In 1967 Kathrine Switzer became the first women to enter and finish the Boston Marathon and she unexpectedly reshaped our conceptions of gender.
The accepted knowledge forty years ago was that woman who participated in strenuous athletics would basically lose their femininity—“they would get big legs, grow a mustache, hair on your chest, and your uterus is going to fall out.” While woman had crashed the marathon before, Kathrine Switzer actually applied to run in the Boston Marathon. Signing her name with only her initials she was accepted and became the first woman to officially run in the race. With the support and training with her boyfriend she began the race. One Marathon director, however, felt doped and threatened by a woman officially running the Boston Marathon, and literally tired to take the numbers of her while she was running.
This is such an extraordinary story told by images I thought this link to another later image of Jock Semple and Katherine Switzer years later at another marathon. Semple is the marathon director photographed trying to tear Switzer’s number away.
http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/U1770509/jock-semple-and-katherine-switzer?popup=1