Jezebel: physical culture

Um...The One On The Right?

Sadie — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:30:00 EDT

"Which is the mother?" asks Physical Culture's odd 1930 "mothers and daughters who look like sisters" contest. Mrs. Iveen Lawrence and daughters stay youthful by avoiding alcohol and cigarettes, eating a healthy diet, and by being "ardent physical culturists." [ModernMechanix]

Art Class

Sadie — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:30:00 EST

In a 7-page "story" from a 1930 Physical Culture, "There's An Art In Using Perfume," Jane learns the "secret of feminine glamour, internal and external cleanliness." Like...behind the ears? [ModernMechanix]

Feminist Footwear Advice From 1930

Margaret — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 17:45:00 EST

In this article from Physical Culture, a man writes that the next step in women's emancipation should be to ignore the new trend toward high heels and find a "non-barbaric form of footwear."

In the magazine, the "middle-aged gentleman" recounts sitting in Central Park and watching women hobble by in these newfangled monstrosities. He wonders:

Will the day ever come when this last citadel of fashionable distortion of the [female] body will be captured and razed, and when women will get over the notion that there is beauty to be achieved by wearing on the foot a leather harness designed expressly to throw it out of position, destroy its beautiful mechanical efficiency, cripple it in and out of action, and make it look from in front as much as possible like a hoof?

As it has been 80 years since this article was written, we're guessing the answer is "not anytime soon." [Modern Mechanix]