Boys of Summer Brand

Boys...and Girls - This loose triptych of paintings explores gender b(l)ending in the late-nineteenth century. The central painting features two images of Maud Nelson (1881‒1944), ace pitcher for the Bloomer Girls, a generic name for any barnstorming club composed of female players. The Bloomer Girls were a popular draw on the traveling circuit from the 1890s through the 1920s. (It is believed that the name comes not from the baggy pants called bloomers, but from suffragist Adelaide Jenks Bloomer.)  Flanking Maud are “Debutantes Ball” and “Boys of Summer,” the former depicting a team of young ladies clothed in what passed for women’s athletic wear in the 1890s, the latter a group of strangely stilted lads in dunce-like toppers. Much has been said and written about baseball as a metaphor for democracy, little about the game as a metaphor for sexism. We owe a huge debt, then, to the adventurous Victorian women who blazed a trail for inclusion in “the boys’ game.”