BackStory; Man Up: A Look at Masculinity in American History

major funding for backstory is provided by an anonymous donor the national endowment for the humanities and the justice and rubber cornell memorial foundation this is better well the back story to show that explains the history behind today's headlines on brian balogh and if you're new to the podcast each week my colleagues joe and freeman and here's the thing connelly and i explore an aspect of american history it's been in the news this week were digging into an age old question what makes a man earlier this year just in time for the super bowl razor makers gillette released its latest ad campaign which quickly got people talking is called the best men can be the egg starts by featuring clips of men behaving badly some are harassing women others fighting and its all summed up with a simple phrase

for his voice in that sense and there will be no going back because we we believe in the past some critics denounce the acts is the latest in what many people call woke washing a tactic used by brands to cash in on social movements others claimed it was too hard on men that it shame them rather than help them no matter what you might think about the head one thing's for sure the question to oppose about what it means to be a man it's one that has preoccupied americans for generations so this week on backstory we go back into the archives to look at past segments that explored changing perceptions of manhood in america we'll look at why so many men started growing beards in nineteenth

century america and we'll explore how ideas about the perfect male body used to be very different from what you might think today but first i want you to imagine a suburban summer weekend in the nineteen seventies let set in a manicured lawn in the backyard casually dressed neighbors of course a pretty quiet day glowing coals giant disgust <unk> oversized bald white smoke wafting over the neighbor's fence of his adoring family waiting for a girl to be just right for the giant hundred and sixty one and sizzling spirit and taste like saturday and it's an idyllic image and mould says it's completely choreographed grilling was an antidote to problems that psychiatrists and family experts on the american middle class two decades before in the mid nineteen thirties

these experts thought fathers were too absent from the home and varied about the development of american children so mole says in journals magazines across the country there was a call for men to have a stronger presence in family life to balance out the effects of over mothering to be a great role model for their children in order to ensure that their daughters know what to look for in a man and their son's know what a good man is but experts wanted dead to be around as a manly role model he couldn't just rushed to a dustpan and broom household chores were women's work dave needed a space for distinctly masculine projects maud says a popular magazines of the nineteen thirties were awash with activities for dead that wouldn't turn him into law in nineteen thirty five article for america magazine former heavyweight boxing champion

jack dempsey suggested that manly art of cooking and the key to its manliness well that was neat oh he's saying basically that men have any need to do a spiced meals right because men are really good specials station and a really good fun techniques spectacle and so he associates men's cooking very masculine activities like police powers camping hunting trips he says the incense itself to cooking he cannot do anything and then so far with every kind of cooking stove imaginable and put unexpected uppercut in ordinary dishes and make them really knockout share quite a wordsmith along with being a chef one was meat always what's for dinner mean what is it about neat one thing meets the perfect thing right meat is carmel there's

something primal about meat about cooking meat harkens back to the caveman it harkens back to cooking over for years with the group dudes you know it's really something that only men can do it is if there's a bigger danger to it there's a bit of expertise so that's why the barbecue just resonates i think i argue with these fathers because it's not something that every day that it's something that requires a lot of youtube it is mull says of the grill is a distinctly masculine to maine really caught fire in the nineteen fifties after the scarcity of the great depression and meat rationing in world war two i think it comes out of this distinctive postwar moment based on prosperity and property suburbs are a perfect

place for something like this to happen because you have on president lots of families moving out into the suburbs and they have all the space in the backyard and veered need to fill that void with rituals magazines quite esquire and a growing industry of cookbooks for men showcase those rituals most says there was another reason to fire up stakes in the nineteen fifties the cold war americans were expected to stand up to those lean mean communists with orations capitalist appetites grilling became part of american exceptionalism buying the meat stays part of a grueling experience proves that the american way of life and consuming meat such a distinctive important way of living it goes to show that we live in a country of marvel's we're every place in the suburb can have a giant state or hot dogs or hamburgers every day of the week we can do it

in a very rich do it his way i think it's a wonderful celebration of american that's been made a very uncertain geopolitical circumstances that's cornell's digital preservation he's been deceased before backyard barbecues there were some big changes taking place in nineteenth century america more and more people were moving into cities and desk jobs were becoming common these changes transformed many aspects

of american life including what it meant to be a man and whether or not they need to pick up their racers so now i'm going to take you back to the late eighteenth thirties and it's a very public debate about beards by this point members of the more broad find urban professional classes have been wearing facial hair for a few years they called that look like whiskers which usually meant a carefully trimmed beard lengthy side parents or even a waxed moustache beards were different they were wild on campus and off and went down to a man's chest and they quickly became a source of controversy as americans argued for and against the beer those who oppose them claimed beards wearing decent wild beard proponents said they were virtues or even if they had hopeful

