Babe Didrikson

[GMDino]

Lucy's refrence to her got me thinking:

She would be consider, by folks who agree with Lucy, as a "proper" woman.

In fact she would be the exact kind of woman those of a certain mindset would rail against for destroying the idea of what a woman "should" be.

Quote:The first to prove a girl could be a stud athlete, Babe Didrikson began as a muscular phenom who mastered many sports and ended as a brilliant golfer. An exuberant tomboy whose life was athletics, she was accomplished in just about every sport - basketball, track, golf, baseball, tennis, swimming, diving, boxing, volleyball, handball, bowling, billiards, skating and cycling. When asked if there was anything she didn't play, she said, "Yeah, dolls."


As a teenager she knew her life's ambition. "My goal was to be the greatest athlete who ever lived," she said.

While others dispute her story, Didrikson said that she was nicknamed Babe early in her teens by boys awed at her long-distance homers. As she grew older, there seemed to be more Ty Cobb than Ruth in her, a dark rage that made losing intolerable. Like for Cobb, animosity seemed to be the fuel that stoked Babe's competitive fire.


 
Less than two years after seeing her first track meet, Babe Didrikson qualified in five events for the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.

---

The Associated Press voted her the Greatest Female Athlete of the first half of the 20th century. The wire service also voted her Female Athlete of the Year six times - once for her track dominance and five times for her golfing prowess.

Babe performed at a time when female athletes were considered freakish at best, downright unacceptable at worst. For most of her life she was the antithesis of femininity; not until her later years did she dress and act less manly. "She was not a feminist, not a militant, not a strategist launching campaigns against sexual liberation," wrote William Johnson and Nancy Williamson in Whatta-Gal!: The Babe Didrikson Story. "She was an athlete and her body was her most valuable possession."

Some writers condemned her for not being feminine. "It would be much better if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up and waited for the phone to ring," Joe Williams wrote in the New York World-Telegram.

Others were enthralled by the 5-foot-5 Babe, who was muscular but never heavy. "She is beyond all belief until you see her perform," famed sportswriter Grantland Rice wrote. "Then you finally understand that you are looking at the most flawless section of muscle harmony, of complete mental and physical coordination, the world of sport has ever seen."

While she excelled in competition, she often alienated teammates and competitors. She frequently acted like a self-centered prima donna, a boastful person who constantly sought attention. Although she became somewhat less arrogant over the years, she still remained flamboyant and cocky - and often overbearing.

Babe didn't seem to have much interest in men until she was swept off her feet when she was paired with George Zaharis at the 1938 Los Angeles Open. Zaharis was a gregarious man, a 235-pound wrestler who as a stock villain was making a fortune as the Weeping Greek from Cripple Creek. They married 11 months later and Babe would change her name to Babe Didrikson Zaharias.

He would become her manager and advisor, but in the later years of their marriage, problems arose as Zaharias lost influence with his wife. Babe spent more time with good friend Betty Dodd, a young golfer who was a natural athlete and had no interest in looking feminine. She often stayed at the Zaharis' home in Tampa.

She competed against boys, boxed, didn't care for men and lived out her life with a younger female "friend".

The kind of person who would and should be lauded for her abilities would still be shunned and shamed by some folks because she wasn't "feminine" enough.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Babe_Didrikson_Zaharias.aspx

Quote:Gender Backlash


Despite her success, or because of it, a backlash against her swelled up in the press and in popular opinion, fueled by her refusal to fit typical stereotypes of womanhood. According to William O. Johnson and Nancy P. Williamson in Whatta Gal: The Babe Didrikson Story, she was "seen by many reporters and members of the public as a freak … an aberration … a living put-down to all things feminine." Zaharias herself expressed scorn for traditionally "feminine" clothing and mannerisms, and according to a writer in Gay and Lesbian Biography, once told a reporter that "she did not wear girdles, bras, and the like because she was no 'sissy.'"

The common male response to her was summed up by Joe Williams, a contemporary reporter for the New York World-Telegram. According to Larry Schwartz in ESPN.com, Williams commented, "It would be much better if she and all her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up and waited for the phone to ring."

Schwartz also noted that contemporary sportswriter Paul Gallico, who lost a golf match to Zaharias and Grantland Rice in 1932, called Zaharias a "muscle moll" in one Vanity Fair article, and commented in another Vanity Fair article that she was neither male nor female, and wrote dismissively that she was a lesbian. And according to Cayleff, it was not unusual for her to be accosted in the locker room by other female athletes who demanded to know whether she was a man or a woman.

In addition to her androgynous personal style, Zaharias defied gender stereotypes of women's need to be financially dependent on men by remaining single, supporting herself, and earning a great deal of money through endorsements, stunts, and appearances. Her Employer's Casualty contract alone paid her three times as much as the average American man of her time made, and six times as much as the average American woman earned.

I find it humorous that she would be used as an example of how women would be against transgender or men playing in their sports.