Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

SMAD. An Organ of Student Opinion. 1932. Volume 3. Number 4.

Gymnasium

Gymnasium.

Feminine gymnastic effort at V.U.C. is now in its second year. We want to correct the belief, how ever, that the gymnasts themselves are in their second year. Of course, if you come over to the Gym. on Friday nights or Saturday mornings and see a host of folk tumbling round in little white shirts and —er, you know—well, you could easily get that impression, but really it is quite wrong.

No, the Gym. Club members are grown up women of the College, and they are there because they get a lot of fun and exercise out of it, and also perhaps because they have something to correct. We all have something to correct, but we don't all realise it. I don't mean our table manners, or our pronunciation, or our morals, or anything like that— we are never likely to improve those at 'Varsity What I mean is structurally. Half of us have hunched backs, and don't realise it, or we turn our 'feet out when we walk, or fail to swing the pelvis, or stick this out or stick that in; or we have hollows in our backs, and our shoulders are raised, and our chins arc up and out instead of down and in. Then what we know about poise, gait, balance, co-ordination, bearing, posture and rhythm is absolutely negligible. In short, compared with members of the Women's Gym. Club, we are as Don Priestley's "Flivver" compared with Helen Dunn's "Stutz." But there is one hope for us—the Club will still accept members.

Last year the Club wasn't one: it was just a collection of active women who eurythmicked and gymned, and danced under the able instructorship of Miss Nancy Webber. They became so good that they gave a display, and Pen. Rollings made a speech. Well, this year they have formed a Club and been duly affiliated, and have a full-blown patron, president and secretary (metaphorically, of course). These officers should be approached by all those who feel they have some slight defect in their contour, or have been liberally supplied with avoirdupois, or who have insufficient pep; in fact by all those women who realise the importance of feeling fit, fresh, and full of beans.

By the way, are the men of the College Apollos that they need no Gym Club, or are they too lazy to form one?