Slouch, p.37
Slouch, page 37
48. Dorothy S. Ainsworth, “Our Contribution to Morale in Times of War and Peace,” Journal of Health and Physical Education 14, no. 2 (1943): 68.
49. Martha H. Verbrugge, Active Bodies: A History of Women’s Physical Education in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
50. “Fundamental Movement” lecture notes and outline, December 2, 1946, Department of Exercise and Sport Studies records, Box “Departments: Physical Education,” File “Courses, Reports,” Smith College Archives, CA-MS-01043, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
51. Syllabus for “Technique of Physical Examination,” a course offered in 1946, Department of Exercise and Sport Studies records, Box “Departments: Physical Education,” File “Courses, Reports,” Smith College Archives, CA-MS-01043, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
52. Patricia Vertinsky and Bieke Gils, “ ‘Physical Education’s First Lady of the World’: Dorothy Sears Ainsworth and the International Association of Physical Education and Sport for Women and Girls,” International Journal of the History of Sport 33, no. 13 (2016): 1500–1516.
53. Dorothy S. Ainsworth, “Report for the Dept. of Physical Education,” November 1, 1934, Department of Exercise and Sport Studies records, Box “Departments: Physical Education,” File “Courses and Reports, 1930s,” Smith College Archives, CA-MS-01043, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
54. Hans Bonde, “The Iconic Symbolism of Niels Bukh: Aryan Body Culture, Danish Gymnastics and Nordic Tradition,” International Journal of the History of Sport 16, no. 4 (1999): 104–18. Bukh traveled to the United States in 1923 and 1926, and in the 1930s he traveled to South America and South Africa.
55. Niels Bukh, Fundamental Gymnastics: The Basis of Rational Physical Development (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1928), 4.
56. Bonde, “The Iconic Symbolism of Niels Bukh.” For an example of an interwar American adaptation of Bukh’s program, see Dorothy Sumption, Fundamental Danish Gymnastics for Women (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1929), 1–9.
57. Hazel C. Peterson, a student of Ainsworth’s, completed a biography of her mentor for a doctoral dissertation. See Hazel C. Peterson, “Dorothy S. Ainsworth: Her Life, Professional Career and Contributions to Physical Education” (PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 1968).
58. Robert L. Griswold, “ ‘Russian Blonde in Space’: Soviet Women in the American Imagination, 1950–1965,” Journal of Social History 45, no. 4 (Summer 2012): 881.
59. Dorothy S. Ainsworth, “Contribution of Physical Education to the Social Service Agency,” Journal of the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation 21, no. 6 (1950): 325, 367–68.
60. Vertinsky and Gils, “ ‘Physical Education’s First Lady of the World.’ ”
61. Jonathan Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality (New York: Dutton, 1995), 96.
62. Anna G. Creadick, Perfectly Average: The Pursuit of Normality in Postwar America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), 74.
63. This was in contrast to the zoot suit. See Kathy Peiss, Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).
64. Jennifer Terry, An American Obsession: Science, Medicine, and Homosexuality in Modern Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Carolyn Herbst Lewis, Prescription for Heterosexuality: Sexual Citizenship in the Cold War Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).
65. For more on Sheldon, see Patricia Vertinsky, “Physique as Destiny: William H. Sheldon, Barbara Honeyman Heath and the Struggle for Hegemony in the Science of Somatotyping,” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 24, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 291–316; Sarah W. Tracy, “An Evolving Science of Man: The Transformation and Demise of American Constitutional Medicine, 1920–1950,” in Greater than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine, 1920–1950, ed. Christopher Lawrence and George Weisz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 161–88. For primary sources, see William H. Sheldon, “The New York Study of Physical Constitution and Psychotic Pattern,” in Sensation and Measurement, ed. Howard R. Moskowitz, Bertram Scharf, and Joseph C. Stevens (New York: Springer, 1974), 147–55; William H. Sheldon, Atlas of Men: A Guide for Somatotyping the Adult Male at All Ages (New York: Harper, 1954); J. E. Lindsay Carter and Barbara Honeyman Heath, Somatotyping: Development and Applications (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
66. Quotations from Liam O’Connor, “How Your Shape Shapes Your Life,” Popular Science 160, no. 5 (May 1952): 116–19, 228, 230, 232.
