Women Boxers
Karl Arnold, Women Boxers, Berlin, from ‘Simplicissimus’, August 1923. Reproduced by kind permission from the Mary Evans Picture Library.
By the mid-1920s the cabaret revue had become the most popular form of entertainment in Berlin. Consisting of a large variety of fast-paced acts (including songs, dances, and comedy), revues were thought to express the random juxtapositions and speed of modernity. Boxing was frequently included. Brecht’s list of topics for a planned revue on Americanism in 1926 read: ‘Record Girl, Smiling, Advertising, Boxing match, Revue, Tarzan, Sixday races, Slow Motion film, Business, Radio.’ In 1922, heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, the epitome of Americanism, visited a Berlin revue where what the ‘New York Times’ dubbed ‘pugilettes’ fought ‘in décolleté fancy tights’.
This image is from UCL English lecturer Kasia Boddy’s new book ‘Boxing: A Cultural History’, which is published in May 2008 by Reaktion Books.
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