D
DORISPULASKI
Guest
Re: When?
Just to change the direction a little from Why? let's consider When. I recently got a volume of old St Nicholas' Magazines for children. In the late 19th and early 20th century, figure skating was thought of as one of the big winter activities. For both boys and girls. When I was a kid in the late 1950's and early 1960's little boys in New England routinely got black figure skates, not hockey skates, for Christmas. My Dad had figure skates. My brothers played hockey on figure skates. My husband had figure skates and the only pair of hockey skates he had were his goalie skates. Pictures from that 100 years of skating (1860 to 1960) show guys-I particularly remember a picture of the Reverend Some or Other Skating in his top hat. The picture that Brian Boitano evoked of the showoff young man in his Les Patineurs SP was typical of the feeling involved. Skating was a typical first date activity. Weirdly enough, both my husband and I and my father and mother skated on our 'first dates'. Skating was a good way to meet/date/impress the opposite sex and a general fun thing to do in the winter. If you could dance on skates, so much the better, and the more fun. In the 1950's, no one thought Dick Button was gay. In fact, they voted him the sportsman of the year. For that matter, doesn't anyone remember Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates??
When on earth did it become gay for a guy to figure skate?
Was this something started in reaction to the style of Toller Cranston? Did it have something to do with sequins of the Europeans? WHEN DID Figure Skating suddenly become equated in the mind of little hockey players with being gay?
dpp
Just to change the direction a little from Why? let's consider When. I recently got a volume of old St Nicholas' Magazines for children. In the late 19th and early 20th century, figure skating was thought of as one of the big winter activities. For both boys and girls. When I was a kid in the late 1950's and early 1960's little boys in New England routinely got black figure skates, not hockey skates, for Christmas. My Dad had figure skates. My brothers played hockey on figure skates. My husband had figure skates and the only pair of hockey skates he had were his goalie skates. Pictures from that 100 years of skating (1860 to 1960) show guys-I particularly remember a picture of the Reverend Some or Other Skating in his top hat. The picture that Brian Boitano evoked of the showoff young man in his Les Patineurs SP was typical of the feeling involved. Skating was a typical first date activity. Weirdly enough, both my husband and I and my father and mother skated on our 'first dates'. Skating was a good way to meet/date/impress the opposite sex and a general fun thing to do in the winter. If you could dance on skates, so much the better, and the more fun. In the 1950's, no one thought Dick Button was gay. In fact, they voted him the sportsman of the year. For that matter, doesn't anyone remember Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates??
When on earth did it become gay for a guy to figure skate?
Was this something started in reaction to the style of Toller Cranston? Did it have something to do with sequins of the Europeans? WHEN DID Figure Skating suddenly become equated in the mind of little hockey players with being gay?
dpp