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Better Babies Contests: Eugenics Goes to the Fair
by Cristen Conger | September 8, 2011
In the 1920s baby parades evolved into Better Babies Contests, marketed as public health initiatives. At these contests, often held in rural fairgrounds, babies would be disrobed, measured, weighed and evaluated for temperament and intelligence. Winning babies might claim titles such as “Heaviest Boy Under 1 Year of Age.” If this sounds a lot like livestock competitions at homegrown fairs that’s because it was!
While studying up for the Stuff Mom Never Told You episode on men and makeup, I stumbled across the Men’s Dress Reform Party (MDRP), a London group started in 1929 that advocated for the adoption of “brighter, more hygienic, and picturesque attire” for the male dresser. Just as women’s groups had revolted against excessive undergarments, long skirting and generally restrictive clothing, the MDRP also wished to shed requisite suiting, stiff collars and neckties they considered unhealthy and downright uncomfortable.
At Stuff You Should Know, it is our goal to give everybody something interesting to discuss around the campfire or the bar or between rounds at a cockfight, even if it means we feel dirty after having reached that goal. So how about today we talk about the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement?
There is a race afoot among blue chip IBM and a number of smaller start-ups to reach the $1,000 mark for sequencing individual DNA. Ever since the Human Genome Project completed its work in 2001, the quest to read a single person’s genetic code went from a possibility to a reality. The reality cost the U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan, France and China conglomerate a cool $1 billion, however. You have a billion dollars lying around to have your genetic make up sequenced? Me either. Do you want to have your personal genetic code cracked? Probably. Maybe. I don’t know either.
One can imagine my dismay upon realizing recently that I may not have developed correctly in the womb. After my glasses disintegrated on Sunday I opted for contacts, since they’re cheaper. Everything was going swimmingly until I took a good long look in the mirror and thought, “Huh, I don’t remember my eyes being that close together.”
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