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Eugen Sandow flexing his bicep.

The Evolution of the Alpha Male Aesthetic

If you've noticed a certain look common to the manosphere, you're not mistaken. A visual identity has taken hold, with roots that trace back decades.
by Derek Guy via Bloomberg on April 22, 2025
Margot Robbie in "Barbie" film.

This is the Real History of Barbie

Before the eagerly-anticipated film hits our screens, we take a look back at the story of the world's most famous doll.
by Marie-Claire Chappet via Harper's Bazaar on July 13, 2023
A pale woman tanning in a beach chair with a towel and sunglasses covering her face.

The Meaning of Tanning

The popularity of tanning rose in the early twentieth century, when bronzed skin signaled a life of leisure, not labor.
by Katrina Gulliver, Phillip Vannini, Aaron M. McCright via JSTOR Daily on April 27, 2023
Black and white photo of a white woman holding a baby.

Can Every Baby Be A Gerber Baby? A Century of American Baby Contests And Eugenics

In 2018, Gerber selected baby Lucas as the winner of its Spokesbaby Contest, making Lucas the first Gerber baby with Down syndrome.
by Jamie Marsella via Nursing Clio on August 23, 2022
Pink tinted photograph of women on the beach lifting barbells

Nevertheless, She Lifted

A new feminist history of women and exercise glosses over the darker side of fitness culture.
by Meghan Racklin via The Baffler on February 7, 2022
Collection of People's 50 most beautiful people magazines

Inside the Making of People's Iconic '50 Most Beautiful' Issue

Before People was the juggernaut of the celebrity media, it was a magazine “about people.”
by Joan Summers via Jezebel on March 2, 2021
Men with six-packs on a boat

When Men Started to Obsess Over Six-Packs

Greek statues, the Napoleonic wars, and the advent of photography all played a role.
by Conor Heffernan via The Conversation on February 23, 2021
Bathroom scales

The Completely Bonkers History of the Bathroom Scale

A century ago, few Americans had any idea how much they weighed. Here’s why that changed so dramatically.
by Kelsey Miller via Elemental on February 15, 2021
A close-up of an African-American woman's face and hair

On Liberating the History of Black Hair

Emma Dabiri deconstructs colonial ideas of Blackness.
by Emma Dabiri via Literary Hub on June 23, 2020
A building that appears distorted

Staring at Hell

The artists of our time, with their ruin-porn coffee-table books, offer the world a glossy, anesthetized image of abandoned infrastructure from Chernobyl to Detroit.
by Kate Wagner via The Baffler on January 6, 2020
A white muscular man flexes confidently while sitting on a stool.
partner

Nose Knows Best

Nasology was a 19th century pseudoscience which claimed to explain personality traits based on the shape of a person’s nose.
via BackStory on July 10, 2015
A drawing of the book "Fat is a Feminist Issue" by Susie Orbach with a magnifying glass in front of it.

Was “Fat Is a Feminist Issue” Liberating? Or Weight-Loss Propaganda?

Susie Orbach’s 1978 book is a fascinating snapshot of diet and physical culture in a very different era.
by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela via The New Republic on December 5, 2024
1937 ad showing three women in underwear.

From Torpedo Bras to Whale Tails: A Brief History of Women’s Underwear

The popular reception of thongs, bras, boy shorts and other intimate items.
by Nina Edwards via Literary Hub on October 24, 2024
A group of Black women in swimsuits and caps gather in a group in a pool.

The Intimacy of Exercise: Sensuality and Sexuality in Black Women’s Fitness History

How did the sensuality, sexuality, and homosociality of exercise create intimate possibilities for Black women in postwar America?
by Ava Purkiss via Nursing Clio on July 3, 2024
Women wearing early twentieth-century gym suits emblazoned with 1902, some women in baskets.

How Sports Clothes Became Fashion

The evolution of women's sportswear.
by Einav Rabinovitch-Fox via Nursing Clio on May 15, 2024
A photograph of four children standing, one is slouching.

