IIIWITH A GYM GIRL
There had been some mistake about the time, and she was there an hour ahead of the class, a circumstance which I had not the conscience to resent, for she said I might stay until the class came. Meanwhile we sat in the big, cool gymnasium, into which fell patches of spring sunlight that painted here the shining floor, and there striped the dangling lines of rope, falling finally into whimsical arabesques on the dumb-bell rack. It was a co-educational sort of gymnasium, as one might guess from the punching-bag and other devices, classes of men andwomen, boys and girls, alternating in possession, under the discipline of an academy.
She herself wore a dark serge gym suit, that fascinating hybrid of skirt and bloomer, which unites the charm of drapery with the effect of the girded uniform. Sitting there thus well-dressed, lithe, poised, sufficient, with light in her eyes and blood in her lips, she presented a pleasing spectacle. Something in her association with all the paraphernalia of the vaulted gymnasium struck me as symbolizing the situation of her sex in the modern world. She seemed only prophetically adjusted to it all, and yet one could not but have the feeling that she would always know just what to leave alone.
For some reason that did not appear at the moment, she was not merely the feminine version of the athlete. She was something differing from that, doubtless something better. I could not think of her as promoting athletics. The athletics seemed to be promoting her. The ultimate thing was not a system, a day, an hour, an event. The ultimate thing was herself. The theory of athletics from a man’s viewpoint is a pretty affair, and unquestionably it includes the notion of a finer physical manhood for us all, directly in the participants, by reflection in the rest of us. Even football, thereductio ad absurdumof inter-personal conflict, is presumed and I believe reasonably, to have a tonic influence on the physical development of the race, although there is no country in the world where, inthe habit of daily life, it is more unsafe than in this for one man to shoulder another. But in feminine athletics so far as these have gone, there yet appears much less of the idea of prospective conflict. It may be that this is to come again later. A bunch of girls in a hand-ball game introduces a lively element of organized contest. But it scarcely looks as if the girl runner of the Greek games was likely to be repeated.
“I suppose you think all this is very absurd,” said the Gym Girl, tapping the floor with her slipper. “Sometimes I myself think it is. But I like it; I like it well enough not to care what any one thinks, and besides, I am supported by the moments when I think it isn’t a bit absurd.”
“Which moment is this?”
“I should find it hard to say. Until I know what you think about it, I feel defensive about the gym. Generally speaking, I feel rather cordial toward it to-day.”
“Then please feel cordial toward me, too, for I like the gym and the idea the gym represents.”
“What idea does the gym represent?” she asked in a tone of challenge.
“Now that is scarcely hospitable. Moreover, I had saved up that to ask you. But I don’t mind committing myself, with the understanding that you are to supplement me in the matter. This gymnasium seems to me to stand for the idea of physical equilibrium. It means that you and the others are not willing to give up what the city seeks to force you to give up for the time. In the country I hope you lead such a life that the gymnasium would be absurd there. But in the city it is very different for all of us, but especially for you women. The clothes you usually wear here presuppose that you will suspend, while wearing them, the use or development of most of your muscles. Some of the time you will wear a bicycle skirt and ride a wheel. But the bicycle uses but one set of muscles. Your walking and dancing, with some tennis and an occasional run out to the links for golf, all leave the symmetrical development incomplete in some way. They do not include the immensely important element of climbing, for example. The gymnasium ought to fill in the chinks. I suppose it does. Then it makes you like it. Perhaps that is one of the best things it does.”
“It does make me like it, because it makes me like myself. The gymnasium makes me feel good,—good, do you understand, not merelywell.”
“We often have been told that if we all were well we all should be good.”
“I don’t suppose I am good enough to hurt, but it is nice to feel that way. Mind you, I don’tagree at all that women need the gymnasium any more than men do. I have three brothers, and I know some things. I know that the average man is just as much hampered by his clothes as the average woman. I really think he is hampered more, for he defers to his clothes more than a woman defers to hers. A woman’s management of her skirt at least gives her a certain amount of exercise, while a man’s horror of bagging his trousers at the knees has not a single physical compensation. It simply limits his movements.”
“But a woman’s skirt limits her movements.”
“I wouldn’t say that it limited them so much as it directed them.”
“Perhaps you will tell me why most women are or seem to be pigeon toed.”
“I can explain that. It is for the same reason that they waddle when they go up stairs. The reason is the skirt. I can illustrate by a diagram,” and she found a hoople and placed it on the floor. “That we shall say is Figure One. Now, I place here two dumb-bells. These we shall say are feet standing within the radius of the skirt. Now the point of freest action in stepping for the feet B and C obviously lies in the direction of A. Toward A the foot B can move in the longest line without striking the skirt. Hence in walking the tendency for one foot to follow the other in the direction of A and the centrifugal tendency of the toes. As women learn to wear shorter skirts or wear short skirts a greater proportion of the time the likelihoodthat they will be intoed will naturally decrease.”
“Very convincing!” I cried. “The intoed tendency is beautifully extenuated in a most logical way. Plainly it would be as foolish for a woman to walk with her toes out as it would be for a cavalryman to ride with his knees out.”
