Women and Parachuting: Writings of the Outsider's Experience

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Women and Parachuting: Writings of the Outsiders’ Experience1

Julie Gaucher

University of Lyon 1, France

Keywords: sport, parachuting, gender order, discrimination, resistance, vulnerability.

Abstract

Marked by a military history, parachuting−as a sport−mobilized some traditional

values of manliness, such as bravery and fearlessness, technical control and physical

involvement. However, in France of the Fifties, some sportswomen attempted to

penetrate the parachuting world and to challenge this male bastion: Michèle Savary

and Colette Duval were among these women. Moreover, these sportswomen gave

testimonies of their experiences in autobiographies and prose memoirs. Relying on

the methodological reflections of Gender/Women’s Studies and using a literary

approach, this article reveals the gendered resistances that Savary and Duval had to

overcome. Vexations, discriminations and stigmatisations concerning female

parachutists were numerous. This paper will focus on the strategies adopted by these

two sportswomen to ‘exist’ in a male world. By analysing life stories, it will offer a

new and original approach to the history of women’s sport.

Introduction

I would like to express my gratitude to Susan J. Bandy for her assistance in the final stage of editing this essay. This paper has been written with the support of the National Research Agency, program PRAS-GEVU.

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Colette Duval was born in the 1930s, when ‘Coco Chanel had abolished the

corset, and when women, surprised to feel comfortable in their clothes, explored a

new lifestyle and discovered freedom.’ They introduced themselves in the stadiums,

ventured on to the sport fields, founded the first women’s sport associations, and

organized competitions (Laget and Mazot, Arnaud and Terret, Terret et al.).

Nevertheless, according to Duval, although ‘they had cut their hair,’ numerous

women still had a metaphorical ‘bun in their head’ and ‘when their husbands spoke,

they kept silent.’ ‘The girls were still real girls.’[1] The books of etiquette regulated

the way to be a woman, in accordance with traditional values. According to Michèle

Savary, in the 1950s, it was common to display femininity with ‘sewing, cross stitch

and crinolines.’[2] In other words, Savary and Duval interpreted France of the Fifties

according to their specific experience and the challenges for sportswomen. Savary’s

advice to her young female readers revealed her quest for freedom and her values

(until then, only considered masculine). In L’Escadrille Blanche, quoting Saint

Thérèse d’Avila, she recommended to her readers: ‘do not be women but strong men.’

The novel, as a literary form, was an invitation to bravery and to courage, and why

not, to the practice of parachuting.

In the context of the Fifties, a sporting adventure such as parachuting was not

considered a feminine activity. Nevertheless, some sportswomen, as pioneers, took up

this challenge. Savary discovered parachuting in 1948, at 20 years old, and Duval

began to participate in this sport in 1951, at the age of 21. It was a period of

institutionalization and sportification of parachuting.[3] Moreover, by relating their

sporting adventures in autobiographies and personal stories, Savary and Duval gave

an intimate testimony of challenges. Although being involved in a ‘male’ sport was a

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challenge, relating this experience was another one−sports literature was actually

produced by ‘male voices’ at this time.

French researchers who have investigated women’s history have rarely

examined sport and leisure; their analysis and reflections were initially focused on

topics such as ‘family,’ ‘work,’ and ‘education.’ Substantial researches began at the

end of the 1990’s and at the beginning of the century (Terret, Prudhomme-Poncet,

Rosol, Ottogalli-Mazzacavallo and Gaucher). Some academic studies already focused

on female champions or sport’s female leaders (Drevon, Munoz, Bloit, and Erard).

However, sport autobiographies have rarely caught academic attention.[4] The

autobiography is not the traditional material of sociologists who prefer the method of

interviewing; nor has the autobiography been a preferred source for historians. If they

refer to these kinds of books, it is with caution. Literary studies have not focused on

sport (auto)biographies either, because of their mediocre literary quality.

Nevertheless, according to Bale, Christensen and Pfister (auto)biographical work has

real potential.

The biography does not reveal the truthfulness of an historical event or the

authenticity of a life trajectory.[5] It does, however, give information about the

construction of a myth, that of the hero. Its interest thus lies in its potential to deal

with the representations of popular culture. The autobiography translates the

integration by the sportsman/sportswoman of societal values. According to Susan J.

Bandy, ‘like all artists, [the writers] are in the act of re-creation, of reconstructing

[the] notions of gender, femininity, and possibly [the] notion of sport.’[6] The

narration of a personal experience uses the same logic: with autobiography, the act of

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writing is re-creation, re-interpretation. It reinvents the ‘bio.’ The autobiography

oscillates ‘between fact and fiction, producing what some have termed faction.’[7]

This analysis does not attempt to write the biography of two sportswomen;

rather it tries to compare their experience, the experience of two women who were

involved in parachuting in the Fifties, with special attention given to their writings.

We would like to point out the way in which Duval and Savary challenged and fought

inequality, violence, discrimination, aggression and stigmatization. We will focus on

the strategies that they adopted, consciously or unconsciously, to find their place in a

‘male’ world. Moreover, these sportswomen did more than only rewrite their own

experience. As Bandy noticed, they also ‘reinvented’ the femininity, and reinterpreted

the relations of gender. They suggested a myriad of embodiments of femininity.

