlete was strong and robust, a sign of the health of the English and American populace. This growing interest in female athleticism occurred in other countries as well and was frequently tied to images of nationalism. A strong female body symbolized a nation’s health and ability to produce strong future generations. The interwar years emphasized the idea that citizens, both men and women, should be physically fit enough to serve their country, in whatever capacity. Physical education became standard in schools, and young children were introduced to certain sports, alongside reading and arithmetic. Children living in poorer urban environments made do with insufficient space and equipment to play yard games. Young girls without the new, “proper” exercise attire tucked their skirts into their knickers.[58] Middle-class schools included sports like swimming, tennis, hockey, and gymnastics, the latter an especially popular activity in the 1920s and 1930s.

  This era also marked the beginning of the institutionalization of sports. Governing bodies, almost invariably consisting of men, ruled every aspect of sports, including who could participate. With these new administrations in place to establish rules and regulations, women were routinely excluded from certain sports or from playing at clubs and fields. While great strides were made toward equality in sports for women, criticism and opposition from these official governing bodies continued to thwart many efforts to fully integrate the sporting world.

  Fighting during World War II

  Pugilistic fighting became subsumed by actual fighting during World War II. Many sporting events took place during the war, but they were diluted by the absence of most young men, who were serving their countries. The all-women baseball league in the United States famously competed with regular professional baseball. During the war, many American women took over jobs that had once been held by men to perpetuate America’s industry and economy. Women entered the workplace in unprecedented numbers. While individual men may have scorned the idea of dealing with women in the workplace, the government’s support of the female laborers trounced any hostilities. Women were fully integrated into the war effort and, because of their new position outside of the home, gained an extraordinary amount of freedom.

  There were many milestones for women in fighting sports during the years of American involvement in World War II. In 1942, Miss Angela Wall became one of the first female reporters to cover boxing news in the United States.[59] A charming photo shows her sitting between her father and Louis “Kid” Kaplan, the former featherweight world champion. Wall is wearing a large, ruffled hat reminiscent of a bonnet and red lipstick. But the funniest part of this story is the picture of a woman to her father’s left who is screaming with abandon at the fight. There is no indication of who this woman is, but as more women began to attend boxing matches, the knowledge and zest of the fan base grew considerably. The following year, still in the midst of the horrors of war, the C.Y.O. gymnasium, a famous amateur boxing gym, opened its doors to young women.[60] The Chicago gym provided training for girls at a time when physical fitness was an important part of the war effort. The athletic director specifically invited women working downtown and women who did war work to take advantage of the gym’s facilities. Women not only took part in men’s work, they were now taki
ng part in men’s athletics.

  The End of the War

  When the war ended, most women were expected to give up their factory and industry jobs to allow returning soldiers a place to work. During this decade, there was an insistence in popular culture to remind women of their roles as homemakers and wives. While the 1940s saw a historical shift in women’s roles outside the home, the 1950s bore the brunt of the reaction to those shifts. Prior to World War II, the home remained the woman’s sphere, while during the war, the factory became the woman’s new home. After the war was over and women were encouraged, if not forced, to return to their homes, the following decade in America’s popular culture sought to perpetuate the domestic fantasy of the good, stay-at-home wife who was passive and feminine.

  Clothing has often been used to regulate the female body; women’s clothing of the post–World War II era restricted movement, signifying the return of women to the home and retreat from the workplace, where clothing had been forgiving to allow for work. Christian Dior’s new look, while incredibly beautiful, is remembered as the return of the constricting corset and hobble skirts. Postwar fashion reminded women of their duties to their homes and husbands as mothers and wives.

  Nevertheless, the end of the war did not completely diminish the gains made by women during the war years. In 1948, twenty-six women joined the police force in New York City.[61] At the Randall’s Island stadium, the women demonstrated their skills in boxing and jiu-jitsu to an impressed audience. Lieutenant Julius Brilla, who was in change of the physical training of new police recruits, claimed that this class of women was the “best one he had ever had.”[62] Nearly all of the women had worked for the military during the war, several as officers in the marines and air force. During the demonstration, many of them displayed extraordinary skill in the fighting arts. Twenty-four-year-old Lorette Ingram easily threw Brilla to the mats, despite his nearly fifty-pound advantage. The New York Times praises the women and their skill and does so without commenting on the novelty of their position in the police department.