Gymnastics

Gymnastics is a word from ancient Greek which means athletic or disciplinary exercises. Over time, events like trampoline, tumbling, and weight lifting were separated out from the gymnastic canon; weight lifting is now considered a separate sport altogether (Menke 525).

In the United States, gymnastics has long been considered an "appropriate" sport for women; as early as the turn of the century there were gymnastic schools for young women. However, it was the era of televised Olympic Games which probably solidified our present associations between gymnastics and women; the unprecedented skill of athletes like Olga Corbett and Nadia Comenici in the 60s and 70s, followed by the dazzling personality and courage of Mary Lou Retton in 1984, brought women to the fore in the gymnastics arena.

The history of the cultural meanings attached to gymnastics is a revealing one; the fact that a few decades of excellence (a mere blip on the radar screen of sports history, after all) could serve to so solidly link women to a single sport demonstrates the distance at which women are kept from sports in general in mainstream Western European/Euro-American culture. And, according to one critic, even women's progress in gymnastics is limited by popular notions of women's roles (i.e., the meanings attached to women in the cultural system of meanings): "Ironically, even in those sports like ice skating and gymnastics, in which girls and young women excel and are publicly acclaimed, sex-role differences are further clarified. Success is to do with fitting the youthful, lithe, nubile, stereotypically 'perfect' popular image of femininity" (Willis 36).

Link to gymnastics-related Web page:

• Yahoo's Gymnastics Directory: This is a small but growing archive of gymnastics related links.