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Author/Athlete/Professional Speaker "Think of yourself as an athlete. I guarantee you it will change the way you walk, the way you work, and the decisions you make about leadership, teamwork, and success." --MBN |
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 Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, by Susan E. Cayleff (University of Illinois Press, 1995), hardcover, $29.95.reviewed by Mariah Burton Nelson in the Women's Review of Books
I eagerly read the story Babe wanted people to know: that she was born of Norwegian immigrant parents in Beaumont, Texas in 1914; that she was named Mildred and dubbed Babe for Babe Ruth; that she won a silver and two gold Olympic track and field medals at age 18 when she was just five feet tall; that she won 82 golf tournaments, including 17 in a row. But when I got to the photo of Babe wearing earrings, stockings, pearls, and a dress, I was perplexed. Why would brave, boisterous, baseball-throwing Babe play feminine games? When Babe married a professional wrestler, I was baffled. Why would brawny Babe allow herself to seem small, even dainty, in the arms of huge George Zaharias? Why would Babe have a husband at all? Though at twelve I knew nothing of lesbian love except my own unnamed passions for teammates, the story seemed specious. Now, in Babe: The Life and Legend of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, San Diego State University women’s studies professor Susan E. Cayleff explains Didrikson’s ultra-feminine behavior, her sexual orientation, and more. Based on extensive research including interviews with Babe’s surviving family members and Betty Dodd, the woman who apparently became her lover, Babe the book reveals truths that Babe the woman concealed. In fact, Babe lied a lot. She was born in 1911, not 1914; she was called Babe not for Babe Ruth but because she was the youngest girl in her family; at the 1932 Olympics she was 21, not 18, and a full-grown 5’5,” not 5’0”; her so-called 17-tournament winning streak actually ended at 14; and the pretty little wife role was an act designed to keep sexist and homophobic comments at bay. Cayleff explains Babe this way: she did what she needed to do to win. First she focused only on sports, embellishing her records and diminishing her size and age to make her achievements even more impressive. When she outgrew the “tomboy stage” and the media began to question her sexual orientation and her gender, she adorned herself with feminine accouterments -- including a husband -- in an impassioned effort to win public approval. Most women relate to each other through “troubles talk,” Deborah Tannen has noted. In Fire With Fire, Naomi Wolf says women need to use “victory talk” as well. Babe was the original victory talker. “I don’t see any point in playing the game if you don’t win, do you?” she often said. “This boldness and willingness to make her presence felt and desires known were qualities that... endeared Babe to her fans,” writes Cayleff. “These traits also aggravated critics who perceived her extreme self-confidence and razzle-dazzle as arrogance." At the height of her career Babe earned $100,000 annually; she gave much of it to her poor parents and other family members. Once asked to play in a charity golf tournament, Babe told her agent, “You get me the jobs that pay. I’ll take care of the charities.” In the mid-thirties, the previously androgynous Babe began adorning herself with hats, dresses, girdles, lipstick, perfume, and nail polish. She “consciously created a heterosexual past” and actually suggested that women should limit their activities to golf and swimming. She denied ever having boxed and refused to discuss her accomplishments as an All-American basketball player and Olympic track and field star, claiming, “My sports career began with golf.” Notes Cayleff: “Denial of this magnitude hints at immense distress and severe personal pain.” But the camouflage worked. Reporters “heaved a collective sigh of relief,” says Cayleff. “Babe’s successful ascension to femininity [was] hailed as an applaudable accomplishment.” Zaharias, a wrestler whose body ultimately swelled to more than 400 pounds, “was a caricature of manliness: tough, ferocious, powerful... able to take punishment,” says Cayleff. “His exaggerated manliness contrasted favorably with Babe’s attempted womanliness. He softened her image; she heightened his.” George was openly jealous of the women’s relationship, Dodd reported, and “we always had a lot more fun when he wasn’t around.” Babe asked George for a divorce, but “he got meaner than a snake.” Ultimately Babe stayed because “being married to George was part of her public image.” Cayleff admits that “a sexual relationship was never publicly acknowledged” but refers to them as “primary partners” and uses “lesbian” liberally, conjecturing that “their silence on this point is a matter of survival given the ... conservative culture of the 1950s.” She concludes, “The inducements for a woman to reveal a lesbian life to a national audience are few; the reasons for silence, many.”
I once interviewed a woman from Babe’s generation, a 1936 Olympian who told me her “roommate” had just died. As we talked about the loss, there was no doubt in my mind that this athlete was mourning her female lover and life partner. But she never said so directly. I suspect Betty Dodd and Susan Cayleff had similar conversations, though I have no proof. Maybe Dodd was sworn by Babe to secrecy but indirectly or nonverbally told Cayleff that Babe was her lover, and a lifelong lesbian. Yet George didn’t get to tell his story; before Cayleff could talk with him, he died (in 1984 or 1986 -- the book is inconsistent). Without more information, I think it’s as unfair of Cayleff to call her lesbian as it was unfair of her previous biographers to call her straight. Babe’s life makes sense, finally, thanks to Cayleff’s historical context and feminist analysis. Cayleff quotes the physicans of the era who decried the “costs in terms of impaired health, physical beauty, and social attractiveness” for female athletes. She cites magazines that advised girls to “play dumb” in order to catch boys. Even female physical educators warned girls not to compete, especially with boys. For Babe, “‘just being herself’ was tantamount to gender heresy,” says Cayleff. Like other heretics, she was tortured. Male reporters harassed her mercilessly until she metamorphosed into the woman the press lauded as a “sleeping beauty awakened.” She never lost her will to win, and I found that competitiveness fascinating. Babe “made it very hard on a lot of these women golfers because she’d walk right up and say, ‘What are you girls practicing for? You can’t win this tournament,’” reports Dodd. “She did it all the time, and there were a lot of them that didn’t like it one damn bit.” It occurs to me (but not to the author, apparently, nor to Babe's opponents) that when Babe trash-talked she might have been kidding. My brother and I taunt each other when playing golf: “Want me to play left-handed, to make it more even?” Sometimes, at least during mini-golf, Peter will even mock-sneeze when I’m putting the ball. This amuses us, reminds us that it’s just a game and, I believe, eases the tension inherent in the fact that we both crave victory, even in trivial pursuits. Was Babe joking when teasing her rivals about their impending defeats? If so, the other golfers didn’t get it. Nor will some readers “get” Babe. Some will be appalled by her arrogance, her crudeness, her unabashed quest for money and fame and success -- or by her tall tales, or her homophobic camouflage. There’s much here not to love. But the thirties, forties, and fifties were a tough time to be the best female athlete in the world. Babe had no books to read about athletic women. She had no heroes. Even now, almost forty years after Babe’s death, only one prominent female athlete -- Martina Navratilova -- is openly gay. Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Babe’s successor as the world’s greatest female athlete, was for a while overshadowed by her flashy, feminine, long-fingernailed, less successful sister-in-law, Florence Griffith-Joyner. Personally, I forgive Babe all her imperfections. If you’re female and you want to win, you can’t always play by the rules.
To contact Mariah about her presentations, call 703/276-8323 or write to her at Mariah@MariahBurtonNelson.com Home
2000-2002 Mariah Burton Nelson 2002
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