‘Dress for success’ revisited

This Skirt Won’t Work: How Women Athletes Changed Their Clothes and Changed the Game
by Jennifer Cooper (illustrated by Eva Byrne)

Naperville: Sourcebooks Explore, 2025
$28.99 / 9781728267845

Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic

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This Skirt Won’t Work is a happy book, introducing a sunny world of possibilities.

With a feel-good infectiousness, Okanagan author and coach Jennifer Cooper (Kate Big and Strong) showcases social change as not only possible but something that can be initiated by pretty much anyone.

The picture book begins with girls in a locker room who are about to play their sport of choice. “But first,” the narrator says, “we’ll turn the clock way back….”

Pages on calendars show 1805 and 1906—which, for an audience of pre-schoolers born around 2015, will probably seem as far away in time as Ancient Egypt.

A few panels focus on girls in bygone finery—voluminous skirts, voluminous hats, “a stifling corset,” “layers upon layers of UNDERGARMENTS.” And with perplexed faces: how can they skate or bicycle competently in such froufrou gear?

(Throughout, Eva Byrne’s illustrations are a delight. She has an eye for period detail that kids will clue in on—and that adults will appreciate. Plus, the humorously nonplussed expressions on her athletes—which recall the frazzled women of New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast—really convey the often silly arbitrariness of social norms.)

“But keep in mind,” the narrator chimes in, “you MUST look… nice”: there are gender rules, young readers will pick up, and some rules have greater strength than others. 

Presenting this situation as a complicated bind, the narrator then steers readers from problem to solution: “We found a few women who figured out something much better to wear.” 

There’s bicyclist Katherine “Kitty” Knox in 1890, who loved to race and truly understood the limitations of a bulky ankle-length skirt.

With knickerbockers, she freed her legs. Ditto Annette Kellerman, an athlete realizing that her woollen swimming attire (stockings included!) throttled her.

She opted to sew her own maillot and—voila!—swam faster and more capably. “It’s time that I made some new waves,” Annette exclaims.

A Canadian ice skater (Albertine Lapensée, popularly known as the “Miracle Maid”), a French Jazz-era tennis player, and an English soccer player—which is to say football player—share similar epiphanies: socially-imposed restrictions can be refused with scissors, fabric, a needle, and a good idea.

The message is spelled out in a sing-song verse as the tale concludes:

And there you have it.
Out with these long, heavy,
stinky dresses. And in with
styles that let girls really PLAY!

Finally, a couple of panels reach into the present day, where clothing restrictions were circumvented by athletes like Alice Dearing, who challenged an IOC ruling about swim caps and later remarked, “We cannot allow younger generations to look at a sport and think, for whatever reason, ‘that’s not for people like me.’” Well said, Alice, well said.

Whenever he finishes it, Cull will be Brett Josef Grubisic‘s sixth novel. He assigns, edits, and posts fiction, poetry, and children’s lit reviews for BCR; occasionally, he contributes reviews as well. [He’s written about recent books by Caroline Adderson, Sunny Dhillon, Wanda John-Kehewin, Ryan O’Dowd, Michael V. Smith, David Bouchard, Alice Turski, Louise Sidley, K.J. Denny (ed.), Sonali Zohra, Carrie Anne Vanderhoop, Kristen Pendreigh, Sam Wiebe, Maureen Young, Daniel Anctil, and Adam Welch for BCR.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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