With an entertaining narrative focus on the individuals responsible for a decades-long "poor posture epidemic" that began in the early 20th century, Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America by Beth Linker revisits a largely forgotten period in U.S. history when the "social contagion" of poor posture was treated with the same seriousness as deadly communicable diseases.
A cultural historian as well as a historian of medicine and disability, Linker's interest in what she has termed the poor posture epidemic began with a 1995 media scandal. That year, a New York Times Magazine article announced the existence of thousands of nude photographs, including those of prominent public figures, at the Smithsonian archives. The photos, available for public viewing, were taken decades earlier when the pictured individuals were university students. Apparently, for much of the 20th century, many U.S. universities mandated that their students undergo an annual physical exam, including a posture evaluation. Since the 1995 exposé and the subsequent destruction of photo archives, there hasn't been anything written on the subject, until now.
Slouch charts the complex arc of the epidemic, and how it attracted a wide array of professionals in medicine and education, and "health culturists" such as Joseph Pilates, who advised clients to improve their deportment by placing a book on their heads, and by sitting cross-legged like "those people of the East." The "Harvard slouch" report and studies by military and public health agencies showed that slouching was rampant in America, prompting panic that the country's future leaders would end up chronically ill or permanently disabled. The desire of young women to adopt the fashionable "debutante slouch" didn't help the cause of crusaders like Jessie Bancroft, founder of the American Posture League, and orthopedist Joel E. Goldthwait, who contended that slouching predisposed a person "to tuberculosis, nervous disease, acute mental disorder... and many intestinal disorders."
Scattered throughout Slouch are the fruits of Linker's deep archival research, including reproduced public health advertisements intimating that standing straight not only reduced the likelihood of disease, it also signified health, youthful vitality, upright character, and sexual chasteness. Looking ahead, Linker (War's Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America) connects the poor posture panic to present-day "noninfectious epidemics" such as the 21st-century preoccupation with obesity, ADHD, and diabetes.
Slouch is a skillfully researched, engrossing account of a socially engineered epidemic that captured the public imagination for the better part of a century. --Shahina Piyarali
Shelf Talker: This entertaining cultural history delves into a largely forgotten period when a poor posture epidemic led to mandatory posture evaluations of college students in the United States.