Fig leaf

In culture, a "fig leaf" or "fig-leaf" is a literal or figurative method of obscuring an act or object considered embarrassing or distasteful with something of innocuous appearance.

The use of an actual fig leaf for the purpose originates in Western painting and sculpture, where leaves would be used by the artist themselves or by later censors in order to hide the genitalia of a subject.

[5] For free-standing statues this did not work well, and carved or cast fig leaves were sometimes added, such as with the plaster copy of Michelangelo's David displayed in Victorian era London.

Eugen Sandow, often considered the first modern-day bodybuilder, was an admirer of the masculine physique, encapsulated in a Greco-Roman musculature he termed the Grecian Ideal.

In addition to strongman sideshows, he performed "muscle displays" by posing in the nude—save for a fig leaf that he would don in further emulation of statues he described seeing in Italy as a boy.

A fig leaf cast in plaster used to cover the genitals of a copy of a statue of David in the Cast Courts of the Victoria and Albert Museum . Today, the fig leaf is no longer used, but it is displayed in a case at the back of the cast's plinth. [ 1 ]
Bodybuilding pioneer Eugen Sandow portraying The Dying Gaul , a pose taken from an ancient Roman sculpture.