The Press: Body Love

Monday, Oct. 07, 1929

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Bernarr ("Body-Love") Macfadden celebrated the second anniversary of his Evening Graphic . . . with "a frank talk" to his readers (TIME, Sept. 27, 1926).

Publisher Bernarr ("Body-Love") Macfadden's New York Evening Graphic last week embraced the divorce hearings . . . (TIME, Feb. 7, 1927).

Bernarr ("Body-Love") Macfadden . . . went to Washington . . . (TIME, April 30, 1928).

Last week an editorial entitled "Body Loving'' appeared in Publisher Bernarr Macfadden's New York Evening Graphic, over his signature. Excerpts:

"A few literary 'lights' who have little or no respect for bodily culture especially delight in referring to the writer as 'Body-Loving Macfadden.'

"I accept the criticism, if it might be so termed, as a distinct compliment !

"I freely admit I love my body.

"I respect and reverence it.

"It is the flesh-and-blood house in which I will have to live for the balance of my life. I have occupied it up to the present time. . . .

"One of my most caustic critics had to pass on to the cemetery at the age of thirty-three. A brilliant mind, but lacking in balance; and I would say it was entirely because he had not given his body the attention and care to which it was justly entitled. . . .* Loving care you give your body will be returned with many rich rewards. It will insure you good digestion. . . . It will give you bright eyes.

"Self-love is often criticized; but when it compels careful attention to the rules of life essential in the building and maintenance of buoyant, powerful health, it is indeed commendable."

^{*Reference to Briton Hadden, Founder & Editor of TIME,
who died aged 31 (TIME, March 11). Shortly before his fatal illness,
Editor Hadden had been accepted as a better-than-average risk by the
Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. A keen baseball player, he exercised
summer and winter. His physicians declared his death to be due to
septicaemia (resulting evidently from the scratch of a cat), which
might have overcome the most perfect physical specimen.}