Muscles, symmetry and action: ‘do you measure up?’ defining masculinity in Britain and America from the 1860s to the early 1900s

Abstract

Two approaches inform the modern world's thinking about ‘the body’– that which predominates in the biological sciences (the body is a ‘machine’ that is governed by the laws of physics and chemistry) and that which has become of increasing interest to scholars in the social sciences and humanities (the body is substantially a neutral surface upon which social and cultural values are imprinted). Although what occurs deep within the body's structures is vitally important, it is anatomical form that commands our attention. The mesomorphic forms that presently pervade the media insistently proclaim that muscularity defines what it is ‘to be a man’. This is by no means the first time that such a message has been heard. Among the better educated, by the 1860s the icon of the well-muscled male – and all that this implied – was rapidly replacing the eighteenth-century ideal of manliness as one defined by proper stances, gestures, and countenance. In what has been described as Charles Kingsley's first muscular novel Two Years Ago (1857), broad-shouldered Tom Thurall is contrasted with the fragile and affected Elsley Vavasour. Muscles found particularly powerful expression in new forms of athletics and the concept of ‘athleticism’ that emerged in England and quickly made its way across the Atlantic. The Illustrated London News depicted sturdy gentlemen oarsmen and runners engaged in events such as the 1866 Oxford-Cambridge athletics meeting. A montage in Harper's Weekly (a popular American publication) in 1869 contrasted a handsome and muscular young oarsman with a bespectacled, wizened youth; many other publications offered similar messages. Anatomical form was given added emphasis in the rising interest in anthropometry, and by such things as contests designed to identify the ‘most physically perfect male’ that were held at a number of colleges.

Notes

This essay was originally published in The International Journal of the History of Sport 22, 3 (2005): 365–395.

[1] Connell, Masculinities, 45–6.

[2] O'Neill, Five Bodies, emphasis added.

[3]Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 June 1991, A4, A8.

[4] Cahn, Coming on Strong.

[5]‘Naked Power/Amazing Grace’, Life, July 1996; Brubach, ‘The Female Esthetic’.

[6] Jordanova, Sexual Visions. The most thorough account of late-nineteenth-century medical beliefs about the frailty of females remains Vertinsky, The Eternally Wounded Woman. See also chapters in Apple, Women, Health and Medicine in America.

[7] Banta, Imaging American Women.

[8] Canning, ‘The Body as Method?’.

[9] Budd, The Sculpture Machine; Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent; Ernst, Weakness Is a Crime; Vertinsky, ‘Embodying Normalcy’.

[10] Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany, 33 and 182–7.

[11] Ibid., chapter 7. See also Hoberman, Mortal Engines, 176–82.

[12] Mangan, Shaping the Superman and Superman Supreme. See also Alkemeyer, ‘Images and Politics of the Body’ and Krüger, ‘There Goes this Art of Manliness’.

[13] Garb, Bodies of Modernity, chs 1 and 2. For fin-de-siècle anxieties about such matters see Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France, ch. 9.

[14] Whitehead and Barrett, The Masculinities Reader, 1.

[15] For example, Gilmore, Manhood in the Making; Hawley, Boys Will Be Men; Leverenz, Manhood and the American Renaissance.

[16] For example, Carnes and Griffen (eds), Meanings for Manhood; Rotundo, American Manhood; Bederman, Manliness and Civilization.

[17] Bottomley, Attitudes to the Body, 160.

[18] Kuriyama, The Expressiveness of the Body, 8.

[19] See for example, Céard et al., Le Corps à la Renaissance.

[20] Nutton, ‘Les Exercises et la Santé’; Manson, ‘Le Rôle des Objets de Jeu’.

[21] Todd, ‘The Strength Builders’. According to Todd, the Indian club was introduced early in the nineteenth century to England and America by British officers who had been stationed in India and were impressed by the muscular strength of the native soldiery and police who used it for training.

[22] Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution, 95–l19.

[23] Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex?, ch. 7. See also Stafford, Body Criticism.

