{"id":25205,"date":"2024-02-08T17:35:49","date_gmt":"2024-02-08T17:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/?p=25205"},"modified":"2025-01-09T21:24:02","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T21:24:02","slug":"promoting-physical-health-for-women-at-oregon-state-college-during-world-war-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/2024\/02\/08\/promoting-physical-health-for-women-at-oregon-state-college-during-world-war-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Promoting Physical Health for Women at Oregon State College during World War II"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Students in Dr. Marisa Chappell’s fall 2023 History 363 “Women in U.S. History” class spent the final three weeks of Fall Quarter 2023 in OSU\u2019s Special Collections and Archives Research Center exploring women in Camp Adair\u2019s history.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brooklyn Blair, Grace Matteo, and Ruiqi Zhang<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
A January 20, 1928 issue of the Oregon State Barometer<\/em> announces group photos for women\u2019s athletic teams.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

One of the expectations of women during World War II, including women at Oregon State College, was that they uphold and promote their own and others\u2019 physical health in order to support the war effort. We discovered that women\u2019s physical health was heavily promoted at OSC, both in the student newspaper and through various clubs and organizations dedicated to 1940s understandings of women\u2019s physical well-being. While participation in athletics had a longer history at OSC, World War II prompted a specific emphasis on women\u2019s physical conditioning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We first became interested in this topic when we saw a section in the March 1942 issue of the Oregon State Barometer<\/em> called \u201cWomen Leaders, Professor Stress Need for Conditioning.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Discussion of the need for physical fitness, especially for women, took up nearly the entire fourth page of the March 24, 1942 issue of the Oregon State Barometer<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The section includes personal accounts from four women at OSC, all of whom call on readers to prioritize health and enlist in a new workout program for women. One author, Jean Ford, encourages readers to lose weight and \u201cawaken muscles\u201d and urges them to \u201csign up for the physical fitness program and stick to it\u201d because \u201cit\u2019s your duty.\u201d Toddy Gates, president of OSC\u2019s Women\u2019s Athletic Association, insists participating was the best way women could serve their country because it would prepare them to work in \u201cemergency positions.\u201d Mortar Board president Kay Serberg argued that a trained mind and body were equally important and that \u201cnew-fangled diets\u201d were not an effective way to become healthy.[1]<\/a> The article was accompanied by a poem celebrating OSC women\u2019s role in fighting the war, which demanded their \u201cstrength\u201d as well as courage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
This poem appeared amidst several articles under the heading \u201cWomen Prepare for War Work\u201d on page 4 of the March 24, 1942 issue of the Oregon State Barometer<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We soon discovered other examples of women being urged to pursue fitness as an obligation in wartime. A 1943 OAC report on women\u2019s intramural athletics, for example, stressed that athletic opportunities were important to help women maintain what was considered a proper figure. In another Barometer<\/em> article, Dr. Eva M. Seen insisted that \u201cemergency conditions will demand more vigorous, more strength and toughness of body than has been demanded of us during the past few years of soft living.\u201d This included women, who \u201cmay not be drafted and have to face the rigid military tests of physical fitness, but they must face squarely and honestly the fact that they as well as the men must carry their share of the burden of defense.\u201d Specifically, she asked OSC\u2019s women students if they were physically fit enough to \u201cmeet the probable demands of long hours of labor in the fields, fruit orchards, vegetable gardens, canneries, canteen work, first aid stations or the strain of long confining hours in defense factories without the danger of physical strain or injury or complete physical breakdown?\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These examples indicate that physical health was highly stressed for women during the war, but there remained conflict over the methods and meaning of women\u2019s physical activity. Many advocated health as necessary for the war effort, but others tended to emphasize conditioning as a way to improve women\u2019s appearance. For example, the historian Rachel Louise Moran notes, for example, that \u201cwomen\u2019s weights were sometimes a point of contention\u201d in the Women\u2019s Army Corp.\u201d[3]<\/a> Mark Ellner, meanwhile, has documented resistance to women\u2019s participation in Olympic sports, quoting one leader insisting that the games \u201cshould be the sole purview of men,\u201d leaving women to \u201ccrown . . . the winner with garlands, as was their role in ancient Greece.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discussions of women\u2019s physical health at World War II-era Oregon State College suggest that World War II might have been a historical turning point. The military and industrial requirements of the war seemed to provide new opportunities and promote new understandings of physical fitness and education for women. Did wartime demand for physical fitness affect how women thought about themselves, their bodies, and their roles in society? Perhaps it helped pave the way toward greater equality for women in athletics and the labor market later in the twentieth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> \u201cWomen Leaders, Professor Stress Need for Conditioning,\u201d Oregon State Barometer<\/em>, March 24, 1942, 4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Dr. Eva M. Seen, \u201cWomen Begin Fitness Program,\u201d Oregon State Barometer<\/em>, March 24, 1942, 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Rachel Louise Moran, Governing Bodies: American Politics and the Shaping of the Modern Physique<\/em> (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 69.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> Mark Ellner, \u201cA Critical Look at Women\u2019s Role in Physical Education and Sport in the 1930s,\u201d Educational Considerations<\/em> 45, no. 2 (2020), 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students in Dr. Marisa Chappell’s fall 2023 History 363 “Women in U.S. History” class spent the final three weeks of Fall Quarter 2023 in OSU\u2019s Special Collections and Archives Research Center exploring women in Camp Adair\u2019s history. By Brooklyn Blair, Grace Matteo, and Ruiqi Zhang One of the expectations of women during World War II, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1451,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[1345961],"class_list":["post-25205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hst363"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1451"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25205"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25212,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25205\/revisions\/25212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}