Ivy League Posture Photos - Part 72

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 eight more Yale students that I had the opportunity to acquire.

Yale freshman Cuyler R. McGinley II on Oct. 7, 1953.

In 1952, Yale installed an apparatus using mirrors to photograph the front, rear, side and top view.

Yale freshman Burton Foote Hatheway on Oct. 8, 1948.

Photos taken before the fall of 1952 show only a side view.

Yale freshman Charles Frances Schnedl, Jr. on Oct. 7, 1948.

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

Yale freshman Frederick Carl Wuest on Oct. 8, 1948.

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

Yale freshman H.H. on Oct. 7, 1948.

If posture problems were detected, the student had to attend remedial posture sessions, and a second posture photo was taken.

Yale freshman John Cornelius Harrington, Jr. on Oct. 7, 1948.

Freshmen were told to report to Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium, and once there, they were told to strip.  The photography and analysis of the photos was conducted by the staff of the gymnasium.

Yale freshman Morton William Wivchar on Oct. 13, 1948.

Nobody outside the gymnasium staff saw the photos.  The photos were not published for other students to see.

Yale freshman Theodore Edmundson Brown Wood on Oct. 7, 1948.

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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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 and relatives 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.

Ads - Part 91

Webcargo

This amusing commercial for Webcargo, a company that handled confidential file transmission, was created by Montreal ad agency BleuBlancRouge and shown on Canadian TV in 2007.  It features another part of the anatomy substituting for the face, claiming that the company can save your ass.

Weighing In - Part 93

Carl Frampton

Carl Frampton, born in 1987, is a boxer from Northern Ireland who competed from 2009 to 2021.  Above, we see him weighing in naked on Aug. 17, 2018, the day before his fight with Australian boxer Luke Jackson, defending his interim WBO featherweight title.  The guys holding up the modesty cloth held it a bit too high, giving photographers an unobstructed view, although Frampton covered himself with his hands.

Here's a view captured by another photographer.

Although we didn't get a full frontal view, Frampton released a video that included this rear view of him weighing himself before the match.  He was one pound over the limit, and he had to work it off before the official weighing.

Frampton won this match.  His career record is 28 wins and 3 losses.

Hiking - Part 93

Spruce Mountain, Vermont

This is another naked hike by Jim Bornholdt, whom we have seen before.  A few years ago, after a cancer diagnosis, Jim decided to embrace the idea of naked hiking, which he had done a few times before.  For him, shedding his clothes was symbolic of shedding fears and negative baggage.  He calls it "forest bathing", and he relishes the freedom of going into and out of the sunshine and feeling the forest energy across his skin.

He lives in Connecticut, but he found that public nudity is legal in Vermont (as long as you don't engage in "lewd and lascivious conduct"), and Vermont has many wonderful hiking trails, so he began hiking the Vermont trails naked and publishing photos of his hikes on his blog called Baring It All in the Woods.

Today we see Jim hiking a trail to the summit of Spruce Mountain on June 7, 2024.  Here he is at the trail map at the beginning of the trail.

The first part of the trail was easy, a dirt path through the woods.

The trail leads to this pond.  Normally, hikers that Jim meets on the trail have no problem with his nudity, but this time, he met a woman coming the other way who ranted and cursed at him.  Then he met another man with a small child.  The man said he had no problem with the nudity, but he didn't like the child seeing it.  Jim thought this was strange.  Why give the child the impression that nudity is bad, if the father was OK with it?

After the pond, the trail got rocky and started climbing uphill.

Finally Jim reached the summit.

At the summit is a fire tower that Jim did not climb because he was worn out from hiking up the mountain.  We also see another hiker and his dog.  Apparently they were friendly to Jim.

And then Jim hiked back down to the parking lot for the trail.  Apart from the one abusive woman, it was a nice hike.

Sausage Day 2026

National Sausage Day

Did you know that October is National Sausage Month, and October 1 is National Sausage Day?

These may be meatless, but they certainly look like sausages.

A hot dog is of course a type of sausage.  Here's one that's ready to eat.

Pierogies and sausage and some sauce to go with it.

Who ordered the large sausage?

We end with this advice from McDonald's.

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The site that I use to identify unusual holidays says Oct. 1 is National Sausage Day, but other sites listed National Sausage Day as January 5, April 30, June 5, October 11, or October 21.  National Sausage Roll day is June 5, and International Sausage Day is April 12.  But after all, for some of us, every day is sausage day.

Poem of the Day - Part 93

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Artists - Part 95

Hippolyte Flandrin

Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864) was a French neoclassical painter.  His brothers Paul and Auguste were also painters.  Above, a double self-portrait of Hippolyte and Paul.  I think Hippolyte is on the left.

Paul painted mostly landscapes, and Auguste painted mostly portraits.  Hippolyte painted mostly scenes from ancient classical tales, often featuring nudity, though he tended to conceal frontal views.

His most famous work is Young Male Nude Seated Beside the Sea, 1836, above.  It is now in the Louvre museum.

In 1832 he painted Theseus Recognized by his Father, above, winning the Prix de Rome, a prestigious art scholarship that let him study for five years in Rome.

Here are some more paintings by Hippolyte, mostly on classical subjects.  Above, Male Nude Seen from Behind.

Virgil's Shepherds, c. 1836.

Polites, son of Priam, observing the movements of the Greeks towards Troy, 1834.

Seated Young Shepherd, 1834.

Euripides Composing His Tragedies, 1836.

Jonah and the Sea Monster, 1860.

We end with this unusual Pieta, 1842.  Unusual because it shows Christ naked, including a visible penis.  Some think the dark figure is the Virgin Mary; others think it is Death.  I have to comment that Christ looks very European, not like a Middle Eastern Jew.  Christ with reddish-blond hair?  I think not.

Hippolyte died in Rome of smallpox in 1864.  He was 54 years old.  That is what happened to people before we had vaccines.