TIL that many easy, on a regular basis issues like monkey bars in playgrounds, and standing desks, had been initially born out of eugenic considerations with white folks’s postures.

What surprises may an examination of Korean “determine correction” companies additionally present?

Estimated studying time: 10 minutes.

Full disclosure—I’m not really answering that query I pose. Or at the least, not for now. Sorry. As an alternative, this meta publish is about reveling within the asking. Then, passing on to you the mind-blowing BBC podcast episode in regards to the “posture police” that helped me remind me of the worth of that, plus a myriad of sources to assist come to some solutions. I’ll additionally give a shoutout to my favourite trend historical past YouTuber.

However first, how I obtained to them, beginning with the visceral unease I felt once I first noticed the advert beneath. It was simply an excessive amount of, even by Korean requirements. It merely begged commentary.

Or did it? What was there to say precisely?

I’m under no circumstances towards the “체형교정,” or “determine correction” companies this clinic offers. Truly, I might do with a session for my again myself.

However that figurehead-like ‘after’ shot, the mannequin’s impossibly excessive heels conveniently hidden? That nonetheless uncomfortable and painful that pose appears to carry for greater than a second, it’s nonetheless offered as a great?

I can’t assist however be reminded of the “determine flaws” or “determine faults” that abroad corset producers invented a century in the past, to assist maintain their business afloat.

For readers unfamiliar (long-term readers, please bear with me a second), these producers’ pseudo-scientific justifications for his or her ensuing schema for ladies’ our bodies, developed solely to disguise that their flaws had been wholly invented, one way or the other grew to become the accepted knowledge for a way girls considered themselves. Which I noticed uncanny parallels to in the Korean craze for inventing numerous “traces/라인” for ladies’s our bodies 10-20 years in the past. Then, it was

astonishing to see how overtly corporations would compete for their new, eponymous traces to sink into within the public consciousness. Venus lingerie claiming that girls’s breasts had been a “V-line” as an illustration, Sure lingerie that they had been a “Y-line.”

Hanging over this development was the inconvenient reality that almost all girls neither wanted nor needed thrilling new names for his or her physique elements, which would invariably be discovered wanting in comparison with these photoshopped variations within the advertisements. Therefore most traces, mercifully, had been shortly forgotten. However some did certainly stick, a V-line neck changing into a normal providing by beauty surgeons at this time as an illustration, and only a few days in the past my feminine college students advised me that their summer season plans included engaged on their “bodylines.” In truth, within the 2020s, it appears nearly all the pieces to do with a girl’s physique has change into a generalized “line.”

However these topics, I’ve already lined in depth. You would argue I’m merely projecting too, and overemphasizing mere semantic similarities.

Both approach, I might have simply tweeted the advert, and all these hyperlinks.

For each you long-term and hopefully new, readers although, who I would like to supply additional worth to if I’m (very) belatedly going to transition this weblog right into a paying, subscriber-based e-newsletter, merely linking to stuff you’ve most likely learn earlier than felt woefully inadequate.

However once more, what so as to add although? An in-depth take a look at the expansion of the figure-correction business? Now ubiquitous, however which I’m unsure I’d even heard of 5 years in the past? Fascinating to study extra about, for certain, however most likely missing English sources. So, probably not value, as a busy divorced dad, the massive time funding I’d must spend on all of the translations.

“For liposuction and fats transplantation, Mannequin-Line Clinic, Busan.”

Therefore I sat on this publish for a 12 months, leaving it half-finished. And, frankly, dozens prefer it earlier than and since, for a similar purpose that I didn’t really feel I knew sufficient in regards to the topic so as to add that worth, so recent analysis was wanted first. All culminating in my latest hiatus.

Then lastly, in simply the final two weeks, all of them out of the blue beginning making sense once more.

Like all breakthroughs, this one is merely the end result of a number of onerous work. Or quite, my studying of the onerous work executed by different folks a lot smarter than me. Particularly, one set off was my just lately encountering the article “The Intimacy of Train: Sensuality and Sexuality in Black Girls’s Health Historical past” by Ava Purkiss at Nursing Clio, creator of Match Residents: A Historical past of Black Girls’s Train from Publish-Reconstruction to Postwar America (2023), which I couldn’t order quick sufficient. Immediately, it reminded of themes I’d beforehand examine in, to present only a small pattern:

All of which I used to be too daunted by to even start to parse right here. However simply occupied with all of them collectively for the primary time now, persuaded me to purchase 운동하는 여자: 체육관에서 만난 페미니즘 / A Lady Who Workouts: Feminism Meets the Gymnasium by 양민영 / Lee Min-yeong. Which I’m discovering surprisingly well-suited to my Korean degree, and has already thrown me headfirst into an equally deep dive on the sexualization of Korean (feminine) basketball gamers’ uniforms, which I’ll hyperlink to right here as soon as I emerge.

Supply: Aladin.

An 인증샷 and teaser for Korean audio system:

However to proceed with the ‘small’ pattern, “The Intimacy of Train” additionally jogged my memory of Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea by Seungsook Moon (2005) and 예쁜 여자 만들기 / Making Fairly Girls by 이영아 / Lee Yeong-ah (2011) which I have mentioned. The previous, as a result of it extra offers important socio-historical context and background than appears particularly at physique picture and sweetness beliefs per se, and the latter as a result of it’s Korean, so usually I solely, slowly, look at small sections at a time.

