Physical Culture

“Spats in the streets but lats in the sheets, M’lady!”

I love old copies of Physical Culture. Beyond their great covers they really hammer home that there’s little new under the sun in health and fitness. So many of the health fads emerging today were also popular in the 1910s. I also wonder if the quackery-to-quality of advice was about the same. We laugh at that era’s exercise belts (the belly jiggling things) and prostate warmers but there’re undoubtedly trendy techniques of today that’ll be scoffed at in a decade or two.

Also, I need do a write up on the magazine’s fascinating founder: Bernarr Macfadden. He was quite the character and amazingly influential in American health & Fitness.