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 nine more Yale students that I had the opportunity to acquire. For privacy reasons, I redact the names of men who might still be alive. Seven of these men have passed away, so their names are not redacted.
This is Yale freshman Richard Bruce White on Oct. 12, 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 Brayton Wilbur, Jr. on Oct. 19, 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 G.W. on Oct. 19, 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 Albert L. Williams, Jr. on Nov. 3, 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 Z.H. on Oct. 18, 1954.
The photography and analysis of the photos was conducted by the staff of Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium.
This is Yale freshman Robert Douglas Haller on Oct. 18, 1954.
Nobody outside the gymnasium staff saw the photos, and the photos were not published for other students to see.
This is Yale freshman Allan Clark Scheer on Jan. 21, 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 Arthur Elliot Toft on Sept. 10, 1942.
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.
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This is Yale freshman William Slocum Tilghman on July 15, 1942 and Dec. 8, 1942.
It's rare to have both the first posture photo and the second, where the student failed the posture test, took remedial posture sessions, then a second photo was taken.
Normally the first photo was taken near the start of the freshman term in September or October. In this case, the fact that the first photo is dated July 1942 indicates that he was a member of the special accelerated wartime class 1945W (W for War) where the students entered Yale in July 1942 and graduated in 1945.
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Note: some of my followers consider these photos an invasion of privacy for the students. 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.
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.
8 comments:
Such fine asses.
All the work that you FORCE me to do :-)
I've split the Tilgman photos and superimposed them. The december on, he is wearing shoes with "high" heels so that skes everything. Very surprised they would have done that. So I adjusted both images to have the ear at same position.:
In both, the ass is the same.
In the december one, the penis is higher up
In the december one, the belly is pulled more in (which would explain higher penis). But the chest is further out, but the back further "in". (aka, in the december one he is leaving a bit forward compared to july.
Except for the ass ones, the pins are placed in almost the same exact positions, but are at slightly different angles.
I have to wonder how the actually evaluated these images back then, before the age of photoship to overlay images. Perhaps they worked with negatives and moved then to adjust and see the differences, Placing "post" guy in shoes with heals falsifies his height to give false ikpression of his posture.
Generic question on those series of images: in the ones you posted today, these gentlement are all very fine specimens who are not overweight and in good shape. So visually appealing. I am curious whether they were all like this and the samples you end up getting and posting are represetative of the student body (pun almost intentded :-) of those days, or was there a selection at some point ( scanning, distribution etc) of only models who had a certain visual appeal so we get a slightly skewed representation that is missing less visually appealing students of that era?
@Anon - They did not compare the “before” and “after” images by superimposing the images or any other way. Each image was evaluated separately by measuring the angles made by connecting the points where certain pins touched the skin. I don’t know which pins and what angles indicated a supposed problem. If the angles were acceptable, there was no second image. If the angles were unacceptable, the student had to undergo a posture training session, and a second photo was then taken and measured separately, with no reference to the first photo.
@Anon - These are not selected “models”. Photos were taken of every Yale freshman. I have a very large collection of these photos. I believe there was no “selection” of the photos that I was able to acquire, and I am not selectively publishing only certain students; I am systematically publishing my entire collection. Compared to the general population, Yale students would have been mostly from upper-class families. But I think the primary factor skewing the appearance of these guys is age: college freshmen would all be about 18 years old. Then, as now, it was not uncommon for men to look good in high school and college and then get fat later in life. But these photos show that in those days it was extremely uncommon to be overweight at age 18.
William Slocum Tilghman was allowed to wear shoes and socks in his second photo. Very unusual. All other students had to be completely nude. Any reason why Tilghman was permitted this exception?
I do not know why Tilghman was wearing shoes and socks. What's even more strange is that he presumably took off his shoes to remove his pants and underpants, then put his shoes back on.
First photo was taken in July and the 2nd in December. Maybe the floor was cold in December. Yale is up North. And maybe he had to walk from the changing area to where they took the photos. Only conjecture. It is quite curious.
And I always love this series.
Quite fascinating and compelling.
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