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⁷⁰ Newman, Building of a Nation's Health, 249–78; Grant, Mariel, “The National Health Campaigns of 1937–1938,” in Cities, Class and Communication: Essays in Honour of Asa Briggs, ed. Fraser, Derek (Hemel Hempstead, Herts, 1990), 216–33Google Scholar, and Propaganda and the Role of the State in Inter-war Britain (Oxford, 1994), 168–93Google Scholar; Karpf, Anne, Doctoring the Media: The Reporting of Health and Medicine (London, 1988), 32–34Google Scholar.

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⁹¹ Frumusan, The Cure of Obesity, 9; Williams, Obesity, 22, 29, 72.

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¹⁰⁵ Rout, Ettie, Sex and Exercise: A Study of the Sex Function in Women and Its Relation to Exercise (London, 1925)Google Scholar; reissued in the 6th ed. as Stand Up and Slim Down: Being Restoration Exercises for Women with a Chapter on Food Selection in Constipation and Obesity (London, 1934)Google Scholar. The book ran to nine editions and remained in print until the late 1950s.

¹⁰⁶ Stack, Mary Bagot, Building the Body Beautiful: The Bagot Stack Stretch-and-Swing System (London, 1931), 3Google Scholar. See Stack, Prunella, Zest for Life: Mary Bagot Stack and the League of Health and Beauty (London, 1988)Google Scholar; Matthews, Jill J., “‘Building the Body Beautiful’: The Femininity of Modernity,” Australian Feminist Studies 5 (1987): 17–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “They Had Such a Lot of Fun: The Women's League of Health and Beauty,” History Workshop Journal 30 (Autumn 1990): 22–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹⁰⁸ Williams, Obesity, 21–22. Compare Huff, Joyce L., “A ‘Horror of Corpulence’: Interrogating Bantingism and Mid-Nineteenth-Century Fat Phobia,” in Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression, ed. Braziel, Jana Evans and LeBesco, Kathleen (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2001), 51Google Scholar, who suggests that in the nineteenth century the corpulent body suggested rampant, unchecked consumerism and the abuses of laissez-faire capitalism. See Burnett, Plenty and Want, 213–14, 221–39, on lavish middle-class dining before the war, and 307–21, on the interwar years.

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¹¹⁰ Rowntree, Poverty, 31, 251, 253–54, 234; for menus see 252, 289–94; emphasis in original.

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¹¹² Boyd Orr, Food, Health and Income, 34, table 7, on food expenditure by income, 24.

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¹¹⁵ MRC, Diet of 154 Families of St Andrews, 24–26. On “luxury” consumption see Lambie, “Obesity: Aetiology and Metabolism,” 887; Seid, Never Too Thin, 100; Schwarz, Never Satisfied, 136, 193.

¹¹⁶ For cartoons see, e.g., Christie, Surplus Fat, 32; W. F. Christie, “Corpulence,” in Lane, Golden Health Library, 3:819; Howe, Henderson, “Fat People Die Young,” Health and Strength, 30 August 1919, 206Google Scholar; cartoons by W. K. Haselden published in Daily Mirror, Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature, University of Kent, http://library.kent.ac.uk/cartoons; Men Only, launched in 1935, provides another good source.

¹¹⁷ Christie, Surplus Fat, 34; see also Douthwaite, “The Treatment of Obesity,” 344. For discussion of childhood obesity, which was relatively rare, see The Lancet, 12 February 1921, 329; Langmead, F. S. and Calvert, Edwin G. B., “Obesity in Children,” The Lancet, 29 November 1924, 1111–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ellis, R. W. B. and Tallerman, K. H., “Obesity in Childhood,” The Lancet, 15 September 1934, 615–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Obesity in Children,” British Medical Journal, 1 August 1936, 246–47.

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¹²⁶ Orwell, George, Coming Up for Air (London, 1938), 3–5, 166Google Scholar. An interesting comparison from a slightly earlier period is Charles Pooter, discussed in Hammerton, “The English Weakness.”

¹²⁷ Orwell, Road to Wigan Pier, 161–62, 19–20.

¹²⁸ “Forty and Fat,” Men Only, December 1935, 101–3. Men Only was launched in 1935 and claimed fifty thousand readers in 1937 and two million in 1947.

