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 posture photos of eleven more Yale students that I had the opportunity to acquire. For privacy reasons, I redact the names of men who might still be alive. Nine of these men have passed away, so their names are not redacted.
This is Yale freshman A.R. on Oct. 8, 1953.
In 1952, Yale installed an apparatus using mirrors to photograph the front, rear, side and top view. Prior to that, the posture photo was just a side view.
This is Yale freshman Ivan Hugh Wolpaw on Oct. 12, 1953.
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 James F. Loucks II on Oct. 7, 1953.
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 Charles T. Ludington, Jr. on Oct. 13, 1953.
If posture problems were detected, the student had to attend remedial posture sessions, and a second posture photo was taken.
This is Yale freshman William James Penner on Oct. 9, 1953.
The photography and analysis of the photos was conducted by the staff of Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium.
This is Yale freshman John Lee Robinson on Oct. 7, 1953.
Nobody outside the gymnasium staff saw the photos, and the photos were not published for other students to see.
This is Yale freshman Thomas John Rohner on Oct. 8, 1953.
The posture photo program was discontinued in the 1960s, and later, most of the photos were burned.
This is Yale freshman R.S. on Oct. 16, 1953.
However, some of the photos escaped burning, including the photos that I have been showing in this series.
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This is Yale freshman Roger Adams Bachman on July 17, 1942.
This and the following photos show only a profile view because they were taken before the 4-way view equipment was installed in 1952.
This is Yale freshman Melvin Fay Pierce on July 9, 1942.
This is Yale freshman Karl Anton Piez, Jr. on July 17, 1942.
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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.
13 comments:
They look damn young, nonetheless fine young specimens of American youth. Average size penises and a few well formed asses. Some more exercise and phys ed, and their bodies would fill out nicely into good physiques. Because these were done in the gym of the phys ed dept, these photos must have been seen by a few phys ed teachers and coaches as well, or at least discussed on a professional level.✨
Always a delight to see their nice butts.
So nice to see young man naked in a "natural" state, not with pumped up dicks etc. Probably why they look on the small side. most of these guys in that era would have swam naked at the Y or at school or uni. Must have been a lovely sight.
Some healthy-looking young men. I would surely think the various coaches must have had access to these photos. Recruiting might be a bit easier if they could view their potential teams completely nude. Kind of like looking through a catalog, getting a good look at the new guys entering Yale each year.
I would have gladly attached the posture pins to James F. Loucks II, carefully making sure each one was securely fastened. What a sight these photo days must have been, hundreds of nude freshmen males awaiting their turns before the photographer!
It is notebale that all these guys have been circumcised. I guess that was pretty much the norm in the uS then, as now, partaly amonght the more upper call guys who went ot Yale.
Personlly I tink the only serves to enhance their appeance naked.
James F, has been reported to be later movie star James Farentino
@jamesgray - You're saying that James F. Loucks II became James Farentino? That's silly. Both of their lives are well documented. James Farentino dropped out of high school and did not attend Yale, and he would have been 15 years old when the Yale photo of Loucks was taken, so he couldn't possibly have been a Yale freshman then.
James Frederick Loucks II had quite a distinguished life and career (see attached link). Was definitely not James Farentino.
https://www.ohiocremation.org/obituaries/James-Frederick-Loucks-II?obId=27886950
A different slant to the debate: In the military, each recruit got head to toe medical exam. Back then, pediatricians/doctors would pull back a foreskin if present to ensure it worked and no infection below. Some schools have physical exams to make sure all students were OK. In such an environment, what Yale and others did was not out of the the ordinary, and this nudity could have been part of the general physical given to all students. In today's world where there is debate on whether school lunches should be offered, I suspect the concept of school providing physical exam to all students for free has long ago been buried. So in today,s environment, a school providing medical exam and posture remedies might seem totally out of norm, but back then, it was par for the course. We can debate handling of photos, but it would be normal that school would keep photos of a sudent during his few years there in order to be able to evaluate progress. As with the estonian photos, I suspect the school saw some potential research value in a large sample of bodies that could be analyzed/compared so deleting them may have been "postponed".
These are dated 1953, so one assume these dudes were born circa 1935. There was in this or related blog, a Marine Bootcamp series and one showed 5 guys from South carolina, 4 of whom were with foreskin. Circa same time. There may have been regional differences on when circumcision ramped up and from what I read, the more educated/richer areas adopted the trend first, so normal it would be seen in those icy league schools first.
I attended private schiolsin the Uk in te 60s
We had head to toe full medicals naked and wigth the foreskin (if you still had one) check as described. If i did not retract easily ypou got circumcised.
Like a lot of all boys schools we also swam completely naked in hte scholl pool and photos were osetim taken of swimmers and swim team naked so in a similar context the Yale pics are not out of the ordinary.
You may be mis- remembering the actor James Franciscus, who was a famous actor who did attend Yale and was photographed nude for the student studies.
His nude photos were sold for a large sum and supposedly kept private. Though they do occasionally pop up online with the privates covered (possibly from the sale of the photos).
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