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 seven more Yale students that I had the opportunity to acquire.
This is Yale freshman Michael J. McGuire on Oct. 7, 1953.
In 1952, Yale installed an apparatus using mirrors to photograph the front, rear, side and top view.
This is Yale freshman Edwin H. McKee on Oct. 7, 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 A. M. 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. If posture problems were detected, the student had to attend remedial posture sessions, and a second posture photo was taken.
This is Yale freshman Herbert Woodruff Bainton on Oct. 4, 1941.
Photos taken before the fall of 1952 show only a side view.
This is Yale freshman John Edward LeGros on Dec. 2, 1940.
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.
This is Yale freshman Jmes Ralph Lengen on Oct. 2, 1940.
Nobody outside the gymnasium staff saw the photos. The photos were not published for other students to see.
This is Yale freshman Edward Field Rullman on Oct. 3, 1940.
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 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.
.jpg)