“Unless she were going up stairs.”
“Up stairs? Oh, I see. You are to explain the waddling. That will be an immense comfort to every man—I mean the explanation. So many of us have turned our faces away from the spectacle of a lovely creature who walked with a Delsartean lilt and seated herself with the inexpressible grace of a bird who has reached the chosen branch, mounting a flight of steps with the roll of a breathless duck.”
“Let us now take this hoople for Figure Two,” said the Gym Girl, with a serious effect. “The two feet, still represented by the dumb-bells, now seek not the point of least resistance but the point of most resistance. They do not wish to tread on the gown, which is likely to happen, even when it is slightly lifted, unless the knees assist in lifting the forward edge. This chalk mark extendingto A and B will indicate by its variation from the circular line the direction in which the feet alternately move in the effort to keep the skirt free in front. Of course a woman who tries to go up stairs with her hands full, without holding her skirt, must waddle more than a woman who is able to let her hands help her feet.”
“I have no doubt that what you have intimated with regard to the dexterities imposed by the skirt is quite true. There must be a certain important amount of muscular power not otherwise demanded in the current method of holding up the skirt with one hand at the back, or even in twisting the loose of it into a tuft on one hip. The habit doesn’t seem to be intrinsically pretty, yet it has that fascination which makes us wonder whether conventional ideas of beauty are of any importance whatever. I fancy that Greek and Roman women had some such untransmittable method of managing redundant drapery during those intervals when the useof beauty gave place to its twin, the beauty of use.”
“Yes, I think you will find that from the beginning of time woman has sought to combine garments in which she may be becomingly draped and in which she may move abroad. The Professor tells us that a trailing gown is an anachronism out of doors, save to those women who are carried—you know what I mean, in a carriage or something. We have heard that a great many times; but all the same, I suppose women will go on trying to make the gown they prefer to be seen in do service during the transits as well as during the pauses.”
“There is much transit about the modern woman.”
“I hope you find something to be glad of in that.”
“I do; but no man can help feeling that draperies are a great burden which no gallantry can lighten.”
“O yes, gallantry can! See that her packages are sent home—or carry them for her.”
“Understand me: I think that draperies held up in the right way by the right woman are an element of real picturesqueness in modern life. But sometimes they are not held up at all.”
“Yes, I know. Theoreticallya lady does not let her dress drag in an unclean place. But actually there is a good deal of dragging. It is a pity, too, if you men are going to be disturbed by it. There should be consolation for you in the frequent gym suit—which you seldom see, because you are not often permitted to enjoy your present privileges—and in the more frequent bicycle suit. The bicycle has done in one decade what abstract dress reforming would never have accomplished. Sometimes I think that the most important inventions of the century are the bicycle and the shirt waist. Each has had an immensely important influence on the physical and economic situation of women. I have no doubt the bicycle will get full credit, but if no historian mentions the shirt waist the shirt waist will proclaim its own triumph.”
“I believe you have been writing a paper on that.”
“No, I am not a paper-writing girl. One thing I am sure of: The review of women’s dress during the century will surely dismiss the shirt-waist with a few lines.”
“I dare say. It will go unsung, like the plain, average, every-day woman, who is doing so much of the world’s work,—I mean, of course, except on the Woman’s Page. Do you know you explained some things to me so beautifully a moment ago that I am tempted to put your sophistry—I mean your scientific analysis—to the crucial test. Let me do this in a word:—We have spoken of clothes, and we have spoken of transit. Why do women get off a public vehicle backward? I say public vehicle advisedly, for I have seen a woman get on and off a horse properly—assisted. I have seen her get off a bicycle properly, unassisted. I have even seen her get out of a coach properly. But few men have ever seen a woman leave a trolley-car or a railway-coach otherwise than backwards.”
“When you say ‘backwards,’ I know that you don’t mean backwards in the sense in which an old lady or a very portly person of any age gets out backwards,—turning about, holding with both hands, and backing off. That was the way Ian Maclaren’s old lady tried to get off the underground train, wasn’t it? and was pulled up the steps at one station after another by men who thought that she was getting on? You mean getting off with the face to the rear, instead of with the face to the engine, the motor, or the horse.”
“That is what I do mean.”
“I had supposed that there was but one answer to that old question: Because they have not been trained by getting on and off vehicles while the vehicles are in motion. A person who gets on avehicle while it is in motion learns at once that the forward handle is the only safe handle to hold either in getting on or getting off. The forward handle is the one that preserves your balance should the vehicle start while you are getting on or off.”
