Apuntes 82 (2018). doi: https://doi.org/10.21678/apuntes.82.871
SCHARAGRODSKY, Pablo (coordinador), 2016, Mujeres en movimiento. Deporte, cultura física y feminidades. Argentina, 1970-1980, Buenos Aires, Prometeo. 354 pp.
The book compiled by Scharagrodsky, Mujeres en movimiento, immerses us in a profound discussion about the mechanisms, practices, actors, institutions, and representations that modeled and were able to construct specific femininities linked to sports activities and physical culture in Argentina, investigating the plurality of institutions, social actors, discourses, and sports and physical culture practices.
The 13 chapters that make up the book are organized into three sections. The first, “Physical Culture, Bio-political Discourse, and the Construction of Femininities,” includes five chapters dealing with: the tensions between medical discourses and the fashions and consumer products aimed at the feminine public, such as the case of the corset; the “feminine” gymnastics organized by Ruth Schwarz de Morgenroth in the 1930s and 1940s, whose principal conceptual influences and a proposal for physical exercise for pregnant women in Argentina are analyzed in detail; the appearance of new disciplinary practices through graphic publicity for industrial and disposable sanitary napkins and tampons, which reorganizes the legitimate knowledge and social actors related to the body of a woman, reconfiguring the meanings of their practices; and the discourses of a group of anarchist doctors, focusing on the place of sex in the construction of the moral of femininity in the framework of heteronormative discourses. The section finishes with an article that analyzes the knowledge of constitutional medicine and biotypology in physical culture in Argentina.
The second section, “Physical Culture, Religious Discourse, and the Construction of Femininities,” is made up of four articles. The first of these investigates the place that Catholic doctrine assigned to sports activities aimed at young women in the interwar period; the second is a study of how the Feminine Christian Association (Asociación Cristiana Femenina) created an early feminine community spirit around physical culture between 1890 and 1949; the third researches the participation of “girls and young women in Scouting on the international level and in Argentina, with special attention to processes of inclusion and exclusion […]”2 (p. 208) between 1914 and 1955, during a period before the foundation of the Association of Argentine Scouts (Asociación Guías Argentinas); and the fourth focuses on camping by Catholic Action Youth (Juventud de Acción Católica) as an activity that “provided tools for youth to anesthetize their sexual desires and neutralize stereotypes imposed by modernity, consumerism, and the ideologies of the left” (p. 245), at the same time as it configured particular identities.
The third section, “Physical Culture, Sports, the Press, and Construction of Femininities,” consists of four articles. It begins with a work that analyzes the place of women in horsemanship at the beginning of the 20th century, when this activity provided a ritual space for interaction and visibilization of women, primarily from elite sectors; the next article studies the trajectories of the first women to cross the skies of Argentina in airplanes, which brings to light the gender relations that traversed the trajectories of the first pilots, as well as their varied conceptions of femininity; the next analyzes the place assigned in shooting practice to women, as guarantors of the participation of their male children, as well as the invisibilization of women’s participation in Swiss shooting by the federal shooting institution; and the last chapter analyzes the role of the press, particularly the Editorial Atlántida, in constructing and promoting the discourse of the modern woman, where discourses about fashion gained ground vis-a-vis the hygienists.
Throughout the chapters, the various authors demonstrate the specific processes that unfolded in each of the institutions or entities discussed, analyzing how different social actors systematically updated the meanings of hegemonic discourses related to femininities in physical culture. In this regard, the medical discourses that serve to reproduce gender inequalities are in permanent tension both because of fashions and industry as well as the previous conceptions of the subjects.
The different chapters demonstrate the presence of a hegemonic model regarding women: one that is certainly misogynistic, with clearly defined roles, but the authors’ analyses are not limited to exposition and denunciations. That is, in this framework both anarchist doctors as well as different groups of women challenge and succeed in putting pressure in different ways on certain dogmas, understood as being “natural.” The authors present various cases (which they document extensively), allowing us to go beyond approaches that limit themselves to describing mechanisms that recreate gender roles or the reproduction of prevailing discourses, and go on to present the agency of women.
This book, centered on cases in Argentina, also opens up avenues for the study of other cases, linking the circulation of knowledge with the actors, participating entities, and institutions involved. This said, we celebrate the publication of this new book, which will certainly be consulted regularly by those who study physical culture.
Alejo Levoratti
Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina
levoratti@gmail.com
2 Translations in this review are by Apuntes.