[24] See for example, Göbel et al., Engendering Images of Man in the Long Eighteenth Century. On the cover a wigged gentleman with rapier by his side stands among Greek statues in an eighteenth-century courtyard.

[25] Cohen, ‘Without Polish’. See also Cohen, Fashioning Masculinity.

[26] Haley, Living Forms, 7.

[27] Haley, ‘Sports and the Victorian World’. For a detailed account of the emergence of this powerful ideology see Mangan, Athleticism.

[28] Haley, The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture.

[29]‘Physical Education’, Harper's Weekly, 2 Oct. 1869.

[30]‘Sport, Past and to Come’, Bailey's Magazine of Sports and Pastimes 18 (1870), 191–7.

[31]‘The Eton and Harrow Match’, The Saturday Review, 17 July 1869; ‘The Boat-Race’, The Saturday Review, 4 April 1874.

[32] Jenkyns, The Victorians and Ancient Greece; Young, ‘Mens Sana in Corpore Sano?’.

[33] Kingsley, The Heroes, vi–vii, xvi.

[34] Kingsley, Health and Education, 22.

[35] Chitty, The Beast and the Monk, Ch. 3.

[36] Haley, ‘Sports and the Victorian World’. See also Mack and Armytage, Thomas Hughes, ch. 6.

[37] Quoted in Martin, The Dust of Combat, 220.

[38]‘Tom Brown's Schooldays. By an Old Boy’, Edinburgh Review 107 (1858), 172–93.

[39] Kingsley, Health and Education, l.

[40]‘Physiological Riddles: I. How We Act’, Cornhill Magazine 2 (1860), 20–32; ‘Physiological Riddles: II. Why We Grow’, ibid., 167–74; ‘What Are the Nerves?’Cornhill Magazine 5 (1862), 153–66; ‘Health’, Cornhill Magazine 3 (1861), 332–41.

[41]‘Training’, Cornhill Magazine 15 (1867), 92–103.

[42] See Park, ‘High Protein Diets’; Park, ‘Athletes and Their Training’; Whorton, ‘“Athlete's Heart”’; Hoberman, ‘The Early Development of Sports Medicine in Germany’.

[43] I attempt to argue this point in ‘“Cells or Soaring?”.

[44]‘The Oxford and Cambridge Athletic Sports in Christ Church Meadows’, Illustrated London News, 24 March 1866, supplement; Walsh, Athletic Sports and Manly Exercises.

[45] Blundell, The Muscles and Their Story.

[46] Wilkinson, Modern Athletics.

[47]‘Argonaut’, The Arts of Rowing and Training, 88.

[48] Woodgate, ‘Oars and Sculls’.

[49] Warwick, ‘Exercising the Student Body’.

[50]‘Athletics’, Contemporary Review 3 (1866), 374–91.

[51] Treherne and Goldie, Record of the University Boat Race, 1829–1880; Proctor, Strength.

[52] Bradley,' The Relationship of Anatomy to the Fine Arts'.

[53] Livingstone, The Greek Genius, 125–7, 133–8.

[54] H.L.B., ‘Athletic Training in Schools’, The Sporting Mirror 7 (1884), 269–71.

[55]‘The Boat-Race’, The Nation 2 (Sept. 1869), 187–9.

[56]‘Gymnastics’, North American Review 169 (1855), 51–69.

[57] Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 197.

[58]‘Saints, and their Bodies’, The Atlantic Monthly 1 (1858), 582–95. For an extensive coverage of American attitudes, anxieties and endeavours regarding health between 1830 and 1920 see Whorton, Crusaders for Fitness.

[59]‘The Gymnasium’, The Atlantic Monthly 3 (1859), 529–43.

[60] Young, ‘Are Americans Less Healthy than Europeans?’. Young also had praise for young Germans who belonged to Turner societies ‘where their Muscles become like iron’ and the French, who took walks along the Champs Elysées and in the Tuileries.

[61] Bryce, ‘A Plea for Sport’.

[62] Rosenberg, ‘The Place of George M. Beard; Oppenheim, ‘Shattered Nerves’.