67. Vertinsky, “Physique as Destiny.”
68. Vertinsky, “Physique as Destiny,” and Tracy, “An Evolving Science of Man.” Much of this same information, including the number of psychiatric patients that he photographed, can be found in Sheldon’s Personal Papers, held at the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Suitland, Maryland. See, for example, Box 5, file “New York Psychiatric,” and Box 14, file Oregon State Prison.
69. Sheldon Papers, Box 10, file “Atlas of Women Inquiries,” and Box 30, file “College Series Statistics,” National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Suitland, Maryland.
70. Sheldon, Atlas of Men.
71. St. Clair Drake, “Reflections on Anthropology and the Black Experience,” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 9, no. 2 (Summer 1978): 85–109.
72. Katrina Hazzard-Donald, “Dance,” in Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-First Century, ed. Paul Finkelman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
73. David K. Wiggins, “Charles Holston Williams: Hamptonian Loyalist and Champion of Racial Uplift through Physical Education, Dance, Recreation, and Sport,” International Journal of the History of Sport 36, no. 17–18 (2019): 1531–51. Wiggins points out that it was also important to signal masculinity among the Black male dancers, making sure that they were not overly effete or homosexual. Wiggins, “Charles Holston Williams,” 1540.
74. “Hale America Program to Keep Nation from Going Soft: Three-Fold Purpose,” Atlanta Daily World, March 30, 1942, 5.
75. Lucius Jones, “Sports Slants,” Atlanta Daily World, April 22, 1942, 5.
76. “Physical Education and Athletic Association Bulletin Published for the Class of 1954 in the Fall of 1958,” Department of Exercise and Sport Studies records, Box “Departments: Physical Education,” file “Publications, 1920–1993,” Smith College Archives, CA-MS-01043, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
77. Margaret Perkins, Smith College Press Board, to Helen Stafford, Society Editor, Hartford Courant, Hartford, CT, March 12, 1940, Department of Exercise and Sport Studies records, Box “Departments: Physical Education,” File “Body Mechanics,” Smith College Archives, CA-MS-01043, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
78. Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998), 239.
79. Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 245.
80. Joseph Hansen, Evelyn Reed, and Mary-Alice Waters, Cosmetics, Fashions, and the Exploitation of Women (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1986): 39, as quoted in Peiss, Hope in a Jar, 256.
81. Florence C. Whipple, “An Experience in Health Motivation for College Girls,” Journal of Health and Physical Education 18, no. 9 (November 1947): 639–88.
82. For quote, see J. Robertson, “Are You Norma, Typical Woman? Search to Reward Ohio Winners,” Plain Dealer (Cleveland), September 9, 1945, 1, as quoted in Creadick, Perfectly Average, 29.
83. “Books: The Glad Hatter, Lilly Daché’s Glamour Book,” Time, March 26, 1956, 112.
84. Paisley Harris, “Gatekeeping and Remaking: The Politics of Respectability in African American Women’s History and Black Feminism,” Journal of Women’s History 15, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 212–20.
85. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 187.
86. For the purpose and methodology of her dissertation research, see “An Outline: ‘The Development of Beauty in College Women through Health and Physical Education,’ 1938,” Maryrose Reeves Allen Papers, Series B “Education,” Box 160-4, Folder 4, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University Archives, Washington, DC. For model club and concerns about superficial beauty, see Reeves Allen Papers, Series C, Box 160-7, Folder 4.
87. This quote comes from the 1939 draft of her dissertation. “An Outline,” Reeves Allen Papers.
88. See Reeves Allen papers, Series C “Teaching Materials,” Boxes 160-7 through 160-10.
89. “Foundations of Physical Education” handwritten lecture notes, Reeves Allen Papers, Series C “Teaching Materials,” Box 160-4, Folder 4.
