“My early physical misfortune has turned out to be the greatest blessing that could have come to me. Without it I should have missed all the grim struggle upward and the reward that waited at the end of it all.”
Annette Kellerman was just six years old when she developed weakness in her legs. This required her to wear painful steel braces and to help recovery, her parents enrolled Annette in swim classes.
As a teen her legs recovered and she became a champion swimmer, a record holder in the 100 yard and mile races in her native Australia.
But more than just swimming, she became famous for advocating for women’s rights.
“I can’t swim wearing more stuff than you hang on a clothesline,” she once said.
In a time when women were expected to wear dress and pantaloons to swim, she wore a one piece suit. And while doing so led to her arrest in 1907 in Massachusetts for indecency, with time she helped change the social norms.
Her one piece suit, known as the Annette Kellerman, became a popular swimsuit for women.