Date: 2011-11-19 02:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nijireiki.livejournal.com
Hahaha, yeah, that was my big issue with Captain America. I didn't worry about it too much, because of course the Hollywood adaptations needs 6+ft buffed-up Chris Evans to make Steve Rogers "heroic"-looking enough (and some comic fans wanted him EVEN BIGGER), but at the time the comic was written, like with Superman, it was very much self-insert wish-fulfillment fantasy. The American comics industry was largely comprised of an immigrant population, often poor, and of course the workers stateside during the war would have been ineligible for service in some way or another. The audience was also American, so children of both genders, women, and men who were turned away from enlisting would have been part of the reader market.

There also wasn't the same level of mandatory education, child labor laws, or general workers' rights, like unionization or protection from workplace injury (the face model for "Rosie the Riveter" actually quit her machining job shortly after being "discovered" for the propaganda art because too many women's hands were being crushed and she felt uncomfortable with the prospect of losing her fingers, go figure), not to mention the agricultural devastation of the Dust Bowl affecting availability of nutrient-dense food even if you weren't going hungry. And WWI and WWII both highlighted a lot of chemical warfare, and most people's first instinct isn't to check their genitalia after exposure in the factory or in the foxhole, but all I'm saying is reproductive side effects are both 1) real and 2) a bitch.

TL;DR: Tall and/or healthy men would not have been the norm among the general populace of Brooklyn by any stretch of the imagination.

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