We’re Slouches When It Comes to Posture

These days everyone’s slouching off, from fashion models showing off their bony round shoulders in fashion magazines to teenagers showing off their bad attitude by hunching over like old men.

Times have changed since the days when “sit up straight” was every mother’s mantra, when gym teachers taught schoolchildren to walk with chins up and shoulders back. Look around. Americans are bent over like a flock of egrets.

Laura Little of Laguna Niguel has seen her share of slumped backs as a high school English teacher and instructor of a “Modern Manners” class for children through Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. She worries that a generation is growing up with poor posture.

“I don’t think posture is stressed as much as it used to be. When my grandmother went to private school, the nuns taught her to sit up straight and had her walk around with a book on her head,” Little says.

Back then, good posture was handed down from one generation to the next. Little learned proper posture from her mother and from her teacher at modeling school.

Today, harried parents and teachers are no longer taking the necessary time to remind, cajole and nag children not to slouch. The result of this neglect is rounded shoulders, S-shaped backs, chins pointed downward and protruding bellies.

“Kids today are great on computers, but they’re lost as far as portraying themselves. It all has to do with posture,” says Darcee Gollatz-Klapp, owner of the Gollatz Cotillion in Riverside, which teaches children social skills and dancing at sites throughout Orange County.

During the 65 years that her family has been teaching the social graces, posture has taken a dive. Gollatz-Klapp finds herself trying to correct bent backs both as a cotillion instructor and as the mother of seven children.

“I’m telling them all the time to sit up straight. It’s a mark of caring,” she says.

She attributes poor posture to an overall relaxed approach to social etiquette. People don’t dress up anymore; sloppy, ill-fitting clothes have become the norm for most social occasions.

The family dinner hour has all but disappeared; children often eat their meals while slumped over the table without a parent to set them straight. They’re bombarded with poor examples of manners in the media.

Consider the campaign launched by Carl’s Jr.: “If it doesn’t get all over the place, it doesn’t belong in your face.”

Correct posture was a mark of wealth in England, where many of our modern manners derived, Gollatz-Klapp says.

“Public schools and finishing schools used to teach kids how to walk and carry themselves, but now that’s no longer done,” she says.

Manners and cotillion classes are among the few places where children are taught posture, which means that children who don’t have access to these special programs are receiving little if any instruction in how to sit and stand properly.

Not until many people reach adulthood and find themselves feeling insecure in social and business situations do they realize the importance of posture. The Gollatz Cotillion teaches adults correct posture as part of its etiquette seminars.

“Those who went to school in the ‘60s and ‘70s who weren’t taught correct posture are finding they need it,” Gollatz-Klapp says. “It’s a lost art that’s coming back.”

Some have discovered that having good posture helps them appear competent and self-assured. Carrying themselves well gives them presence when they walk into a room or a job interview.

“Good posture conveys inner confidence and charisma,” says Dianna Pfaff-Martin, owner of California Image Advisors in Newport Beach. She conducts mock job interviews with clients using videotape to show them how poor posture can sabotage their image, making them appear unapproachable and afraid.

“When someone walks into a room with head down, hunched shoulders and arms crossed in front of their body, they look like they’re avoiding contact,” she says.

Their body language speaks loudly, which is why it must be “conscious and controlled.” An elongated torso and a raised chin gives them a positive, confident air.

Even adults who were taught correct posture as children can fall into bad habits.

“I rode horses English style, and I’m told I have good posture, but my downfall is sitting at a computer. With computers, we tend to sit in our chairs hunched over,” Pfaff-Martin says, who must remind herself to pull her shoulders back while working. “You forget what good posture is. I remember my father telling me if you don’t use those muscles now, you won’t be able to later.”

Those who slouch today will regret it tomorrow, say chiropractors. They can end up with serious spinal problems.

“Parents are complaining about their teenage sons and daughters slouching. I don’t know why it’s cool to slouch. Maybe it’s some kind of social statement, but they’ll pay for it in the long term,” says Doug Walker, a Fountain Valley chiropractor.

By midlife, those with poor posture develop excessive curvature of spine, he says. People can develop chronic back pain as early as their 30s and 40s. While some curvature of the spine is hereditary, it’s usually acquired by standing and sitting poorly and can be prevented by practicing good posture.

Walker shows his patients how to stand, lift, sit and perform exercises to straighten up.

To head off back trouble, some people are heading to stretching and yoga classes where they practice poses that realign the body.

“Yoga is about lengthening the muscles and torso. We practice sitting and standing up tall, where the shoulders line up over the hips and the ears line up over the shoulders,” says Randi Beck, owner of the Yoga Place in Costa Mesa and Mission Viejo.

“A lot of postures strengthen the back and relax the shoulders.”

Still, it’s best for people to practice their posture while they’re young. For parents, that usually means telling their children to sit up straight until good posture becomes automatic.

“It’s hard to keep up good posture all of the time. You get tired. With children, it’s a matter of saying 100 times ‘sit up straight,’ ” says Consuelo de Chozas, a Newport Beach etiquette consultant. She has had students balance bags of sand on their heads to correct their slouching.

“It’s repetition after repetition. It’s very boring,” she says. “But if you don’t learn it from childhood, you’ll have to learn it somewhere. It’s part of graciousness and style.”