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Unexplainable.
This week, we're talking about your posture and improving your posture might improve your health. When someone mentions posture, I tend to sit up a little straighter. Maybe even some of you just sat up a little straighter because I mentioned posture. And it makes sense, right? Like this message is everywhere.
Sit up straight. Stand up straight. Stand up straight. Sit up. Stand up straight with your shoulders back. Sit up straight. Don't slouch over. Stand up straight. TV and magazines and teachers and parents all telling us essentially the same thing. Because, as Beth Linker puts it, if you have bad posture, that leads to bad health. That belief is something self-evidently true and unquestioned. Except Beth Linker is questioning it.
She's a historian of science who wrote a whole book on the history of posture called Slouch. And when she dug through some of the history here, she did find people talking about sitting up straight back in the past, but she didn't really find the kind of clear consensus that we have nowadays. In fact, for
For some Europeans in the 1700s, it was considered low class to sit bolt upright. It was kind of crude. An 18th century Earl, for example, wrote that it was awkward and ill-bred to sit too upright, that you shouldn't have the, quote, stiff immobility of a bashful boobie. You're supposed to have kind of a languid, leisurely pose about you. Bess says our cultural stance on posture changed radically
right around the time when science got involved. That's when ideas about good posture got much more rigid. But the more she looked into that early science, the more she realized that her modern beliefs about the health benefits of posture rest on a pretty shaky scientific foundation. ♪
So, this is Unexplainable. I am Bird Pinkerton. And today on the show, the story of posture. It tells us a lot about how ideas are learned and spread, but it also shows us how much our science can be the product of our culture. ♪♪
According to Beth, our modern posture story actually starts in the late 1850s. It has its origins in the origin of species and the descent of man, which are not etiquette manuals, obviously. They're mostly Darwin writing about natural selection and finches, etc., etc.,
But he also spells out some theories for how humans came to be so different from other animals. Like, fundamentally, what makes us so human? He posits that the first human characteristic to evolve was upright standing or posture. And that caught a lot of attention among scientists.
Anthropologists and scientists debated this point. In the late 1800s, people found ancient remains that seemed to prove Darwin right. And by the first decade of the 1900s, a lot of people were convinced, especially some anthropologists who were also physicians. And those people started to get worried. These human beings that they're seeing in the clinic are pretty slouched over.
And yet this was supposed to be the one thing that distinguishes human beings from simians. And human beings were failing at it. These physicians were especially worried that white people were slouching. If this sounds like racism, it's because it is. The eugenics movement was picking up steam at this time. And a lot of white Europeans and European Americans were trying to improve the white race, quote unquote. Basically trying to
make sure that white people were evolutionarily fit. Though in this particular case, we're not talking about the sort of long history of sterilizing people who were thought to be unfit. The posture scientists did not do that. They were more improving the fitness of living populations.
in order to prevent degradation or degeneration. Which to them meant improving posture, especially because they thought that other people were doing better on the posture front than they were.
So in the late 1800s, England colonized huge sections of the African continent, places like present-day Nigeria, Sudan, Kenya, South Africa. And the U.S. had colonized land too, taking it from American people like the Lenape, for example. But white Americans and Europeans thought the indigenous people in the places they were colonizing had better posture, that they were standing up straighter.
And they also thought that they knew why that was the case. There was this racist and inaccurate idea that Indigenous people around the world were somehow more primitive. Untouched by civilization. So these posture scientists are looking at slumping white Americans and Europeans. And they start to blame civilization. They start to believe that it's civilization that causes the slouching.
So civilization in the early 20th century modernity looks like, well, now we have trains, we have automobiles, there's more workplaces where you're standing or sitting in one place for the full day. It's no longer an agrarian society. And they have concerns about over-civilization, which is really of the learned class who are sitting and reading books.
And if the white educated class keeps slumping, it's going to lead to a degeneration. Again, this is not good science, right? This says much more about the culture of the turn of the last century than it does about how anyone should carry themselves. But this is the foundation that our modern understanding of posture was built on. Like, this is its spine, right?
And you see it show up in the posture reform efforts that cropped up in the early 1900s. Like, in the U.S., there was an organization that did a lot of work on the posture front. The American Posture League. This was a bunch of professionals. Physicians, orthopedists.
efficiency engineers. Who came together to promote the gospel of good posture. And the APL had these ideas about civilization and the supposedly less civilized indigenous people with better posture baked into some of its materials. They would give out posture pins to people who had A-grade posture. And on that pin, there was forged a Lenape warrior holding the ideal posture.
