On a recent afternoon, half a dozen of its members the DC Synchromasters were warming up by the pool at an outdoor swim club in Fairfax, Va.
A portable underwater speaker began playing Deorro’s hit ‘Bailar’ and the group drew attention for a ‘hand drill’ – using their hands to mark where their feet should be, timed to the beat.
Swimmers jumped to run through some vertical spins, lifts and barracudas (which involve pushing the body straight out of the water while upside down). Some stood tall, gathered around Vicki Valosik, who is not just a member of the team, but the author of the new book “Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water.”
“Oooh,” a teammate said as Valosik pulled an advance copy from her bag. “Is this book in the flesh?”
For many, synchronized swimming (or “artistic swimming,” as the competitive sport is now called, following a rebrand in 2017) may be synonymous with 1950s Esther Williams aquatic blockbusters like “Million Dollar Mermaid” — or maybe the classic 1984 “Saturday Night Live” skit. mocking what was then a fledgling Olympic sport.
But to “Swimming beautifully,” Valosik puts the sport in a broad historical context, showing how the very idea of women taking to the water has reflected and driven social change.
“A lot of people see synchro as a niche sport, but it’s associated with women learning to swim, with lifesaving, with women showing people what they can do physically,” she said. “It’s not just that light and fluffy thing with the flowery swimming caps.”
Which isn’t to say that the book, just released by Liveright, is anything but a worthy coming-of-age story. The story of “synchro,” as practitioners call it, reflects a persistent tension between sport and entertainment, and Valosik doesn’t dwell on the latter. “Swimming Pretty” features plenty of “who knew?” moments and a packed cast of characters, including Victorian-era “water queens” who performed elaborate acrobatics in glass-fronted tanks and Annette Kellerman, an early 20th-century champion swimmer turned fitness guru and star of stage and screen .
In her day, Kellerman, one of the first women to seriously attempt to cross the English Channel, was a huge celebrity. She took the lead stylish and functional one-piece swimsuits for women, and is credited as the first woman to appear nude in a film (“Neptune’s Daughter”, from 1914).
“It’s amazing how forgotten she is,” Valosik said.
Valosik, 44, a petite blonde with arms toned from hours of sculpting (the flutter swimmers use to propel themselves), showed up for a pre-workout interview in a sleeveless top printed with retro swimmers in various float patterns. But growing up outside of Nashville, he had little interest in sports.
He came to “synchronization” somewhat by accident about a dozen years ago, encouraged by a former boss, an amateur figure skater. He found a meeting with the DC Synchromasters, a rival group of masters who developed a local group, the Aqua Gems, who played at shows the water in the 1960s.
When Valosik first jumped into the pool, she had a typical newbie reaction.
“It was crazy how hard it was,” he said. “I thought my chest is basically two air bags and I’m supposed to push it gracefully through the water?”
Within a year, Valosik, who now works as a writing teacher and editor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, was competitive (not well, he said). Curious about the history of the sport, he also began diving into the archives.
Her first trip was to the International Swimming Hall of Fame, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She found scrapbooks of figures such as Aileen Riggin, who at the 1920 Olympics became the first woman to win a gold medal in springboard diving (she was just 14), and Wilbert E. “Longfellowan early 20th-century water safety pioneer who organized elaborate contests to promote his goal of “waterproofing America.”
There were also completely unexpected things, such as a collection related to the early 20th century “Diving Girls” — Daredevils who performed in venues from seedy carnivals to Broadway theaters, plunging from heights of up to 100 feet into pools 12 feet wide and six feet deep.
There was already one history of competitive sport, published in 2005 by Dawn Pawson Bean, a former sprinter who went on to compete and coach several synchro teams. As Valosik continued to research, she found herself particularly fascinated by the complex prehistory of the sport and the various ways in which women had sought pleasure and competition in the water.
“It became like an origin story,” Valosik said of her project. “I was fascinated by everything that had come before.”
In 2021, after he posted an article in The Atlantic about renaming the sport “artistic swimming,” received a call from Gina Iaquinta at Liveright, a division of WW Norton.
“I loved the way it slipped through the story,” Iaquinta said. “It promised to be a great book, emulating the sport itself — rigorous, yet entertaining.”
“Swimming Pretty” has garnered largely rave reviews so far. In the Wall Street Journal, dance critic Sarah L. Kaufman the book is called an “enlightening, well-researched story,” though she expressed disappointment that Valosik didn’t give readers an inside look at what it’s like to compete.
Early on, the very idea of women competing on the water, as opposed to attractively clashing, was troubling to some. In 1912, when the Olympics added women’s swimming and platform diving, the US Olympic Committee refused to send athletes, saying it was “opposed to women participating in any event in which they could not wear long skirts.”
Others feared that vigorous exercise of any kind would make women masculine and ugly. “It is a woman’s business to look beautiful, and there are hardly any sports in which she looks capable of doing so,” wrote Paul Gallico, a prominent sports journalist, in Vogue in 1936.
Valosik’s title comes from theater impresario Billy Rose, who in 1937 staged the first of his elaborate water shows known as the Aquacade. When Esther Williams, a teenage track champion whose Olympic dreams were dashed by the cancellation of the 1940 games, auditioned for the show, she was blunt: “I don’t want fast. I want beautiful.”
“Mr. Rose,” he replied, “if you’re not strong enough to swim fast, you probably aren’t strong enough to swim ‘pretty.’
In 1941, Williams made the jump to Hollywood, where she made 21 films for MGM, most of them lavish “aquamusicals” such as the 1952 hit “Million Dollar Mermaid.” Valosik emphasizes the athleticism and boldness behind the glamour-girl smile. On set, Williams suffered at least seven broken eardrums, multiple brushes with hypoxic blackout and, after a six-story dive with an elaborate headdress, three broken vertebrae and the temporary loss of her arms.
Williams dropped out of the movies in the mid-1950s as her box office appeal waned and she largely disappeared from the public eye. But even decades later, the fledgling competitive sport was still struggling to distance itself from, or at least condescend to, its legacy.
“She’s a rare synchro athlete who doesn’t suffer from the showbiz stereotype that Esther turns effortlessly on the big screen,” lamented Swimming World magazine in 1985.
Today, the sport features increasingly difficult (and dangerous) moves—a point at the 2022 world championships, when American swimmer Anita Alvarez fainted during a solo routine and had to be rescued by her coach.
But there’s also a countervailing “nostalgic” strand, Valosik notes, exemplified by the Aqualillies, a group of retro acts (including some former Olympians) who have appeared in the movie “Hail, Caesar!” and series like “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and “Glee.” (The group’s annual water show in honor of Williams’ birthday will take place on August 8 in Los Angeles.)
The gender politics of sport are also changing. Ahead of this year’s Paris Olympics, a big story was whether veteran Bill May, 45, would become the first male artistic swimmer to compete in the Olympics after a rule change in 2022.
May, a member of the 2023 United States national team, failed to do so. But the growing presence of men, Valosik writes, is a sign that a sport derided as weak and ridiculous “has fully arrived.”
However, her message is strongly feminist.
“I hope the book will give readers a new perspective on the different paths to women’s liberation in the 20th century – one that took place on the water,” she said.
