Due to extensive political reforms and uncertainty, a feeling of social dislocation was created among the early twentieth-century population. In search of stability, people turned to science and it quickly became a mirror and a corrective to society’s lifestyle and body image. As a result, numerous outlines of Darwinism and materialistic biology initially intended to promote rationalism, spread and became tools for self-improvement and even genetic purification. Since the establishment of the British Science Guild in 1905 society developed an interest in maintaining a strong and healthy body through physical exercise, surgical repairs, and new nutrition techniques.
Among the most popular scientific branches in the early twentieth century was anatomy. The reason for this is that it provides information on what we were given by nature. More closely into the possible ways of improving that body was studied by eugenics. It embodied disciplines such as statistics, biology, psychology, genetics, and anatomy itself, and has been compared to a tree that ‘draws its material from many sources and organizes them into a harmonious entity’ (Rosen 2004:11). Called by some scientists a ‘pseudo-science’, eugenics has derived from Darwin’s Evolutionary theory and its followers believed that science could help evolution and natural selection, by providing the best genetic material.
It was accordingly named after Eugen Sandow (with original name Friedrich Wilhelm Müller), a physical culturist, who became a symbol of masculinity in England and America, and was called by the renowned physical educator Dudley Sargent of Harvard University ‘the finest specimen of manhood’. Just like Sandow, the representation of bodily perfection, eugenics promoted developing the body we were given and suggested that a perfect body is easily accomplishable by anyone, regardless of their social class and gender. Furthermore, it promoted that the female ‘body and mind would be perfected through the implementation of eugenics.’ (Cogdell 2003: 36), and that a healthy and strong body ‘serves the mind and relies on it for its own material progress,’ (Doyle 1994: 63)
In addition, in his illustrations ‘Evolution Chart of the Desk Telephone’ and ‘Evolution Chart of Female Dress’ industrial designer Raymond Loewy compares the work of industrial designers, fashion designers, and eugenicists, suggesting that the last are creators and innovators of the human body.
‘[Walter Dorwin] Teague, too, compared industrial designers with breeders, for in creating perfect designs they were metaphorically functioning in much the same way as breeders and eugenicists who strove to ever improve the “purity” of selected biological strains.’ (Cogdell 2003: 49/50)
And, indeed, the neo-eugenics aim to improve the genetic quality of human population. A typical example is also the way the American Eugenics Society describes its greatest goal: ‘Selected parents will have better children.’ (Cogdell 2003: 40) as well as the words of the feminist and writer Victoria Woodhull, who has observed in that respect that ‘if superior people are desired, they must be bred; and if imbeciles, criminals, paupers, and [the] otherwise unfit are undesirable citizens they must not be bred.’ (Kevles; 1985: 85)
Later in the early twentieth century, however, the extremity of the so-called ‘negative eugenics’ brings the whole ideology of the movement to decline. Its new branches promote purity and health reform, sex hygiene, radical sex reform, marriage counselling and the birth control movement.
It could be argued, however, that sterilizing of immigrants and people from a variety of backgrounds could have the opposite effect, as it decreases the biological and genetic diversity, instead of purifying genes. This is why it is important to differentiate between ‘negative eugenics’ that worked to limit the reproductive capacities of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘positive eugenics’ that targeted the ‘fit’ and worked to increase the quality and number of their offspring.
In order to replace the role of natural selection with the so-called ‘rational selection’, thereby permitting the continuation of the ‘unfit’, eugenicists relied on the latest advances in medicine and sanitation. It was accepted that ‘medical and surgical treatment will reduce crime to a fraction of its present-day proportion.’ (Cogdell 2003: 40). In addition, it was thought for plastic surgery that it would not only help ‘rational selection’, but also shape the female body to perfection. The expectations for the early twentieth-century woman were that she would
‘… never know obesity, emaciation, colds in the head, superfluous hair, or a bad complexion-thanks to a controlled diet, controlled basal metabolism. Her height will be increased, her eyelashes lengthened…’ (Cogdell 2003: 37)
According to the text, she would not only possess a beautiful face, but her body would be ‘a perfect working machine’, incapable of feeling pain, her mind would be clear and logical, it suggests that ‘Tomorrow’s American Woman may, indeed, be close to perfection.’
It is important to mention, however, that plastic surgery first appeared as a result of the severe injuries and burns that soldiers endured during the World War 1. In consequence of the desperate need for (mostly facial) transformation, skilled surgeons united to create the basis of modern plastic and reconstructive surgery. Shortly afterwards the first hospital appeared that provided treatment specifically for the flood of wounded, whose faces had been shattered or burned during the war. Indeed, Queen Mary’s Hospital was so busy that according to the records it had admitted over five thousand patients only between 1917 and 1921.
A remarkable figure in early twentieth century plastic surgery, and a leading surgeon in the hospital, Harold Gillies was a pioneer and genius in facial transformation and managed to cure wounds that were beforehand considered deadly. As an artist, he was aiming at creating the best visual result in face treatment and was the first to produce a pictorial record of the initial injury and the outcome of his reconstruction. In search of the optimal benefit and final outcome, he spent time before each of his operations designing his ideas on paper or with wax.
