In contemporary North America, figure skating ranks among the most 'feminine' of sports and few boys take it up for fear of being labelled effeminate or gay. Yet figure skating was once an exclusively male pastime - women did not skate in significant numbers until the late 1800s, at least a century after the founding of the first skating club. Only in the 1930s did figure skating begin to acquire its feminine image.

Artistic Impressions is the first history to trace figure skating's striking transformation from gentlemen's art to 'girls' sport. With a focus on masculinity, Mary Louise Adams examines how skating's evolving gender identity has been reflected on the ice and in the media, looking at rules, technique, and style and at ongoing debates about the place of 'art' in sport. Uncovering the little known history of skating, Artistic Impressions shows how ideas about sport, gender, and sexuality have combined to limit the forms of physical expression available to men.

Mary Louise Adams is an associate professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies and the Department of Sociology at Queen's University.

Mary Louise Adams' profile page

• Winner, North American Society for Sport History Book Award

‘Mary Louise Adams offers a thoughtful and complex discussion about sport, gender, and sexuality. …Artistic Impressions is an excellent fusion of historical research and sociological analysis.’

Sociology of Sport Journal, vol 29:01:2012

‘It is full of fascinating detail….I learned a great deal and was impressed at how engagingly Adams explained some of the specificities of the transition from a set of sporting activities being embedded in masculinity to one so strongly inflected with femininity… Adams succeeds in putting figure skating onto the agenda of the history of sport.’

Sport in History, vol 32:01:2012

‘Artistic Impressions is an important book and a long-overdue contribution to the history of figure skating.’

Journal of Sport History; vol 40:02: 2013

'It was the movement to music that first drew me to figure skating, and it is still that aspect which fascinates me today. But like all young male figure skaters, I had to endure the social taboo of participating in the sport. I enjoyed reading Mary Louise Adams' remarkable book about the history of our sport. I was intrigued by how gender differences affected the direction of figure skating from the time of Sonia Henie to the present.'

Louis Stong, Skate Canada Hall of Famer and consultant; coach of World Champions Barbara Underhill, Paul Martini, and Kurt Browning

“This book offers an excellent history of the sport with respect to gender? Artistic Impressions should be a required reading for anyone involved in the marketing and development of figure skating.?

<em>International Figure Skating Magazine; August 2011</em>