“Yes,” I said, “that is the old answer, too. But it does not answer enough. I have disproved its accuracy a score of times. I have seen women who knew better by precept, by example, and by experience get off backward, as if obeying some fatalistic impulse. The other day a woman who stepped off a car in my presence, firmly grasping the wrong handle, laughed and said, ‘There! that’s the wrong handle, but I can’t help it!’ That illustrates what I mean. She could not tell why shehadto take the wrong handle, which, if the car had been going in the other direction would have demanded the other hand. Your theory at best would only explain why women do not get off rightly. It does not explain why nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand get off wrongly. It would be well enough if the proportions were even, if the habit seemed like a matter of chance. But quite plainly it is not a matter of chance. There is a strange, and, as yet, unexplained impulse to which women yield when the moment of choice comes. Every day I see women get off the wrong way at real inconvenience. They are like Jerome K. Jerome’s stage villain who doesn’t want to be a villain, who is not profited by being a villain, but who, quite uncomplainingly,goes on being the villain in obedience to the unities. Once I thought I had grasped the thing, which you must know gave me a moment of superior comfort. A coach or a car, I said to myself, generally stops at a point beyond that at which the passenger really wishes to alight, as at the further curb, and in getting off and spurning the vehicle, as it were, the woman passenger, acting with primitive directness, turns her back upon it at the moment of alighting. But I have repeatedly seen women get off a trolley-car at a near corner when they had to turn about and walk in the direction the car was going, and they faced the rear of the car when they got off just as they do under all other circumstances. It is extraordinary. You must not think the inquiry trivial. It is not merely a question of a minor physical habit. There certainly is some momentous psychological significance under it all, something with a deep meaning if we only could get at it.”
“Perhaps this backwardness has something to do with woman’s confusion as to right and left.”
“Heavens!” I exclaimed. “I thought for an instant you were going to say right and wrong! The right and left confusion explains nothing, for in those directions in which people are confused as between right and left they are as likely to take one as the other. How could that explain why a woman uses her right hand when she should use her left, and her left when she should use her right?”
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t, unless you wished to fortify some theory of her natural perverseness, and I hope you don’t wish to be so trite. You shouldn’t hurry woman too much. See what physical agility she is displaying with the bicycle. She is unfolding wonderfully. You men are too impatient. I read an advertisement the other day in which I saw a tangible sign of this impatience. It was headed. ‘A Moustache in a Month.’ Surely that is wrong.”
“Yes, it is as wrong as the conditions indicated by a department store advertisement I read the other day which began: ‘Great Embroidery Excitement.’”
“O, I know we are all too intense. I understand that it is telling in our appearance. A scientific observer has been reminding us that we Americans have too much expression, and that the dull, stupid look in certain English faces, for instance, indicates reserve force, a force that is not constantly being wasted in expression. They say we even go to sleep with our expressions. My teacher says, ‘When you go to bed, unlock your face.’”
“Are teachers really bothering you about your expressions? Your teacher must be a woman.”
“She is, and—”
“I thought so. Only a woman—”
“Yes, I know. Our expressions are too lovely to be ruthlessly modified. I credit you with all that you could say. But you are not a bit practical. Our nerves are more important than our expressions.I guess you may count on us for expression enough when the occasion demands. What we want are healthy nerves behind the expressions.”
“I see; you are going in for that stupid look now.”
“If it becomes necessary.”
“You never will succeed.”
“Probably I don’t want you to hope we will. You know what I mean—”
“How can I help knowing? Do we hear anything else but relaxing? Those of you who are not relaxing tremendously are repenting of your outlines and straining to get thin.”
“Don’t you suppose there are great advantages in these readjustments? When a girl is very pretty she is pampered; when she is pampered she grows fat; when she grows fat she grows ugly; and so things are balanced.”
“Let me amend that,” I said. “When she gets fat she gets frightened, diets, and gets fatter. Then she gets a little angry, golfs, rides, swims, hustles, finds the secret, gets reasonably proper again and acquires the new charm that comes with the aroused energy and the humility of a threatened loss—or gain, as you may wish to put it. Nothing is more qualifying than the threatened adversity of fat. We all know women who would be simply insufferable if they were not a shade plumper than they care to be. I fancy that leanness induces a more private humility.”
“It is a more private defect. But this is all to be righted in the next century. Our new ideals are going to give us more of the English physique. Anyway, we are going to be more athletic, not merely in this gymnasium way, which is only a sign of good faith, but in a broader, more practical, more—shall I say final?—way. See what summer means to us now.”
“Well, it seems to mean a great many things.”
“It means everything that could make a gym unnecessary. It once meant very little, it seems to me; if we are to believe what our grandmothers tell us. Now it means as much to a girl as to her brother.”
“It doesn’t mean quite as much as it might if there were more brothers—there.”
“True. Our summer groups always make me think of college. We are not through seeing too much of one another when we graduate. Presently we are in clubs or gym classes, and, in the summer, man is an exceptional element.”
“And that is not good forhim. It is not good for him to be in such a majority in the city nor in such a minority in the country. But I don’t see what we can do about it.”
“I suppose each sex will have to go on living out the problem for itself. That seems likely to keep both sexes busy.”
“It is keeping your sex busy.”
“You never can tell about us.”
“I admit that.”
“We have great larks over the profound things, and go to pieces—”
“Relaxing.”
She laughed, and got up in her easy, definiteway. “You must go now,—not because you have been naughty, but because the class is coming.”
“That is a class decision. But I bow to your ruling, Miss Gym.”