Ivy League Posture Photos - Part 73

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.

Yale freshman G. A. on October 12, 1954.

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

Yale freshman Alfred Nash Beadleston III on October 12, 1954.

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 P. B. on October 13, 1954.

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

Yale freshman Leonard Louis Levy on October 3, 1940.

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

Yale freshman Ralph Allen Hepler on October 1, 1940.

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

Yale freshman Thomas Francis Jackson on December 2, 1940.

Freshmen were told to report to Yale's Payne Whitney Gymnasium, and once there, they were told to strip.

Yale freshman R. S. on December 2, 1940.

The photography and analysis of the photos was conducted by the staff of the gymnasium.

Yale freshman William Lockhart Wallace on November 29, 1940.

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

Yale freshman Lewis Williams Douglas Jr. on July 17, 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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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 94

Topper Sneakers

This commercial for Topper sneakers ran in Argentina in 1995, showing two tennis players wearing nothing but Topper tennis shoes.

Aside from shoes and socks, they were completely nude.

Another revealing screen shot.

And a rear view.

Weighing In - Part 94

 Antonio Escalante

Antonio Escalante, born in 1985, is a Mexican professional boxer.  Above, he weighs in for a fight with Roberto Marroquin in Oklahoma in 2013.    The guy holding the modesty cloth lowers it, allowing us to catch a glimpse.

The glimpse in the video is brief, so I captured it in this gif.

Escalante lost that fight, but his overall record is 29 wins, 11 losses.

Hiking - Part 94

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Poem of the Day - Part 94

 Seven Ages of Man
by Robert Conquest

This is a limerick written by Robert Conquest as a humorous summary of Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man from the famous passage beginning "All the world's a stage" in the play As You Like It.  To appreciate how clever the limerick is, you can read Shakespeare's original at the end of this post.

I've taken the limerick one step further by adding illustrations, though they may not be exactly what Robert Conquest (or Shakespeare) had in mind.

Seven ages: first puking and mewling;

Then very pissed off with his schooling;

Then fucks

and then fights;

Then judging men's rights;

Then sitting in slippers;

then drooling.

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To compare, here is Shakespeare's original from As You Like It:

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Artists - Part 96

Paul Cadmus

Paul Cadmus (1904-1999) was an American artist.  He became part of the photographic collective PaJaMa, which stood for Paul, Jared, Margaret.  Jared French was Paul's lover, and Margaret French was Jared's wife, who was apparently OK with the arrangement.

Above, a 1935 photo taken by Jared French showing (front to back) Paul Cadmus, Bernard Perlin (a friend), and Margaret French.

Almost all photos of Paul Cadmus are rear views, but this photo by George Platt Lynes of Cadmus in a torn T-shirt shows a rare frontal view.

But it's Cadmus' art that we're interested in.  This 1935 painting called YMCA Locker Room was published in the March 29, 1937 issue of LIFE magazine in an article on Cadmus' art.  LIFE would publish rear nudity, but not frontal nudity.

Gilding the Acrobats, published in the same 1937 issue of LIFE.

The Shower, 1943, depicts the PaJaMa trio: Margaret French, Jared French (seated) and Paul Cadmus (in the shower).

The Bath, 1951.  Cadmus painted and drew many male nudes, more than I can show here, using many different models. The models for The Bath were Jack Fontan and Jensen Yow.

The Nap, 1952.

Male Nude, 1955, model Ted Starkowski.

Male Nude, 1965.

We end with Sleeping Beauty, which dates from the 1950s.

Beach Bums - Part 91

 Tambaba Open 2024

Praia Tambaba, or Tambaba Beach, is a beautiful beach in the northeastern Brazilian state of Paraiba.  There is a clothed beach and a nude beach, but unlike American and European nude beaches, which are clothing optional, on this beach clothing is forbidden, as this sign says: "Nudity is mandatory beyond this point."

This beach is the site of the Tambaba Open, one of the world's biggest nude surfing competitions, sponsored by SONATA, the Sociedade Naturista de Tambaba (Tambaba Naturist Society) and the Brazilian Federation of Naturism.

We've seen some of these competitions before.  Today we look at the 15th Tambaba Open, held in September 2024.

Normally, total nudity is mandatory on this beach, but surfers wear T-shirts of different colors for the competition to help the judges keep track of who's who (above).  But their bottom half is still nude.

Another surfer.

The competition judges are naked, like everyone else on the beach.

Two of the competitors.

Above is a photo of the winners posing behind their surfboards to hide the nudity for a publicly acceptable view.  From left to right, they are the 4th, 3rd, 1st, and 2nd place winners.  The 1st place winner was William Meira, and 4th place was his brother Ulysses Meira.

But in this video, showing the winners lining up for the previous photo, we get to see a bit more of them.