ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the mediated discourse that took place in the press of the Gilded Age over the novelty and propriety of the New Woman as athlete, the negotiation of the female athlete's place in sport, and the legacy of these debates on established gender norms that lingered into the twentieth century. Many members of the press considered women who competed in manly, professional sports such as baseball and boxing as corrupt and morally bankrupt. By the 1880s, lady athletes began using the rationale of True Womanhood to their own advantage in order to compete in once-forbidden sports. Ladies from upper-class backgrounds were able to gain entry into a wide range of sports without fear of social ostracization by virtue of their birthrights, but bourgeoisie women felt pressure to comply with traditional value systems, in particular, those of True Womanhood and separate spheres.
