Does One Size Fit All?

This is the 10th installment in the Legacies of Eugenics series, which features essays by leading thinkers devoted to exploring the history of eugenics and the ways it shapes our present. The series is organized by Osagie K. Obasogie in collaboration with the Los Angeles Review of Books, and supported by the Center for Genetics and Society, the Othering & Belonging Institute, and Berkeley Public Health.

HOW LARGE SHOULD members of our species be? Even before birth, many of us are assessed through ultrasounds to determine if we are the “right” size. The women who gestate us are weighed throughout pregnancy to determine if they are gaining the “right” amount of weight. Once we are born, growth charts track our progress toward full stature. Thereafter, our girth may be scrutinized relentlessly, with the balance scale being the clinical device we encounter—and likely resent—more than any other.

The eugenics movement was premised on the notion of amplifying favorable traits in the population, but this requires knowing which value of a trait is optimal. To this end, the early eugenicists became...