Physical culture for women in 1927, especially shoes

This photo of a billboard on the Duke University site ROAD (Resource of Outdoor Advertising Descriptions) caught my eye, because I really hadn't heard the term "Physical Culture" before. And now I'm thinking about physical fitness, especially as it pertains to women.

If you're already snickering, or giggling, I'm sorry, I've lost you. If you aren't, and understand that both men and women can be interested in physical fitness (or physical culture, as it says on the billboard), you'll see what I'm talking about.


Speaking for myself, I've always been an active and athletic man, and to me having intelligence isn't mutually exclusive with that. I've been fortunate enough to know a lot of wonderful women in my life who have enjoyed having a fit body, intelligence, and of course having stylish shoes. I'm no expert on women's shoes, but from what I've seen the more stylish a woman's shoe is, the less it works with physical fitness. And even for me, a man, when I started my corporate career, and wore dress shoes every day to work, I did everything I could to make them comfortable, like wearing flexible inserts inside of them. I also always made sure that the soles weren't slippery, that there was a firm arch, and that the heels didn't get run down.

Anyway, let's take a look around at the folks on the boardwalk today in 1927. They're getting good exercise - walking!



My eye immediately goes to the kid on the left, who's wearing what I always wanted to wear on the golf course, knickerbockers. His dad isn't actually holding his hand, he's holding his wrist, and it makes me think that the kid would be about to spring into action, maybe running over to look at the photographer, and dad is controlling him. I sure like their hats!

Note that he isn't looking at the little girls over on the right - at his age, he would have hated girls! I remember that age, where the boys teased each other about it. Seems to me there was a poem about "sittin' in a tree, K - I - S - S - I - N - G". That was in the '60s for me, I wonder if they said that back in the twenties?

It's July, so this is what people wore in the summer at the shore in New Jersey. It had to be comfortable enough to walk in, but respectable enough to be seen in.

I just love to walk, and when I lived in California there were a lot of places to stroll, like along the beach. Here in suburban Phoenix, where I live now, you hardly ever see anyone walking, maybe a few kids, but not much. The presumption is that when you see someone walking, their car has broken down, or they've had a DUI and can't drive for a while.

So, go get yourself some good shoes that are comfortable and stylish, and do some walking. If you don't have a boardwalk, or a strand, find a path in a park, or if the weather isn't very nice, you can walk around a mall. If anyone asks you what you're doing, you can say "Physical Culture!"

If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. If you like Phoenix history and would like to help support my efforts to preserve and share precious digital historic images, please consider becoming a patron. Thank you!

Become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more