Among his achievements are the first transfer of bone grafts from the hip to replace missing jaws, coverage of burns and destructed facial features with tubes of skin and fat, as well as his revolutionary method of creating new eyelids for burned soldiers, unable to close their eyes because of scarring. His first patient that he performed this operation on was Walter Ernest O’Neil Yeo, an English sailor, who was injured during the World War 1 and brought to Queen Mary’s Hospital for a skin transplantation.
Another distinctive name in the early period of plastic surgery is that of John Staige Davis, who was the first plastic surgeon in the United States to limit his practice to solely plastic surgery, and the only specialist existing when World War 1 broke out. He pioneered the tissue transfer technique, known as Z-plasty, and in 1919 published his first language textbook of plastic surgery, which is still used today.
Despite the pace of the progress of surgical treatment as a result of the war, other events gave rise to its further development. A key example is the fire eruption in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston on the evening of November 28th, 1942. With nearly 500 victims and 114 injured the event stimulated studies of burn physiology and the effect of such catastrophes on the chemical body components. Apart from comparable injuries, plastic surgery evolved in other operations such as facial reconstruction and gender reassignment with the first ‘bottom surgery’ performed on Michael (Laura) Dillon in 1946.
In the early twentieth century, however, people realized that surgical intervention was not the only way of improving their body. In order to maintain a beautiful and healthy look, they also needed more than physical exercise. With society’s ‘disciplinary gaze’ and the standards for beauty reaching the level of perfection nutrition seemed to provide a solution to the quest for superiority. It was believed that diet affects the way our body looks and that balanced nutrition makes the perfect body easily accessible even for those who weren’t born with one. This was also the period of the ‘Clean Living Movement’ in the United States, which proclaimed numerous health reforms, including temperance, diet, physical exercise, anti-tobacco and drug campaigns, but also social changes such as eugenics and purity.
A vivid supporter of the Progressive Era Clean Movement was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, an American medical doctor, nutritionist, health activist, and the founder of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, equipped with ‘the best health and wellness facilities in the United States’ (Mohaupt 2017). His recipe for ‘biologic living’ promoted vegetarian diet, regular exercise, sexual abstinence, and regular exposure to fresh air and sunshine. His strict diet excluded caffeine, vinegar, spices and salt, as according to his beliefs ‘what you put in your body has a lasting effect on your health’. The creator of peanut butter also suggested that food must be chewed 100 times before swallowing and proclaimed protein ‘the greatest evil nutrient’. In contrast, he was convinced that people should consume more carbohydrates, and since according to him breakfast was the most important meal of the day, he incorporated them in his revolutionary invention – the corn flakes. After initiating the granola in 1877, in 1901 Dr. Kellogg founded his Sanitarium Food Company in (later Kellogg Food Company), which produced a variety of breads, whole grain cereals, fruit crackers, and oatmeal.
As well as his nutrition recipes and principles his health reforms were widely accepted. According to him ‘sex is the sewer drain of a healthy body’ and ‘masturbation is the silent killer of the night’. In consequence of these beliefs he claimed never to have consumed his marriage with his wife – the reason he didn’t have heirs of his own, but rather adopted over 40 children from the poorest regions of America. As not all of them were willing to follow his strict recipe for ‘biologic living’, he assumed that genetics have a bigger impact on human development and became a supporter of the eugenics movement. As a result of his new beliefs, he established ‘The Race Betterment Foundation’, the great purpose of which was to prevent ill or people inclined to criminal deeds from having children, as well as others that would ‘deteriorate the composition of the human race’(John Harvey Kellogg and Adventism 2009).
Dr. Kellogg, who published over 40 books of correspondence with specialists on health and wellness, and other nutritionists such as writer Lenna Francis Cooper and Yale University physiologist and chemist Russell Henry Chittenden reshaped the standards for healthy diet and revolutionized mass production of food.
As a result of political uncertainty, high social expectations and wartime catastrophes, the body image of the early twentieth century changed immensely. The ultimate appearance regardless of the sex was one of a healthy, strong, and close to perfection body. Because of the fact that not everyone was born with one, people turned to science in order to conform to the social expectations. On the one hand, anatomy provided knowledge for the body that was given to us by nature and set the new example of bodily perfection. In time this image grew into a whole movement that over time had a strong influence on the perception of anatomy itself, as well as the other branches of science that designed and shaped the twentieth-century human body. Plastic surgery, as one of them, helped perfecting the ‘defects’ and repairing the damages, caused by the war, it gave people something they were aiming for but were not born with. The science of nutrition, on the other hand, encouraged population to take a good care of what they were already given by anatomy and plastic surgery. From a contemporary point of view, it is extreme, just like any other scientific movement, but it revolutionized not only the body image but also people’s lifestyle and food market. All of the three branches of science have undoubtedly had an immense influence on the contemporary body image and will continue to do in the future.
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