“Stand up straight!” Have you figured out how to do that with big boobs yet? I’m still trying, as evidenced by this photo that I took with Tina and our friend Melissa in the TJMaxx dressing room two Sundays ago.

As soon as I saw the above picture on my digital camera screen, I wanted to see how Tina approaches posture.

On the left is the posture that she avoids (and that I happen to like on her), and on the right is the posture that’s closer to what she aims for after receiving advice from a photographer for a well-known British full-bust clothing brand. (I’ll ask her to describe the advice in more detail in the comments.)

These pictures remind me of an experience that SweetNothingsNYC relayed recently:

“I remember being a teenager and having [a relative] tell me not to slouch and stick my belly out, and then if she caught me with my back straight she’d tell me not to stick my boobs out. WELL, YOU GOTTA PICK ONE, FRIEND, otherwise what . . . am I supposed to do?”

Given a choice between slouching or sticking my boobs out, I’m gonna go with sticking my boobs out. After all, they’re not going anywhere, and slouching makes me look apologetic for being alive. However, this gets me into the same trouble with my oldest sister that it did with Sweet Nothings and her relative. In sixth grade, my sister saw me riding a horse and announced, “You look just like Lady Godiva!” My posture was never the same after I looked “Lady Godiva” up in our encyclopaedia. (Hint for all aunts, mothers and big sisters: never tell a self-conscious sixth grader wearing her first bra that she looks like a naked woman on a horse.) I finally recovered from the mortification all those years ago, but now when I pose for photos, my sister says, “Stop sticking your boobs out!”

As far as I can tell, I’m NOT “sticking my boobs out”. I’m simply rolling my shoulders back like I’ve read that you’re supposed to do for good posture. It turns out that rolling our shoulders back can lead to unintended consequences. Instead, it may be better to imagine that we’re riding a horse instead.

Getting ready for today’s post, Tina emailed me what she learned from her riding instructor. Her teacher explained that a straight spine and an arched back are not the sameAn arched back is what happens when you pull your shoulders back. When she relaxed her shoulders, “It felt more natural and made riding easier,  and even though I felt like I was slouching, I had to admit it did not look like that on the video she recorded of me riding with the straight posture she taught me.”

I’ll be experimenting with this as I take future photos for this blog, and if I weren’t so busy learning how to knit, I’d be tempted to take up riding as well.

What about you? What tricks do you use to stand up straight, and what posture stories do you have buried in your past?

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