Artistic Impressions: Figure Skating, Masculinity, and the Limits of Sport

322 Pages·2011·3.416 MB·English

by  Mary Louise Adams

ARTISTIC IMPRESSIONS:
FIGURE SKATING, MASCULINITY, AND THE LIMITS OF SPORT
In contemporary North America, figure skating ranks among the most
‘feminine’ of sports, and few boys take it up for fear of being labelled
effeminate or gay. Yet figure skating was once an exclusively male pas-
time – women did not skate in significant numbers until the late 1800s,
at least a century after the founding of the first skating club. Only in the
1930s did figure skating begin to acquire its feminine image.
Artistic Impressions is the first history to trace figure skating’s strik-
ing transformation from gentlemen’s art to ‘girls’ sport.’ With a focus
on masculinity, Mary Louise Adams examines how skating’s evolving
gender identity has been reflected on the ice and in the media, looking
at rules, technique, and style and at ongoing debates about the place of
‘art’ in sport. Uncovering the little-known history of skating, Artistic
Impressions shows how ideas about sport, gender, and sexuality have
combined to limit the forms of physical expression available to men.
mary louise adams is an associate professor in the School of Kinesiol-
ogy and Health Studies and the Department of Sociology at Queen’s
University.
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MARY LOUISE ADAMS
Artistic Impressions
Figure Skating, Masculinity, and the
Limits of Sport
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2011
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
Printed in Canada
ISBN 978-1-4426-4318-5 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-4426-1171-9 (paper)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with
vegetable-based inks.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Adams, Mary Louise, 1960–
Artistic impressions : figure skating, masculinity, and the limits of sport /
Mary Louise Adams.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4426-4318-5 (bound). – ISBN 978-1-4426-1171-9 (pbk.)
1. Figure skating – History. 2. Figure skating – Social aspects.
3. Masculinity in sports. I. Title.
GV850.4.A33 2011 796.91!2081 C2010-907148-4
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to
Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario
Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the
Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing
activities.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 Introduction 3
2 Tough Guys? Figure Skating’s Macho Moment 28
3 Girls’ Sport? 45
4 Manliness and Grace: Skating as a Gentleman’s Art 81
5 Women Start Skating, Skaters Form Clubs, Their Art
Becomes Sport 105
6 ‘They Left the Men Nowhere’: The Feminization of Skating 134
7 Artistic Sport or Athletic Art? Class and Gender and Shifting
Definitions of Skating 161
8 Sequins, Soundtracks, and Spirals: Producing Gender Difference on
the Ice 197
Epilogue 233
Notes 241
Bibliography 263
Illustration Credits 285
Index 287
Illustrations follow page 172
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Acknowledgments
This book has been very long in the making. Its first iteration was a
course paper for a graduate seminar with Roger Simon at the Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education almost twenty years ago. After turn-
ing the essay into a few conference presentations and a short article, I
thought I was done. I wrote a dissertation on another subject, started
teaching, changed cities and jobs, and worked on other things, but
through all that the questions about figure skating kept coming back.
Eventually I gave in. The story was too compelling to be left untold.
And so, what started as a fairly straightforward analysis of contempo-
rary men’s skating evolved into a broad historical project that spanned
more than two centuries and several national contexts. I would not
have been able to complete this work without a tremendous amount of
practical and moral support.
I was very fortunate to receive financial and other forms of institu-
tional support as I carried out my research. Long-term, single-author
projects on cultural topics like the gender history of figure skating
are not very close to the top of the current research policy agenda in
Canada. One worries that, in the future, researchers who want to pur-
sue such work will have to struggle to follow their intellectual inclina-
tions. I want to acknowledge the many scholars, professional societies,
and faculty associations that have been working hard to make sure
that curiosity-based (non-applied) humanities research and the schol-
ars who undertake it continue to thrive in the Canadian university
environment.
Funding for this project was provided by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada, a Queen’s University Chan-
cellor’s Research Award, two grants from the Queen’s University Advi-
viii Acknowledgments
sory Research Committee, and a University Research Grant from the
Faculty of Social Sciences at Carleton University. I conducted most of
my primary archival research during the course of a year-long sabbati-
cal that allowed me time away from my teaching position at Queen’s
University. A second six-month sabbatical, spent as Visiting Scholar
in the Centre for Women’s Studies in Education at the University of
Toronto, provided time and space for writing.
I am indebted to a number of colleagues and friends who have read
portions of the manuscript and offered thoughtful feedback that has
made the final product much better than it otherwise might have been:
Hart Cantelon, Karen Dubinsky, Samantha King, Mary McDonald,
Eric Mykhalovskiy, and Geoff Smith. William Bridel and Eleanor Mac-
Donald both read the entire manuscript – a huge task for which I am
especially grateful. My old comrade Bob Gardner gave me an excellent
critique of the original paper out of which this book grew. British skat-
ing historian Dennis Bird read early drafts of two chapters and offered
useful advice and careful criticism. I regret that I was not able to send
him a copy of the completed book before he passed away. His 1979 his-
tory of the National Skating Association of Great Britain still stands as
the best institutional history of the sport. I am also very appreciative
of the careful reading of the manuscript – not once but twice! – by the
two anonymous reviewers engaged by the University of Toronto Press.
Their comments and constructive criticisms have improved this work
