Vintage Military - Part 57

 Lebanon Crisis, 1958

In 1943, Lebanon became an independent country.  Previously, it was a French "mandate", i.e. a French pseudo-colony under the League of Nations.  At the time, Lebanon had both a substantial Christian and a substantial Muslim population.  A National Pact was agreed on, stating, among other things, that the Christians would not attempt to bring Lebanon under foreign control or influence (such as France), and that the Muslims would not attempt to bring Lebanon into political union with Syria or any Arab Union.

In 1958, Egypt and Syria politically merged to form the United Arab Republic (UAR).  An insurrection broke out in Lebanon, headed by Muslims who wanted to make Lebanon part of the UAR.  Lebanon's president requested assistance, and President Eisenhower sent 5000 U.S. Marines and 8500 soldiers to Beirut on July 15, 1958, plus a fleet of 70 U.S. ships offshore.

Above, U.S. Marines in Beirut showering outdoors, photographed by LIFE photographer Hank Walker.  Click on any of these photos for a larger view.

Another view of the Marines showering.

LIFE photographer Paul Schutzer recorded some soldiers in Beirut taking a break on the beach.  Above, one guy is buried in the sand ...

while his buddy looks on ...

and we look at his buddy.

(Full disclosure: the original photo was darker.  I brightened it.)

Another group playing in the surf are not naked, but apparently they were not issued swimsuits, so they seem to have just worn their underwear, which became transparent when wet.

We end with this zoomed-in look at the guy on the left. Having his shorts become transparent was apparently not enough for him, because he's letting something hang out.

The Lebanon crisis ended peacefully, with both sides agreeing to let popular Lebanese general Fouad Chehab be elected as President, and Lebanon remained an independent country.  U.S. troops were withdrawn in October, 1958.

Note: these photos are from the LIFE archive of 4 million photos taken by LIFE photographers, but they were not published in the magazine.

Performers - Part 51

 Waldemar Horwat

Waldemar Horwat is not a professional performer.  He is a self-described computer geek, but he is also a fire dancer, Burning Man burner, photographer, and more.  He took some of the photos in yesterday's post about the Bay to Breakers race.

Above, Waldemar performed naked as a fire spinner at a mini Burning Man event held at Red White and Blue Beach in Santa Cruz, California in 2004.

More naked fire spinning at the beach.

And more.

Here he is (on the ground) at the real Burning Man festival in 2010.  The photo is captioned "I tied Tezz on the Thunderdome."  I guess you could call it performance art.

Waldemar is into tying people up.  Here he is at the Dore Alley festival in SanFrancisco in 2015.  Waldemar, at left, has grown long hair.  He is wearing a rather revealing costume, and he is tying up a guy named Ethan.

He finishes off Ethan by tying on what he called a "beard leash".

Here's Ethan with his beard leash, and in the background another guy is taking care of himself in public.  Well, it's Dore Alley.

In 2016 Waldemar did another (almost) naked fire dance at Club Z in San Jose.

Then in 2019 we see him at the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco with another guy he has tied up naked.

In 2023 at the Folsom Street Fair, Waldemar tied up yet another naked guy and suspended him from ropes in what he called "Rope Performance."

We end with a close-up of Waldemar's assistant for "Rope Performance."  Nice rope work – but maybe you weren't looking at the ropes.

Events - Part 54

Bay to Breakers, 2009 

Bay to Breakers is an annual footrace in San Francisco.  The 7.5 mile (12 km) course crosses the city from San Francisco Bay to the breakers of the Pacific Ocean.  Much of the course runs through Golden Gate Park.  Some of the participants run (above) ...

some jog ...

but thousands of people just walk.  Most are clothed, of course, but being San Francisco, some dress in costumes and some are naked.  Walking the Bay to Breakers event naked has become such a tradition that it has a name, "Bare to Breakers", as seen on the caps of the couple above.

These guys are evidently not in a hurry to complete the race.  Smile, you're on camera!

These guys aren't even walking, just observing from the sidelines and being observed.

Here's another guy on the sidelines.  Well, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

And, being San Francisco, the variety of costumes and accessories is endless.  This guy's not ready to be fully naked, but he'll show us his buns.

This guy has a rainbow-colored umbrella.

This guy sports a floppy hat and a little cape.

This guy has a Mexican sombrero, a guitar, and the thickest bush I've ever seen.

And this guy is a minimalist – just a cap, not even shoes.

We end with the "Bare to Breakers" couple again, along with a bunch of like-minded folks.

Protests - Part 52

San Francisco, Jan-Feb 2013

On Jan. 27, 2013, a group of people in San Francisco staged a naked protest against the upcoming nudity ban.  The previous year, Scott Wiener, one of the members of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors (the city council) pushed through a new law banning public nudity, with a few exceptions for nude beaches and certain street fairs and festivals if they got a permit.

The ban was scheduled to go into effect on Feb. 1, 2013, a few days after this protest.  Previously, quite a few San Francisco residents walked around town naked, and nobody seemed to mind – nobody except Supervisor Scott Wiener.

