For decades, the idea of ​​standing tall 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 schools, thanks in part to the American Posture League, a group of doctors, educators, and health officials that formed in 1914. In 1917, a study found that approximately 80 percent of Harvard’s freshman class had poor posture. Industrialists piled in with chairs, products and devices to improve posture.

But real science doesn’t support conventional wisdom about proper posture, Beth Linker argues in her new book, “Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America.” Dr. Linker, a historian and sociologist of science at the University of Pennsylvania, recently participated in an interview with The New York Times; The conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Nice to meet you.

Your posture looks pretty good. And it doesn’t matter, that’s the goal of my book. It’s fake news.

Is our obsession with good posture fake news? I am blameless!

Concern about posture, as a matter of etiquette, has existed since the Enlightenment, if not before, but poor posture did not become a scientific and medical obsession until after the publication of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species.” in 1859. He postulated that humans evolved through natural selection, and that the first thing that developed was bipedalism; In other words, standing preceded brain development.

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

In other words, poor posture was primitive.

In fact, quite the opposite. Poor posture was assumed to primarily affect “civilized” individuals, people who no longer performed physical labor but rather enjoyed the fruits of mechanized transportation, industrialization, and leisure.

With the rise of eugenics in the early 20th century, certain scientists began to worry that neglect among “civilized” peoples could lead to degeneration, a setback in human progress. Posture correction became part of “racial improvement” projects, especially for white Anglo-Saxon men, but also for middle-class women and blacks trying to gain political rights and equality. Poor posture became stigmatized and defined as a disability. As I show in my book, people with postural “defects” were regularly discriminated against in American workplaces, educational settings, and immigration offices. People with disabilities had no legal protection at that time.

Additionally, this was a time when doctors and public health officials began to focus more on disease prevention to control the spread of infectious contagions such as tuberculosis. Good posture was understood to be an effective way to avoid deadly diseases, leading to campaigns teaching Americans to stand upright.

When tuberculosis rates decreased in the 1940s (partly as a result of the discovery of antibiotics), scientists and doctors began to establish a causal link between poor posture and back pain. President John F. Kennedy, who suffered from chronic back pain and was his own posture guru, revitalized the Presidential Council on Physical Fitness to promote righteousness and strength among the nation’s citizens.

For much of the 20th century, posture awareness campaigns were seen as a cost-effective way to improve national health, especially compared to more expensive health investments such as improvements in housing, infrastructure, and nationalized health insurance coverage. Proponents of the position also tended to hold individuals responsible for their own deteriorating health, rather than looking at structural problems. For example, they would blame someone who suffers from back pain for causing the problem, for not being able to sit and stand properly, for being slouched.

And you maintain that that was unfair.

There really was no evidence of causality, then or now.

But the belief gained traction because it legitimized long-held assumptions about the importance of upright posture to human ability. Posture assessments became a quick and efficient way to evaluate another person’s character, intelligence, and health, all in one fairly simple test.

I am not a denier of the position. I believe that postural therapy can be a powerful tool when used to relieve existing back pain. I myself see a physical therapist for my own back pain and use standing desks, ergonomic chairs, and yoga to contribute to my sense of well-being. But these devices and remedies offer much more than a fixed notion of good posture.

What I question is how much posture correction can do for a healthy, pain-free person in terms of preventing future illness and the inevitability of aging. The panicked posture created over 100 years ago, and the simplistic message behind it, were good for self-discipline and business. In a sense, the manufacturers of ergonomic chairs, back supports, bras and shoes still want to keep the panic alive today.

Do we even have a good definition of what good or bad posture is? We do not. No one can agree on what the standards are. Additionally, the human body is incredibly dynamic and each of our anatomies is, to some extent, different. Saying that there is some kind of static standard is not in line with reality.

Isn’t it just a matter of standing as upright as possible with your chin pushed back?

It’s called plumb verticality; that’s one way to evaluate posture. You have certain anatomical markers aligned with each other. But we are never static. How long can you really maintain a posture that is “good”?

Until we finish this Zoom call and I can relax.

Scientific study into the effectiveness of postural correction has been hampered by a scandal that was covered by The New York Times Magazine in the 1990s. The article reported that for several decades until the 1970s, Ivy schools League took photographs of naked college students to prove their posture, and that these photographs still existed in the Smithsonian Archives. My own research has shown that posture photography was carried out not only at elite universities but also in schools, hospitals and prisons across the country. The practice of taking photographs of nude poses largely came to an end in the early 1970s due to concerns about decorum and personal privacy.

After the Times exposé, entire archives containing a century’s worth of scientific posture data were burned or destroyed.

The scandal did not question the supposed benefits of postural correction; rather, he disagreed with the conventions of posture measurement. Therefore, the health belief that posture is an indicator of future health (which can predict back and neck pain) remained valid. Until recently, studies have not shown that you can adopt all types of postures, even occasionally slouching, and be fine.

In short, you argue that there is no connection between a person’s stance and morality, and that there may be no connection to long-term health.

In a way, it is the phrenology of the 20th century. We use posture to judge character, intelligence, and physical ability. For example, if you are lazy, that also means that you are lazy in some way.

It is superficial and ableist to estimate what another person can or cannot do based on their stance. In terms of long-term health, I think there is still no consensus on that.