For decades, the idea of standing properly carried considerable political and social baggage. Slouching was considered a sign of decline.
In the early 20th century, posture testing became mainstream in the military, workplaces, and schools, thanks in part to the American Posture Federation, a group of doctors, educators, and health officials formed in 1914. A 1917 study found that approximately 80 percent of Harvard University's freshman class had poor posture. Businessmen were stocking up on chairs, products and equipment to improve posture.
But the actual science doesn't support conventional wisdom about proper posture, argues Beth Rinker in her new book, Slouching: Postural Panic in Modern America. Rinker, a historian and sociologist of science at the University of Pennsylvania, recently gave an interview to the New York Times. The conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
nice to meet you.
Your posture looks pretty good. it doesn't matter. That's the gist of my book. That's fake news.
Is our obsession with great posture fake news? I'm off topic!
Interest in posture as a matter of etiquette has existed since the Enlightenment, if not earlier, but it was not until 1859 that bad posture became a scientific and medical obsession. This was after Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published. He claimed: Humans evolved through natural selection, and the first to develop was bipedalism. In other words, upright posture preceded the development of the brain.
This idea was controversial. For whereas conventional wisdom had taught that advanced intelligence distinguished humans from non-human animals, it now appeared that mere physical differences in the spine and legs separated humans from apes. It is.
In other words, bad posture was primitive.
In fact, quite the opposite. Bad posture was thought to primarily affect “civilized” people, that is, those who no longer engaged in manual labor and instead enjoyed the benefits of mechanized transport, industrialization, and leisure. .
With the rise of eugenics in the early 20th century, some scientists began to worry that slouching among “civilized” peoples could lead to degeneration that would reverse human progress. Posture correction became part of the project of “racial improvement,” especially for white Anglo-Saxon men, but also for middle-class women and blacks who were trying to gain political rights and equality. Bad posture has become stigmatized and defined as a disability. As I show in my book, people with postural “deficiencies” have been regularly discriminated against in American workplaces, educational settings, and immigration authorities. At that time, people with disabilities had no legal protection.
This was also the time when doctors and public health officials began to focus on disease prevention to curb the spread of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. Good posture was understood to be an effective way to prevent deadly diseases, leading to campaigns to teach Americans how to stand up straight.
As the incidence of tuberculosis decreased in the 1940s, in part due to the discovery of antibiotics, scientists and doctors began to draw a causal link between poor posture and back pain. President John F. Kennedy, who suffered from chronic back pain and was himself a posture guru, reinvigorated the President's Council on Physical Fitness to promote uprightness and strength among the nation.
For much of the 20th century, attitude awareness campaigns were seen as a cheap way to improve public health, especially compared to expensive health investments such as housing, infrastructure, and national health insurance coverage. . Posture campaigners also tended to place the blame on individuals for poor health rather than focusing on structural problems. For example, a person with back pain may blame them for causing the problem, for not sitting or standing properly, for slouching, etc.
And you claim it was unfair.
There was no evidence of causation then or now.
But this belief gained traction because it validated long-held assumptions about the importance of upright posture for human performance. Attitude assessment has become a quick and efficient way to assess another person's personality, intelligence, and health in one very simple test.
I'm not an attitude critic. I think postural therapy can be a powerful tool when used to reduce existing back pain. I personally go to a physical therapist frequently for lower back pain and utilize a standing desk, ergonomic chair, and yoga to increase my sense of well-being. But these devices and treatments offer more than just the stereotype of good posture.
What I'm wondering is how effective posture correction is for a healthy, pain-free person in terms of preventing future disease and inevitable aging. The postural panic that was created over 100 years ago and the simple message behind it was beneficial for self-discipline and business. In some ways, the makers of ergonomic chairs, back braces, bras, and shoes want to keep Panic alive today.
Do we even have a proper definition of what is good and bad posture? We don't. No one can agree on what the standard is. Also, the human body is incredibly dynamic, and each person's anatomy differs to some degree. To say that there are some kind of static norms does not correspond to reality.
Isn't it just standing as straight as possible with your chin tucked in?
This is what we call the verticality of a plumb line. That's one way to evaluate posture. Certain anatomical markers line up with each other. But we are never static. How long can you really maintain a “good” posture?
Until this Zoom call is over and I can relax.
Scientific research into the effectiveness of posture correction has been hampered by a scandal covered by the New York Times Magazine in the 1990s. The article reported that for decades until the 1970s, Ivy League schools took nude photos of undergraduates to check their posture, and that these photos still exist in the Smithsonian Institution. My own research found that posture photography was practiced not only at elite universities, but also at universities, hospitals, and prisons across the country. The practice of taking photos of people in nude positions was largely abolished in the early 1970s due to concerns about civility and personal privacy.
After the Times' revelations, the entire archive holdings, containing a century's worth of postural science data, were burned or shredded.
This scandal did not call into question the supposed effectiveness of posture correction. Rather, it challenged the practice of measuring posture. So the health belief that posture is an indicator of future health and can be a predictor of lower back and neck pain remained intact. Only recently did a study show that you can assume all kinds of postures (even slouching occasionally).
In summary, you are claiming that there is no relationship between a person's attitude and morality, and there may be no relationship to long-term health.
In a sense, this is the phrenology of the 20th century. We judge character, intelligence, and physical ability from posture. For example, if you are slouched, it also means that you are somehow lazy.
It is shallow and meritocratic to assume what another person can or cannot do based on their attitude. I think the jury is still out on long-term health.