Skidmore College has republished the New York Times' year-end essay on Pudgy Stockton, penned by Skidmore writer-in-residence Elizabeth McCracken. McCracken clearly admires Stockton, her physique and the role she played:
There were strong women before Muscle Beach, pale, leotarded circus and vaudeville performers, stoic as caryatids as they lifted extraordinary weights. Even their names seem carved from stone: Minerva, Vulcana, Sandwina, Athleta. But Pudgy Stockton was something brand-new. Every inch and ounce of her body refuted the common wisdom that training with weights turned women manly and musclebound. She was splendid as a work of art but undoubtedly, thrillingly, flesh, blood, breath.
