Aside from their general awkwardness, which is not unexpected for an introductory class, the unusual thing about these beginners is that nearly half of them are women. In fact, Mele says, 40 percent of his customers at Forteza Fitness are women. And they're not just here for the crossfit classes.
"I'd like to attribute that to what a wonderful bunch of people we are," Mele says. "But women don't know anything about our organization when they sign up. Say that we were teaching Brazilian jiujitsu or Muay Thai boxing or something like that. A lot of women think, going into that, there's not going to be any women there. I'm gonna be training with guys, they're going to be stronger and it'll be some testosterone-laden gym.
"Ironically, even though sword fighting represents this incredibly lethal martial art, because of its role in our modern world it doesn't have any of those connotations for people. It comes across as romantic and exciting. By the same token, I think the other advantage is that weapons are an equalizer. Women can train with men."
And, at Forteza, they do. Mele says that there is even evidence in the historical record of women being trained in medieval swordplay.
"We do know that in the aristocratic schools of the 15th century," Mele says, "noble daughters were allowed to practice fencing. They weren't going to war, though. So it was, presumably, a leisure-time activity.
"The other thing we know is that our oldest surviving manuscripts — from somewhere around 1300 to 1325, on the sword and buckler — in the last part of the manuscript, after teaching all these techniques, there's a figure who appears named Walpurgis, which is a German women's name.
"Walpurgis basically shows up and defeats everything you've learned previously. She kicks everybody's ass. That may be a symbolic figure. She may represent a patron saint from the area in southern Germany, Saint Walpurgis. There may be some symbolism that's lost there. We don't know. While it would not have been commonplace, there is some evidence of women involved in the arts."
Still, younger students attending classes at Forteza — teenagers especially — are mostly women. Mele thinks it has a lot to do with the portrayal of women in modern pop culture, from Game of Thrones to The Hunger Games and even the Marvel movies.
"Ideally we hope that in not that many years, I won't even be talking to you about why we have so many women students."
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