but feared serve yet another class when he spoke to historian sean there's a sense that we're in five million viewers will be stronger he will be more robust more virology you can go out and do these men these things that perhaps they've always wanted to do but couldn't do because they didn't have facial hair considering all that you might expect a dear to be found on the american frontier but trainer says it was just the opposite this is a period when americans were flocking to cities for jobs behind desks as clerks or salesman and it was these guys who wore and argued for the biggest beards many of these folks are actually coming from the same set of professional urban circles as the the clerks incentive for wearing whiskers but it is an idea that they're aspiring to win that they

think the beard is suggestive of but the thing is actually interesting is that you do find a handful of critics especially among western men and really become object to this idea of the beard as a style of the frontier a stylus river to masculinity servicing he's really don't think of cowboys as having beardsley right out in fact that it sees ample is as a famous mural in the capitol rotunda was for the course of empire takes its way features some rather a rugged looking western men with facial hair billy's one commentator i objected to this this particular way of depicting western men and said that you know while while western incentive use a modern term i get scruffy every once or you know they out doing their august to frontiers the business and that when they get a chance they found some warm water the fan some soap and a fundraiser and they showed themselves so i mean there is this sense it was coming from a few sources the idea of a beard wearing his canada western education that that's just as is incorrect what is it that

american men eighteen forties would be reacting against or why are they so eager to prove themselves manly well that the beard i think is is it the bearded vision mr more broadly that the response to them to a number of factors and you know the first perhaps is the burgeoning of women's activism women's rights movement and the fear among some men get their product has been challenge tonight that and the beer becomes a way to sort of reinforced a distinction between them when they feel is being lost even the ladies who in years past so lovingly admired these noble badges of man's dignity no demand their curtailment if not utter extermination they wish to make a clean shave of all batches of manly security they seem determined to have equality between the sexes anyhow if they can elevate themselves up they are determined to elevate the man down but also this is this is a great period of manifest destiny on you know you see these folks talking about

the bearded races are the conquering races in the world's history the bearded races have at all times been the most important actors there's no part of the body which on the whole they show more readiness to honor it cannot be denied that a certain superiority has always been conveyed by the presence of the beard if you want to make your presence felt throughout the world as a person of imperial power that the beer it is is an emblem for that now i know that an eighteen fifties there was a kind of palpable excitement in the air about the impending war and you think it's possible that some american man soared beyond beers as a way to show themselves as men were at the at this moment yet i think that as the sectional crisis deepens as the likelihood of some sort of conflict with its violent or whether it's political deep insight i think that that the beard is part

of a wave that good men kind of prepare themselves mentally or were more socially or culturally this is the way that man i thought that they should go or needed to look when facing a crisis or when facing something that they thought would test their masculinity so as you pointed out names imagine wearing a beard the year support the civil war is a kind of preparation for the crisis but as you know they still wear beards for decades after the civil war does the beard then have a different meaning well i think they're wearing the beard was was part of sort of marking one status as a veteran in and i mean veteran kind of expensive we're not just as a veteran of the newer confederate army but as a veteran of the experience of of two or and i do think that it continues to carry that mean for us in this century in that perhaps one of the reasons why the styles of falls into disrepair as it were is that you know people are armed beginning turn to try to put the war behind them and i think that you know the beard is as part of that or rather

getting rid of the beard and moving beyond style men's grooming be wearing visionaries kind of the damage has been that was at a recent conversation with sean trade gems book is the beauty of the rise and fall of torreon america's most infamous flash crash it what message today by turning to the ever contentious topic of body image something he may or may not be thinking about is you pull out your favorite swimsuit and have the beach or your local

public poll today it's common to see images of the so called perfect american man as a burly muscular guy but back in the nineteenth century men got a very different message in fact it's one women often here today and i had a lot to do with changing notions of citizenship it all started with a little pamphlet called a letter on court to what's written in eighteen sixty three by a british undertaker named william and banking was overweight and had become a problem for him he had trouble climbing the stairs and he couldn't ties shoots farmer backstory co host peter odowd spoke to katherine investor a historian at american university about banned things letter and corpulence which documented his attempts at losing weight the pamphlet promised readers that if they follow dan dings program they too could shed the pounds the pamphlet was a runaway hit on both sides of the atlantic and a proposed of ferry

