For my week 9 blog post I chose to write on “Flying, Flirting, and Flexing: Charmion’s Trapeze Act, Sexuality, and Physical Culture at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” an article detailing the career of a trapeze artist and female fitness icon Laverie Vallee or “Charmion”. The subject of the article trapeze performer “Chermion” is written as an entrepreneurial savant and it’s hard to argue with this given everything the article tells you about her efforts to further both her own career and dispel misogynistic views on the female image. The primary argument as stated by the author is “my aim is to illustrate how Charmion walked a fine line between traditional and modernizing ideas surrounding women’s bodies and their physical capacities.15 While she alone did not dismantle patriarchal structures that tended to objectify women’s sexuality for the pleasure of men, she helped set new standards for female health and beauty that combined physical fitness, strength, and freer movement of the female body.” In essence, the entire article is an explanation of how Charmion played by the traditional rules of society in order to further free the female image from its association with sex. Charmion used the modernization of the female image just as much as she advanced it as noted in the article, an example of this is her exploitation of the American perception of Europeans. Charmion was born in California but on stage, she presented herself as French so that her provocative performance was more excepted. The author makes clear the relation between Charmion and the revolution in fitness that was going on at the time and references how the media and promoters view Charmion, “Young women who are ambitious to rival their brothers in muscular development, would do well to follow the example set by La Petite Charmion” whose “muscles stand out like great knots when she strikes a pugilistic attitude.”
