Medicine: Posture Lady

The potbellies of the ladies-in-waiting of the last German imperial court always annoyed Kaiser Wilhelm II. In an effort to appease him, whenever they stood at attention in his presence they folded their hands over their bulging abdomens. This posture made them look like fantastic beer-mugs, a sight which vexed Wilhelm further. Hearing that a sturdy little blonde U. S. esthete named Bess M. Mensendieck taught men & women how to stand and move gracefully, by means of what she called "functional exercises," he summoned her to do the same for his court. Cried the Kaiser: "They are the most awkward women in the world. One never sees women at the courts of London, St. Petersburg or Rome stand about in the graceless attitudes I see at mine."

Bess Marguerite de Varel Mensendieck, a sculptress and a coloratura soprano with an M. D. degree from the University of Zurich, set up a school for exercises at Potsdam. By-&-by she had similar schools all over Germany and in Austria, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, The Netherlands. She became the best known physical culturist south of Sweden. Eventually she returned to the U. S. and. though her vogue has been quieter here, her system of functional exercises is being used at eminently respectable schools like Finch (Manhattan J, Greenwich Academy, Stoneleigh-Prospect Hill (Greenfield. Mass.), Laurel (Cleveland), Ogontz (Ogontz, Pa.) and at Yale. Her main U. S. school is a large, sunny room filled with full-length mirrors, at No. 36 West 59th St.; Manhattan, where last week five important businessmen and 25 young women who hope to become Mensendieck instructors were watchfully wriggling their muscles in accordance with a finely printed new illustrated manual of the Mensendieck System of Functional Exercises.*

The nub of Dr. Mensendieck's system is her conception of the body as a collection of muscle-bound bones. She calculates that the head of a 150-lb. individual weighs 10 lb., his hands 1 lb. each, forearms 4 lb. each, upper arms 5 lb. each, trunk 70 lb., thighs 15 lb. each, lower legs 7 lb. each, feet 3 lb. each.

For the best, least fatiguing posture and movement those unit masses of flesh and bone, she reasons, should counter-balance so that the body's centre of gravity lies in the sacrum (base of the spine). When the human animal stands properly erect, an imaginary line should cut the nose, chin, breastbone and crotch. Another imaginary line should drop from the mastoid, in front of the shoulder joint, through the elbow and little finger (palm turned to the rear), side of knee and ankle. This is achieved by standing with feet together, shoulders held back, abdomen tucked in, buttocks clenched.

When a Mensendiecker raises his right hand in a stiff-armed salute, he puts his weight on his right foot and thrusts his left leg backward. The left leg thus counterbalances the upraised right arm. Because Nazis and Fascists stand with their feet together when they salute, they strain themselves (according to Mensendieck theory) and are bound to have unesthetic legs and rumps.

Mensendieckers must exercise naked between two full-length mirrors, otherwise Dr. Mensendieck disowns them. She insists on this so they can see exactly how: