163. Today in 1920s Turkey: 26 April 1924 (Female Boxers Exist Now, Too)

(Story and photo, Resimli Gazete, or “The Illustrated Gazette,” 26 April 1924, no. 34, page 8.)

Türkçe
Kadınlar da Boksör Oluyor
Boks da dans gibi her tarafı sarmaya başladı. Hiç bir şeyden mahrum olmak istemeyen kadınlar da Avrupa’da boks yapmaya başladılar.
Resmimiz boks dersi alan bir İngiliz madmazelini gösteriyor. Her halde “rink” [اورزنده] bir erkek ile karşılayacak kadını tasvir edemiyoruz desek bilmem hata mı etmiş oluruz.

English
Women, Too, Are Becoming Boxers
Boxing, like dance, has begun to catch on everywhere. So women, who don’t want to be deprived of anything, have begun boxing in Europe.
Our picture shows an English lady taking a boxing class. If we were to say that we cannot show a woman in the [اورزنده] of a ring with a man, would we be at fault?

Comments:
Boxing was one of the hip and new sports gaining traction in 1920s Turkey. While on the one hand stories about boxing and combat sports in Turkey are appering with greater frequency in the press, a female boxer is a noteworthy novelty in itself because the sport is still too new in Turkey to attract the attention of both sexes. Apparently, however, it is being picked up by women in Western European countries like England, which is where the current story and picture hail from.

European athletes will sometimes grace the pages of Turkish illustrated gazettes and of course, rarer images of female athletes are also valued by the press for their ability to attract the gaze of a potential reader/buyer. This is somewhat the case with this cover photograph featuring four female Olympic swimmers from 1928. Some sports or activities that have a longer history in Turkey, however, do have domestic female representation as was the case with this story of a female markswoman from 1927.

On the other hand, if “dancing” is considered a sport than there are many female practitioners of that line of athletic activity almost universally. Both this article and many others from the 1920s stress the popularity of co-ed dancing in Turkey, especially Istanbul. See, for instance post #62 on Istanbul’s Dance Problem and post #66 on dancing during Ramadan.

(Entire page, Resimli Gazete, or “The Illustrated Gazette,” 26 April 1924, no. 34, page 8. Hakkı Tarık Us Collection, Beyazıt State Library, Istanbul.)