Posture

My physiotherapist and orthopaedist keep telling me to improve my posture by squaring my shoulders, sticking out my chest and holding my stomach tight. How can one wipe out years of conditioning my predisposition of being the secondary race in Indian society with medical advice? Even the miniature paintings in the National museum have Indian women over the ages that hold their stances in a demure manner, shoulders slightly hunched and chin at an acute angle to the neck.

Let us step back into what psychologist’s term as the gentle years of female puberty. In India, this is usually an event which is fraught with anxiety and shame. The mother will hug the bemused young lass and tell her with shimmering eyes that she must discard the frocks and don a sari or salwar. The father will look at her with a grim face and tell her that under no circumstances must a man be let anywhere close to her for she may get pregnant. If one has a forthright male friend or brother around one’s age, one may get to know that the best method of self defence is to kick a man’s balls which will remain most woman’s fantasy till the day she dies. In many a village, town and city the girl is ostracised and sent to the unclean outhouse for the period of her being under the weather. She is not allowed to pray or sit in front of a deity. These notions are not restricted to the uneducated or economically underprivileged but exist in apparently progressive people in the cities.

In such an environment expenses such as sanitary napkins and brassieres are deemed as unnecessary and the bewildered girl child usually embraces her puberty not with a sense of pride at being at the thresh hold of womanhood but with a sense of shame. The family wants to get her married at the earliest since her functionality of being a child bearing adult has been achieved and the looming question of dowry remains to be resolved. Her physical posture is reflective of her status in society.

It is a scientific fact that the incidence of lower back problems in women in regressive societies and particularly India is much higher than other countries due to a hunched or stooped posture. One can mitigate such an outcome in a girl child by enrolling her into a dance class before her pubescent years. She will learn to stand perfectly although the conservative relatives will term it as arrogance. God help the lass if she is paraded in front of the potential groom’s family when they visit to check out the bride for what the doctor recommended will definitely not appeal to the in-laws.