ABSTRACT
In postwar America, heart-related diseases became the number one killer of American men over the age of thirty. Insurance actuaries and medical experts had long connected heart disease to “overweight” and “obesity.” Health warnings in and of themselves were not enough to persuade Americans to change their eating habits. Instead, an all-consuming discourse in prescriptive literature, namely women’s magazines, demanded thinness for fashion and beauty, while the life insurance and medical communities continued to equate health with size. Although periodicals like Life and Sports Illustrated largely avoided stories that showed American female athletes looking less than feminine, the magazines showed a near obsession with Soviet women in the same sports. Weight management gained momentum in postwar media due to the widely held belief that fat was literally killing America. The media’s coverage of physically imposing Communist women while simultaneously celebrating the femininity of American women athletes may seem counterintuitive.
