Beth Linker shakes up good posture

A historian and sociologist of science reexamines the “panic posture” of the last century. You'll want to sit down for this.

For decades, the idea of ​​standing has carried considerable political and social baggage. Slouching was considered a sign of decadence.

In the early 20th century, posture exams became mainstays in the military, workplace and in schools, thanks in part to the American Posture League. , a group of doctors, educators, and health officials formed in 1914. In 1917, a study found that about 80 percent of Harvard freshmen had poor posture. Manufacturers piled in with posture-enhancing chairs, products and gadgets.

But current science doesn't support conventional wisdom about good posture, says Beth Linker in his new book. , “Slouch: The Posture Panic in Modern America. » Dr. Linker, 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 seems pretty good. And that doesn't matter, that's the whole point of my book. This is fake news.

Our obsession with good posture is fake news? I'm out of the woods!

Concern for posture, as a matter of etiquette, has existed since the Age of Enlightenment, if not before, but poor posture has not become a problem. scientific and medical obsession until after the publication of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" in 1859. It claimed that humans evolved by natural selection and that the first thing to develop was bipedalism; in other words, standing preceded the development of the brain.

This idea was controversial because convention taught that a superior intellect distinguished humans from animals non-humans, and it now appeared that only a simple physical difference, located in the spine and feet, separated humanity from the apes.

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