He-manliness is taking a 21st-century bow. Trump 2.0, an unlikely icon of physically fit masculinity, has transformed his doughboy persona into a veritable Charles Atlas balancing the world on his shoulders, showing of his muscularity by pressing heavy weights in the form of punitive tariffs.
You may ask: What does this have to do with the copper halftone printing cuts gathered below from printer and illustrator Ross MacDonald‘s exceptional type collection? I admit the link is tenuous. But the president is a worm that is eating away at my brain, so forgive any deviations from the norm.
Recently, I published a story about a forgotten cover illustrator for Physical Culture magazine, which was published by Bernarr Macfadden (1868–1955), a fanatical figure in the health and fitness movement of the ’20s and ’30s. Having no medical education he nonetheless fervidly supported unorthodox ideas and quackery such as “grape therapy” in curing cancer. His publishing career came to an abrupt dead end after he refused medical aid for a possibly treatable stomach ailment.
After reading my story, MacDonald was reminded that a few years ago he’d acquired a collection of metal printing cuts used for Physical Culture and other magazines showing Macfadden’s ideal he-men lifting dumbbells and displaying their muscular physiques.
As it pertains to my initial metaphor: Currently Trump is acting out his strongman persona, and his minions are following his lead. Time will tell whether his show of strength will work or not.
At least it gives MacDonald an opportunity to play with his iconic vintage cuts …
Postscript from Ross MacDonald: When I was a teenager, I worked as a printer, first at Coach House Press in Toronto, then at Dreadnaught Press, which I started with my older brother. At Dreadnaught I hand-cranked a flatbed letterpress all day every day, printing the books and broadsides we published, as well as commercial printing jobs (what printers call jobbing work). I could print up to 300 sheets an hour, eight hours a day.
I was tall and skinny, but after a couple of years, the women who worked at Dreadnaught started noticing that I had one big bicep—my right—from cranking the press. My other arm, and the rest of me, was weedy and skinny. So they bought me a single 10-pound dumbbell for my birthday so I could work my left arm. This was the mid ’70s. All the people around me, and me included, were hippies. No one worked out or went to a gym or even knew how—it just wasn’t a thing. When we weren’t working, we sat around smoking weed and drinking cheap Szechszárd Hungarian wine. So I kinda worked out my left arm in secret in my room. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it felt good. It was all downhill from there …
Announcement printed by Ross MacDonald/Brightwork Press.
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