History 103D (Fall 2017)

Andres Dongo

November 6, 2017

In the senior thesis Getting Over the Weaker Sex: How America Grappled with the

Rise of Female Professional Wrestling in the Early Twentieth Century, Kindred clearly

defines her main argument as how Women wrestlers were successful at attracting

crowds and added a new direction to wrestling that men could not provide. As well she

describes as a following argument that female wrestling was successful because of the

rise of female viewership helped by television and also their presence at the ringside.

What I think really works in this thesis is how organized she is in her introduction that

just leads to keep reading to answer the aspects that she wants to develop,

development in the circus, cold war, television, etc.

Her use of sources made me realize i'm missing out on sources for my own research,

she grabs memoirs, newspapers, court cases, reference books and physical education

books of that time. I like also how she grabs a source that could deteriorate her

argument to become a convincing source of the pressure that the media was putting

towards the participation of women in manly sports in regards of affecting their body in

the eyes of man. The interpretation of the sources and how they interact to shape the

argument is what worked in this thesis and also what i learned from it.