It’s time, once again, to talk about the anterior pelvic tilt.
An Anterior Pelvic Tilt is a posture problem that naturally occurs in many people when they sit for hours each day. It’s caused by a “shortening” and stiffening of our hip flexors, so our lumbar curvature increases while our hips tilt forward. While some degree of poor posture is going to happen to anyone who spends time sitting at their computer, lots of us consciously exacerbate this problem without realizing that it’s hurting us.
Check out the image posted above - This pelvic tilt looks really odd when a man is photographed in profile, but scroll through women’s #fitspo and you’ll see this everywhere:
Curving your spine, pushing your boobs out, popping your butt? That’s actually a dangerous posture. That’s an anterior pelvic lift that can eventually cause lower back pain, hip pain, flat feet, knee pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, headaches, weakened pelvic muscles and even permanent damage to your back. Making your butt look rounder and your waist look thinner isn’t worth the damage that repeatedly standing like this will cause.
We tend to associate healthy and “fit” women with this particular posture, which is messed up. It twists our perception of what healthy and muscular bodies should look like - Instead of actually displaying proper posture and a strong stance, women are instead taught to display their bodies in a way that’s more sexually appealing. The media teaches us that showing off a big, round butt and tiny waist is apparently more important than treating our bodies safely.
If you can help it, don’t emulate this style. Posture is something that we often take for granted, so it can be incredibly difficult to hold your body in a new way that feels unnatural or unflattering, but getting rid of this anterior pelvic tilt is worth it - We need to stop normalizing this posture and promoting it as fitness.
Because the more often you move your body in a certain way, the more it becomes a habit. Someone who frequently strikes this pose for photos will likely also be standing this way when they want to show off their assets, or look at their body in the mirror, or when they’re feeling particularly “fit” and strong, or they’ll simply find that their body eventually falls into this position naturally. You don’t have to stand this way all the time in order to get injured: Striking this posture on any occasion will help to make you feel more accustomed to it, which can lead to you standing this way more often, which can lead to quite a lot of medical issues.
Having this posture consistently saturate women’s health and fitness culture is harmful. It prioritizes a woman’s sexual appeal over her strength and safety. After all, we learn from the media that we’re constantly exposed to - Considering that a huge number of users turn to #fitspo as a means of inspiring them and teaching them how to maintain a healthy lifestyle, this style of posture is consciously being mimicked by young girls who just want to be healthier, happier and more athletic. In an effort to improve their body, this pose teaches them how to slowly destroy it.