1. Some sportswomen and some autobiographies

Some portraits

Duval discovered parachuting in 1951, at 21 years old, after her first

experience with gliding. Introduced to the pleasures of air sports, she searched for a

stronger feeling of freedom and joined her first training course in parachuting. She

then married but divorced very quickly. Moving to Paris, she enjoyed the freedom of

a single woman and held various positions as a secretary, which gave her a meager

income. So, she forced herself to make numerous sacrifices to cover the expense of

the training courses in parachuting. Audacious and motivated, she wanted to show her

ability, and she became very seriously involved in the activity. She was invited to

jump during exhibitions, although she still did not pass the test for certification (she

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only jumped with a parachute that opened automatically).[8] The free fall seems to

concretize metaphorically her permanent quest of freedom: ‘when [she] skydived,

[she was] absolutely, inevitably alone, thus totally free, and [she felt] tall.’ In the sky,

‘nobody could dominate [her], nobody could help [her],’ too: ‘[she was] a free

woman, [she had] self-control.’[9] Finally, she practiced parachuting according to a

hedonistic ideal and a sport’s perspective: the performance, the record and the risk

were essential. Duval attempted to break different records: on May 23rd, 1956, in

Brazil, she realized the highest dropping in free fall. She exited the aircraft at an

altitude of 12,080 meters, opening her parachute at 250 meters, after a free fall of 3

minutes and 18 seconds. She received special treatment in the media. As a regular

participant in the exhibitions in the Southwest of France, she had, at the beginning of

her career, ‘every week, more than half a page of articles and pictures in the regional

newspapers;’ enough to transform her into a local celebrity. National newspapers

published several articles about her: in May, 1955, issue 134 of Aviation Magazine

focused on her. After her ‘Brazilian’ record, on June 9th, 1956, Paris Match conferred

a title upon her, on the front page. On July 1st of the same year, Marie-Claire

dedicated one article to her. Her exploits echoed in the American sports press: Sports

Illustrated of June 4th, 1956, recounted her ‘Brazilian record’ in its column ‘These

Faces in the Crowd.’ Held up as an example to girls, she entered in ‘the homage to the

champion,’ a column of the magazine Line. Becoming media-friendly and well-

known as a model for the fashion designer Germaine Lecomte, she acted in several

movies (sometimes as a stuntwoman); in particular, she was a character in Une balle

dans le canon by Michel Deville and Charles Gérard (1958), Un clair de lune à

Maubeuge by Jean Chérasse (1962), and La Belle emmerdeuse by Roger Coggio

(1975). She was forced to ‘throw the towel in definitively’ after an accident during an

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exhibition in Barcelona; because of a hard landing, she was temporarily paralyzed.

She was then 30 years old and her certificate was definitively withdrawn. This date,

putting a stop to her dream, seems to condense in itself the drama: ‘October 9th, 1960.

I skydived for the last time of my life.’[10]

Other sportswoman, other profile. Savary, a childless single woman, dreamed

of pursuing studies in medicine, but she had to postpone her education for a long time

due to financial reasons. She found several jobs as a journalist and art critic. Engraver

and painter, she was also recognized as an historian, in particular for her biography of

Marie-Antoinette and for her studies of Serbia. Savary practiced parachuting with

more inhibition than Duval, subject to a visceral fear, which paralyzed her before each

jump. She came to this activity beginning with sanitary paradropping, at 20 years old,

in 1948 and her initiation occurred in a military context (military camp of Cercottes).

Having handed in her resignation, Savary joined civil parachuting. However, she

lived several years without jumping and accumulated only 17 jumps in 8 years. Her

watchword, conforming to her original involvement, was summarized in a verb:

‘serving.’[11] She had no ambition regarding sport and confided in Race de la

Rigueur: ‘I will never do any manual opening […]. My life is more important than

that.’ So, when the instructor wanted to introduce her to the ‘manual opening,’ she felt

forced to accept, ‘without any pleasure.’ Before her first attempt, she admitted:

‘Unconsciously, I wished for a failure, to be maintained in the safety.’

What a pity that the manual opening exists! What a pity that there is this more

difficult degree and that I couldn’t be content with mediocrity.[12]

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Finally, after seven jumps using a ‘manual opening,’ and after a technical error, she

went back to the ‘automatic opening.’ She jumped about sixty times before she

stopped. Her paralyzing fear that she overcame 64 times developed her bravery. As

Pierre Charreton suggested, Race de la rigueur ‘was completely organized as an

orchestration of the theme of bravery and of its various variations. The experience of

the parachutist seemed to have been supported by the research for this virtue.’ In her

essay La Serbie aux outrages, in attempting to define bravery, Savary remarked:

‘when I was young, I practiced parachuting, a sport which was not for me. I knew all

kind of fears.’[13]

Thus, these two sportswomen offered two contrasting portraits of women in

parachuting and two different definitions of female sport writers. These two

biographical characteristics, because they were so unusual, seem to allow us to read

Duval and Savary’s life trajectories together. Female parachutists were not numerous

in the 1950s, and concerning female writers who focused on sport, they were in the

minority and their literary voices remained hesitant. However, the engagement in the

practice of these two sportswomen differs radically, and their motivations cannot be

compared. The practice of Duval, hedonistic and narcissistic, had a sports dimension;

the quest for thrills and records was at the basis of her involvement. Conversely,

Savary jumped at first ‘to serve,’ in accordance with her first involvement in the

sanitary paradropping. Thus, without comparing them, we will read their texts

together, producing a dialogue and making connections between the two women and

their experiences.