particular regimen for american men to follow as peter quickly learned it is quite neat happy and it also suggests that people who want to lose weight should throw a lot more smoke a lot to drink a lot of alcohol say it's not you know this is right that recommends smoking and drinking it suggests a golf every meal so obviously this is pitchfork know exactly and we can see that that advice has also placed mostly in publications forman night due to self magazines such as manufacturing build their between advertisements for schools sauce or articles on salon matching they now start to have guide recommendations to forgive me there's no way with american men get all excited about whether a british undertaker has to tell him about being

fixing to or ernie hare americans fought in many ways as though we have already writings by emerson who suggest that masculinity is closely connected to self control which also fits into a puritan ideas off bodily control so this is all basically they already and then when it hits the united states in the eighteen sixties we have a rising middle class that strives to participate in political power and basically they get the tool because they are kept all went off many ways to decide the nation's fate by a being told that they'll vulgar non educated not sophisticated enough and dieting is one way in which they can demonstrate that they can control their mergers and that they're ready to go so they're demonstrating that they have the kind of self control their elites traditionally exercises that the

point exactly and it's interesting that in the middle of the nineteenth century and adds ariane europe that old wade is now associated with greed and corruption now we see that there's an increased fear that american society and especially american man willing american society become too weak too soft too feminine and this is a number off defend cross says so one of the most prominent ones is that men start to work sedan to a jobs desk jobs where they no longer work out and you don't do the traditional professions that manning gauged in before night trades so there is the fear that this is not only affecting american masculinity but american society in general that american society to lose power because it's a man is known and all along there

as masculine as they used to be a stop to prepare for a second because as you may have noticed the story so for so little one sided what you may be wondering do dating advice for women who look like this time well basically the advice was this bill do it less now harper's bazaar describe the effects of weight loss but women in at ninety six the body and the face lose their round as the ais become sunken cheeks fall in the lips are drawn the scan acquires to heal and hardness of parchment well at the same time lines and wrinkles multiply the chest becomes hollow in the waste angular interesting to see that man stop dieting and women start to become plumper and plumper there actually due to manuals that are called things like call to be plump ok so why is that so

desirable or wives have a voodoo spirit oh so it's the maternal body is still considered being very attractive the soft bodied the body that presents the most difference to the male body seems to be sexually more desirable so we have at the end of the century we have sex goddess is like lillian russell who await presumably something like two hundred pounds or so to be at a very plum woman as the deal of the time so you can see in this context the women are supposed to look like fertile they suggest sexuality and motherhood maternal body and so forth in this complex it's not surprising that some women my wife actually said the first diet advice for women that he can find it's actually written by women's rights activists and bess team of doctors so we have writers like anna king's for it was a doctor and great britain and a woman's rights activist tool and eighteen

eighty six writes the first diet for women the security rights activists associated press lend their healthy female body with equality strength and libertine yeah so they argued that if we were able to show that they could control their bodies in the same way that white middle class man way that to control their bodies that they could demonstrate that they're rational beings fit to determine the fate of the nation so there is the idea that this would help their cause to claim suffrage so often we hear that women has diets as a form of oppression as a way to divert them from living their political interests but my of research showed that actually women started dieting as a means of liberation to embody a new type of woman who tend to dissipate and american policies in the context of women's rights this is empowering to mimic or follow the example of man and gain control over your body was its implication for a

race and class and that's more problematic because white middle class women who made the claim that they would be able to also control their bodies are often made at the same time the claim that immigrant women women of color are working class women i'm not able to control their bodies so basically it's not that they now ask for inclusion of everybody and into all as a power but actually the day they suggest that they should be included but others should be excluded so we can see for instance in coal emanuel's or a house or nine years of the time written by bestselling authors like marianne holland that she suggests that her white middle class readers should exercise regularly but at the same time she says that richardson directions which are cold words for irish and german made simple that they are too lazy to exercise and that they're overweight because of

that implicitly the argument that because they are not able to control their bodies we're also not able to be american citizens that was an assistant professor of history i did that will do it for us

today thanks for joining me to take advantage of the back story there are hundreds of other shows available at our website you can keep the conversation going on what let us know what you thought of the episode for pastors who push and that his sadness and you know baxter an opinion yet we're also on facebook and twitter after extricating baxter is produced differently humanities majors supports is provided by the national endowment for the humanities joseph roberts for now the moral foundation of the johns hopkins university and family life additional support provided by that difficult thing fresh it is up to brian balogh is a professor of history at the university professor of the humanities and president emeritus of the university of richmond john

freeman a professor of history and american studies at johns hopkins university