STANDING HEAD: The Monday After

Special to The Canton Repository

Flappers and flapper-style attire found a friend in Canton a century ago.

When the blazing summer sun was heating up activity in the city's parks 100 years ago, and girls started making athletic appearances in loose-fitting flapper clothing, Roy R. Bobbitt, physical director of the YMCA, came to their defense.

"Bobbitt ... whose particular job this summer is supervisor of public playgrounds in the city," The Sunday Repository reported on its front page on Aug. 6, 1922, "says a trip to the playgrounds, parks, or any spot where girls gather to play will show why short skirts, knickers, rolled socks and loose clothing has brought more freedom to women than the 18th amendment."

That comment certainly found the approval of young women, at least if the ballots were cast by the participation of women in athletic events being held on Canton's playing fields. A reporter from the newspaper was sent out to tally those "votes" and found them abundant.

"At Waterworks playground a game of playground baseball is in progress," wrote the reporter. "The bases are 35 feet apart instead of 90 feet and the ball used is a stuffed one, but otherwise the rules of the game are the same as those of the national sport. A girl in knickers and a sport blouse swings the bat that knocks the ball through the air for what surely seems to be a home run, but a fielder picks it out of the air with her bare hand.

"At the track meet at Cook Park playground a girl of 14 hurls her wiry body through the air in a record broad jump, while across the field a group of girls are lining up for the 50-yard dash," the article continued.

"From the high platform at the Meyer's Lake beach a dozen flappers in one-piece suits dive off together, cutting the water with but little more splash than so many razor blades. They are only a few of the many girls who have learned to swim and dive at the weekly classes held at the lake for the past three summers under the supervision of the playground instructors."

Bobbitt attributed both the increase in the number of girls participating in athletic endeavors on the city's playgrounds and the heightening of their level of skill in the sports to the "flapper" influence and the changing clothing styles.

"Five years ago, possibly four years ago, to see girls participating in athletic games, especially outdoor games, was an uncommon sight to cause much comment," Bobbitt said in the 1922 Repository article. "Today, that girl who will not take part in games is a 'poor sport.'

"The change in their style of dress has brought about the change in their play, and that is why I, for one, am strong for flapper styles, including knickers, short skirts and rolled stockings."

Bobbitt told the newspaper that women's participation in sports harbored many benefits, both physical and mental.

"Seriously, athletic games for girls are biologically necessary," he said. "They give an outlet to primitive instincts and inherited tendencies which have no outlet in civilized life."

The recreation director found an ally in Dr. Mae E. White, staff doctor at the YWCA, "who has examined hundreds of girls in the physical education department of the association here."The doctor, though not outlining any specific benefits of athletics for women, at least could not see that they did any harm to the perceived fairer sex.

Dr. White "said she has yet to find examples of ill effects of athletic games for girls, where such games have been properly supervised."

Helen Marr, assistant supervisor of Canton playgrounds, spoke with a voice of a woman who once had been teased for being an active young girl.

"Not so very long ago, I can remember when I was called a tomboy because I prefered to play prisoners' base (a form of tag) rather than jacks," she remembered, noting that the growing acceptance of women in the world of athletics made her happy and proud.

"It gives me a thrill every time I see a bunch of girls playing ball in the street or chasing across a block playing fox and geese (a hide-and-seek game)," she admitted.

Athletic activities offer young girls an opportunity to improve their social skills as well as their physical conditioning, Marr maintained.

"Did it ever occur to you to wonder why as a rule, the healthy girl who can swing a baseball bat or a tennis raquet with equal ease is not catty and little like many girls who do not take any part in games or exercise?" she asked. "It is because the athletic girl has found an outlet for her fighting instincts, she does not have to bottle them up and run the risk of becoming catty.

"A girl without an outlet may become a flirt or develop morbid tendencies. We ought to start a campaign against the ill effects of not playing games."

The phrasing of her words may cause them to come off as dated views today. Still, the observations pointed somewhat accurately toward the participation of girls in athletics in the future. They envisioned a time when women's sports are widespread and the number of female athletes increased throughout the country at a burgeoning rate.

"Of course, you cannot accomplish anything in one generation," Bobbitt told the Repository in 1922, "but let me predict that in 30 years from now the girl who cannot participate in outdoor athletic games will be classed as a weakling."

He scoffed at the fashion trend in 1922 away from "flapper" clothing and back toward longer skirts and other clothing styles aimed at accenting the female figure and not aiding the woman athlete.

"That advance showing of fall styles in Canton display skirts almost to the ground does not daunt Bobbitt's enthusiasm on flapper styles, or rather on the effect of flapper styles on the play life of girls, a bit," the Repository's article reported.

Women were playing games, Bobbitt noted. They were on the athletic fields. The acceptance of women in sports had started 100 years ago.

"You cannnot tell me that once girls have learned to enjoy the freedom and fun of strenuous games," said Bobbitt, "they are going to make it impossible to participate in them by wrappinng their bodies in tight, clinging clothing that will make it impossible to play such games.

Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. On Twitter: @gbrownREP.