This essay outlines how sports photography and film from the early twentieth
century have been used to introduce US-Americans to a scientific
understanding of human bodies and their motions. It asks how certain
groups tried to make sure that this modern perspective became not only
ubiquitous but also a marketable commodity. The essay focuses on crawl
swimming because its motions became increasingly related to discussing
modernity and modern bodies. Furthermore, crawl swimming was densely
charged along racial and gendered lines: The modernity of the sporting
body and its visual appeal rested significantly on ideas of racial hierarchies
and a changing as well as problematic perception of women’s roles in
public. In that sense, swimming was doing gender as well as doing race.
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