The internet is constantly throwing amusing articles from 19-bloopedy-boo at us and we love to titter at how times have changed since…
This anatomical chart from 1942 claims hip size determined a woman’s intelligence. It also claimed men were built for violence. Yay biology!
Maria Popova at Brain Pickings stumbled upon the book The Sexual Study of Male and Female Human Body in Color Pictures. She uploaded the drawings online so others could see what 1942 was teaching kids about the body.
Here are some choice extracts:
“The ideal female body is widest, it will be seen, at the hips. While individual proportions differ greatly, wide shoulders and narrow hips give an effect of lack of femininity.”
“It has been said that the width of a race’s women are an index of its brains, meaning the large-headed babies must have wide-hipped mothers. Among primitive races with small heads, the disproportion is as great as among Americans and Europeans.”
“The male body, of which this is a rather idealized type, is built for strength and speed, for violent efforts for a short period.”
“The female body, however is better suited to swimming, being lighter, better protected by its fat and vascular (blood vessel) formation against cold.”
“The female body is, therefore, not built for violent efforts, though capable of great endurance and having more resistance to disease.”
“The double curve of the spine, shown here, has been called by artists ‘the line of beauty.'”
“Male and female sex organs are, originally, before birth, alike, and differ because of the unequal development, which takes place as a result of little-understood gland activity.”