considerably. Any remaining weaknesses persist despite their diligent
efforts to make this a better book.
Over the years I have received all manner of practical assistance from
friends, friends of friends, relatives, and acquaintances. Patricia Chafe
– a consultant to the International Skating Union – explained skating’s
new scoring system to me. She also helped me to understand the way
that gender inequalities have been built right into it. My former skat-
ing teacher Fred Hawryliw agreed to be interviewed in the very early
days of the project. Historians Gertrude Pfister, Doug Brown, and Paul
Deslandes all responded to queries and offered sources. Nicole LaVio-
lette and the late Alan Berubé forwarded newspaper clippings as I was
getting started. Barbara Adams and Julie Guard collected newspapers
for me. Barbara Adams, Bob Gardner, Cathy Humphreys, Helen Hum-
phreys, and Eric Mykhalovskiy made tapes of televised skating com-
petitions. Paul Renwick shared with me his wonderful unpublished
Master’s research paper on skating in New York City in the nineteenth
century. Debi Brock passed on a collection of old skating publications
Acknowledgments ix
that had been collected by a neighbour who used to be a professional
skater.
My understanding of contemporary skating has been much im-
proved by conversations with William Bridel, who provided significant
support to the project in terms of research assistance and an extensive
insider knowledge of the sport. He has also made the last stages of
the project much more fun. The late Susan Shea contributed her fabu-
lous library skills as the big version of the project was getting off the
ground. Alana Hermiston did an excellent job during weeks of archi-
val and other research work in Ottawa. Special thanks are also due to
Alana’s father Ian Hermiston, who is a stellar and very generous clip-
per and taper. The final stages of the project would never have been
completed without the careful help of Martyn Clark. The other Queen’s
University students who have assisted with this work are Kristi Allain,
Michele Donnelly, Tamara Ferguson, Leanne Findlay, Audrey Giles,
Tiff Mochinsky, Alissa Overend, Shannon Smith, and Anne Warner.
Former Queen’s student Mark Falcous helped me track down sources
in England.
Many of the German translations that appear in this book were pro-
vided by Christine Reisinger and Ruba Turjman. Christine also pro-
vided excellent research assistance and many diversions in Vienna. At
some point during the course of the project, it became clear that I was
going to have to learn at least some German myself. Jorica Perryman
and Jill Scott kindly let me sit in on their undergraduate classes in the
Department of German at Queen’s. A language training grant from the
DAAD, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, made possible
further study at the Goethe Institute in Berlin. Petra Fachinger has been
a huge support, providing assistance and encouragement, supplying
me with German-language resources, connecting me with tutors, and
helping me with my own shaky translations.
When I was an undergraduate my fantasy of the academic life
involved a lot of reading – on topics of my own choosing – at big tables
in quiet rooms full of books. I got to do a lot of that over the course of
this project. My research was made possible by the collections and work
of archivists and librarians at: the archives of Skate Canada, where I
had excellent assistance from Emery Leger and Natalie Park; the World
Figure Skating Museum and Archives, especially Karen Cover; Library
and Archives Canada; the British Library; the National Library of Scot-
land; the Austrian National Library; and the German National Library.
I would not have been able to work at the British Library had Frances
x Acknowledgments
Humphreys not introduced me to her old friend Anne Seagrim. Thanks
are due to Anne for the exceptional hospitality that made a research
trip to London a great adventure. Research in Vienna would have been
neither possible nor so enjoyable without the friendship of Marlene
Rodrigues, Christine Reisinger, Bernadette Haller, and, especially, Ines
Rieder, who facilitated a little bit of everything – housing, language,
research, and fun. The incredible luck of running across Ines in Vienna
– after having last seen her more than a decade earlier in Toronto – was
a happy coincidence that has been a great bonus of working on this
book.
When I began to study figure skating, I was a historian of sexuality.
Somewhere between then and now I found an intellectual home in the
cultural studies of sport and the body. For making this shift I have been
rewarded with fantastic colleagues. I first crossed paths with Samantha
King when she too was working on a paper about figure skating. When
she joined our department at Queen’s, several years later, a colleague
joked that we should set up a figure skating research group in recog-
nition of the fact that the department was now home to the greatest
concentration of skating researchers in the world. There was no centre,
of course. But I have been fortunate to have collaborated with Sammi
in many other ways both inside and outside the department, academi-
cally and otherwise, and she has been an important influence on my
thinking. Her friendship has made life at work and, more importantly,
away from work a lot richer.
Thanks to current and former colleagues in what is now called the
School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University for tak-
ing a chance on a social historian who was just starting to get interested
in sport and for making the department so collegial. Thanks especial-
ly to my colleagues in the sociocultural field area from whom I have
learned so much: Rob Beamish, Hart Cantelon, Samantha King, Elaine
Power, and Geoff Smith. Thanks also to successive department heads,
all of whom have supported this lengthy project and all of whom were
kind enough not to ask when it was going to be completed: Joan Ste-
venson, Janice Deakin, Jean Côté, and Pat Costigan. In the broader
world of sport sociology, thanks to feminist colleagues and friends –
Judy Davidson, Michelle Helstein, Kathy Jamieson, Mary McDonald,
and Geneviève Rail – who are a constant source of analysis, advice, and
good humour. Thanks also to Brian Pronger, whose early encourage-
ment made this project seem like a good idea and whose insistence on
going dancing at conferences made sport sociology seem a lot more