Are You Sitting Up Straight? America’s Obsession with Improving Posture

In Beth Linker’s new book, she applies a disability studies lens to the history of posture.
by Laura Ansley via Perspectives on History on May 9, 2024
Girl holding a pile of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls

The Droll Capitalist Parable of Cabbage Patch Kids

A new documentary, “Billion Dollar Babies,” shows how a product of Appalachian folk art drew the blueprint for all holiday toy crazes to come.
by Jessica Winter via The New Yorker on November 20, 2023
Jewish characters in television and film

The Long History of Jewface

Bradley Cooper’s prosthetic nose is the latest example of the struggles around Jewish representation on the stage and screen.
by Jody Rosen via The New Yorker on October 7, 2023
Woman leading a group of twelve other women in floor exercises.

Fit Nation

A conversation about "the gains and pains of America’s exercise obsession."
by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Lara Freidenfelds via Nursing Clio on September 27, 2023
Cartoon spoofing weight loss and weight gain patent medicines.

How the Use of BMI Fetishizes White Embodiment and Racializes Fat Phobia

Size-based health and beauty ideals emanated from eugenic pseudoscientific postulates, and BMI continues to advance white supremacist embodiment norms. 
by Sabrina Strings via AMA Journal Of Ethics on July 1, 2023
Barbie dolls in 1959 wearing the zebra-striped swimsuit.

A Cultural History of Barbie

Loved and loathed, the toy stirs fresh controversy at age 64.
by Emily Tamkin via Smithsonian on May 18, 2023
Four new Army brassiere designs modeled by servicewomen.
partner

A New Bra Reveals That the Military is Moving Toward Gender Equality

Women’s military uniforms were once about making soldiers look feminine. Now they’re about enhancing performance.
by Tanya L. Roth via Made By History on August 19, 2022
Advertisement for a gold dredging machine from a 1920's magazine.

The Huckster Ads of Early “Popular Mechanics”

Weird, revealing, and incredibly fun to read.
by Clive Thompson via Medium on August 6, 2022
Photo of Ethel Barrymore over collage of citrus, eggs, and toast.

The Golden Age Hollywood Diet That Starved Its Famous Starlets — And Then America

In 1929, Ethel Barrymore went on the ‘18-Day Diet.’ From there, it took the country by storm. Until, that is, its disciples began dying.
by Ian Douglass via MEL on March 31, 2022
Caesar, William McKinley, and Trump sporting three different comb-overs throughout history.

The Rise, Flop and Fall of the Comb-Over

Balding has been the constant scourge of man since the beginning of time, and for millennia, our best solution was the comb-over.
by Brian VanHooker via MEL on March 21, 2022
From center: Saundra Williams, the first crowned Miss Black America (1969). At left, 2nd runner-up Linda Johnson; on the right is Theresa Claytor, who was the first runner-up.
partner

The History of Beauty Pageants Reveals the Limits of Black Representation

Black contestants — and winners — have not translated into changed beauty standards or structural transformation.
by Mickell Carter via Made By History on February 16, 2022
Green labels read "100% Natural Product" and "Natural Bio Product"

Guilt-Free: Naturopathy and the Moralization of Food

How the rise of alternative, "natural," medicines led Americans to equate food with moral character.
by Zach Setton via Nursing Clio on January 27, 2022
Women wearing bathing suits and sashes stand in a row on the Atlantic City boardwalk in 1921, competing in a pageant.

How the Swimsuit Showdown Shaped the Miss America Contest

A new behind-the-scenes book, “There She Was,” and a Smithsonian collecting initiative celebrate the pageant’s centennial.
by Amy Argetsinger via Smithsonian on December 13, 2021

Macho Macho Men

Bodybuilding is routinely presented as the very apex of male heterosexuality—but its history is a bit gayer than you might think.
by Benjamin Weil via The Baffler on November 23, 2021
A 1920s undergarment shop, in black and white.

Bringing Down the Bra

Since the 19th century, women have abandoned restrictive undergarments while pursuing social and political freedom.
by Einav Rabinovitch-Fox via Zócalo Public Square on October 14, 2021
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