We all know that, where there is society, there are people who judge . From haircuts to the aesthetics of tattoos, from the non-verbal language used and the products consumed, everything that links us to community life is crossed by a thousand and one labels designed in the most sophisticated marketing factories .

Yesterday, it was the urban tribes who kept these codes of aesthetics and conduct to themselves. Today, these take-away personality pieces have been diluted into a much broader concept: the postured .

Posture: envelope posers and ghettos

It is clear that postureo is not a concept coined by sociologists or psychologists, but is a new word that probably comes from the English “poser”, which in turn is a loan from the French. This already gives clues as to the context in which the root of the word postureo appeared.

Originally, the word was used to refer pejoratively to those people who pretend to be what they are not . It was the urban tribes that extended the use of this word to refer to people who copied their aesthetics without having previously internalized their musical tastes, values and customs. Not in academic circles, but in spaces of dissidence. In the street, far from fixed definitions. A place in which exteriorising one’s personality is, in part, reinventing oneself .

Therefore, to show off posture meant imitating the aesthetics of a certain collective without doing the same with its ethics , the content that gives meaning to those haircuts, those sensations that the music transmits and that way of dressing to recognize each other among comrades.

Today all that is behind us. Now, posture has become independent from those little ghettos of youth: it has become part of the daily life of most of the urbanites . It consists of giving the desired image, but not just any desired image: specifically, that which allows us to merge with the crowd, not to stand out. Now, this way of pretending is a product for all palates, easily marketable and exportable to all Western countries.

The posture is no longer related to the community, to the determined groups. Today, pretending to be what one is not means doing it as an individual who wants to appear to be something much broader, for all tastes , without stridencies.

New forms of posture: personality to wear

Posture, as we understand it today, has appeared in the same breeding grounds in which the urban tribes appeared: the externalization of the signs related to life beyond work . In the urban tribes, this “beyond work” in which the elements prone to be copied to maintain appearances were born was related to the spaces of dissidence: music, concerts, the world of graffiti and skateboarding in public places, etc.

Today, “beyond work” means, simply and plainly, leisure time .

Not everyone shares the struggles of the left-wing punk movements, or of the bikers who claim for themselves the right to transgress the rules of use of public space. However, many more people go to concerts, go on holiday or meet friends from time to time. And many of these people have access to their profiles on social networks .

Everything is based on social networks

It is in the laboratory of our facebook and twitter accounts where the new posture is given. If before they tried to copy some elements from an easily recognizable local band, today they do the same to appear to be a normal middle class person, with aesthetic influences well assimilated by the middle class and typical situations of leisure time . This song by the Sevillian rapper ToteKing sums it up quite well:

If before the posture was exerted in the street, today it is exerted from the solitude of the electronic devices , at the moment of selecting photographies and giving to the button of uploading images. This is something that everyone with access to technology can do, regardless of the social dynamics or customs of the place.

The selfie stick as a paradigm of something going wrong

An example of this is the very rapid popularization of the selfie stick, whose function is to make it easier to graphically express a fact: “I was here” . The new posture is such a refined way of pretending that it is not based, as it was until a few years ago, on the great artifices. It is based on selective attention. I was here, and for some reason I’m showing you this. I’ve also been scrubbing the kitchen, but for some reason I don’t show it to you. I want you to know that I’ve been there, but not here. And if I have to, I’ll buy a stick to take a picture of me when there’s no one to go with me.

On the Internet you can find videos showing people posing in the belief that they will be photographed. It’s a few uncomfortable seconds, and it’s this discomfort that makes the videos funny. This feeling of being made a fool of is one of the symptoms of pretending .

In those moments of discomfort, if you pay attention to the faces of the people posing, you can see the friction between the image you want to give and what you are actually doing. It is not an effort to stand out, but to merge with the image in the abstract of a person living life, worth the redundancy.

The totalitarianism of normal appearance

The new posture is an artifact born in the globalization that is governed by a mechanism of all or nothing . If two years ago people laughed at the first Chinese tourists travelling with a selfie stick, today it is perfectly normal to use them. If a few decades ago people pretended to distinguish themselves, today they do it to look more like members of the global village. Whoever we are, we all have leisure time and we like to live life, they seem to want to say.

More and more, our social life is based on the avatars we use in social networks . More and more, the image we give resembles the one we want to give through these virtual profiles. Let us hope that, in this eagerness to show what we are, the ways of living life in a spontaneous and original way are not eclipsed.