Mehmet Fetgeri Şuenu (1890-1931) and Women's Physical Education

The study of sports and dance in the Ottoman period presents a complex domain for researchers. The primary sources for professional acting, dancing, and acrobatics performed in palaces and the households of the elite are imperial festival books, surnames, and narratives by foreign travelers and observers. There were almost no written sources on the local dances that we call folk dances today. In the 19th century, some researchers began to think and write directly about topics such as dance, sports, and physical education. For the Muslim-Ottoman world, Rıza Tevfik and Selim Sırrı Tarcan pioneered in the study of dance, movement, and the body. Both of them were also the first to establish a direct relationship between folk dances and the nation-state. Tarcan and Rıza Tevfik's interest in the meaning of folk dances paralleled their curiosity about the human body. According to them, the body was an expression of "strength" and "health". At the turn of the 20th century, the concept of "health" evoked the idea of a "healthy modern society" for nation-building and many Ottoman writers expressed their ideas on movements and modernity. Among these, one can count Selma Selim Sırrı's Bedii Rakslar, a manuscript on modern dance, and Mehmet Fetgeri Şuenu's Kadında Terbiye-i Bedeniye. Such writings not only interpreted a new system of movement at the time, but also emphasized the importance of women as bearers of the new modern society and, above all, of a "civilized life”. This article focuses on Mehmet Fetgeri Şuenu's book titled Kadında Terbiye-i Bedeniye, published in old script between 1914 and 1928 by the Zarafet Printing House. Although the work is co-authored with a Muallim Sami, the narrative written in first person, belong to Mehmet Fetgeri Şuenu. The book has greatly benefited from Max Parnet’s La Culture physique de la femme published in 1913. Fifty-four movements are collected in six chapters in the book, offering compact descriptions of the movements. Given the fact that Mehmet Fetgeri had a limited education, 13 it is probable that he needed a hand in the French translation of Panet’s book. Like Max Parnet’s work, Mehmet Fetgeri Şuenu’s book closely follows the original in its images and movement descriptions. Nevertheless, the explanations for the images differ in their style. Mehmet Fetgeri’s explanations are more detailed and provides a ‘cultural translation’ for the Ottoman readers. Its lengthy introduction tells how Mehmet Fetgeri was affected by the early death of his mother and sister from tuberculosis. He explains that he wrote the book to enable women to overcome the bodily weaknesses which cause fatal diseases. The content of the book in general, and more specifically the recommended exercises, also constitute an essential source for the understanding of women’s health and beauty issues that prevailed in the early 1900s. In that regard, it is also related to what kind of female beauty Ottoman men imagined at the turn of the 20th century. The book contains several pictures and captions, suggesting exercises which aim “to strengthen the muscles,” “making the legs look fuller”, “looking taller and straightening the shoulders” and “correcting the knees and spine.” These were rather outspoken descriptions of the female body, which has been a very intimate domain in the Ottoman world, but which began to be tolerated for the imagination of a “modern womanhood.”