Bernarr Macfadden: Apostle of “Physical Culture”

Bernarr Macfadden (born Bernard Adolphus McFadden, 1868–1955) was America’s loudest early evangelist for fitness, fasting, and whole foods—and a publishing titan who turned those passions into a mass-media empire. He founded Physical Culture magazine in 1899, built best-selling confession and true-crime magazines, staged the nation’s first large-scale physique contests, and popularized a health creed summarized in his notorious slogan: “Weakness is a crime—don’t be a criminal.”

Early life and reinvention

Raised in hardship in rural Missouri and orphaned young, McFadden remade himself through hard physical work, calisthenics, and diet, then even toughened his name—Bernard became “Bernarr,” McFadden became “Macfadden”—to sound, as he put it, like a lion’s roar. After a stint in England marketing a wall-mounted exercise device, he launched an early fitness periodical, Physical Development (1898), and then the American monthly Physical Culture (1899), which would be his platform for decades.

A publishing empire that remade mass media

Physical Culture carried how-to training, vegetarian recipes, sun-bathing and fresh-air paeans, and brash personal testimony. It was a hit—laying the groundwork for a far larger business. In 1919, Macfadden launched True Story, the prototype of the confessional magazine; in 1924 he created True Detective Mysteries, which evolved into the hugely influential True Detective and pioneered modern true-crime. He also founded the sensational New York tabloid Evening Graphic (1924), famous—critics said infamous—for splashy sex-and-scandal covers. Together, these titles made Macfadden a household name and helped shape 20th-century popular magazines.

What he preached

Macfadden’s creed was spartan and theatrical: vigorous daily exercise, frequent walking, fresh air and sun, cold baths, minimal clothing, and an ascetic diet heavy on fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. He scorned white bread as the “staff of death,” and championed therapeutic fasting to “reset” the body. Ever the showman, he liked to walk barefoot to his Manhattan office carrying a 40-pound sandbag to advertise vitality. His barked motto—“Weakness is a crime”—became a cultural provocation as much as a prescription.

Experiments in everyday life: restaurants, schools, hotels

Not content with magazines, he brought “physical culture” into bricks and mortar. In 1902 he opened Physical Culture vegetarian restaurants in New York (and soon Philadelphia and Chicago); by 1911 there were roughly twenty, among the first mainstream vegetarian venues in the U.S. He established boys’ and girls’ boarding schools in Westchester County that emphasized discipline, athletics, and outdoor life. And in 1929 he bought the famed Jackson Sanatorium at Dansville, New York—reborn as the Physical Culture Hotel, a destination for exercise, diet regimens, and celebrity retreats on a hilltop above the Genesee Valley.

Bodybuilding impresario

Macfadden did as much as anyone to turn muscle display into modern sport. In 1903 he staged the first national physique contest at Madison Square Garden—won by Al Treloar, whose victory was even filmed by Thomas Edison. He returned to the Garden in 1921 and 1922 with extravaganzas that helped launch Charles Atlas (Angelo Siciliano), who won Macfadden’s “Most Handsome Man” (1921) and “World’s Most Perfectly Developed Man” (1922) titles before becoming an international icon of mail-order muscle.

Controversy, politics, and the Evening Graphic

Macfadden’s outrages kept pace with his ambitions. He tangled repeatedly with censors and Anthony Comstock’s vice squads over scanty costumes, risqué photo spreads, and frank talk of sex and birth control in his pages. His tabloid, the New York Evening Graphic, was nicknamed the “Porno-Graphic” by detractors. Ever craving a bigger stage, he flirted with public office—booming himself for the 1936 Republican presidential nomination and later entering Florida’s 1940 U.S. Senate Democratic primary (unsuccessfully). He even toyed with founding a quasi-religion, “cosmotarianism,” devoted to physical culture.

Books and a canon of “self-healing”

A prolific author, Macfadden wrote manuals and manifestos that blended exercise, diet, and moral exhortation. Representative titles include Strong Eyes (1901), a regimen for eye health; Vitality Supreme (1923), a condensation of his system; and Fasting for Health (1934), which popularized therapeutic fasting between the World Wars. His multivolume Macfadden’s Encyclopedia of Physical Culture (1911) gathered exercise methods, diet advice, and photographs into a definitive statement of his program. While doctors took sharp issue with his anti-medical rhetoric, these books reached millions and created a mass audience for lifestyle medicine.

Who he influenced

Macfadden’s most visible heir was Charles Atlas, whose contests, modeling, and mail-order course grew directly from Macfadden’s shows and pages. But his reach was wider. The confession-magazine template perfected by True Story changed American magazines, advertising, and celebrity culture, while True Detective seeded the true-crime juggernaut that still dominates podcasts and streaming. In fitness, scholars like Jan Todd and Kathleen Endres have shown how Physical Culture promoted women’s athletics and body-confidence—a heterodox “health feminism” for its day—even as it trafficked in pageants and spectacle. And in nutrition, his unprocessed-foods message, whole grains, and skepticism of sugar-and-starch modernity echoed through later natural-foods and wellness movements. He lived to the age of 87, passing away in October 1955.

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