“I once tried to fix my posture. Now I just let my body apologise to the furniture.”
Veronika Kavendish-KnollEditor-in-Chief, Unsolicited Opinions
The Tragic Eroticism of Proper Posture
Spines are sexy. Slouching is not.
It has come to my attention that posture has returned to public discourse. Not the moral kind, unfortunately, but the physical sort, shoulders back, chin up, core engaged. Everywhere I look, people are standing like unpaid mannequins in a mindfulness showroom.
Social media calls it “alignment.” I call it surveillance.
There was a time when slouching was an act of quiet rebellion. The jazz generation knew this. The beat poets knew this. Even office workers in the 1990s, slumped over beige monitors, were heroes in their own ergonomic way. But now, apparently, good posture is self-care, which makes bad posture a cry for help.
Anatomy of Desire
I’ve been told there is something undeniably erotic about a straight back. Spines, they say, suggest self-control, confidence, even moral clarity. One cannot dominate a room while hunched like a croissant.
And yet there’s something deeply tragic about that kind of perfection, the rigid neck, the calculated tilt of the pelvis, the clenched awareness of every vertebra. It’s attraction by restraint. Desire with lumbar support.
My yoga instructor calls it “finding the line between effort and ease.” I call it foreplay with a foam roller.
Seduction of Correction
Posture, much like character, can apparently be “corrected.” I find that word suspicious. Correction implies improvement, but what it really means is obedience. “Stand up straight” has always been code for “make yourself acceptable.”
I tried it once. I lasted half a dinner party before developing the urge to bite someone. My body prefers chaos. My spine, bless it, is an anarchist. It curves toward comfort, not beauty.
And yet I’m constantly reminded that shoulders back equals confidence. Confidence equals success. Success equals happiness. Which is, of course, a marketing campaign for furniture.
I Confess…
There’s a moment, brief, treacherous, when I catch myself standing tall and think, Good God, look at that posture. It’s intoxicating. For one second I believe every influencer with a trapezius muscle and a dream.
Then I exhale, the illusion collapses, and I return to my natural state: morally flexible and physically approximate.
If you are one of those people who move through life with impeccable posture, congratulations. I admire your discipline. I also suspect you have no sense of humour. Posture, after all, is just performance in skeletal form. It’s the spine’s way of lying politely.
So yes, spines are sexy. They carry the burden of civilisation, keep us vertical, and allow us to nod at strangers with authority. But they also make us ridiculous, strutting about as if gravity were optional.
The rest of us, the slouchers, the leaners, the laptop-curved romantics, we understand something the upright never will: surrender can also be beautiful.