Above, one of the protesters holds a sign showing famous nude artworks like Michelangelo's David.  His point?  Nudity is not obscene.

Two more of the protesters.  The protest was held right outside City Hall.

This guy arrived on a bike, took off his pants ...

and joined the protest.  His tattoo says "In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni," a Latin quote from a poem by the Roman poet Virgil.  It means "We go round and round in the night and are consumed by fire."  Not only is it a classical quote, but it's a palindrome – it reads the same backwards and forwards.  I'm not a big fan of tattoos, but I'm impressed.

This guy was one of the protesters, but he also brought his camera and took pictures of the others.

This protester's hat says "Recall ...

Wiener," the guy responsible for the anti-nudity law.

And here's Gypsy Taub, the de facto leader of the pro-nudity movement, with our "Recall Wiener" friend behind her.

Here's one last shot of the group of protesters.

Five days later, on February 1, the anti-nudity law went into effect.  A few of the pro-nudity protesters showed up publicly naked to test the new law.  Above, Gypsy Taub tells the media, "If they don't arrest me, I'll be disappointed."  She was not disappointed.  The cops showed up and arrested her.

George Davis, another prominent pro-nudity activist, also showed up on Feb. 1.

Sure enough, the police arrested him and took him into custody.

And Trey Davis was also interviewed naked by the media.  On his back was written "War is obcsene not my body."  His spelling needs some improvement ...

but not his body, in my opinion.  He explained to the media why he was protesting ...

and then the police took him into custody, too.

Ivy League Posture Photos - Part 31

Ivy League Posture Photos

Yale started taking nude photos of incoming freshmen in 1919 as part of a program to detect and correct posture problems.  The Yale photos have erroneously been associated with William Sheldon, a psychologist at Harvard and author of Nazi-like eugenic theories who used Harvard nude posture photos to illustrate his theory of somatypes.  The Yale program predates Sheldon, and, as far as I can tell, the Yale photos were never connected to Sheldon's work.

Here are seven more posture photos taken at Yale that I had the opportunity to acquire.  For privacy reasons, I redact the names of men who might still be alive.  One of these men has not passed away, so his name is redacted.

This is Yale freshman Christie Conlon Barter on Nov. 12, 1946.

In 1952, Yale installed an apparatus using mirrors to photograph the front, rear, side and top view.  Today's photos are from before 1952 and show only a profile view.

This is Yale freshman Frank Stewart Berall on Nov. 12, 1946.

Note the strange pins stuck to each student's back and chest.  The pins were stuck on at specific points for later posture analysis.

This is Yale freshman Jose Lopez de Victoria, Jr. on Nov. 12, 1946.

Supposedly, by examining the angles formed by connecting the points where the pins touched the body, certain posture problems could be detected.

This is Yale freshman L.K. on Nov. 19, 1946.

The photography and analysis of the photos was conducted by the staff of Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium.  Nobody outside this staff saw the photos, and the photos were not published for other students to see.

This is Yale freshman Waid Rogers on Nov. 12, 1946.

After the photos were used, they were filed away.

This is Yale freshman Carroll Davies French on Jan. 7, 1947.

If posture problems were detected, the student had to attend remedial posture sessions and a second posture photo as taken.  Initial photos were taken in the fall.  The photo above is a second photo taken after the remedial posture sessions.

This is Yale freshman William Davison Glover on March 18, 1947.  Another second photo taken after the remedial posture sessions.

The posture photo program was discontinued in the 1960s, and later, most of the photos were burned.  However, some of the photos escaped burning, including the photos that I have been showing in this series.

*        *        *

Note: some of my followers have questioned the propriety of publishing these photos.  If you think I should not publish them, please don't comment to that effect.  Too much time and space has been taken up on the subject.  We can agree to disagree.  If you don't like it, go to some other blog.  Here is my position:

1. Were these photos an invasion of privacy for the students?  By today's standards, yes.  By the standards of the day, not so much.  In that era, guys were routinely naked around each other in locker rooms and in swimming pools when women weren't present.  Being asked to strip and even being photographed naked as part of a posture examination would not seem too outrageous.

2. To protect the privacy of the students, I redact the names of students who may still be alive.  I only publish the names of students who have died.  Legally, the right to privacy does not extend beyond death, i.e. it does not extend to spouses, children, grandchildren, etc. of the deceased person.

3. In my opinion, publishing these photos is similar to publishing nude photos of athletes and soldiers taken by LIFE magazine photographers.  At the time, the understanding of the photo subjects was that photos with frontal nudity would not be published in the magazine (and they never were), but the LIFE photo archive containing those photos is now publicly available online, and nobody seems to be complaining about it.

4. I consider these photos to be a historical record of the time.  Almost all of the Ivy League posture photos were burned when their existence became widely known.  In my opinion, that was akin to book-burning of books that someone claimed were obscene.  These photos are not obscene.  They should be celebrated, not hidden away.