Standardizing Slimness: How Body Weight Quantified Beauty in the Netherlands, 1870–1940

This chapter investigates the history of one of the most powerful quantitative beauty standards: weight. The chapter argues that weight is neither a natural nor a neutral standard for the beauty ideals of slimness and fatness. It is shown first how, in late nineteenth-century Netherlands, weight had not yet become a standard of beauty but was rather a bodily curiosity, measured at fairgrounds. The chapter then analyses Dutch newspaper advertisements for slimming remedies to show that, by the 1930s, weight was strongly established as a standard of beauty, scales having ceased to be a fairground attraction. The chapter concludes with an exploration of the consequences of this new standard of beauty, which complicated its character by partially separating it from the visual

From Ethical Consumerism to Political Consumption

This article reviews some of the recent literature in geography and related disciplines on ethical consumerism and political consumption. Many geographers began their engagement with questions of ethics, politics, consumption and consumerism inspired by critical theory, commodity chain analysis and a sense that geographical knowledge might have a central role to play in progressive social change. Since these early engagements, it has been established that consumption practices are rarely the practices of rational, autonomous, self-identified consumers, and so-called ethical consumption practices are rarely detached from organisations and their political activity. Over time, therefore, some researchers have gradually shifted their focus from consumer identities and knowledge to consumption practices, social networks, material infrastructures and organisations of various kinds. This shift in focus has implications – both for the field of political consumption and for how the discipline of geography relates to this field

Keeping secrets:Leslie E. Keeley, the Gold Cure and the Nineteenth-Century Brain Science of Addiction

In October 1997, Alan Leshner, director of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), declared that addiction is ‘a chronic, relapsing brain disorder characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use.’ For Leshner, recent neuroscience proved that drug use changes brain structure and function and, consequently, ‘the addicted brain is distinctly different from the non-addicted brain’ (Science 278; 1997: 45, 46). Now known as the hijacked brain theory or the NIDA Paradigm, Leshner’s model informs research and directs funding around the globe. But the theory was not as novel as he claimed it was. It is strikingly similar to that proposed in the 1890s by Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, an American physician whose internationally franchised ‘Gold Cure’ for habitual drug and alcohol use was the most famous addiction treatment regime in the world. Today Keeley is nearly forgotten, but when he died in 1900 he was among the world’s most controversial physicians. The British Medical Journal wrote damningly that ‘Dr. Keeley was for many years an orthodox practitioner of medicine. Then he left the broad highway of legitimate practice, and took a short cut to fortune by a secret path.’ The piece was titled ‘The Nemesis of Quackery’ (BMJ 1900; i: 921). ‘Keeping Secrets’ asks why, and what it means to have forgotten such a popular and influential figure. It uses unexplored archival material to recover Keeley’s claims about addiction and medical practice, and it examines the historical irony of his dismissal as a quack. It engages questions of medical professionalization, the changing description of a persistent health problem, and the persuasive role of technology in medical explanation. In doing so, it moves beyond narrow conceptions of the history of medicine to think about what counts as history and its relevance for today’s policy and treatment initiatives

Standard bearers: material culture and middle-class communities at the turn of the twentieth century

No abstract available