More Than Milk and Cookies: Reconsidering the College Play Day

Abstract

This paper considers how examining events such as college play days can provide additional insights into the experiences of women involved in college sport. This article interrogates the dominant discourses that scholars have previously assigned to the play day and seeks to build a new framework for understanding why play days were adopted and how they evolved between 1926 and 1971. I also examine how the play day served as a site where notions of respectable female physicality were reproduced and reworked by various groups to advance specific professional and cultural concerns. This article draws from twentiethcentury professional literature, magazines, textbooks, and college newspapers, in addition to the correspondence, minutes, and memoirs from various students, faculty, and administrative entities.