As far as I know, nobody has ever commented on the strange shifft in cultural norms around the question of where your shoulders should be – back or forward.
Most people alive today take it for granted that “shoulders back” is good. You don’t get to be a movie star – or even a movie star wannabe – unless you accept this simple truism.
And yet, if you look back into cinematic history – think of Jean Harlow, for example, or Joan Blondell – you find that our great sirens of the silver screen expressed their sexual languor by thrusting their shoulders forward – a display of bad posture that today would be utterly unacceptable.
When I look at a film from, say, 1933, I can intellectually understand that the pretty young woman with the alarmingly curved spine – shoulders thrust so far forward that they enter a room before the rest of her – is supposed to be sexy, carefree, conveying an attitude of “I don’t care – I don’t have to.” It’s basically the equivalent of Wynona Ryder or Natalie Portman deliberately dressing like a ragdoll, and the audience understanding that this nonchalance is really an expression of power, of sexual chic.
But intellectual understanding is one thing – visceral response is another. I can see what’s going on, but I’m still thinking “straighten up girl!” As a form of cultural meme, this use of bad posture to convey insoucience just doesn’t work anymore.
One of the interesting things about this is shift in acceptable posture is that it makes it almost impossible for modern actresses to effectively emulate the sirens of the early silver screen. When you see a film that tries to recreate the atmosphere of early Depression era cinema, you always know that you’re not watching the real thing. The film makers might get everything else firht – film stock, lighting, set design, costumes, even the cigarette holder – but you know, deep down, that it’s fake.
And the reason is that no modern American actress will deliberately thrust her shoulders forward, curve her spine, and assume a physical attitude that will come across to her audience as unsexy. She won’t do it, and her director won’t ask her to do it. The whole point of the movie is that we’re supposed to find her sexy. If we don’t, the film won’t sell tickets – and therefore those scenes will not get shot.
And so, there it is. As Mr. Hardy said, you can’t go home again. We move on, and cultures don’t go back. Or at the very least, shoulders don’t.
Weird — I was just considering this today. As computer folks spend more time on computers their shoulders slump forward and their backs round, and head protrude forward.
This can be alleviated by rolling the shoulders back, sitting up straight and an ardous yoga practice including back bends. As far as cultural norms involving actors – I don’t know if a rounded back (convex?) has ever been seen as seductive as a concave back – well except in a Halloween cat.