ABSTRACT
Peggy Fleming was pure. It began with the neat assonance of her name, her dark hair parted plainly down the side, her high-necked, long-sleeved outfits in ironically exotic 60s cocktail colorsgrenadine and chartreuse. Watching her on tape, the directness of her style is striking, a chaste line so similar to another famous and pure Peggy: ballerina Margot Fonteyn, whose real name was Peggy Hookham. Both women excelled in simple strength, an almost royal minimalism that might have verged on the matronly were it not for the delicate hush, the flushes of girlish fervor that marked their connection with the audience. Neither were pyrotechnics. Neither were pyrotechnical, yet both became icons of their art forms, setting standards to which women after them have aspired-and fallen short.