¹²⁹ Orwell, Coming Up for Air, 5.

¹³⁰ Breward, Christopher, The Hidden Consumer: Masculinities, Fashion and City Life, 1860–1914 (Manchester, 1999)Google Scholar.

¹³¹ Greenfield, Jill, O'Connell, Sean, and Reid, Chris, “Gender, Consumer Culture and the Middle-Class Male, 1918–39,” in Gender, Civic Culture, and Consumerism: Middle-Class Identity in Britain, 1800–1940, ed. Kidd, Alan and Nicholls, David (Manchester, 1999), 183, 185–90Google Scholar, and “Fashioning Masculinity: Men Only, Consumption and the Development of Marketing in the 1930s,” Twentieth Century British History 10, no. 4 (1999): 463–65, 470–72Google Scholar.

¹³² Picture Post, 4, 18, 25 February and 4 March 1939.

¹³³ Men Only, May 1936, 145, see also August 1936, 141, January 1938, 135; Picture Post, 25 February 1939, 8.

¹³⁴ Men Only, November 1938, 151. Body belts were also marketed in Esquire, an American men's magazine launched in 1933; Stearns, Fat History, 99. Similar products which formed part of a burgeoning patent medicine market were available in the late nineteenth century if not earlier; Schwarz, Never Satisfied, illustration after 120.

¹³⁵ Barnett, “Fletcherism: The Chew-Chew Fad,” 9; Schwarz, Never Satisfied, 125.

¹³⁶ Hornibrook, Culture of the Abdomen, 2–3; Hornibrook, Physical Fitness in Middle Life was aimed particularly at the middle-aged businessman.

¹³⁷ New Health, February 1927, 67, May 1927, 3.

¹³⁸ Williams, Leonard, Middle Age and Old Age (London, 1925), v–viiGoogle Scholar.

¹³⁹ Ibid., 7–8.

¹⁴⁰ MH, Annual Report for the Year 1928 (London, 1929), 197Google Scholar; see also Newman, The Building of a Nation's Health, 350.

¹⁴¹ Christie, Surplus Fat, v.

¹⁴² Dutton, Obesity, 10–11, 23–24.

¹⁴³ Williams, Obesity, 11, 36–7, 58; see 38–59 for a discussion of the various diseases linked with obesity.

¹⁴⁴ Williams, Science and Art of Living, 54.

¹⁴⁵ Muller, My System, 14, 26.

¹⁴⁶ Williams, Middle Age and Old Age, 9–10. See also Williams, Science and Art of Living, 48ff. See also Claxton, Ernest Edward, Weight Reduction: Diet and Dishes (London, 1937), 17–18Google Scholar.

¹⁴⁷ Fisher, Irving and Fisk, Eugene Lyman, How to Live: Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science, 9th ed. (New York and London, 1916), 213, 219, 30–32Google Scholar. Excess mortality stood at between 50 to 75 percent excess among the heaviest (fifty to eighty pounds overweight). How to Live, which went through twenty editions in Britain until 1938, became a standard hygiene text in U.S. high schools and colleges in the first half of the twentieth century.

¹⁴⁸ Schwarz, Never Satisfied, 153–56; Seid, Never Too Thin, 85–87; Offer, First World War, 43–44.

¹⁴⁹ Bulmer, Ernest, “The Menace of Obesity,” British Medical Journal, 4 June 1932, 1024CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

¹⁵⁰ Gilman, Sander L., Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery (Princeton, NJ, 1999), 98, 150–53, 231–35Google Scholar; Mosse, Image of Man, 28–39, on Greek aesthetics in Enlightenment Western male beauty ideals; see Houlbrook, Matt, “Soldier Heroes and Rent Boys: Homosex, Masculinities, and Britishness in the Brigade of the Guards, circa 1900–1960,” Journal of British Studies 42, no. 3 (2003): 356, 365–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on guardsmen as an ideal of manly beauty.

¹⁵¹ Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan and the Perfect Man; Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent; Budd, The Sculpture Machine. Sandow inspired eulogies in physical culture magazines until the 1930s. There are several Web sites devoted to Sandow.

¹⁵² Health and Strength, May 1906, 189–94.

