‘Building the Body Beautiful’ inThe Women's League of Health and Beauty: yoga and female agency in 1930s Britain

Abstract

Techniques of the body, claimed Marcel Mauss in 1935, were the vehicle societies employed to express their values. Arguing that politics goes nowhere without movement, this paper explores the visibility of movement aesthetics in Britain during the 1930s through the activities of the League of Health and Beauty and its mother–daughter leaders, Mary Bagot Stack and Prunella Stack. It argues that Mary Bagot Stack's introduction of yoga to the League's keep fit activities encouraged an element of female agency and embodied freedom that was diminished as Prunella's concerns were drawn increasingly toward national imperatives of fitness regimentation modeled upon fascist physical training schemes in Europe.

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