[63] Beard, ‘English and American Physique’.

[64] Livermore, ‘The American Physical Man’.

[65] Collins, The Woman in White as cited in Oppenheim, ‘Shattered Nerves’, 148–9.

[66] Blackie, On Self-Culture; Eaton, Things a Young Man Should Know.

[67] Eaton, Things a Young Man Should Know, 122–8, passim.

[68] Blaikie, How to Get Strong.

[69] Scott, Physical Training in New England Schools. Scott had presented the paper at meetings of the Boston Physical Education Society and at the High School Teachers' Institute, where he accompanied his remarks with such things as photographs of English school views, the Phillips-Exeter gymnasium and Greek statuary.

[70] O'Reilly, Athletics and Manly Sport.

[71] Wadsworth, How to Get Muscular, 3–28.

[72] Dwight, ‘Intercollegiate Regattas’.

[73] Green, ‘College Athletics’.

[74] Bradley, ‘The Prominence of Athleticism in England’.

[75] Richards, ‘College Athletics – I. Advantages’ and ‘College Athletics and Physical Development’.

[76] White, ‘A Physician's View’.

[77]‘Address of Professor J. William White’; ‘Address of Dr R. Tait McKenzie’; DuBois-Reymond, Swedish Gymnastics and German Gymnastics.

[78] Kozar, The Sport Sculpture of R. Tait McKenzie, 43.

[79] Trall, The Illustrated Family Gymnasium.

[80] Tanner, A History of the Study of Human Growth, ch. 3.

[81] Stigler, The History of Statistics; Porter, The Rise of Statistical Thinking.

[82]In the introduction to a facsimile reproduction of the 1842 translation of Quetelet's A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties, Solomon Diamond observes: ‘To the modern reader, so accustomed to think in terms of intelligence classifications, it seems most odd that Quetelet should speak of the average man, fiction though he be, as a type of perfection. What one must remember is that for Quetelet the concept of perfection was linked to the classical ideal of moderation’: Quetelet, A Treatise on Man, xii.

[83] Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, chs 2 and 3.

[84] These points are well presented in Todd, Physical Culture and the Body Beautiful, ch. 7.

[85] Simms, Physiognomy Illustrated.

[86] Baxter, Statistics, Medical and Anthropological; Haller, ‘Civil War Anthropometry’. According to Haller, after the war the Sanitary Commission gave its apparatus to colleges and institutions it believed might continue such research.

[87] McIntosh, Physical Education in England, 97.

[88] MacLaren, A System of Physical Education, appendices.

[89]‘Anthropometry’, The Lancet, 8 May 1888.

[90] Galton, Hereditary Genius; ‘Final Report of the Anthropometric Committee’.

[91] Roberts, A Manual of Anthropometry, 2.

[92] See Park, ‘Science, Service’.

[93] Blaikie, How to Get Strong.

[94] Mclntosh, Physical Education in England, 94; MacLaren, System of Physical Education, 23–52.

[95] Hitchcock, ‘Physical Culture’.

[96] For example, Bowditch, ‘The Growth of Children Studied by Galton's Percentile Grades’.

[97] Wey, Physical and Industrial Training of Criminals; Wey, ‘Physical Training of Youthful Criminals’. See also Fink, Causes of Crime.

[98] Both Harvard's president Charles William Eliot and Nathaniel Shaler, dean of the Harvard Summer School, took issue with Sargent when he sold his handbooks (which were to be used by students) in the Hemenway Gymnasium. See Park, ‘The Rise and Demise of Harvard's BS Program’.

[99]‘The Physical Symmetry Competition at Cambridge’, Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 11 Sept. 1890.

[100]‘Adam and Eve: A Harvard professor [Sargent] took measurements of some sixty anatomical features of 25,000 American subjects to create these “typical” forms of American manhood and womanhood’. Reported in Bolotin and Laing, The World's Columbian Exposition, 76–7.

[101] Kellogg, ‘A New Dynamometer’, 269–75.

[102] Sargent, ‘The Physical Characteristics of the Athlete’. Also Sargent, ‘The Physical Proportions’.