¹⁵³ Sandow's Magazine, January 1904, 56–57; Bonde, “Danish Apostle of Health,” 148–50; Muller, My Sun-Bathing and Fresh Air System, 12–13.

¹⁵⁴ Lowe, T. A., “Keeping Fit,” Men Only, August 1937, 66–69Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁵ Hornibrook, Culture of the Abdomen, 17; Hornibrook, Physical Fitness in Middle Life, 88.

¹⁵⁶ Chesser, Eustace, Slimming for the Million: The New Treatment of Obesity: A Practical Guide for Patient and Physician (London, 1939), 115–16Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁷ Dutton, Obesity, 23–24.

¹⁵⁸ Hunter, Donald, “Obesity,” The Lancet, 28 October 1933, 994CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Correspondence, British Medical Journal, 2 June 1934, 1007; see also Miles, Frank, “The Safe Way to Reduce,” Health and Strength, 1 April 1939, 490Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁹ Webb-Johnson, Why Be Fat?, 9, 17, 20–21.

¹⁶⁰ Claxton, Weight Reduction, 14.

¹⁶¹ Orwell, Coming Up for Air, 20.

¹⁶² Howard, Christopher, “In Defence of Rotundity,” The Lancet, 11 November 1933, 1129Google Scholar.

¹⁶³ Hunter, Donald (and F. B. Byrom), The Lancet, 25 November 1933, 1236Google Scholar.

¹⁶⁴ Howard, Christopher, correspondence, The Lancet, 2 December 1933, 1290CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶⁵ See, e.g., Orbach, Susie, Fat Is a Feminist Issue: The Anti-diet Guide to Permanent Weight Loss (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Wolf, Naomi, The Beauty Myth (New York, 1990.)Google Scholar

¹⁶⁶ Francis, “Domestication of the Male,” 643.

¹⁶⁷ Greenfield, O’Connell, and Reid, “Fashioning Masculinity,” 467.

¹⁶⁸ Williams, Middle Age and Old Age, 55.

¹⁶⁹ Williams, Obesity, 3.

¹⁷⁰ “Forty and Fat,” Men Only, December 1935, 101–2.

¹⁷¹ Herbert, “Mr. Mafferty Keeps Fit,” 116.

¹⁷² Chesser, Slimming for the Million, 26.

¹⁷³ See Stearns, Fat History, 72–74; Woolf, Beauty Myth.

¹⁷⁴ W. F. Christie, “Corpulence,” in Lane, Golden Health Library 3:817.

¹⁷⁵ Chesser, Slimming For the Million, 19.

¹⁷⁶ Hornibrook, Culture of the Abdomen, 5, and Physical Fitness in Middle Life, 78–79; emphasis in original.

¹⁷⁷ Inch, Inch on Fitness, 13–15, 16–17.

¹⁷⁸ “Over-Forty Fitness,” Picture Post, 28 January 1939, 45–48.

¹⁷⁹ Foucault, Use of Pleasure, 11.

¹⁸⁰ On conduct literature see Armstrong, Nancy and Tennenhouse, Leonard, eds., The Ideology of Conduct: Essays on Literature and the History of Sexuality (New York, 1987)Google Scholar.

¹⁸¹ Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys, preface to 7th ed., viii. See Rosenthal, Character Factory, 13, on sales and influence of Baden-Powell as a writer.

¹⁸² Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys, 201–2; see 179-202 passim, camp fire yarns nos. 17–19.

¹⁸³ Proctor, On My Honour, 101–2.

¹⁸⁴ Hornibrook, Culture of the Abdomen, 45; Williams, Obesity, 19–21; MH, Annual Report for the Year 1930, 162; Claxton, Weight Reduction, 63.

¹⁸⁵ Dutton, Obesity, 14, 18–19, 22, 28–35, 43, 46–48.

¹⁸⁶ Frumusan, Cure of Obesity, 71. For American diets see Seid, Never Too Thin, 95–96; Schwarz, Never Satisfied, 175–77.

¹⁸⁷ Frumusan, Cure of Obesity, 56–59, 67–75, 77, 79–80.

¹⁸⁸ Chesser, Slimming for the Million, 42–43.

¹⁸⁹ Christie, Surplus Fat, 66–80, and Obesity, 77–91, 179–80.

