Posture has become a buzzy wellness trend and an aesthetic, but that's not the point. Experts share what posturemaxxing should really be like.
Sometimes, when it feels like I hate all of my clothes and none of my outfits look quite right, I’ll go complain to my mother, and more often than not, she’ll simply say, “Don’t slouch.
” Although I may roll my eyes at her, I’ll look back in the mirror and realize she may have a point; sometimes it’s just about how you carry yourself. Posture is, after all, fundamental to our daily lives. It’s in the way we wear a piece of clothing. It’s in the way we enter a room.
It’s in the way we pose for photos. It’s in the way we communicate with others. It’s a quiet piece of who we are. But recently, posture has become a main character on social media.
From Pilates workout vlogs to perfectly posed ’fit checks, it feels like everyone online is posturemaxxing.
“Posture is part of personal style,” Jorge Dorsinville, a creative movement director who works with athletes, models, and other celebrities, tells Teen Vogue. “It’s not just ‘what I wear,’ it’s ‘how I carry myself in what I wear,’” he adds. “And Gen Z, being so visually aware, is starting to understand that instinctively. ” Like proteinmaxxing, posture correction has become a buzzy new beauty trend for the body.
From posture checks on social media to posture-focused workout videos, it's becoming a hot topic online. But these trends have clued people in to the fact that there’s a market for businesses to cash in on, regardless of the legitimacy of a practice or product. Posturemaxxing also overlaps with diet culture. Still, posture is essential to our health.
It affects the way we breathe, digest, move, and generally function every day. So, it’s understandably becoming a priority for young people who are already experiencing back, neck, and shoulder issues. The demand for posture remedies Teens have often been told to stand and sit up straight by elders, but often the reasoning was to show respect, discipline, or good habits.
Particularly picturesque posture could also be an indication that you were trained athletically or practiced in activities like ballet or military drills. Now, the plea for posture has taken on new importance in light of our inclination to bend with our increasingly portable technological advances. The original computer setup, a monitor stationed on a desk, was optimal for posture.
“The point of a desktop computer is it's at the height of your eyes, the distance from your nose is the size of the screen, and that you're sitting at a desk that a pullout drawer to put the keyboard and mouse on,” Sarah Cash Crawford, a doctor of physical therapy, tells Teen Vogue. As we started to take our devices with us on the go, we found ourselves in less ideal positions.
“Historically, everything we do to function in life is in front of us…. As digital media continues to increase, more and more people are falling forward,” Dr. Crawford says, pointing to remote technology, like cell phones, tablets, and laptops that are traditionally placed or held lower than eye level, often bringing the body down with it.
“A lot of people, especially young people, are working from laptops as permanent work solutions, and they are not meant to be full-time, everyday, primary devices that they work from,” Dr. Crawford adds. “If you think about posture when you're working on your laptop, we typically have our elbows out wide on top of the desk or the surface that we're working from.
We are not sitting back in our chair, if you're sitting on a hard chair at a table. I see lots of people sitting in comfy chairs with their legs crossed and their laptop on their lap. ” A pivotal moment that drew increased attention to posture as a wellness issue was the COVID-19 pandemic. For many, the effects of modern technology on posture were exacerbated.
Instead of office desktops or classroom whiteboards, we were stuck staring at whatever we could bring home, and that was often a laptop. Suddenly, we were spending more time with our heads aimed down at a camera and a screen rather than at eye level, even just to talk to our teachers, classmates, coworkers, friends, and family. We also started to blur the lines between work and leisure as we took our jobs home.
How posturemaxxing became mainstream In response to our daily lives becoming more sedentary and less social during the pandemic, wellness and exercise trends rapidly took over social media. We gravitated toward workout videos we could do at home. While some found Chloe Ting’s promise of abs in two weeks particularly compelling, popular creators like Blogilates, Emi Wong, and Studio Jibby also produced routines centered around posture.
Pilates also became a buzzy workout choice, with movements that are accessible for different body types and fitness levels.
“Mat Pilates certainly became very, very sought after during the pandemic because it was something that people could do when they were all of a sudden at home and they didn't necessarily have bands, balls, and weights with them when everything locked down,” Pilates instructor Helen Phelan tells Teen Vogue. Pilates can also encourage posture improvement and your body’s sense of where it is in space, known as proprioception, Phelan says.
