Consuming Masculinity and Race. Circus Bodies in Strength Shows and Wrestling Fights Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 64(1), 111–136 (2019) DOI: 10.1556/022.2019.64.1.7 1216–9803/$ 20 © 2019 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest Dominika Czarnecka Insttute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw Abstract: This article describes the mass consumption of masculinity and race within the entertainment landscape in Poland in the years 1850–1939. Focusing on the ever-increasing popularity of strength shows and wrestling fghts held in circuses and performed in front of urban audiences, the article intends to demonstrate the strategies of presenting white and black athletes in circus arenas, and to examine the meanings and roles of strength shows and wrestling fghts in the collective imagination on racial and gender diferences. Keywords: athletes, circus body, manliness, Poland, race, strength shows, wrestling fghts While reading the biography of Zofa Stryjeńska, a Polish painter whose most active artistic period coincided with the interwar period (1918–1939), 1 I came across a passage about the Staniewski Brothers Circus in Warsaw: “It is a multistory building made of brick, with the auditorium of three thousand seats. The fghts between Polish and Russian athletes were always most popular with the public. Athletes reached the arena (its diameter amounted to thirteen meters and it could be flled with water) walking along the red carpet, accompanied by the sound of The Gladiator March. Zocha is excited – Poddubny and Garowienko were supposed to fght ‘until knockout’.” (Kuźniak 2015:153) The description of these 1934 events attracted my attention for two reasons. Firstly, because it relates to the circus, and in the second half of the 19 th century and the frst 1 Interwar period – the period in European history between the end of World War I and the outbreak of the Second World War (1918–1939). In the history of Polish statehood, this period is defined as the Second Polish Republic (II RP). In 1918, Poland regained independence after 123 years of absence from the map of Europe. In September 1939, the territory of the Second Polish Republic was invaded by the Wehrmacht as well as the Red Army, and subsequently annexed. In defiance of the provisions of international law, the occupiers announced the dissolution of the Polish state; their actions were, however, not acknowledged by the international community.