Alex Johnston – Prospectus
Alex Johnston
AMST 705: Senior Research Tutorial
Professor Allen
September 24, 2014.
MUSCULARITY, MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY IN LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICA: Eugen Sandow and the Origins of American Bodybuilding.
The Prussian-born strongman, Eugen Sandow, arrived in the United States for the first time in 1893, and spent much of his time there until 1906. He rapidly became a celebrity, and Americans were fascinated by his “perfect” muscular body and his feats of strength. In recent years, Sandow has attracted the attention of scholars of American culture, who have speculated about the reasons for his success. His successful career overlapped with the history of Vaudeville Theater and the development and use of new technologies in photography and moving pictures. Rapid industrialization, urbanization, immigration and economic uncertainty were all factors that led to a crisis in masculinity in the second half of the nineteenth century. As a result, significant numbers of men during this period developed symptoms of neurasthenia, also known as American nervousness. Fears about the emasculation of American men led to the development of the Muscular Christianity movement, and the increasing popularity of sport and physical culture.
My preliminary research of secondary sources suggests that for American men Sandow embodied white masculinity and reassured them that they could improve and transform themselves in the pursuit of perfection, and in doing so, reassert their manhood at a time when it was perceived to be under threat. In my essay, I intend to use contemporary American newspapers and magazines to explore these themes in more detail. However, Sandow’s appeal extended not only to men in search of their masculinity, but also to women, who were certainly not hoping to emulate his muscular physique. Sandow travelled from city to city as a Vaudeville performer, and the target audience was very much a mix of social classes, and of women as well as men. The basis for his appeal to women has been less extensively investigated. In this essay I shall examine primary sources that shed light on how he marketed his appeal to women. How was it that he could pose, virtually naked, for inspection by groups of women, at a time when Societies for the Suppression of Vice were actively campaigning in many American cities? In the words of one San Francisco newspaper article, “Why should it be shocking for a woman to exhibit herself without clothing and perfectly proper for a man to exhibit himself in the same way to an audience of women and girls?”
The essay will be organized into two main sections; the first section will concentrate on Sandow’s appeal to men. The second will examine how women reacted to his appearances and how he evaded accusations of obscenity. I will argue that his use of classical poses and props lent an air of respectability to his stage performances. I will examine the changing role of women in society at the end of the nineteenth century – women’s increasing demands for the vote, for admission to college, and their entry into the workplace may have given them a sense of growing independence, but I will suggest that persisting sexual stereotypes about the nature of sexuality in men and women allowed Sandow a surprising degree of freedom to pose naked in front of women. Sandow also cultivated the image of a respected medical expert, supplying advice to women about nutrition, healthy living and exercise that was applicable both to women and to their children.
Much of my original research will consist of reading contemporary newspaper and magazine articles written by or about Sandow. There are numerous reports about his appearances in various American cities, many of which reflect the shared cultural beliefs of the time; some raise questions about the morality or otherwise of his performances in front of women. Sandow himself wrote articles for family magazines such as The Cosmopolitan that served as marketing tools directed at female readers. Godey’s Lady’s Book will be a useful primary source, particularly the January 1896 issue, which focuses on the changing roles of women in American life. I expect most of these primary sources will be available using the resources available at the Middlebury Library. The Library of Congress website includes a collection of photographs of Sandow in its online catalog, as well as one of the first Edison Kinetoscope filmstrips (1894) which shows Sandow posing.