It also “improves your quality of movement, so you move more efficiently overall and can ‘catch yourself’ when you're favoring a nonfunctional, potentially painful position,” she adds.
“The breath and mobility work inherent in the method also alleviates tension that gets you ‘stuck’ in certain postures that cause pain. ” “It builds overall strength,' Phelan says, 'with a particular emphasis on the deep core and spinal stabilizers.
This maintains that freedom over time and evens out any muscular imbalances that may have resulted from lifestyle-specific, habitual movement patterns, like a hairstylist whose dominant-side shoulder gets locked from blow-drying hair all day. by counteracting how the body instinctively compensates to avoid aggravating an injury or even scoliosis. ” When posturemaxxing became an aesthetic Once the world opened back up, in-person Pilates became a popular destination.
On TikTok, aesthetically pleasing vlogs of dressing up, grabbing a matcha, and heading to a workout are viral gold. So, just like the rise of balletcore inspired people to try it for themselves, the popularity of Pilates, backed by influencers and celebs, created a new era in fitness culture and a matching style—the pink Pilates princess aesthetic. The look is often depicted with fitted athleisure in pastel hues, fabric headbands, and to-go cups of matcha.
Though the pink Pilates princess aesthetic may borrow a name from an inclusive exercise, over the years, it’s come to be associated with photos of thin, able bodies on social media. It represents how a movement seemingly as simple as posture improvement can turn sour.
How posturemaxxing became conflated with slimming “During the 2010s, with the rise of body positivity, it felt like we were moving away from that conversation a little bit, which was exciting,” says Phelan, who was a dancer before becoming a Pilates instructor, and experienced the toxic wellness culture firsthand.
“And now it seems like we've sort of veered back into saying the quiet part out loud, about how ‘strong’ is often a coded word for skinny and thinness and a very particular version of beauty. ” Like other trends, posture is a market to cash in on on TikTok, feeding off people’s insecurities. Viral workout videos call posture correction a way to look slimmer. A hyperfixation on thinness can actually make your posture worse, Dr. Crawford says.
“We see 50-, 60-, 70-year-old women who have a lot of dysfunction because they've been sucking in their whole lives,” she says. Many of the contraptions, like the braces and corsets sold on social media that promise us quick and easy fixes, don’t do it right either.
“What I explain to patients is that a lot of the time, those devices do more harm than good,” Dr. Crawford says. A real risk of relying on these devices is muscle strain, she adds. She recommends focusing on strength training so your muscles can respond effectively. Instead of emphasizing the need to look a certain way, Dr. Crawford suggests focusing on how you feel.
“There are definitely health benefits to having an upright position,” she says. “We have better respiration. We can get more oxygen in, more diaphragmatic excursion using the diaphragm to pull oxygen in. Organs have better positions without as much intra-abdominal pressure when we're in an upright, tall posture.
But an upright, tall posture is not the same as sucking in, sticking your chest out, and pulling your shoulders back. I don't like to tell people how they should look because they shouldn't have to think about it. ” Phelan echoes this sentiment: “‘Good posture’ in fact looks different on different bodies, and that it isn't a static, immovable thing,” she says.
Assuming posture has to look a particular way doesn't only other those with different body shapes, it does the same to folks with disabilities. When we mistakenly stress the importance of an ultra-straight stance with pinned-back shoulders, we’re really just creating another elitist beauty standard to reinforce for clicks. The reality is everyone looks different, including when it comes to posture, and that’s the beauty of it. As Dorsinville puts it, posture is unique and part of identity.
“ the first generation living so much of life through screens, and the body, it's adapting to that, sometimes in ways that disconnect us from ourselves,” he says. So, rather than a perfectly straight, picturesque posture, “It's about finding alignment that feels natural and alive. ” Instead of stressing about a certain look or rigid regimen, he recommends taking moments for yourself to stretch and use your hands to feel and become cognizant of your body.
“Because, in my opinion, when posture comes from awareness instead of from pressure, it builds confidence,” he says. “It builds identity and a deep connection to who you are. ” Ultimately, the trend shouldn’t be about that waist-cinching, pastel pink athletic jacket you see on social media.
It can be as simple as a pair of leggings and the flip-flops you wear while heading to the mat or reformer, knowing you’re in control of your posture and body, taking it back from your laptop and phone.
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