#Eugen Sandow

[gayartists]

Eugen Sandow (1894)

#Eugen Sandow #beefcake #muscle #body builder #body building #vintage

[principiumindividuationis777]

#Eugen Sandow #vintage #muscle #bodybuilder #handlebar mustache #black and white #photography #hands behind head #posing

[truckman816]

Eugen Sandow

(1867-1925) Professional Strongman 💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪💪

#eugen sandow

[jeanmetabolictrainer]

Los INCREIBLES fisicos NATURALES de los titanes de la era de BRONCE

#youtube #era de bronce #eugen sandow #culturismo natural #culturismo #entrenamiento #nutricion #workout #home workout #calistenia

[thefrankshow]

Self portrait as someone else.

#self portrait as someone else #self portrait #the great sandow #eugen sandow #photographers on tumblr

[gingerbredman1989]

Playground AI

Vintage 1895 B&W full photo of Eugen Sandow, promoting his incredible physique, sinewy musculature. curled mustache, short curly hair, pale complexion, feats of strength, Vaudeville

#ai generated #ai image #ai muscle #playground ai #vascular #Eugen Sandow

[luxsit]

Eugene Sandow. Look over there!

#eugene sandow #vintage strongmen #vintage #moustache

[racefortheironthrone]

Considering superhero comics predate the invention of spandex, when did the idea that superhero costume are made from spandex come from?

Great question!

To answer this question, I first need to backup and do some history about fin-de-siècle strongmen and the origin of the "superhero costume" as a distinct cultural concept. In the late 19th/early 20th century, circus strongmen were not just huge draws but celebrities and cultural icons in their own right, part of the whole obsession of anxious masculinity in that era, along with the emergence of bodybuilding and quite a bit of racist eugenics (think "Passing of the Great Race" stuff) about how industrial civilization was making white men effete and degenerate and thus vulnerable to the Other.

However, the strongmen had something of a fashion problem: in order to do their shtick, they often wore close-fitting silk tights and shirts in order to show off their musculature, and these had a tendency to split when they were flexing. This could run the risk of leaving the strongmen hanging in the wind, as it were, so they adapted by putting on wrestler's unitards over their tights to keep themselves under wraps.

Throw on a cape, and you literally have the archetypal superhero costume. But if you take a look at how these costumes look on an actual human body, they're not literally skin-tight. You can see some muscle definition in places, but there's also visible wrinkles and folds at the joints and other places where you need more flexibility. It's just not quite there yet in terms of evoking the whole George Sandow aesthetique.

And then in 1958, spandex was invented as a much more elastic fabric that could be truly skintight without splitting, so you could really see the musculature much more clearly. Add this to the expanding and increasingly professionalized and advanced culture of postwar bodybuilding, and people's expectations about what their superheroes could and should look like began to change. Thus, starting in the Silver Age and into the Bronze Age, superheroes start to look a lot buffer and their costumes look a lot tighter so that the reader can see every damn muscle (and curve) on superheroes' bodies - because artists and editors and publishers realized they could make more money by making comics that were a bit sexier, thanks to the magic of "spandex."

Now this gets us into the economics of the comics industry and changing generational cohorts, but as we passed from the Silver Age to the late Bronze Age, you started to see a shift from comics artists who worked in comics because Jews and Catholics weren't welcome in the Art Departments of Madison Avenue, to comics artists who worked in comics because they had grown up reading comics and learned to draw from comics.

This had an impact on superhero costumes, because the older artists tended to be plugged in more to fashion and fashion art and thus drew superhero costumes as clothing with real three-dimensionality to it and the younger artists found it easier and faster to just draw familiar superhero bodies naked (with "spandex" as the figleaf) and then put in a few lines showing where the costumes end - and this easier and faster style that turned up the dial on allowable sexiness was more profitable for the companies.

Once you get to Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, and the other "Image Kids" of Nineties Comics, the spandex-ification of superhero comics had reached its peak because now the hot new trend was stuff that wouldn't work even with real-world spandex, hence the phenomena of the boob sock and the logical extension of the swimsuit/bikini for superwomen to the battle thong.

So ultimately it all comes down to the combined pressures of culture and economics.

#comics #comics meta #superhero costumes #silver age #bronze age #nineties comics #cultural history #superhero comics #marvel #dc #marvel meta #dc meta #image comics

[beefysmorgasbord]

1880’s bodybuilder & strongman Eugen Sandow.

#beefy #masculine men #beefcake #thick muscle #daddy #muscle bear #vintage jock #big muscle #vintage bodybuilder #vintage muscle

[sexystudwrestler]

Victorian stud, Eugene Sandow

[cosmicanger]

Eugen Sandow (1894)

[principiumindividuationis777]

#Eugen Sandow #bodybuilder #vintage #black and white #photography #hands behind head #male body positivity

[shaddad]

o pai da musculação eugen sandow fotografado por benjamin j. falk (1853-1925)

[jeanmetabolictrainer]

Cómo construían sus cuerpos los culturistas de la ERA de BRONCE

#youtube #culturisrmo #era de bronce #entrenamiento de la era de bronce #workout #entrenamiento #training #fit #fitness #culturismo natural #eugen sandow #gymlover #gymaddict #gymfit #gym

[thefrankshow]

The inner life of Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House.

#photographers on tumblr #the great sandow #eugen sandow #mike johnson #speaker of the house

[downwithpeople]

the iron culture podcast by eric helms and omar isuf recently put out an episode about steroids and the influencers peddling them and it was a great ep not just because it’s an important issue to talk about but they also really captured the joy of bodybuilding not just in the competitive sense but in the philosophical sense, the beauty of spending years cultivating an athletic physique and the way it can be a form of artistic expression, exactly as eugen sandow described it