¹⁹⁰ Claxton, Weight Reduction, vii, 41–47, 51–59, 62; The Lancet, 16 October 1937, 910.

¹⁹¹ Hawk, Philip B., Streamline for Health (New York and London, 1935)Google Scholar; Wolberg, Lewis Robert, The Psychology of Eating (New York and London, 1937)Google Scholar; The Lancet, 11 January 1936, 92, 29 January 1938, 267.

¹⁹² Muller, My System, 14, 26–27, emphasis in original, and My Sun-Bathing and Fresh Air System, 67–69; Inch, Inch on Fitness, 30–32; Hornibrook, Culture of the Abdomen, 44–48, and Physical Fitness in Middle Life, 11–18, 101.

¹⁹³ Muller, My System, 24; see also Muller, My Sun-Bathing and Fresh Air System.

¹⁹⁴ Hornibrook, Culture of the Abdomen, 4–5, 49–63.

¹⁹⁵ Inch, Inch on Fitness, 82–97, 108–10, 117–20; Sandow, Eugen, Strength and How to Obtain It (London, 1897)Google Scholar; this was Sandow's most popular book, which went through several editions until 1922.

¹⁹⁶ Inch, Inch on Fitness, 117–19.

¹⁹⁷ Hornibrook, Physical Fitness in Middle Life, 24; see also 5–7, 22–24, 75–81, 94.

¹⁹⁸ Layton, Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, 88–92.

¹⁹⁹ Whorton, Inner Hygiene, xii, 79; see also 22–27, 77–79, 82–83.

²⁰⁰ Layton, Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, 94–102, 122–24; Whorton, Inner Hygiene, chap, 3 passim; Schwarz, Never Satisfied, 130.

²⁰¹ Whorton, Inner Hygiene, 77; see chap. 8 passim.

²⁰² Hornibrook, Culture of the Abdomen, 6–10, and Physical Fitness in Middle Life, 11.

²⁰³ Williams, Middle Age and Old Age, 23–25; see also Williams, Obesity, 44–45.

²⁰⁴ Layton, Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, 102; Williams, Middle Age and Old Age, 64, 282, was critical of this use of paraffin; see Whorton, Inner Hygiene, chap. 4 passim.

²⁰⁵ See nn. 46 and 47 above. Rout, Sex and Exercise, discusses the dangers of constipation and the link with obesity along similar lines.

²⁰⁶ MH, Annual Report for the Year 1930, 162, and Annual Report for the Year 1933, 163.

²⁰⁷ Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys, 180, see also 181, 200–201; emphasis in original.

²⁰⁸ Rosenbaum, “100 Years of Heights and Weights,” 280; Office of Population Censuses and Surveys [Ian Knight], The Heights and Weights of Adults in Great Britain (London, 1984)Google Scholar.

²⁰⁹ Barnett, “Fletcherism,” 9; Hornibrook, Culture of the Abdomen, 3; Banting, Letter, 29.

²¹⁰ Sandow, Eugen, The Power of the Evidence: Reports on Patients Treated (London, 1919), 89–91Google Scholar; Muller, My System, 48; advertisement of Muller's system and institute showing “before and after” pictures of a middle-aged man's reduced abdomen, New Health, May 1927, 3; Hornibrook, Culture of the Abdomen, pictures facing 28, and Physical Fitness in Middle Life, 61–63.

²¹¹ British Medical Journal, 19 May 1934, 919, 2 June 1934, 1007; The Lancet, 27 April 1918, 611–12; Dutton, Obesity, 23–24.

²¹² Christie, Obesity: A Practical Handbook, 71–73, 85–86.

²¹³ Offer, “Body Weight and Self-Control,” 102–3; Stearns, Fat History, 127–49.

²¹⁴ Dale, Peter, “Weigh Yourself Daily,” Men Only, January 1937, 59–61Google Scholar.

²¹⁵ Bargielowska, Ina Zweiniger, Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls and Consumption, 1939–1955 (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar.

²¹⁶ Offer, “Body Weight and Self-Control,” 82; Department of Health, Obesity: Reversing the Increasing Problem of Obesity in England (London, 1995), 5Google Scholar; Social Trends 29 (1999): 122, 33 (2003): 140.