Strong, Beautiful and Modern: National Fitness in Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, 1935-1960

Charlotte Macdonald

2013-01 · UBC Press

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In the late 1930s and early 1940s, a wave of state-sponsored “national fitness” programs swept Britain and its former settler colonies, laying the foundations for the twentieth century’s obsession with fitness. In Strong, Beautiful and Modern, Charlotte Macdonald shows how governments encouraged citizens to be healthier and more active and thereby reinforced the cultural ties of the Empire. Alongside these state-sponsored efforts was a growing emphasis from business, the medical establishment, and popular culture on the importance of having “a better body.” At a time when government concern over public health issues such as obesity is once again on the rise, Macdonald offers valuable lessons as to why the first national fitness drive was ultimately a failure. Drawing on extensive research, Strong, Beautiful and Modern is a lively investigation into the way people and their governments think about health and well-being, and how historical views have shaped our modern life.

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Charlotte Macdonald is a professor of history at Victoria University of Wellington. She has strong interests in women’s history, both in New Zealand and the wider British Empire, and in the history of sport. Publishing widely on these subjects, Charlotte Macdonald is also the co-editor (with Frances Porter) of My Hand Will Write What My Heart Dictates (1996) and (with Merimeri Penfold and Bridget Williams) The Book of New Zealand Women / Ko Kui Ma Te Kaupapa (1991).