What Is The June 1919 Issue Of Physical Culture

The topic of fitness has been prevalent in the American society for a great number of years. It has been displayed in various forms of media and has prompted us as a society to think about how we view fitness. One such form of media is a magazine. The pictures, advertisements and stories that are contained in fitness magazines appeal to us and can cause us to desire the society’s view of fitness. In this paper, I will compare two magazines, the June 1919 issue of Physical Culture and the November 2013 issue of Men’s Fitness in terms of their content, philosophy, advertising, imagery and the “look” of the people. I will use the information gathered from the comparison to argue why I believe that the Men’s Fitness magazine is more effective

Both magazines tried to convey the importance of healthy living and fitness. Each magazine has its shortcomings. The Physical Culture magazine addressed healthy living based on information available at that time, some of which are now known to be incorrect or deficient. An example of this is an article called “Physical Welfare vs. Bolshevism” written by O.J. Hamilton and Alan Denby. This article was written as a response to the Bolshevik Revolution that took placed in the Soviet Union (present-day Russia) in October 1917, overthrowing the Tsarist autocracy and establishing a communist government. Hamilton and Denby argued, “the healthy workman with a well-cared-for body, whose mind is not led astray by unpractical theorists, and who is not seduced by malicious and self-seeking propagandists of anarchy.” Both men proposed that the surest method of checking the spread of Bolshevism in the U.S. was for employers to pay attention to the physical well-being of their employees. This article was not based on any scientific research, but was playing on the social threat that Bolshevism posed to capitalism. In hindsight, this was a propaganda piece written to advocate for