Now, when we talk about good posture nowadays, we don't really talk about Lenape warriors or eugenics anymore. So how did that message change? How did good posture get so embedded in our collective understanding that we basically stopped questioning it? That is after the break. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Whether you're selling a little or a lot...
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and what we might be able to do about it. The show covers everything from social media feeds to the most basic human rights, from the familiar to the intriguingly unexpected. New episodes of Technically Optimistic drop every Wednesday. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, unexplainable listeners. Sue Bird here. And I'm Megan Rapinoe. Women's sports are reaching new heights these days, and there's so much to talk about and so much to explain. You mean, like, why do female athletes make less money on average than male athletes?
Great question. So, Sue and I are launching a podcast where we're going to deep dive into all things sports, and then some. We're calling it A Touch More. Because women's sports is everything. Pop culture, economics, politics, you name it. And there's no better folks than us to talk about what happens on the court or on the field.
and everywhere else too. And we're going to share a little bit about our lives together as well. Not just the cool stuff like Met Galas and All-Star Games, but our day-to-day lives as well. You say that like our day-to-day lives aren't glamorous. True. Whether it's breaking down the biggest games or discussing the latest headlines, we'll be bringing a touch more insight into the world of sports and beyond. Follow A Touch More wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Wednesday. ♪
♪ Lift and send shivers down your spine ♪ So, how did good posture become so ingrained in all of us that we don't even question it anymore? In the US, posture reformers, like the members of the American Posture League, played a big role in spreading the gospel of good posture far and wide. And they did it by adding a little something to their message, something more universal than the white race is degenerating.
What gave it a little oomph is that posture crusaders link up with these tuberculosis prevention crusaders, and they start to show that if you have bad posture, you're more likely to get tuberculosis, which is a deadly disease. To be clear, tuberculosis is caused by a bacteria spread through the air, and modern researchers no longer list bad posture as kind of like a big risk factor for the disease.
But posture reformers thought that the connection was strong. You see, our skeletons and muscles are designed to support our vital organs so that they can do their best work. If we sag, these organs are pushed out of their proper positions. They thought that slouching made your organs work less well, which would then make you prone to a disease like tuberculosis.
And it wasn't just tuberculosis either. The health of the whole body is affected. You won't be able to sleep as well if you have bad posture. You'll have anxiety. You may be run down physically or overtired or upset. Back pain, your digestion will be not working as it should. Your lungs won't work as they should. And so that was like the fear part of it. Poor posture may be a sign of something wrong with you. Wrong with you.
So this was the message that really got promoted around posture reform by the American Posture League and by other organizations. The next step is a complete health examination, and we mean complete. Posture checks became a part of the standardized medical exams that were spreading all across the country. Like, say you wanted life insurance. Lots of companies required that you have a physical exam. Don't be satisfied with just a quick checkup.
Eyes, ears, nose, throat. The military also started introducing physical exams. Reflexes, abdominal organs. And even immigrants coming into the country were given medical exams. Skin, feet, posture. So the stakes might be high if you couldn't stand up straight. You could potentially be denied entry to the country or kept out of a job.
And then people were also actively taught to care about posture. Like, it was drilled into them. There were posture guidebooks, for example. The American Posture League sent out posters that were hung up in schools. And in colleges all across the U.S., incoming students had to take something called a posture photograph. You would have a certain week. You'd have a posture exam week. Yeah, it would be in a gym, and you'd have your professor photographing you.
Naked. Yeah, or near. Like maybe you'd have underwear on if you're lucky. And it was seen as a baseline, a baseline measure of how healthy is this person and do we need to be worried about this person? Later in the 40s and the 50s, organizations made films to further educate students about the dangers of bad posture. So there's one, for example, about a girl who's sort of a social outcast.
Adraline knows that for some reason she doesn't fit into the picture, but she doesn't know why. She goes to her room in her house and she has a full-length mirror and the mirror starts talking to her and says, Adraline. Your head pokes forward, your shoulders slump, your stomach will take a look. You need to stand up straight. So Adraline straightens up her act, right? She goes out and learns about the health benefits of sitting up straight.
And if you sit up straight, the implication is you can confront your mean critical mirror. And what is more important, you'll know that you can be proud of your posture. Eventually, this push to convince the public about posture kind of faded. Like the American Posture League no longer exists, for example. And by the 1970s, naked posture photographs had been phased out of most colleges.
