Speaking Back to Sheldon: Barbara Honeyman Heath as the New ‘Doyenne of Somatotyping’

Abstract

In 1991, a reviewer of Somatotyping-Development and Applications celebrated author Barbara Honeyman-Heath as the ‘doyenne of somatotyping’, crediting her for ‘entering this embattled arena 50 years after the publication that started it all, William Sheldon's Varieties of Human Physique (1940)’. Sheldon, creator of the somatotype, had been disparaged since the late 1940s for drawing undue relationships among social deviance, temperament and physique. Yet, even as constitutional research was marred by its eugenic underpinnings, interest in the potential connections between physique and temperament persisted. During the 1960s, the somatotyping system was reorganized by Honeyman-Heath, Sheldon's former assistant, who claimed to modify connections between temperament and physique. Joining Margaret Mead in New Guinea she gained access to the Manus community, somatotyping its members and using the data to develop her modified somatotype technique. Collaborating with physical educator Lindsay Carter she was primed to advertise their system widely among physical educators, especially those interested in elite sport. Indeed, the ‘Heath-Carter’ method lent itself well to analyses of sporting performance, contributing to the ongoing fascination of scientists and coaches with the perceived advantages of certain kinds of body types and compositions for athletic achievement, as well as perpetuating simple minded questions about racial differences.