Objects, Olympics, and Femininity: Exploring the Impact of a 1924 Handheld Fan on Gender at the Games

Abstract

On the second level of the Olympic Museum in Switzerland lives a handheld fan from the 1924 Paris Olympics featuring five sportswomen. The museum describes the fan as a souvenir from the Games and an advertisement for a French perfume company. However, this fan is much more than an advertisement or souvenir. Drawing upon new materialist theory, which envisions objects as lively, this article looks toward the ways the fan was productive in developing ideas around gender at the Olympics. Using an object biography, this research explores how the fan contributed to the New Woman femininity of the 1920s and currently produces a narrative of the International Olympic Committee as being a gender progressive organization. In so doing, it explores how an object that is often overlooked by many at the museum plays a powerful role in understandings of gender across the history of the Games.