Several secondary sources that will be useful to me include John F. Kasson’s 2001 book, Houdini, Tarzan and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America. David L. Chapman’s biography of Sandow, (Sandow the Magnificent) provides extensive background information about Sandow’s life, particularly his American tours. Dutton and Laura’s paper supports the view that American bodybuilding originated with Eugen Sandow. Scholars such as Michael S. Kimmel, E Anthony Rotundo, Gail Bederman, Peter G. Filene and Elizabeth and Joseph Fleck discuss the changes in the understanding of masculinity and femininity that occurred in the nineteenth century, which help to explain Sandow’s popularity. Clifford Putney’s book on Muscular Christianity examines manhood and sports from 1880 and 1920; Donald Mrozek’s Sport and American Mentality 1880-1910, Harvey Green’s Fit for America: Health, Fitness, Sport and American Society and Roberta Park’s paper (“Physiology and Anatomy are Destiny!?”) may provide useful background information on the physical culture movement in America that preceded Sandow’s first appearance. Other possible secondary sources include Fitness in American Culture, which is a collection of essays about health, sport and the body (1830-1940) written for a symposium held at the Strong Museum in Rochester, NY, in 1986. Another essay collection that may prove useful for background research is, Sport and Exercise Science: Essays in the History of Sports Medicine”, edited by Jack W. Berryman and Roberta J. Park. David Churchill’s paper on bodybuilding and physical culture in Chicago 1890-1920 will also be a possible secondary source; it examines the physical culture movement and its influence in education.
Bibliography so far:
Primary Sources
Dickson, Antonia, “Wonders of the Kinetoscope”. Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, February 1895, 245-251.
“Eugene Sandow”. National Police Gazette, January 14, 1893, 13.
“Feeling Sandow’s Muscles”. The Evening World (New York, NY), January 1906, 1894, 6 o’clock extra, 8.
Library of Congress. “Prints and Photographs Online Catalog: “Sandow”. Accessed September 12, 2014.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=Sandow
Library of Congress. “Inventing Entertainment: The Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies: Sandow”. Accessed September 12, 2014.
http://www.loc.gov/item/00694298/
“Kane is Aghast: Wouldn’t permit another Sandow Matinee”. The Morning Call (San Francisco, CA), May 24, 1894, 12.
“Literary Memoranda”. Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, February 1895, 256.
“Make a Sandow of Yourself”. The North American Review Advertiser, December 1900, 1001
Sandow, Eugen, “How to Preserve Health and Attain Strength”. The Cosmopolitan, June 1894.
“Sandow—Strong Man”. Washington Times, March 16, 1902, 5.
Sargent, Dudley, “The Physical Characteristics of the Athlete”. Scribner’s Magazine, November 1887.
“Strong Men’s Tourney”. National Police Gazette, May 5, 1894, 3.
“The Champion Hercules”. National Police Gazette, December 7, 1889, 13.
“The Ladies Idolize Sandow”. National Police Gazette, January 27, 1894, 6.
Secondary Sources
Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Berryman, Jack W., and Park, Roberta J. (Eds). Sport and Exercise Science: Essays in the History of Sports Medicine. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
Chapman, David L. Sandow the Magnificent: Eugen Sandow and the Beginnings of Bodybuilding. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006
Churchill, David S. “Making Broad Shoulders: Body-Building and Physical Culture in Chicago 1890-1920”. History of Education Quarterly, 48 (2008): 341-370.
Dutton, Kenneth R and Laura, Ronald S. “Towards a History of Bodybuilding”. Sporting Traditions, 6 (1989); 25-41.
Filene, Peter G. Him/Her/Self: Gender Identities in Modern America. (Third Edition). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Green, Harvey. Fit for America: Health, Fitness, Sport and American Society. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Paperback edition, 1988.
Grover, Kathryn (Ed). Fitness in American Culture: Images of Health, Sport and the Body, 1830-1940. Rochester, New York: The Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum, 1989.
Kasson, John F. Houdini, Tarzan and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America. New York: Hill and Wang, 2002. 21-76.
Kimmel, Michael S. “Consuming Manhood: The Feminization of American Culture and the Recreation of the Male Body, 1832-1920”. Michigan Quarterly Review, 33 (1994): 7-36.
Kimmel, Michael S. Manhood in America: A Cultural History.
(Second Edition) New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 2006.
Locks, Adam, and Richardson, Niall. Critical Readings in Bodybuilding. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Mrozek, Donald J. Sport and American Mentality, 1880-1910. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1983.
Park, Roberta J. “Physiology and Anatomy are Destiny!?: Brains, Bodies and Exercise in Nineteenth Century American Thought”. Journal of Sport History, 18 (1991): 31-63.
Pleck, Elizabeth H., & Pleck, Joseph H. The American Man. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1980.
Putney, Clifford. Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880-1920. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003.
Rotundo, E Anthony. American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era. New York: BasicBooks, 1993