As part of a mandatory “posture” class focused on personal and physical In all of the photos, the men stand behind some sort of grid fencing to better illustrate misalignment and spinal curvature. Ectomorphs were thin and withdrawn, intelligent and fearful.
Decades of Ivy League Freshman, Including a Former President, Posed
Endomorphs were heavy, slow, sloppy, and lazy.
Sheldon collected the photos of thousands of male and female freshmen;
And under the guise of posture remediation, and with the full complicity of the ivy league, tracked our performance and measured it against his standards. Sticking out from the spine of each and every body was a row of sharp metal pins. The case of the ivy league posture photos. Posted by alphanerd (34 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
In 1951, life magazine dedicated a cover story to sheldon’s work, and the tobacco industry used his ivy league nudes to study the relationship between smoking and masculinity. Entering freshmen at many ivy league and seven sisters schools had to strip during freshman registration for “posture” photographs in the nude. The man behind the posture project was columbia university professor w.h. Sheldon, who believed that body shape could predict intelligence and personality traits.
The ivy league nude posture photos were taken in the 1940s through the 1970s of all incoming freshmen at harvard, yale, princeton, the university of pennsylvania (which are members of the ivy league) and seven sisters colleges (as well as swarthmore), ostensibly to gauge the rate and severity of rickets, scoliosis, and lordosis in the population.
In fact, it was revealed that many of them were involved in the ivy league nude posture scandal. This exposed a series of photo shoots conducted on college campuses in the 20th century, raising profound ethical questions about consent, privacy, and the exploitation of young students ‘for science.’. The fabled ivy league nude posture photos have been written about but seldom seen. Incoming college students were photographed fully nude to gauge posture, detect scoliosis, and address other correctable body issues… all while emotionally scarring the participants.
Posture photographs have become rather notorious over the years. Their fame results at least partially from ron rosenbaum’s article, “great ivy league nude posture photo scandal” that appeared in the new york times magazine a few years ago. These were required during freshman orientation to check “posture” and if there were abnormalities, corrective therapy was needed. A version of this article appears in print on , section 6, page 16 of the national edition with the headline:
The great ivy league nude posture photo scandal.
Order reprints | today’s paper It was not until a new york times magazine article (“ the great ivy league nude posture photo scandal ”), by yale graduate ron rosenbaum ’68, appeared in 1995 that i learned that the photos of yale’s prominent graduates and future celebrities, professionals, business leaders and politicians—and me—were hidden away in files to be The ivy league nude posture photos were taken in the 1940s through the 1970s of all incoming freshmen at harvard, yale, princeton, upenn (which are members of the ivy league) and seven sisters colleges (as well as swarthmore), ostensibly to gauge the rate and severity of rickets, scoliosis, and lordosis in the population. According to the new york times, universities like yale, harvard, princeton, vassar, mount holyoke, smith, and other elite institutions used to require freshmen to take nude photos as part of a study on posture. while harvard took such photos from the 1880s all the way to the middle of the 20th century, most of the universities involved
The practice of taking “posture photos’’ was common from the 1940s to the 1970s. As the new york times explored 20 years ago in article called “the great ivy league nude posture photo Up until recent years, the fabled ivy league nude posture photos have been written about but seldom seen. 1 it was a notorious, dreaded, rite of passage for seven sisters and ivy league college students.
As part of a mandatory “posture” class, students were regularly weighed, rigorously measured, questioned about family lineage, and photographed nude multiple times during their undergraduate stay from the start of this photographic practice in the late 19 th century until it ended in the late
All subsequent photos feature the cadets in jockstraps.
