Physiques Speak

The title of this 1950s magazine says it all: physiques speak. Bodies talk. How do societies regulate them? How do we display them or hide them? What does it mean that a British woman, Ethel Granger (1905-1982), achieved a waist measurement of thirteen inches through the practice of tightlacing? Why did Mary Midgett encourage women to draw their own genitalia? What does it mean that magazines purporting to give art students models to draw were actually early gay pornography? The Sexuality Collection saves works on nudism, artistic and erotic photographs of bodies, and artifacts that shed light on these questions.

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