90. For more on Allen, see Verbrugge, Active Bodies; Ava Purkiss, “ ‘Beauty Secrets: Fight Fat’: Black Women’s Aesthetics, Exercise, and Fat Stigma, 1900–1930s,” Journal of Women’s History 29, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 14–37; Kimberly D. Brown, “The Battle for Black Beauty: Howard University’s Grooming Program for Women and African-American Activism in Redefining Aesthetic Ideology through Pageants Since 1925” (PhD dissertation, Howard University, 2013).
91. Reeves Allen Papers, Series C “Teaching Materials,” Boxes 160-7 through 160-10. The most commercially visible relationship between Prudden and Kraus can be found in their trade publications, such as Bonnie Prudden, Hans Kraus, and Marjorie Morris, Is Your Child Really Fit? (New York: Harper, 1956).
92. “Body Aesthetics” course lecture notes, Reeves Allen Papers, Series C “Teaching Materials,” Box 160-4, Folder 5.
93. Reeves Allen Papers, Series B “Education,” Box 160-4, Folder 4.
94. Newspaper clipping, Reeves Allen Papers, Series C “Teaching Materials,” Box 160-4, Folder 4.
95. Newspaper clipping, Reeves Allen Papers.
96. DeVore’s charm school, according to historian Malia McAndrew, targeted “ordinary black women,” and within a decade of opening had trained over 19,000 clients. Malia McAndrew, “Selling Black Beauty: African American Modeling Agencies and Charm Schools in Postwar America,” OAH Magazine of History 24, no. 1 (January 2010): 32.
97. McAndrew, “Selling Black Beauty,” 30. While most charm school advertisements in the Black press depict Black women as experts, I found one example of a “Prison Charm School” at Westfield State Farm in Bedford Hills, NY, with an image of Bonnie Prudden leading a group of Black women prisoners in posture and fitness exercises. See “Prison Charm School,” Ebony Magazine, January 1960, 75–78.
98. Katharine Capshaw Smith, “Childhood, the Body, and Race Performance: Early 20th Century Etiquette Books for Black Children,” African American Review 40, no. 4 (Winter 2006): 796.
99. Natalie Scurlock, “Newest Fall Fashions Demand Good Posture,” Afro-American (Baltimore), August 2, 1947, M-4. For other examples of newspaper articles that promote the importance of posture to charm, see Lou Swarz, “Charm,” Philadelphia Tribune, March 22, 1952, 5; “Buffer College Group Sponsors ‘Charm’ School,” Chicago Defender, April 19, 1947, 17.
100. “Kissing Co-Ed Sent Home; Students Revolt,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 9, 1929, 1.
101. Susan K. Cahn, “If We Got That Freedom: ‘Integration’ and the Sexual Politics of Southern College Women, 1940–1960,” in Connexions: Histories of Race and Sex in North America, ed. Jennifer Brier, Jim Downs, and Jennifer L. Morgan (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2016): 186.
Chapter Six: The Perils of Posture Perfection
1. “Posture Photos Return to Files,” Cornell Daily Sun (Ithaca, NY), September 19, 1950, 1.
2. Harlee Fried, “A Side View of Posture Pictures: It Gave Women a Sense of Pride,” Miscellany News (Poughkeepsie, NY), November 11, 1977, 6.
3. Donald L. Robinson, “Posture Program Not to Be Abolished, According to Kiphuth,” Yale Daily News (New Haven, CT), February 10, 1956, 1.
4. Robinson, “Posture Program Not to Be Abolished.”
5. Robinson, “Posture Program Not to Be Abolished.”
6. Ellen Kelly, “Taking Posture Pictures,” Journal of Health and Physical Education 17, no. 8 (1946): 464–505.
7. Marcella F. Hance, interview by Betsy McKlveen, May 6, 1988, Pembroke Center Oral History Project, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
8. North v. Board of Trustees of the University, 137 Ill. 296 (1891) at 306, quoted in P. Lee, “The Curious Life of In Loco Parentis at American Universities,” Higher Education in Review 8 (2011): 69.
