I’d had CONTESTED WATERS: A Social History of Swimming Pools by Jeff Wiltse on my to-read list for a while and after reading Swimming Pretty a few months back it inched its way higher. It’s worth the reading, though as with most highly specialized topics YMMV (I found it dryer — sorry! — than Swimming Pretty).
As Wiltse explains, swimming pools were not a thing in the first half of the 19th century (or earlier) because swimming wasn’t a thing. Most Americans didn’t swim for recreation or exercise, nor had they been taught to swim; it was too pleasurable, too athletic, too undisciplined for the pious, sober, responsible people they thought they should be. That the ones who did swim were working-class boys and teens — undisciplined, rowdy — made it seem even more common.
Eventually, though, cities began introducing public baths as a way to wash the filth off the lower orders. As the idea of providing public recreation took hold, the baths mutated into swimming pools, though many found the idea dubious — where team sports taught discipline and obedience, swimming seemed too disorganized to build character.
Eventually, though, the idea caught on and public pools began popping up all over the country. They were massively popular with everyone of every class, and many of them were integrated both in social class and in race, though separated by sex (women got to swim two days a week or got their own pool).
In the early 20th century, gender-integrated pools became a thing which meant racially segregated pools became one too (can’t have black men swimming close to white women!), which in turn led to fights over re-integrating the pools, a victory which led to a boom in private and backyard pools; the latter had the added appeal of being even more exclusive, allowing only family and friends. Wiltse concludes that’s been our loss as a society as we’ve lost the experience of mingling with people outside our pod (there’s much discussion in the ending chapters of Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, though Wiltse disagrees with Putnam on several points).
Like I said, specialized but interesting. Covers by Marie Severin (top) and Nick Cardy, all rights to images remain with current holders.
