Abstract
In the first third of the twentieth century, campaigns to remedy the digestive system preoccupied physical culturists in Europe and the United States. Concerns about the interior workings of the body had long been the preserve of health and fitness doyens, as well as those disposed to religion, temperance and muscular Christianity. It was in the First World War, however, that the abdomen seemed to face its most perilous test, as its meaningful status confirmed guts as the locus of masculinity. Military manhood encouraged a particular type of masculinity, one that required stronger than usual inner resolve. Inner resolve was seen as a particularly masculine trait that depended upon hardened and healthy stomachs. The state of men’s guts authenticated courage and discipline, which had distinct merits for the military machine. At this time, American Professor of Clinical Medicine Dr. John W. Wilce, coined the term “intestinal fortitude.” Tellingly, he was a sports coach at Ohio State University.l Earlier, the colloquial use of the term “guts” had referred to spirit, energy or force.2 Physical culture made use of this notion in a number of bodily and mental contexts. During wartime, however, fitness culture and medicine made important social and military alliances that brought into focus the masculinity of guts.
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Notes
Hugh Rawson, A Dictionary of Euphemisms & Other Doubletalk (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1981), 38–39, 214. I thank Christopher Forth for this reference.
John S. Farmer and W. E. Henley, Slang and Its Analogues (London: Private Print for John S. Farmer, 1893), vol. 3, 237.
Marianne Moore and Kenneth Cornell, French-American Literary Relationships (reprint: New York, 1967; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952); Rene Taupin, The Influence of French Symbolism on Modern American Poetry,William Pratt and Anne Rich Pratt, trans. (NewYork: AMS Press, 1985); Henry Blumenthal, American and French Culture, 1800–1900: Interchanges in Art, Science, Literature, and Society (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975); Marvin Farber, ed., Philosophic Thought in France and the United States: Essays Representing Major Trends in Contemporary French and American Philosophy (NewYork: University of Buffalo, 1950).
WV B. Riddell,“Soldierly Fitness in Time of Peace,” Physical Culture (November 1920), 31.
Bernarr Macfadden, “Fat, Disease and Death,” Physical Culture ( January 1920), 44.
Similarly, films about World War One made during the 1940s projected this theme of limitless courage, such as embodied in the actor Errol Flynn (They Died with Their Boots On). A rare example of showing disability was The Best Years of Our Lives. The lead actor’s real hands were amputated in the Second World War. His character must reintegrate into civilian life, and face his girlfriend. It presents, however, the disabled hero as a man overcoming adversity. His marriage to his former girlfriend signifies the successful repatriation of his masculinity. For a brilliant analysis of this film, see David Gerber, ed., Disabled Veterans in History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000).
John A. Thomson, Reformers and War: American Progressive Publicists and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 278.
Robert H. Zieger, America’s Great War: World War I and the American Experience (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 187 ff.
John Maurice Clark, The Costs of the World War to the American People (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1931), 180.
Arthur Capper, “Why We Must Have National Physical Training,” Physical Culture (May 1922), 20.
Richard Winans, “What Do You think About National Military Training?” Physical Culture (April 1920), 32.
Ana Carden-Coyne, “From Pieces to Whole: The Sexualization of Muscles in Postwar Bodybuilding,” in Body Parts: Critical Explorations in Corporeality, Christopher E. Forth and Ivan Crozier, eds. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005).
There were some notable exceptions to this line. Some readers wrote to the editor complaining about its pro-militarist stance. Comparing the American body with the fitness and gymnastic training of German recruits, one reader wrote, “there are ten million dead men in Europe, fifteen million superfluous women in Europe, a few million cripples and venereally diseased men and women, and the best prepared nation got licked.” Letters to editor, Physical Culture (August 1920), 17.
Major John J. Boniface, “Physical Fitness a National Obligation,” Physical Culture (June 1920), 109.
“I Had Dyspepsia and No Pep—Now I Have Pep but No Dyspepsia,” Physical Culture (April 1924), 58.
Arthur F. Gay, “Strengthen Your Stomach,” Physical Culture (August 1920), 47.
“Don’t Have a Sour Stomach,” Strongfortism advertisement, Physical Culture (February 1920), 1.
Manhood and Marriage advertisement, in Physical Culture (July 1920), 134.
Robert B. Bruce, A Fraternity of Arms: America and France in the Great War (Lawrence, KA: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 142.
Edith Baker, “Dishes for the Prevention of Constipation,” Physical Culture (December 1924), 63; “Constipation: Its Cause, Effect and Treatment,” Physical Culture (December 1924), 146. See also “Constipated? Here’s WhatYou Should Eat,” Physical Culture (December 1924), 48ff:
Edmund Gray, M. D., “These Exercises Will Keep You Cool,” Physical Culture (July 1924), 59. See also Dr. Frank Crane, “Constipation,” Physical Culture (April 1920), 16. Interestingly,Australian physical culture literature, which drew substantially on the Bernarr Macfadden’s magazine in style, content, and philosophy, also claimed Australia as “the constipated nation.”
Edmund Gray, M. D., “Ten Minutes a Day Cured His Constipation,” Physical Culture (January 1924), 36.
Dr. Frank Crane, “Constipation,” Physical Culture (April 1920), 16.
Edwin F. Bowers, M. D., “Avoid Fatigue—Your Greatest Efficiency Problem,” Physical Culture (June 1920), 22.
Brinkler School of Eating, “Constipation, Brain and Nerves,” advertisement, Physical Culture (July 1924), 140.
Raymond S. Hofses, “I’d Rather Die Than be Fat Again,” Physical Culture (October 1924), 59.
Dr. Frank Crane, “Learn How to Eat,” Physical Culture (August 1924), 64.
Physical Culture (September 1920), 34.
Travis Hoke,“Why Fat People Die Young,” Physical Culture (November 1923), 57; Edith Baker, “Mineral Oil Recipes for Fat Folks,” Physical Culture (July 1924), 63.
Michele Lamont, Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and American Upper-Middle Class (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
Here, I am borrowing from Roy Porter’s seminal article on Tahitian women and the Cook voyages, “The Exotic as Erotic: Captain Cook at Tahiti,” in Exoticism in the Enlightenment, Roy Porter and G.S. Rousseau, eds. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 117–144.
Bryce Traister, “Academic Viagra: The Rise of Masculinity Studies,” American Quarterly, 52 (2000), 274–304; Judith Allen, “Men Interminably in Crisis? Masculinity, Sexual Boundaries and Manhood,” Radical History Review, 82 (Winter 2002), 191–207.
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© 2005 Christopher E. Forth and Ana Carden-Coyne
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Carden-Coyne, A. (2005). American Guts and Military Manhood. In: Forth, C.E., Carden-Coyne, A. (eds) Cultures of the Abdomen. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981387_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981387_5
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