Skip to main content

The timeline can be navigated with the “Scroll Left” and “Scroll Right” buttons or by dragging the pointer to a date on the timeline waveform (located at the bottom of the screen on the desktop version and on the left of the screen on mobile). To filter by a particular topic and see a smaller section of the data, make a selection on the dropdown “Filters” menu or click “Search” to do a keyword search. Hover over the abbreviated filter tags in the blue boxes to see the complete name of the filter, or click a filter to display all the data with this tag. If you want to take a deeper dive into a specific topic by viewing a narrative essay page and a curated timeline, click on “Stories.”

Read More

Metropolitan Life Insurance begins to produce "desirable" weight charts for men.

Date: 1942

FAT
DDD
SRA
HPI

Assessing thousands of their members based on weight, fat, general health, and death rate, Metropolitan Life determines a "standard desirable" weight for all men.

Metropolitan's chart builds on the Body Mass Index chart, which was invented by Belgian academic and non-physician Adolphe Quetelet, and has been criticized for years based on its assumption of a single healthy body type that is rooted in oppressive constructs of race, geography, gender, age, ability, and more.