Some Women’s Writings

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Sport literature, which often has the theme of exclusion at its centre, inscribes

women as outsiders. On one hand, when it is written by men, women are on the bench

in the traditional role of spectator. Their presence in the stadium is tolerated, when

they are able to demonstrate grace, according to stereotypes of traditional femininity.

In American sport literature, as Susan J. Bandy noticed, ‘the female is the

quintessential outsider […]. She is nonexistent as an athlete, invisible in the arena,

voiceless as a female character, imprisoned within an oppressive, phallocentric

language of a male author, and reduced to stasis and immobility.’[14] On the other

hand, in the first part of the 20th century, rare were the French female writers who

focused on sport and who described female athletic bodies. When they were interested

in the sportswoman, it was often in a moralistic perspective, writing in accordance

with the expected, normalized, and acceptable arguments. Of course, women already

wrote about adventure, such as Alexandra David-Néel or Ella Maillart.[15] But they

stayed marginal figures. By entering into one of the male bastions and by telling of

their sports experience, Savary and Duval found two opportunities to question social

norms and to cross gendered boundaries.

Duval frantically focused on intimate writing. Having published her first

autobiography La Saint Pétoche in 1959, she designed her prose memoir for young

readership; in 1961, she published Mon Parachute et moi. Ma vie de risque tout was

included in an anthology published by the editors Fayard, ‘Club de lecture des Jeunes’

(1964). Several years later, in 1986, in her book entitled S’en fout la mort, she focused

one more time on her experience as a parachutist. The energy of Duval’s writing

attests to her ‘joie de vivre’ and her dynamism. The frequent use of direct language

and dialogue reveals her vitality and her outspokenness.

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Race de la rigueur by Savary was written between 1956 and 1958 and

published in 1959. The book resists any definition in terms of literary genre. The first

edition stipulated on the cover page that it was about a ‘novel.’ The historical essay

La Serbie aux outrages, in mentioning the bibliography of the author, classified Race

de la rigueur in the category of narrative. Apparently, this last definition seems more

appropriate; Race de la rigueur is a prose memoir, the writer used the first person and

related her own experience. In contrast to Duval, who evoked her childhood and

spoke about her love life, Savary concentrated on her last two years of parachuting.

The book saw real success; published by a well-known editor (Albin Michel), it was

rewarded with the ‘Grand Prix of Sports Literature’. The tone is mystical and

philosophically introspective. The exhortations of heroism were supported by

quotations of Montherlant and Bernanos. Numerous musical, literary, and

architectural references suggested the cultural and ideological background of the

author. Furthermore, the writer had previously published a novel, in 1953:

L’Escadrille blanche, which was expressly designed for girls’ readership. The

adventure is one of a group of girls who discovered parachuting.

These texts further enable us to understand the introduction of women to

parachuting; both of them (autobiography or prose memoir) translated, in its textual

specificities, the gendered resistances and showed the female strategies adopted to

‘exist’ in male world.

2. The parachuting, a ‘male’ sport. What’s about the imaginary of the practice?

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Institutionally, the French Federation of Parachuting had no reservations

concerning the participation of women; initially parachuting was a mixed sport, and

women could apply for the same certificate as men. In the 1950s, some exceptions

were formulated by the statute law: here, as elsewhere, women were prevented from

participating in parachuting. Duval had to ask for marital authorization to be enrolled

in her first training course.[16]

In spite of the early presence of women, parachuting was defined as a man’s

world; excellence required the qualities of virility (a ‘parachutist who succeeded’ was

called a ‘mustachioed’).[17] Marked by a military history, the practice mobilized

some strongly connoted fantasies and socially gendered values, such as bravery and

fearlessness, technical control and physical involvement. These values have been

considered antithetical to the socially-sanctioned and accepted views of femininity (in

others words, ‘hegemonic femininity’) which demanded discretion, subservience, and

weakness. It was enough to envisage the practice as a male bastion and to create a

popular myth; as Duval and Savary observed the definition of parachuting as a virile

sport was obvious.

An ‘obviousness’ spread by the vox populi

When she began parachuting, Duval was aware that parachuting was an

‘unrecognized’ sport, but also a ‘man’s sport’; the vox populi had built a virile

bastion. In this man’s world, ‘the feminine are portrayed as nutcases or easy

women,’[18] the abnormality or the perversion being the only explanations. Towards

these irresponsible women, many people gave advice, multiplying the

recommendations and rephrasing the taboos. To control the motivation of Duval, they

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used various arguments, the interdictions being sometimes implicit sometimes formal.

Some of them thought that ‘she was too pretty to take any risks,’ the Brazilian

minister suggesting–the day before her record–that ‘she was a too beautiful woman to

do this kind of job.’[19] Others laughed about her ambition and were satirical about

her lack of lucidity: the unavoidable quintessential ‘weakness’ of her sex and her

inevitable technical incompetence were continuously argued.

I listened, when I learned gliding: ‘You will never be a good pilot. The girls

know nothing about it . . . . There is only one girl to not be able to . . . . Ah!

The girls!’, etc. It was like a refrain.

Even her friends wanted her to turn away from her sport objectives: ‘My circle made

fun of me, repeated that parachuting was not a sport for women.’[20] According to

the societal views of the Fifties, women did not have their place in gliding or

parachuting; they were enjoined to keep their head out of the clouds!

