Perfect Bodies: Physical Culture and Self-Optimization in the United States around 1900

Simon Wendt

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Chapter 9 Perfect Bodies: Physical Culture and Self-Optimization in the United States around 1900

于Self-Optimization in Modernist Culture

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Simon Wendt

Simon Wendt
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类型:: 章节

Page Range:: 199–219

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004720701_011

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on bodybuilding and notions of self-optimization in U.S. modernist culture between 1890 and 1920. Using the Prussian bodybuilder Eugen Sandow and the publisher and fitness expert Bernarr Macfadden as case studies, it explores how white middle-class men and women engaged in various forms of bodybuilding to create a “better self.” The chapter shows that ideas about physical self-optimization were closely connected to collective norms, values, and anxieties as well as with the fundamental social and cultural changes that modernity brought about in U.S. society around 1900. Fitness experts such as Sandow and Macfadden tapped into those anxieties and related desires, tailoring their performances, speeches, and publications to an audience that wanted to become manlier, more beautiful, and more popular. Their ideas helped stabilize traditional white gender identities while assuring many that modernity’s negative consequences could ultimately be overcome.

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Self-Optimization in Modernist Culture

丛编： Literary Modernism, 卷： 9

ISBN:: 9789004720701

出版社:: Brill

印刷出版日期:: 03 Jun 2025

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies

Front Matter

Part 1 The Self

Part 2 Emotions and Nerves

Part 3 Body and Gender

Part 4 The Technology of Self-Optimization

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Chapter 9 Perfect Bodies: Physical Culture and Self-Optimization in the United States around 1900

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Self-Optimization in Modernist Culture

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