How Jewish women pioneered the fitness movement – The Forward
The women appear perfectly coiffed, makeup impeccable. They’re dressed in shorts, blouses, light sweaters and earrings to match. You might think they were headed off to a picnic in the park. But no, it’s 1958 and they’ve arrived at a calisthenics or “figure-shaping” class.
Well, actually this is a fictionalized recreation of what women’s group exercise might have looked like at the time in one of the most memorable scenes in the first season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
At the start of episode two, Miriam (aka, “Midge”) Maisel, a well-to-do Jewish housewife on the Upper West Side whose husband