ABSTRACT
In this final chapter I expand on the activity of the modern girl, comparing strategies used by young exercising women to female aerialists, considering the examples of Lillian Leitzel, Luisita Leers, and Winnie Colleano. I identify three problems for exercising women that aerialists also needed to counter: physical exertion, muscularity, and competition. Discussing these issues enables me to draw conclusions about how witnessing these stars tapped into national ideas of citizenship and to designate aerialists as the first to use the alluring power of glamour to make muscular femininity acceptable. However, the example of Winnie Colleano demonstrates that ethnicity played a part in influencing who could challenge established codes of femininity and how moving bodies could unwittingly endorse nationalist ideologies. Other stars who used this strategy of combining sexual desirability or beauty as proof of femaleness with glamour in the 1920s and early 1930s include popular female sports competitors. Examining these stars demonstrates how female stars’ bodies often become cyphers for wider cultural and societal concerns.
