Artistic Impressions: Figure Skating, Masculinity, and the Limits of Sport

In contemporary North America, figure skating ranks among the most 'feminine' of sports and few boys take it up for fear of being labelled effeminate or gay. Yet figure skating was once an exclusively male pastime - women did not skate in significant numbers until the late 1800s, at least a century after the founding of the first skating club. Only in the 1930s did figure skating begin to acquire its feminine image.

Artistic Impressions is the first history to trace figure skating's strikin...