Being a freshman in college can give you all sort of jitters and anxiety but if you thought that was scary enough, imagine having to pose for a nude photo while you’re at it.
And that’s exactly what is required of you before getting into Ivy League and Seven Sisters Schools like Yale and Havard between the 1880's till the 1970's.
But why?
Did they need some sort of rad Ivy League version of Tinder?
Although that would have been cool, it actually has something to do with the pervasive thought regarding posture and personality, hence these photos were known as Posture photos.
In response to these pervasive notion and in an attempt to ensure that graduates are healthy and of good personality, these photos were taken to evaluate the relationship between posture and medical condition and personality.
So, rather than being about getting laid, it’s about getting good grades (Yes you’re welcome for that rhyme)
“Whooah whoah whoah, they were okay with stripping nudes?”
Initially yes and the reasons for that is because:
- At the time, it was in a same sex school
- You can kind of get away with saying something is for ‘medical reason’
The controversy which eventually ended the practise started in the 1940’s when a psychologist who goes by the name William Sheldon was given access to these photos to study the popular notion. Sheldon was a renowned Psychologist at the time and most of his work was seen as revolutionary including one on Somatotypes. In his books, her argued and proposed that there are three genetically-determined body types (Somatotypes) and you may have heard of them – They are the Endomorph, Mesomorph and Ectomorph.
Basically, Endomorph is the pear-shaped ones and thought to be relaxed and affectionate; the muscular Mesomorph were thought to be active, aggressive and dominant while the skinny and lanky Ectomorph were thought to be introverts, sensitive and self-conscious. A lot of people are a mix of all that and he used a scoring system to determine the dominant body types of a person. The notion of Somatotypes became so popular that there was a term coined for it – Constitutional Psychology. Much like how people talk about horoscopes in newspaper and magazine up until today, reading and interpretation on body types were like that back then.
But, if such access and study sounds dodgy, that’s because it is – He used these photos of naked male and female adolescents without their consents (Red flag number 1) and everyone knows that no consent is a deal-breaker in pretty much everything.
Red flag number 2 – The way his study these students were basically through observation and that he didn’t take any biography of the students, leading to bias towards confirming his belief. In other words, the study was merely an instrument to confirm his belief without any check and balance.
Dodgy? There’s more – in 1954, he published a book called Atlas of Men featuring hundreds of male nude photos like nobody’s business, all to exemplify the notion of somatotypes that he built so strongly upon. Hold on, he wasn’t sexist – he was also working on publishing the Atlas of Women and as you may have noticed, it didn’t materialise (Otherwise, that book would probably have a softcopy version of it circulating online today). That intention was completely brought down when group of parents and lawyers asked him to dispose collection of female photos he had.
The female rage didn’t stop there – his former assistant, Barbara Honeyman came clean about Sheldon’s method of study and criticised the bias and conflict of interests at play. Sheldon did a lot of rating himself and more often than not, those rating was made to suit his previous model of somatotypes even when the personality mentioned did not match the body types. He skew the conclusion to his favour and reinforced the stereotypes regarding these body types. His research also did not account for how body type can change with age.
Plus, the notion of body types and performance was seen by other doctors and critics as a reinforcement of the whole “Aryan master race” thing which was a super red flag especially after the 2nd world war. As the argument goes, this notion of body template will encourage people to pair up certain somatotypes with favourable somatotypes to breed human beings with desired performance (THE REDDEST OF FLAG!)
These days, doctors have debunked the whole idea of constitutional psychology, proved little connections between postures, body types and health condition as well as the obvious one, personality. While still being used in some area of fitness, these days somatotypes is not used elsewhere and these days, to measure temperament and some other areas of personality, we use mind-base tests like the big 5 and acknowledge the fact that personality can change and develop with time and situation.
In short, no matter how many nude photos of college students you look at, you’ll never going to be able to understand or conclude the temperament and personality of a person.
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