15 Jan What ‘slim’ looked like in 1940

The John F. Kennedy Library in Boston has released a huge trove of digitized images and recordings of the late president. Alexis Madrigal, The Atlantic’s tech blogger, has published a selection. Here’s what struck me:

As a young naval officer, Kennedy was certainly slim, but no one would have thought him gaunt or emaciated.

Yet Kennedy’s Navy ID card reveals that he was six feet tall and weighed just 150 pounds. Six feet, 150 pounds! How our standards of girth have changed (as previously noted).