Savary was a victim of this oppressive discrimination; however, if she spoke

about the vox populi’s critics and fears, she preferred to translate it in a fictive way. In

her novel entitled L’Escadrille blanche, the sporting attitude of the young parachutists

contrasted with the straight morality in bourgeois circles. Every party that joins one of

these girls seems to be an opportunity to open the debate. Apparently, according to

bourgeois standards, parachuting had no place in the timetable of an irreproachable

girl; they were moralized and reminded that ‘it was ridiculous that a girl had fun in

aerodromes, doubtless badly frequented place.’[21]

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Some parachutists who tried to protect their virile bastion

The world of parachutists did not seem more inclined to accept the presence of

women. For Duval, the tone was given from her first training course, when the

enthusiasm of the instructor towards her was, at best, moderate. Lucid, she admitted

his misogyny, ‘concerning the presence of women in sport.’ The entire male group

quickly tried to exclude their feminine training partners. In this sexist atmosphere,

Duval ‘regularly defended with energy, although without humor, the honor of her sex

and its capacity in male sports.’ Later, while she planned to make a new record, Duval

was not encouraged by the parachutists; the manager [of the flight camp of Brétigny]

recommended her ‘to let the men did it.’[22] During his visit to the camp of Saintes,

General Basset could not repress an exclamation of surprise when, removing her

helmet after a jump, Duval also revealed her sex.

– But, it’s a woman![23]

In La Sainte Pétoche, the exclamation of surprise of this character summarizes the

astonishment of the parachuting world, which saw women half-opening its doors.

Suspicious, it had doubts about their pluck, about their motivation, and finally about

their potential.

Nevertheless, in front of the exploit, of the courage and of the motivation of

the sportswomen, the professionals seemed ready to reconsider their preconceived

ideas; Chasak recognized that Duval became an excellent parachutist and asked her

assistance in organizing parachuting training courses. In a fictitious mode, in

L’Escadrille blanche, the motivation and the honesty of the young parachutists were

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enough to modify the representation of the instructor concerning girls that he

considered until then as ‘superficial, empty-headed, cowards, and not always

honest.’[24]

3. Preserving a male arena: strategies of exclusion of the ‘feminine’

In any case, the parachuting world (i.e. the instructors and the group of

trainees) promoted a discriminatory speech and organized itself according to the logic

of the exclusion of women. Then, the female parachutists were in a position of

vulnerability; their introduction in the group became problematic. Either they

rebelled, or they submitted to the male rules, accepting the vexations while smiling,

they had to interact in this environment. Sometimes it was teenager jokes or puerile

gregarious rites; sometimes the strategies of discrimination used violence and could

be understood as real acts of aggression.

The silence as a negation of the female parachutist

There was no doubt concerning the misogyny of Chasak, the instructor. He

kept a cold and disheartening posture toward women. Unsociable and distant, he

made the dialogue impossible. So, ‘when he spoke to a girl (which happened only

when it was absolutely indispensable), he became stony-faced; the hardness of his

steel eyes accentuated his aquiline nose and he looked terribly intimidating.’[25]

Every jump, during the debriefing, was analyzed, but the feminine trainees waited in

vain for the comments of the instructor in La Sainte Pétoche. Duval seemed the only

one to note that ‘the woman with red socks received neither critic, nor compliment.’

She was the only one whose jump was not commented upon, but ‘nobody noticed the

omission.’ ‘She looked about for Chasak, but he focused on someone else. Then,

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disappointed, she ducked.’ Here, the silence had to be interpreted in a negative way;

for the parachutists’ world, embodied by Chasak, the female novice did not exist. The

contempt could not find better translation. Duval was not considered at all; after one

week of the training course, ‘only one person, a girl, received neither critic, nor

compliment, and it was Colette.’[26] The silence of Chasak translated his refusal to

teach, to advise, to encourage or to blame trainees whom he did not regard with

esteem. Only the real exploit redeemed the female sex.

Vulgarity as a way to communicate and a register of language

For Savary, parachuting represented simultaneously the freedom, the fear

preceding each jump, and the presence of ‘mocking and rude sub-instructors,’ of

‘yelling men.’ The atmosphere of the training courses was fatally made of ‘shady

conversations’ and of ‘coarse laughter.’ So, ‘after the exhilaration of the jump, [she

was] plunged into a lukewarm and nauseous life in which some awful melody of jazz

coming from a portable radio rumbled.’[27] In Race de la rigueur, she regretted that

parachuting could not exist without this bourgeois contemporary lifestyle, in which

the nonchalance was established as a rule, the vulgarity and the mediocrity as a norm.

She worried that parachuting was also ‘some undesirable bars, some endless obscene

conversations, and obscene with aggressiveness’ in brief, ‘an animal idleness.’ The

atmosphere of parachuting represented a collection of ‘bad memories,’ for

Savary.[28] Because this coarse life was so close to her, she could not isolate herself

in reading, and could not regain serenity by listening to classical music. But, the

trainees refused to be indifferent and considered the distance of Savary as

contemptuous, her isolation as the pride. They constantly tormented her with some

shady jokes, an ‘ironic consideration and a piquing indulgence.’ The parachutists

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devoted themselves to offending her and took pleasure in ‘sullying her’ with insults.

