Finding Lost Voices: Abbye “Pudgy” Stockton - The Queen of Muscle Beach who popularized Women in Weight Lifting
A weekly email that brings back the voices of those who have been forgotten or misremembered.
I’ve been thrilled to see all the body positivity about female athletes during the Olympic games in Paris. Seeing rugby player Ilona Maher go viral for her social media posts urging people to “throw the stereotypes around women’s sports … out the window.” All of it has brought me back to my current project, writing a book about the history of strong women and weight training and how muscular women are treated in the United States. There is a lot that has changed over the last century in regard to women lifting weights. Few know that before the 1950s, women could not compete in weightlifting. But thanks to early foremothers, we’ve been given that opportunity. I thought about this today as set up my bar and did a set of clean and jerks. How grateful I am to have this space where I can practice my sport. So, this week, I wanted to showcase another female strong woman, one who was a pivotal figure in normalizing exercise and weight training for women. A woman named Abbye “Pudgy” Stockton (1917 - 2006).
Stockton moved to Santa Monica, CA, in 1924. As a child, she was nicknamed “Pudgy,” and the name stuck even though she was anything but pudgy. During her childhood mother often brought her to the beach and taught her to swim in the Pacific Ocean. She claimed later that this was when she began to love physical activity. After graduating high school, while she was working as a telephone operator in Los Angeles, she began to gain weight. As she remembers, her boyfriend (UCLA student Les Stockton whom she would later marry) “persuaded me to start exercising He brought me some dumbbells and a York training course. I used the dumbbells some, and also did calisthenics, but I quickly discovered that the acrobatic work was a lot more fun to do.” Stockton found that not only did the weight she’d gained in her sedentary job come off, but her body composition began to change. She began to become lean and strong. She couldn’t work out in the regular swim suits women wore at the time, so she created her own out of men’s swim trunks and a bra that she sewed fabric over.
In 1939, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) installed exercise equipment on the beach in Santa Monica, including a platform with weightlifting equipment, creating a prime spot where Stockton and her boyfriend could train. (Later, this spot would be called “Muscle Beach.”) She spent her afternoons learning how to perform “perfect” handstands. As she remembers, “I worked a split shift at that time for the phone company and so I had my afternoons free. Les and I and Bruce Conner, a friend of Les’ from UCLA, would all gather there and practice in the sand.” Soon, the three began to do acrobatic tricks. That fall, the group performed at a UCLA football game as part of the halftime show “Pudgy and Her Boys.”
Following World War II, men and women began to become interested in weight training and acrobatics, and large crowds began to gather at “Muscle Beach” to watch and train with the athletes who were lifting weights and performing acrobatic feats. As Stockton’s husband Les recalled, “At first, all there really was at Muscle Beach were just some kids who’d go down to the beach to practice doing acrobatics at the Del Mar Beach Club. But under the direction of Deforest Most … things became more organized. A few professional hand balancers began coming down to the beach to train, people like Betsy and Kitty Knight and Johnny Collins, who worked as a movie stuntman. Gradually, it evolved that regular exhibitions were held in the afternoons on the weekends. All kinds of folks participated in the shows—amateurs, professionals, children, weightlifters, bodybuilders, and handbalancers. The crowds were enormous.”
Stockton was petite, strong, and beautiful, and photographers loved to feature her in magazine spreads. In 1939, she appeared in Life Magazine. By the end of the 1940s, Stockton had appeared on 42 magazine covers worldwide, giving her a national reputation as a strongwoman. In 1944, she used this reputation to write a regular column for Strength & Health magazine, aimed at a female audience called “Barbells.” In these columns, Stockton highlighted the feats of other female athletes from Muscle Beach, such as Edna Rivers, Evalynne Smith, Pat King, and Relna Brewer Macrae. These strong women were adept at everything from jiu-jitsu and wrestling to running a mile in six minutes. Relna could rip a Los Angeles phone book in two with her bare hands. Stockton’s column and Muscle Beach worked to normalize athletic training for women and created an environment where women were applauded for their strength and encouraged to train alongside men.
But Stockton didn’t only write about the strong women she worked out with at Muscle Beach; she also set up the first weightlifting competitions for women in the United States. In 1947, Stockton organized the “Pacific Coast Weightlifting Championships,” which featured nine women competing in three bodyweight divisions. Stockton weighed 118 pounds, pressed 100 pounds, snatched 105 pounds, and got a 135-pound clean and jerk. Over the next two years, two other lifting contests were held for women, and by 1950, the AAU-sanctioned national championships.
UPCOMING EVENTS
August 25, Books and Books, Coral Gables, FL - AN AFTERNOON WITH NICOLE CALLIHAN, SUZANNE FRISCHKORN & IRIS JAMAHL DUNKLE
Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb Launch beginning in OCTOBER and November (more dates coming soon!)
OCTOBER 15 - Vromen’s Bookstore in Pasadena, CA - Iris Jamahl Dunkle in Conversation with The Lost Ladies of Lit Co-hosts Kim Askew and Amy Helmes,
October 16 - 6:00 PM - Iris Jamahl Dunkle reads at Bookmine in Napa.
October 18 - Iris Jamahl Dunkle reads at Copperfield’s Santa Rosa, CA
October 23 - Iris Jamahl Dunkle reads at Readers’ Books in Sonoma, CA
October 30 - Iris Jamahl Dunkle in conversation with HARRY STECOPOULOS AT PRAIRIE LIGHTS BOOKSTORE, IOWA CITY, IA
November 1, Iris Jamahl Dunkle with Catamaran in Santa Cruz, CA
November 18, The Book Club of California, San Francisco, CA
November 19, 4:30 PM UC Davis Manetti Shrem Museum
I had no idea the WPA put in the weight lifting equipment on Muscle Beach! Go, New Deal!