Then Moon’s guide out of the blue jogged my memory of Suk-Jung Han’s July 2005 Japan Focus article “Imitating the Colonizers: The Legacy of the Disciplining State from Manchukuo to South Korea,” one in all two completely important for understanding Northeast Asia within the second half of the Twentieth Century, particularly South Korea’s nationwide Jaegun residents’ gymnastics (국민체조) from the Nineteen Sixties. Which then jogged my memory of Taeyeon Kim’s 2003 Physique and Society article “Neo-Confucian Physique Strategies: Girls’s Our bodies in Korea’s Shopper Society,” due to @equalopportunityreader’s perceptive level beneath about Korean self-cultivation, and the countless drive—very a lot shared on my own—to enhance one’s ‘specs.’ And, oh, what about that man you ask? Don’t get me began on picture necessities for resumes, and the following extreme, usually alien-like photoshopping, completely enabling resigned acceptance of usually actually inconceivable physique picture requirements for ladies—and males.

Supply: @equalopportunityreader.

Extra particularly, the breakthrough is my out of the blue starting to see the hyperlinks between all of these. A grand narrative coalescing because it had been, quite than feeling overwhelmed on a regular basis. That possibly simply by way of osmosis, I do know my shit. That I’m value $2-$5 a month, if solely I can put these ideas into phrases on paper regularly. And, crucially, cease with all of the navel-gazing already!

On that word, might I first current the “The Politics of the Physique,” the 16 June episode of the BBC 4 radio present and podcast Pondering Allowed, hosted by sociologist Laurie Taylor. The last word impetus for this publish, his interview of Beth Linker, Affiliate Professor within the Social Sciences on the College of Pennsylvania, about her new guide Slouch: Posture Panic in Fashionable America (2024), which I’ll fortunately throw cash without delay the paperback comes out, is an enchanting examination of features of on a regular basis life we take without any consideration—which properly dovetailed with my sense there was—is—one thing to be stated about these determine correction advertisements.

Beth Linker’s full interview, from 1:45 to 16:50, I can’t probably do justice to with my transcripts of transient sections. However hopefully they’ll suffice give a style.

First, from 5:45-7:10:

Laurie Taylor:

“You then really get posture exams within the early Twentieth-Century, [they] grew to become mainstays within the navy, office, and faculties…and there’s a factor referred to as the ‘American Posture League,’ which was shaped in 1914. Inform me in regards to the League, and what beliefs it promoted.”

Beth Linker:

“Sure, the American Posture League was shaped by Jessie Bankcroft, head of public faculties in New York Metropolis…the primary order of enterprise was to standardize posture…they developed instruments by which to measure posture…, in order that they used what’s referred to as a schematograph—an overhead projector the place you get posture tracings. Ultimately they undertake digicam know-how. And so they start to make use of this know-how within the navy, in public faculties, and universities to bodily look at each particular person, after which, they develop grading methods for everyone’s posture. Normal grades then grew to become A, B, C, D—D being the worst….and so they additionally developed posture contests.”

Subsequent, from 10:08-11:00:

Laurie Taylor:

“Slouching has been linked to an offensive discourse about so-called ‘primitive folks,’ however you came upon that the rise of eugenics within the early Twentieth-Century prompted scientists to fret that dangerous posture might result in a backward slide in human progress. Inform me somewhat bit extra about this growth and about ‘race betterment’ tasks.” (Supply, proper: Penn Arts & Sciences.)

Beth Linker:

“The white educated class, once more, very a lot frightened that, in the event that they lacked bodily health, that different non-white peoples would change into stronger and overtake them and their higher bodily type. The top of that quote that you simply had you would hear good posture requires drill, which requires a sure sort of mind and a will, which nonetheless places white folks as superior.”

And at last, from 16:02-16:45:

Beth Linker:

“…it was assumed that your outward look indicated inward means and morality.”

Laurie Taylor:

“That’s not denying posture remedy generally is a highly effective device when used to alleviate present again ache. However…in a approach, we’ve obtained to salvage that thought, haven’t we, from the quite lengthy, troubled historical past of ‘posture panic.’”

Beth Linker:

“I’m not against, you recognize, standing desks…to something that individuals do to enhance their well-being. I’m extra making an attempt to get us to suppose extra critically about after we say to somebody ‘Oh, it’s best to get up straight,” what can we imply by that, and what do we expect that that’s going to enhance?”

Sources: KoreanYouSay, CollectorsWeekly.

And at last for this publish, let me reap the benefits of the chance to present a shoutout to my favourite trend historical past YouTuber, SnappyDragon. Swayed by the picture above that reigned supreme on the sidebar I had then, a 12 months in the past the mannequin’s pose within the determine correction advert jogged my memory of the bustle, main me to the next two movies of hers. For the second, I’ll wrap up this publish by leaving you with a number of screenshots I took earlier than I developed my colossal author’s block—however once more, I extremely suggest watching each in full.

Take pleasure in!

From 16:10 in that second video:

Sound acquainted?

Persevering with, from earlier at 13:26:

And, final however not least, from 21:55:

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For those who reside in South Korea, you may donate through wire switch: Turnbull James Edward (Kookmin Financial institution/국민은행, 563401-01-214324)