For all of them, there was no more a single innocent word in the French

language.[29]

Each movement was distorted from its initial meaning, reinterpreted with suggestive

remarks. Injured, Anny could have any medical assistance only after listening to

numerous ‘coarse jokes,’ massaging the foot of a woman evoking other sexual

pleasures for the apprentice doctor of the parachuting team. The women were also

reduced to silence, the men occupying the ‘sound landscape:’

I again heard this snarl: ‘this fuckin’ handle… Let’s pig out! Shut up,

chicks!’[30]

Shouting, cursing and imposing the silence of someone else can be interpreted as a

way of demonstrating hegemony in a group of peers. Anne-Marie Sohn indicated that

‘nothing is less innocent than the ways of speaking,’ reminding that ‘by the noise, or

the song, the matter is to control the sound landscape.’

All the behaviors concerning the noise must be interpreted as a virile assertion.

The noise symbolizes sexual power.[31]

Men occupied the physical space, but they also expressed their territoriality in the

‘sound landscape.’ Women could only creep into the small vacant place.

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By looking away from parachuting, Savary fled this visceral fear which

embraced her before every jump but also this ‘hostile surrounding vulgarity.’ Quickly,

she put two and two together: ‘what could put me off the bravery could easily be the

terribly arrogant vulgarity of some of the guys with three strands of hair; the way in

which they respect nothing, using as an excuse that they challenged some risk; these

drinking sessions to compensate.’[32] In this world where ‘the louts were despotic,’

Savary did not find an efficient strategy for protection; refusing to align herself with

values which she condemned, she stayed alone, and finally ran away from a world

where she could not be fulfilled.

Conversely, Duval enjoyed this atmosphere in which humour governed human

relationships and created a particular sociability within the group of parachutists, an

atmosphere of game and jokes. With her male friends, she did not hesitate to join the

chorus of a bawdy song: ‘here is my dick-dick!’[33] However, if she seemed to adapt

herself to the vulgarity and to laugh at the rudeness, she did not appreciate that some

of the men questioned her ability, and insulted her with the ‘offensive world girl.’ She

quickly understood that the legitimacy of her presence in the group remained

controversial for a long time, the place of a woman could be only ‘behind a typewriter

or in the kitchen:’ ‘for her male training partners, the word girl was the supreme

insult.’[34] In La Sainte Pétoche, she reminded that the instructor tolerated none of

her weakness, none of her error and said her: ‘if you are not able to manage your

reflexes, all that you have to do is participate in a knitting contest!’ Although she

became doggedly involved in sport, during her first training camp, she always had to

deal with numerous jokes and mocking remarks that referred ‘to the girls in

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general.’[35] In other words, it was not so much the vulgarity of the environment that

hurt Duval, but the ‘supreme insult:’ the one which identified her as a ‘girl.’

Some initiation rites for female parachutists? Vexation, humiliation and violence

Savary and Duval had to endure a series of rites (that echoed the traditional

hazing) to enter into the parachutist community. The introduction and the recognition

in this community required successfully passing a series of tests, the objective of

which was to unite the group and to exclude the unworthy ones. The rites, sometimes

humiliating, revealed the hierarchy of the group, and showed who had the power. But

only the women had to pass these rites. Duval obeyed the tacit laws of the group with

a smile; after all, she resigned herself: ‘when there is only one girl in the training

course, she must perform her duties.’ Her obligation was to knit, if she did not want

‘to be deprived of dessert.’ She knocked them dead in her red hat, and all of them

wanted a similar hat. In La Sainte Pétoche, she named her training partners ‘her

masters and her Lords,’[36] reminding that no negotiation seemed possible and

implicitly accepting this hierarchy of group.

While Duval followed the rules of the group and tried at all costs to be

integrated into the group, Savary remained inflexible and attached to conforming

values. Her resistance and her conformity roused vulgar jokes and saucy comments.

After the insults, she was more directly focused on an ‘anonymous letter full of

obscene drawings.’[37] However, one of the most obvious oppressions was the

absence of intimacy into which she was forced. Her bedroom was constantly invaded

by surprise. The symbol was strong; as a symbolic rape, these noisy night-

interventions suggested that a permanent availability was expected from a woman−at

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least metaphorically. The complaint was recurring in Race de la rigueur: ‘our door

had neither key nor bolt. We were at the mercy of the most imbecilic jokes.’ These

sick jokes did not delay practicing, and nobody tried to stop them. The instructors

acted as though they ‘ignored this night racket’ but they were informed about them: ‘I

had complained to Lauwers, explaining that some drunken boys came in our rooms at

one o’clock in the morning. But I still had to support the aggression of these morons

who willingly hated me.’[38] Thus, the female parachutists had to defend their

intimacy by themselves. Like an assaulted fortress, the bedroom put up its

fortifications: ‘when [they] went to bed, Brigitte, Monique and [Michèle] pushed one

of the beds behind the door to prevent the assaults of the drunken men.’ And when

this intimate space remained impenetrable, the men, surprised by this absence of

obedience, still found a way to take their revenge. For instance, if the tent replaced the

room, we ‘cut the guy ropes.’[39]

Finally, the strategies of exclusion, the physical and moral harassment

overcame the motivation of Savary; having already refused to participate in a training

course because one of these men promised her ‘to change here her life in a

nightmare,’ she ran away from this noxious atmosphere. She tried, however, to adopt

some strategies of inclusion.

4. Between resistance and compromise. Answers to the strategies of exclusion

The female parachutists, confronted with this hostility, did not have many

choices: to resist or to accept, to rebel or to tolerate.