[103] Seaver, Anthropometry and Physical Examination, 94.

[104] Richards, ‘College Athletics and Physical Development’.

[105] Ibid., 730.

[106] Beyer, ‘Football and the Physique of its Devotees’, 306–22.

[107] Hitchcock and Seelye, An Anthropometric Manual.

[108] Stated in the concise and informative discussion of Hitchcock in the introductory chapter, ‘Exercise Physiology: Roots and Historical Perspectives’, in McArdle et al., Exercise Physiology.

[109]Annual Report of the Professor of Hygiene and Physical Education, 9.

[110] Ibid., 8–10.

[111] Roberts, ‘Our National Physique’; Hitchcock, ‘Some Principles’ and ‘Cultivation of Body and Mind’.

[112] Metzner, ‘The German System of Gymnastics’; Posse, ‘The Chief Characteristics’; Hartwell, ‘The Training of Teachers’; Dukes, ‘Games and Athletics’.

[113] Hoppin, The Athletic Games and Their Effect on Greek Art.

[114] See Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent.

[115] Oriard, Reading Football, 94 and passim.

[116]‘Snap Shots of the Strong Men of Harvard's Ancient Rival’, New York Journal, 21 March 1897.

[117]‘Intercollegiate Strength Tests’, American Physical Education Review 2 (1897), 216–20; ‘A Very College Samson’, Providence Sunday Telegraph, 5 Dec. 1897.

[118] Benezet, Three Years of Football, 105–36.

[119] Bardett and Gifford, Dartmouth Athletics, 283.

[120] Wilkinson, Modern Athletics, 91–110; Treherne and Goldie, Record of the University Boat Race, 1829–1880.

[121] For example, The New York Clipper Annual for 1896; Sullivan, Athletic Almanac, 1895; Sullivan, Official Athletic Almanac, 1896.

[122]‘Here's More Glory for California University Girls’, San Francisco Examiner, 20 Jan. 1897.

[123] Parkman, ‘The Woman Question’; Livermore, ‘Recommendatory Letter’ in Austin, Perils of American Women.

[124] Linderman, The Mirror of War, especially ch. 6.

[125] Roosevelt, The Rough Riders, ch. 1.

[126] Camp, ‘Football, Review’.

[127] Camp, Football Facts and Figures.

[128] Deming, ‘Athletics in College Life’; Bates, ‘The Negative Side of Modern Athletics’.

[129] Foster, ‘An Indictment of Intercollegiate Athletics’, 577–88.

[130] Roosevelt, Rough Riders, 3–5.

[131] Roosevelt, ‘What We Can Expect from the American Boy’, 571–4.

[132]‘Roosevelt's Physique’, The Sargent Quarterly 4 (1919), 1–3.

[133]‘One Built Like Hercules; Other Four are Apollos’, San Francisco Call, 22 Oct. 1919; also ‘Physically Perfect Men Found at UC’, Oakland Tribune, 19 Oct. 1919.

[134]‘UC Girls Seek the Perfect 25 on the Campus’, San Francisco Chronicle, 20 Oct. 1919.

[135]‘UC Presents the Perfect Woman, Co-eds Share Honors with Super-Beings’, San Francisco Examiner, 23 Oct. 1919.

[136]‘Free for All for Supermen’, San Francisco Examiner, 27 Oct. 1919.

[137] For example, ‘Twenty-Five Physically Perfect’, Stockton Record, 22 Oct. 1919; ‘Most “Perfect” is claimed by West’, Cleveland Plain Dealer, 9 Nov. 1919; ‘Claimants of Superman and Superwoman Honors’, Portland Journal (Oregon), 30 Nov. 1919; ‘St Ignatius has “Superman”, San Francisco Call, 20 Oct. 1919.

[138] Blackford and Newcomb, Analyzing Character, 111–67.

[139]‘The Biology of Beauty’, Newsweek, 3 June 1996.

[140]‘The Men in the Mirror’, Chronicle of Higher Education, 27 Sept. 2002, A53–4.