The Plague Of Overweight: Photographer Martha Holmes Documented The Struggle Of Obesity People In 1950s America

“Bulging at beach in 1949, 197-pound Dorothy Bradley self-consciously leaves locker room for swim. She covered up embarrassment by being jolly and gregarious”.

Martha Holmes/Time & Life Pictures

“The most serious health problem in the U.S. today is obesity.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But that pronouncement about obesity’s primacy in the hierarchy of national health problems is not new. Rather, it’s the opening line to a remarkable article published 60 years ago in LIFE magazine. This photographs made by Martha Holmes to illustrate that March 1954 article, titled “The Plague of Overweight.” Continue reading »