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Silence and acceptance

For Savary, the first compromise was silence and acceptance. To participate to

the training courses, to find a place in the aircraft, she had to endure the vulgarity.

Though ‘the boors still took pleasure in obscenities;’ if she retreated it would expose

her again to their rage. Duval also rebelled in silence. She sometimes defended the

honor of her sex, asserting it as a nonessential quality of the supposed weakness of the

woman. Being on the tenterhooks, she internalized her resentments and kept the

silence. While she was subjected to a series of physical tests which would allow her to

break a new record, she was furious in front of the unchanged sexist discriminations.

– ‘Do I have to report that the mascara bears the recompression?’ asked the

Captain Brisse, with irony.

This remark seems innocent. But, having emphasized the feminine sign, it suggests

the irony, and invites laughter at this sportswoman, whose ambition seems suddenly

illegitimate. As ‘the laughter, the rage and the smoke of [her] cigarette’ strangled her,

Duval wondered in La Sainte Pétoche: ‘when will they seriously consider

women?’[40]

A team of female peers to exist in a men’s sport

Savary envisaged a collective strategy to find her place in the world of

parachuting; she would like to create a group of peers, with some female parachutists.

The team would allow women to exist in a man’s sport. So, she agreed to return to the

airfields, in 1956, when some girls asked her to join them. But, in Race de la rigueur,

the cohesion of the group finally could not resist the compromises and the individual

20

mentality of this sport. Although, what Savary did not accomplish in her life, she

realized it in a fictitious way. So, the ideal team of girls, in L’Escadrille blanche,

gathered ‘marvelous sportswomen, nor tomboys, neither wimps,’ with qualities of

‘enthusiasm, bravery, and loyalty.’[41] The team finally seemed to acknowledge the

advent of a new femininity, which assured the recognition of the sportswomen and

allowed them to exist as parachutists.

Integration of the virile values and internalization of the gendered stereotypes

On one hand, after having suffered numerous humiliations and having

consolidated her marginality towards the male group of parachutists, Savary did not

have solutions other than silencing her intransigence and adapting herself to the

atmosphere of vulgarity. She made a last attempt at socialization: ‘I have to be

integrated, to be similar to each of them. During the dinner, among the boors, I just

have to be like a small cowardly chameleon, changing according to the surrounding

spinelessness.’[42]

On the other hand, Duval straightaway opted for her integration and wanted to

be one of them. In this virile group, she tried to make her gendered identity invisible.

She adopted their saucy songs and ‘the result was instantaneous: integrated in the

male community, eliminated by the group of girls.’ But Duval basked in this situation:

‘I was there to practice a virile sport with virile guys’ and ‘it was not the moment to

feel dizzy.’[43] By integrating the codes and the efficient values of a virile world,

Duval tended to internalize the traditional gendered stereotypes. The jump became

sexualized and took the qualities of virility; she was attracted to parachuting because

it was ‘a virile sport.’ When she began to visualize a record, she understood her

21

project as a ‘virile’ dream. On the contrary, not knowing how to swim, she ‘became

again a woman’ in the water; in other words, she felt ‘the shyness and the weakness of

[her] gender.’ In defeat, she agreed with those who had attempted to hijack her from

her ‘virile’ project: ‘I was ridiculous to persist, they were right, parachuting is not a

sport for girls.’[44] Having internalized the sexual and sexist arguments, she

considered that the masculine mark could be understood as a superlative degree. In

Algeria, while she jumped with the servicemen she seemed happy to listen to them

speaking about her using the masculine. When she organized some training camp with

Chasak, and when she noticed the increase number of women, she worried about it:

Sam and I, we inquired about the atmosphere of this training course, because

the number of girls was considerable; by counting me, we were seven. The

temperament of the woman, subtler, but also more susceptible than that of the

man, always risked to provoke numerous conflicts, as sulkiness or drama, and

it was always a problem for the instructor.[45]

Her purpose was not to facilitate the integration of women in parachuting. Having

completely internalized the stereotypes of gender, the ones that she first challenged,

she repeated the oppression and the discrimination. Her arguments were based on

sexist speeches and on essentialist postulates.

Performing femininity[46]

Duval understood the reason for her first successes. During her first

exhibitions, the spectators’ interest did not take into consideration the performance,

but seemed to be motivated only by the presence of a ‘feminine’ in a male sport. With

22

bitterness, she noticed: ‘when I think that I’m going to jump only with a parachute

with an automatic opening (because I haven’t got my certificate yet), I realize that the

spectators don’t give a damn about my skill, but they honour the fact that I’m a

woman. It’s disappointing.’ She first did not feel well with this usurped status of a

heroine: ‘I seem to be like a circus freak, a calf with two heads, a prize winner of an

agricultural show.’[47] Her difference aroused curiosity and her fearlessness

provoked the comments of others. But she habituated herself to this fame, and quickly

knew how to use it. Strategically she used her femininity as a power. She performed

womanhood to emphasize, by contrast, the surprise of the spectators; her hyper-

femininity in a virile sport was the key of her first successes.

It was evident for me that my success was associated to my femininity […].

The spectators, during the exhibitions, expected to see a tomboy, a muscular

sportswoman, a scout-girl […], and the contrasting effect provoked their

admiration.[48]

As Susan Sontag noticed, ‘beauty is indeed a form of power,’ and the example of

Duval seemed to confirm the argument. In the same perspective, Anne Darden added:

‘although it is a form of power shaped by male tastes and desires, it remains a female

protection against total exclusion.’[49] Her gendered identity, that she emphasized

using signs of a hyper-femininity, assured Duval of her social and sport recognition.

