A photograph of half -naked men, allegedly taken at a beauty contest in 1919, spreads in social networks. We checked whether such a description of reality corresponds.

During 2021, a historical photograph with almost identical signatures posted several public million-plots in VKontakte at once. Among them - "5 interesting facts", "Interesting facts", "Brainstorming", "Style. Fashion. Beauty. Vintage " And "Psychology". Users of other social networks paid attention to the picture (for example, Facebook And Twitter), as well as the authors of blogs on "Yandex.Zen", TJournal, Reddit, Livejournal And Sports.ru.

Our colleagues from the American Facticsching Project Snopes discoveredThat for the first time this photograph appeared on the Web about ten years ago. At that time her Used As an illustration in notes on swimwear at the beginning of the 20th century. In the Russian -language segment of the Internet, the situation was similar - a picture can be found in 2017 publications on history male panties and 2018 about history bathing costumes. The authors of these publications did not write about any beauty contest.

Snopes with reference to Angus Trambla, former director of the National Portrait Gallery of Australia, reportsthat the image that has become a viral is taken from the postcard. According to Tramble, a friend from the museum store in Germany brought a similar postcard to him. The signature for her read: “Schöner Durch Streifen. Mitteleuropa UM 1910 ”(“ Strips made [men] more beautifully. Central Europe, around 1910 ”). A similar signature accompanies A card that is sold on a specialized German site. Trub in your comments does not mentionthat the photo was taken to the beauty contest.

Thus, although the photograph has been known for several years, it has been spreading as a picture at the beauty contest not so long ago. Moreover, there is no evidence that such a signature corresponds to reality. Apparently, the photograph was really taken at the beginning of the 20th century and six men in Central Europe around 1910 are captured on it. The signature on the beauty contest was probably invented in order to attract attention on social networks.