Joe Acton, Wrestler, from World's Champions, Series 1 (N28) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes 1887

This small chromolithograph is from a series made for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes that featured “World’s Champions”. These cards, which romanticize male athleticism, reflect a late 19th-century culture grappling with shifting ideals of masculinity. As industrialization and urbanization changed the nature of work, sport became a prominent way to reassert traditional masculine virtues. The wrestler Joe Acton is presented as the ideal of white, Western masculinity—strong, capable, and self-controlled. Yet, the intimate scale of the image invites a different kind of engagement, one that is more personal and perhaps even homoerotic. The card operates within a complex interplay of public heroism and private desire. These images were not just about celebrating athletic prowess, but also about constructing and marketing a particular vision of manhood at a time when gender roles were being renegotiated. In its own way, the image underscores how masculinity is as much performed as it is innate.