Her immediate benefit was economic; Duval needed money and the exhibitions

offered her a significant income. By appearing as a ‘curiosity’ or a personality

(depending on the perspective), she was assured to add new dates to her calendar of

exhibitions. Because she made the exhibitions successful, the organizers did not

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hesitate to invite her. So, she knew quickly how to take advantage of her success and

she admitted: ‘they applauded not so much the jump, but the woman who did it. I

played the game.’ The issue of her certification allowed her to practice free-fall, and

legitimized, at the same time, her presence during the exhibitions.

This certification had also direct consequences on her individual’s self-

identification: ‘I was a new woman and, to complete my transformation, I cut and

curled my hair, I bought lipstick, an unusual luxury for me, and I had a bath and

painted my nails.’[50] In other words, Duval overused the traditional characteristics

of hegemonic femininity: sophisticated hairstyle, painted nails and make-up

unquestionably showed her gender that her silhouette already allowed others to

discern. Then she performed her femininity each time that she had a public exhibition.

After her first record, a reception was given to congratulate her. She had just time to

change her clothes, having only ‘one hour to disguise herself as a woman.’[51] The

verb ‘to disguise’ used in S’en fout la mort! suggests the amusement of the

sportswoman. She seemed to act as a feminine character, performing a body ‘for

others’ and playing with her double identity: ‘After the parachuting exhibition, the

fashion model has to come on.’

After so many sacrifices, […] I was so thin, that it was easy to interpret it as a

sign of weakness and fragility. I made up meticulously, tried to forget my

tomboy’s attitudes […]. For my entrance in the airfield, I definitively rejected

the jacket and the pants preferring a skirt and a sweater, which underlined the

contrast between the identity of the woman and the one of the parachutist.[52]

24

Duval knew the body language and the symbolism of clothes. She used them as a

second language, which confirmed the message that she wished to communicate. As a

media-constructed personality, she began to think about her image. Gratefully, she

played a role for the journalists, who acted like Pygmalion. They overestimated the

femininity of the sportswoman: ‘they manipulated [her], tortured [her],

psychoanalysed [her], mystified [her], deified [her], dress [her], undress [her],’ but

they also ‘sexualized [her] and sublimated [her].’[53] Entering into the fashion world,

she was more than a sportswoman and became a symbol of femininity. Duval found

in this experience an opportunity to confirm her identity according to the criteria of

the hegemonic femininity.

Conclusion

Intimate writing and testimony, prose memoir and reinterpretation of a

personal sports experience, the texts of Duval and Savary finally seem to reveal the

fragments of an untold story; a story of sportswomen who too often remained silent.

The texts of these authors offered a testimony of female hesitations and fears, but also

of dreams and aspiration. The quest for freedom, autonomous self-definition and

opportunity for surpassing themselves, the athletic involvement of these women had

some deep identical incidences. Shaped by a cultural and societal heritage, but also

moved by a desire of fulfillment and freedom, sportswomen oscillated between the

integration of social standards and modernization of the gendered norms. They finally

seemed to claim a new definition of femininity, made of compromise and of

innovation, of tradition and of modernity, which suggested the imaginary of the

androgynous. Duval, who was at the same time sportswoman and fashion model,

accepted that her situation was considered as ‘ambiguous,’ not to say

25

‘bicephalous.’[54] For Savary, the ideal of femininity was embodied in her fictitious

character of L’Escadrille blanche, Christiane, who condensed the qualities of both

sexes: ‘with a face of a young leader,’ with her determined attitude discernable in her

‘way to shake hands,’ she was still ‘graceful and thin,’ expressing her femininity in

‘soft movements when she made bandages.’[55]

Thus, Duval and Savary, through their sports involvement and their literary

testimony, claimed the possibility to take risks, to prove their bravery, but also their

skills in literature. In other words, they wanted a reconsideration of the literary

traditions; significantly, Savary introduced her novel by this oratorical question: ‘did

you notice that, in novels, the brave characters are only masculine […]?’ She finally

proclaimed that ‘the girls are in front of two possibilities: being the victims whom

boys come to help or being the spectators of the male prowess.’ L’Escadrille blanche

explicitly challenged the traditional gendered order: ‘all this way of organizing a plot

according to gendered values was wrong, inequitable, and discriminating. So, I chose

to write a novel about heroic women, girls-scouts, girls without fear.’[56] The

qualities of these female characters echo back to the values promoted in Race de la

rigueur.

With their books, Savary and Duval renewed the description of the female

performance, evoked their doubts and their fights in a virile world, which tended to

control them, not to say to exclude them. The resistances, the discriminations, the

symbolic violence and the harassment, never evoked by the male voices, became

visible, audible. Between rebellion and acceptance, silence and compromise,

sportswomen had to challenge these strategies of exclusion. However, the texts never

26

explicitly referred to feminist demands; the speech was never politicized, only,

discreetly, in the ultimate autobiography of Duval. Lastly, in S’en fout la mort!, Duval

understood that her desire for freedom and independence was connected to women’s

history and the fights for women’s rights. If, first, ‘nobody realized that the image of

the woman was changing,’ she recognized that, ‘in France, during the 1950s, some

rare women shyly began to challenge the sexist yoke. Without noticing this, she was

one of them.’[57]

Notes

[1] Duval, S’en fout la mort, 13-14. Quotations translated by the author.

