Ivy League Posture Photos - Part 4

 Ivy League Posture Photos

In the 1940s through 1960s, certain Ivy League colleges such as Yale and Princeton and some of their Seven Sisters counterparts such as Vassar, Smith, and Mt. Holyoke took nude photos of incoming freshmen, supposedly for the purpose of detecting any problems with their posture.  For more info, click here to see my first post on this topic.

Recently, I had the opportunity to acquire some more posture photos taken at Yale.  Here are two of them.  As is my practice, for privacy reasons, I conceal the students' names if they might still be alive, but I have confirmed that both of these men have passed away.

This is Yale freshman Lockwood DeForest IV on October 6, 1953.

An article in the Journal of the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation described how in spring, 1952, Yale installed an apparatus using mirrors to produce "PhotoMetric" posture photos like this showing front, rear, side and top views.

Note the strange pins stuck to his back and chest.  These pins were prominently referred to in a New York Times article about the Ivy League posture photos and are absent in non-Ivy League posture photos.

This is Yale freshman Larry M. Rentschler on October 8, 1953.  

These guys were not given a choice about being photographed naked.  They were told to show up at the gymnasium on a certain date and time, told to strip, and then the strange pins were attached to their back and chest, supposedly for later analysis to detect posture issues.

In that era, guys were routinely naked around each other in locker rooms and in swimming pools when women weren't present.  The students would not have balked at being asked to strip for a posture examination, or even being photographed naked, since they were told that it was part of the posture exam.

Andrew Letendre, who was a Yale freshman in 1953, the same year these photos were taken, later recalled:

"Neither I nor any of my classmates questioned it. Just like the 'poor little lambs,' we went along with it. Our fear of challenging Yale’s authority so early in our career trumped our feelings of embarrassment and the blatant invasion of our privacy."