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Wednesday, September 7, 2022
WWII Body Types, Part 1 - The Army
Today's double feature is about World War II body type photographic studies.
We start with the U.S. Army at Fort Sheridan, before moving on the the Navy later.
How interesting Fort Sheridan didn't use a grid in their photographs. I wonder why. The original purpose of taking such photographs started in the Ivy League universities to see if there were a correlation between intellectual propensity and choice of academic discipline and body type - particularly at a time when most but not all sports were still very much the preserve of academe which were attended in the main by the middle- and upper-classes - mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy body is a healthy mind.)
In general, Sheldon body types have not been very well supported in research. Classifying bodies into only three types (endomorphs, mesomorphs and ectomorphs) seems ludicrous to say the least. Even though correlations were found, they say nothing about causality. Interesting though nevertheless.
How interesting Fort Sheridan didn't use a grid in their photographs. I wonder why. The original purpose of taking such photographs started in the Ivy League universities to see if there were a correlation between intellectual propensity and choice of academic discipline and body type - particularly at a time when most but not all sports were still very much the preserve of academe which were attended in the main by the middle- and upper-classes - mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy body is a healthy mind.)
ReplyDeleteI don't know how important it is, but I've seen these referred to as both body type and posture studies.
ReplyDeleteIn general, Sheldon body types have not been very well supported in research. Classifying bodies into only three types (endomorphs, mesomorphs and ectomorphs) seems ludicrous to say the least. Even though correlations were found, they say nothing about causality. Interesting though nevertheless.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think most scholars consigned this to the pseudoscience category some time ago.
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