The problem with 'good' posture

Aligning needs not bodies

Pretty regularly, the algorithm feeds me videos about how to pose for photos, focusing on the importance of good posture. It isn’t just these videos which are pushing for good posture, it’s something I heard constantly growing up. It is seeped in our culture: Good posture is important. Good posture means people will take you seriously and find you more attractive.

Good usually meaning moving in ways that suit gender and sexuality norms, in some specific unattainable way. Good usually implying thin (in the right places) and able bodied. The rules on precisely how to achieve ‘good’ are often changing, but usually means being straight (in both senses of the word). ‘Bad’ posture reveals you are bent in ways that show some difference in you. That difference is read as deficiency.

To illustrate this, I briefly want to share a moment of neurosis I had. (Neurosis is another way of saying a cultural pressure chewed on and sent spiralling through the nervous system.)

Recently, my writing was published. Instead of just celebrating, I looked at the author photo and thought, my heart momentarily sinking “Wow, what awful posture I have. That photo is so unflattering”. I hadn’t thought about this before I’d watched the posture videos. I’d sent this picture to publisher after all. But the photo goes against rules of posing and posture. My back is curved, I am slumped, my knee is at a weird angle, my chin is soft angles undefined, you can see the hairs on my leg etc etc. Not to mention other ‘flaws’ that ‘how to pose’ gaze would try to erase.

When I research the word ‘flattering’ I find its associated with the verb ‘shimmer’, to glow with a radiant light. (Funny you would think people took ‘shimmer’ and replaced one letter to make it ‘slimmer’, based on how the word is used.) But if we go with flattering as shimmering, then this picture, in which I was enjoying the sun, was flattering. The perfect photo to go with my article about finding glimmers of hope during suffering. I was so happy in that photo. It was taken through a gaze of love, in a spontaneous flash of joy during the depths of lockdown. I had the idea to dress up like Audrey Hepburn. I was posing for fun, not trying to emulate her perfect posture. (Ironically, there are dozens of articles on the internet about Hepburn’s ‘elegant’ posture)

The thing is, one reason I have ‘bad posture’ is years of untreated chronic pain from Endometriosis. My body compensated to a world that wouldn’t hold me right, by tightening muscles and changing my stance. There’s plenty of other reasons my posture is how it is, the type of work I do, my limited proprioception, my neurodiversity, how I feel about my gender, my access to warm spaces, nourishing food, health care etc etc. How we hold ourselves is shaped by how we are held in the world.

The root of the word ‘posture’ comes from ‘pose’. It’s a performance, in the Butler sense, playing with norms. The term posture is related to "a state of being or attitude in relation to circumstances".

Some days, my posture and how I walk means people read me as a man, say ‘Sir’ before they have seen my face. Other days, they don’t need to see much of me to ‘Miss’ me. Some days, I am stood tall, others I am hunched over in pain or sadness. I may find myself trying to sit straight in a meeting or an interview, performing a readiness to respond.

Each posture elicits a reaction. When you perform a posture you are making something for others to read, circumstances unfold. By this I do not mean it is your fault what happens because of how your body is understood, just that you’re working within and against a big set of rules. Circumstances are, in a nutshell, the way the world holds us and we hold the world.

‘How To Pose’ videos exist (in part) because we spend so much time being perceived. We are encouraged to curate a personal brand. We are temporarily rewarded for appearing in ways that fit beauty, fashion, aesthetic and gender norms. We are temporarily rewarded for posing no threat to the status quo. For many, appearing ‘less disabled’ - be that through opting to not use or to hide mobility aids, performing greater capacity than we may have, or masking - is a shield against the harmful consequences of ableism. It’s also ableism internalised. If we appear too different, especially if we are already different in other intersecting ways, we may be at greater risk of exclusion, prejudice, discrimination and other harm. Posture is therefore a place to try for temporary fleeting safety. True lasting safety would be being accepted and supported in any body, without having to fit certain standards.

‘Good posture’ is not neutral, it is often a moral imperative or an aesthetic goal. It feels like a way to force people to self police so that their bodies are as close ‘normal’ as possible. This makes sense given the complex history of the idea of posture. As with any attempt to control the human body, there is a racist and sexist history and present. Posture has been medicalised and moralised. To give a very quick overview: In the 17th and 18th centuries, ‘good’ posture was associated with moralised ideas of strength, health and beauty. And ‘bad’ posture was a sign of disability and this was associated with being ‘morally degenerate’. In the 1940s Social Darwinism linked bipedalism (walking on two feet) with intelligence. The idea of correcting people’s posture plays out in racist ways too, Beth Linker makes the connection between this and ‘race betterment’ projects - people striving to perform class and racialised embodiments in order to gain rights, status and power. It also has to do with a militarised approach, and training people to be rigidly conformist for military drills. The body trained to be straight, narrow and serving a violent state.

To buck this history, and imagine and alternative present and future, I am steered by what Alice Wong calls ‘disability visibility’. That is us in our bodies in all their varieties of postures being seen in the world. In our visual culture, we need to see photos of people being people, not people trained into the straight and narrow confides. Embracing the brilliant imperfections of my bodymind, is a way of allowing for disability visibility. Allowing a full spectrum of bodyminds to experience the world in its fullness without shame. We shimmer, we are not fixed, (neither cured nor static).

A good faith interpretation of encouraging ‘good posture’, is that there are benefits to holding our bodies in ways that cause less injury or pain.

I write this blog for example slumped in my bed. I’m slumped because other needs came first, the need for warmth, the need for comfort. I realise sitting up with more alignment would probably result in less discomfort in my body. So I’ve just sat up. I can tell its going to be better for my body. As humans we’re often weighing up a bunch of different things our body needs all at once, and sometimes we have to make trade offs. And we have to be gentle with ourselves. I can do things to improve the ease and comfort I feel in my body, like physiotherapy, exercise, moving in particular ways. But not as punitive corrective to fix a wrong body. My movement practices and healthcare may ‘improve my posture’, but their central goal is to help me feel. ‘Good posture’ becomes what is possible and supportive within the realities and limits of my own particular body, not what looks a particular way in a photograph.

So yes, there are some benefits to paying attention to alignment. But this is for own’s one wellbeing. Not a moral or aesthetic push towards ‘good posture’. To borrow from the more politically radicalised yoga teachers I’ve had, I’d call the adjustments I’ve made to how I hold my body ‘alignment’ as opposed to ‘good posture’. Alignment isn’t just about how different bits of the body relate to one another. In the broadest sense, alignment is about how the body relates to its needs, its circumstances and the world.

Not withstanding the very real ways we have to perform in this world to keep ourselves safe, can we allow ourselves to gradually shift to take up positions and create circumstances where we are aligning ourselves to our needs?

With care,

Rachel