[2] Savary, L’Escadrille blanche, 14.

[3] Bourdès, Histoire du parachutisme en France. The first World Championship occurred in 1951.

The French school attracted attention because Pierre Lard and Monique Laroche, two French

parachutists, won the contest.

[4] McElroy, ‘Athletes Displaying Their Lives’, 165-179.

[5] Cf. According to Birgitte Possing, we would like to remind the post-modern and post-structuralist

critics ‘as Derrida, Foucault and Barthes, who have called the historical biography ‘impossible to use

as a reference,’ ‘spurious,’ ‘a feature of the exercise of power,’ ‘profit-mongering in intimacy.’’

Bourdieu used the expression ‘biographical illusion’. Bourdieu, ‘L’illusion biographique’, 69-72.

Possing, ‘The Historical Biography: Genre, History and Methodology’, 22.

[6] Bandy, ‘The Female Athlete as Protagonist: From Cynisca to Butcher’, 94.

[7] Bale, Christensen and Pfister, Writing Lives in Sport, 9. Miraux, L’Autobiographie. Lejeune, Je est

un autre. Lejeune, Le Pacte autobiographique.

[8] Michèle Savary defined the ‘automatic opening’: ‘a girth is hung from a cable in the aircraft and

from the top of the parachute. During the free fall, this girth unrolls itself and finally pulls up the

parachute bag. It permits the opening of the parachute’ (Race de la rigueur, 13).

[9] Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 80-81.

[10] Duval, S’en fout la mort, 140.

27

[11] Savary, Race de la rigueur, 170. The end of the novel developed the same motif: ‘if she has to be

parachuted as doctor, on day, she will be ready’ (L’Escadrille blanche, 181).

[12] Savary, Race de la rigueur, 16, 92. The author defined the manual opening: ‘These parachutists

hadn’t got any girth hung and wound behind them. They were attached to nothing, but they had a red

handle, and after the sky dive, they pull on it to set off the opening. It was more difficult than the

automatic opening.’

[13] Charreton, Le Sport, l’ascèse, le plaisir, 99. Savary, La Serbie aux outrages, 143.

[14] Bandy, ‘The Female Voice in American Sports Literature and the Quest for a Female Sporting

Identity’, 99.

[15] Cf. Sauvy, ‘La littérature et les femmes’, 269-281. David-Néel, Voyage d’une parisienne à

Lhassa. Maillart, Parmi la jeunesse russe. Maillart, Des monts célestes aux sables rouges. It is

interesting to note that Ella Maillart was a traveller, a sailor but also an actress and a sportswoman. She

constituted the first women’s team of hockey in the French-speaking Switzerland, the Champel Hockey

Club (1919). She participated to the Olympic Games of Paris (1924) in sailing contests. From 1931

until 1934, she participated to the Skiing World Championship.

[16] Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 9. The ‘civil incapacity’ for married women was deleted in 1938. But,

until 1965, in France, the married women could not have any bank account within a marital

autorization.

[17] Ibid., 110.


[19] Ibid., 41. Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 231, 138.

[20] Ibid., 19, 20.


[22] Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 11, 19. Duval, S’en fout la mort, 47.

[23] Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 135.



[26] Ibid., 16, 27. The first chapter of Ma vie de risque-tout is entitled ‘The silences of Sam’.

[27] Savary, L’Escadrille blanche, 148, 154. Savary, Race de la rigueur, 19.

[28] Ibid., 242.

28

[29] Ibid., 20, 62.

[30] Ibid., 73, 249.

[31] Sohn, Sois un homme !, 61, 64. We translated by ‘sound landscape’, the expression used by Alain

Corbin, ‘paysage sonore.’ Corbin, Les Cloches de la terre.

[32] Savary, Race de la rigueur, 111.

[33] Duval, S’en fout la mort !, 28. Conversely, this kind of songs offended Savary (Race de la rigueur,

36). Moreover, in her last autobiography, S’en fout la mort !, Duval used a language less refined and

sometimes colloquial and vulgar. The evolution of the linguistic register seems to be in accordance

with her integration in the parachutists’ world.

[34] Duval, La Sainte pétoche, 15, 20.

[35] Ibid., 10, 79.

[36] Ibid., 60.

[37] Savary, Race de la rigueur, 249

[38] Ibid., 59.

[39] Ibid., 224, 86.

[40] Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 140.


[42] Savary, Race de la rigueur, 211.


[44] Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 144, 202, 89.

[45] Ibid., 75.

[46] Cf. Butler, Gender Trouble.


[48] Ibid., 127.

[49] Sontag, ‘A Woman’s Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source?’, 359-361. Darden, ‘Outsiders: Women

in Sport and Literature’, 7.

[50] Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 128, 92.

[51] Duval, S’en fout la mort !, 47.

[52] Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 183, 127-128. She added: ‘Now I have to care about my equipment, but

also about my clothes, about my make-up and my look’ (Ibid., 160).

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[53] Duval, La Sainte Pétoche, 170. The excessive media coverage of her love story with the stuntman

Delamare seems to focus on the same goal: feminizing and sexualizing the sportswoman.

[54] Ibid., 171.


[56] Ibid., 13.

[57] Duval, S’en fout la mort !, 41-42.

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Women and Parachuting: Writings of the Outsider's Experience

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