9. James D. Anderson, Education of Blacks in the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 54.
10. Heather Munro Prescott, Student Bodies: The Influence of Student Health Services in American Society and Medicine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007).
11. For examples of this, see Martha H. Verbrugge, Able-Bodied Womanhood: Personal Health and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Boston (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Martha H. Verbrugge, Active Bodies: A History of Women’s Physical Education in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). See also Margaret A. Lowe, Looking Good: College Women and Body Image, 1875–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003).
12. Pauline Ames Plimpton, “Letters and Opinions,” Smith Alumnae Quarterly (Spring 1985): 2.
13. Mary Evans Boname, “Letters and Opinions,” Smith Alumnae Quarterly (Spring 1985): 2–3.
14. Sylvia Plath, Letters Home: Correspondence 1950–1963 (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 48, quoted in Jonathan P. Lewis, “Posture Pictures and Other Tortures: The Battle to Control Esther Greenwood’s Body,” Quarterly Horse 1, no. 1 (November 2016), https://www.quarterlyhorse.org/fall16/lewis.
15. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (New York: Bantam Winstone, 1981), 56.
16. Beth Linker, “Tracing Paper, the Posture Sciences, and the Mapping of the Female Body,” in Working with Paper, ed. Carla Bittel, Elaine Leong, and Christine von Oertzen (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), 124.
17. Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, “The Right to Privacy,” Harvard Law Review 4, no. 5 (December 1890): 193–220.
18. Sarah E. Igo, The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 37.
19. Heidi Katherine Knoblauch, “Patients’ Posture: Medical Photography, Collecting, and Privacy, 1862–1962” (PhD dissertation, Yale University, 2015), 155.
20. Knoblauch, “Patients’ Posture.”
21. Knoblauch, “Patients’ Posture.”
22. “X-Ray Examinations! Urged,” Washington Post, October 5, 1937, 25.
23. “Photos of Nude Co-Eds Stir Up Detroit Furor,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 4, 1937, 1.
24. Sarah Lincoln Doyle, “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes: The Origins of Posture Photographs at Wellesley College, 1875–1942” (master’s thesis, Wellesley College, 1996).
25. Charlotte G. MacEwan, Elizabeth Powell, and Eugene C. Howe, “An Objective Method of Grading Posture: Its Development, Routine Procedure and Applications,” Physical Therapy 15, no. 5 (September 1935): 169.
26. Kenneth D. Miller, “A Physical Educator Looks at Posture,” Journal of School Health 21, no. 3 (March 1951): 89–94.
27. Louis B. Laplace and Jesse T. Nicholson, “Physiologic Effects of the Correction of Faulty Posture,” JAMA 107, no. 13 (1936): 1009–12.
28. James Frederick Rogers, “Constitutional and Acquired Posture,” Journal of School Health 3, no. 1 (January 1933): 8.
29. James Frederick Rogers, “The Long and Short of the Carriage Business,” Journal of Health and Physical Education 3, no. 10 (December 1932): 11–59.
30. Dr. J. Philip Keeve would offer the final blow to school-based posture exams (with the exception of scoliosis exams) and training. Keeve, “ ‘Fitness,’ ‘Posture’ and Other Selected School Health Myths,” Journal of School Health 37, no. 1 (January 1967): 8–15.
31. F. A. Hellebrandt and Elizabeth Brogdon Franseen, “Physiological Study of the Vertical Stance of Man,” Physiological Reviews 23, no. 3 (July 1943): 220–55.
32. D. W. Schulenberg, “Letter to the Editor,” New York Times Magazine, February 5, 1995, 14.
33. See “Letters to the Editor” in response to Rosenbaum’s article. “Letters to the Editor,” New York Times Magazine, February 2, 1995, 14.
34. A colleague shared this correspondence with me from his own family personal papers. The names have been de-identified. The letter was sent from Sharpe, Northampton, Massachusetts, January 19, 1953, to her fiancé in Washington, DC.