But by that point, it almost didn't matter. Posture exercises. With your muscles warmed up and your joints loosened up, perform the following exercises. Like, people didn't need to make, say, promotional films about little girls named Adraline, because posture promotion was popping up in the culture all by itself. Gently forcing corrective position.
It was on fitness tapes, on TV, and it's still in more modern-day movie makeover montages where people learn to stand up straight. When walking in a crowd, one is under scrutiny all the time. So we don't schlump like this. Amelia in The Princess Diaries, the baseball players in League of Their Own. Posture. Heads up.
Back straight. Anastasia in that classic animated cartoon. Now shoulders back and stand up tall. And do not walk, but try to float.
These characters all have a little Adraline in them. They all reinforce this truism that good posture is worthwhile. This message that so many of us have internalized. It's just like, oh yeah, posture. Posture's important and we all have to evaluate it. And yes, we all should work on it. So you can find plenty of articles in women's magazines, in the media about how you should have good posture because of X, Y, and Z.
But there really isn't scientific proof or evidence, especially on the health part. Sitting up straight feels like other evidence-based things we know are good for you, right? Things like brushing your teeth or washing your hands after you go to the bathroom. But according to Beth and to some of the researchers that I reached out to, the science around the health benefits of good posture is much more muddy than we might expect. It's just not all that clear or definitive.
Beth says that a lot of the early science that was done on this is just not that useful anymore. And the modern science is tricky to parse. Like, the NIH, for example, has advice on how to have good posture. But when I dug into the research, there are a lot of studies that challenge the idea that you need to sit up straight. One survey of almost 300 physiotherapists from several European countries said
showed that they didn't agree on what good posture even looks like. And then if you look at back pain, for example, there are research studies and meta-analyses from the last couple of decades questioning the connection between bad posture and lower back pain. Researchers have found that back pain is extremely complex and it's really difficult to tease out its causes.
But some of the researchers I spoke to told me that posture doesn't seem to play a particularly big role in whether or not people do develop back pain. Now, if you find this hard to accept, I get it. Like, even after reading Beth Linker's book and learning that our views about good posture have their roots in eugenics, and even after reading the studies myself and talking to researchers while reporting the story myself,
It is really hard for me to accept that sitting up straight isn't clearly and definitely connected to, say, less lower back pain down the line. It feels like watching a magic trick after the magician explained how the whole thing works. Like,
She showed me exactly the moment that she pocketed the card. She showed me the mechanism through which she diverted my attention. She gave me everything I need to call shenanigans. But as I sit watching her do the trick again, I can't help but think, no, that card disappeared. Like, sitting up straight must be good for me. I know it is. It just makes sense.
Right? But I think that's one of the wonderful things about science. It asks you sometimes to question, do I actually know this thing I think I know? Or is it more unexplainable than I realized? Beth Linker's book is called Slouch, Poster Panic in Modern America. And there is so much more in there, like the history of monkey bars and of carrying books on our heads. So I really recommend checking it out.
Meanwhile, this episode was produced by me, Bird Pinkerton, and edited by Jorge Just. Meredith Hodnot runs the show. Noam Hassenfeld is our host and does the music. Christian Ayala did the mixing and the sound design. Melissa Hirsch did our fact-checking. Manning Wen is the fact that chickens can lay green eggs. And we are always, always grateful to Brian Resnick for co-founding the show.
I also want to say thank you to the many people who took the time to speak to me about posture for this episode, including Peter O'Sullivan, Kieran O'Sullivan, Diane Slater, and Nathan Gelati. Thanks also to Rebecca Scheer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
If you have questions about this episode or thoughts, please send them to us. We are at unexplainable at vox.com. You can support this show and all of Vox's journalism by joining our membership program today. Go to vox.com slash members to sign up. Or you can always support the show by leaving us a really nice rating or review. Those mean a lot to us. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. And we'll be back next week.
Life is full of complicated questions. I want to know how to tell if my dentist is scamming me. What age is it appropriate or legal to leave your kid at home? From the silly to the serious and even the controversial. Can I say something that will probably just get me canceled? I'm John Cullen Hill.
and I'm hosting a new podcast at Vox that'll be your go-to hotline for answers to the questions you don't know how to answer. Email a voice memo to askvox at vox.com or call 1-800-618-3545. I promise you it's better than asking ChatGPT. ♪
