Posture - or: How To Look Slim, Energetic, Powerful and Younger in a second

Posture.              Well, well, well...   "Stand tall!"  "Sit upright!"  mother reminded us. 

I have to confess that my posture never was Very Good - I am a tall woman, 1,78m, and though I found out that this has many advantages (I could work as a model and now silver model, was not overlooked when I entered a room - very important for a committee or as teacher) - it has also some drawbacks. 

When you are 15 years old you want to be as everybody else - so in my peer group I curved my shoulders. 

A tall girl seldom wants a lover who is shorter than her (though there are exceptions: beautiful Carla Bruni and Monsieur Sarkozy). And though I know that this is very shallow, and found out that in bed the flaw disappears, I wanted to wear kitten heels or High Heels and "look up" (silly again).    

"You" - a dressmaker said to me, " will get problems with your hip if you stand like that!" 

I looked at her and thought "Prattle on!" (I was 15) - and protruded my right hip in the typical model angle - très chic. Today I think: she had a point. No big problems with my hip, thank God, but sometimes I can feel it. 

Walking with the then tiny triplets made my not very good posture even worse. 

So now it is really, really time for action. I read some enlightening books , go to the fitness club, do exercises from Youtube - and try to recall it when I stand up from an armchair WITHOUT using my hands (at least I do not say "Phew!", as some friends of mine have started - "phew" when they sit down and "phew" when they try to get up...) 

"Keeping up appearances" - a dress looks so much nicer when you hold your head up tight (young people nowadays slouch over their cellphone - and their posture is as bad as mine...) 

Your waistline looks so much slimmer when you stand tall. 

And you look younger. Definitely. 

But it takes some effort now.  (Phew!) 

I Feel Overprotected! "Dressing Instructions" for your tights

 

We all will have read about "helicopter parents". 

A difficult balance in a world to protect your child - without making it feel helpless. (I was always a supporter of the maxim "Do not support someone by giving him everyday a fish - better give him an angling rod.") 

Nowadays they pamper us, average adults, with suffocating eagerness. Whining they see problems everywhere - today I read that PETA, animal rights activists, in earnest call for forbidding wooden animals on roundabouts - carousel animals would give children wrong impressions how to treat animals. 

Politicians "care" about what you SHOULD eat. Don't get me wrong: I think it is great to eat healthy vegetables - but you should have heard the rage of German citizenry when our Green politicians wanted to establish a "vegetable day" once a week for all of us. (Sugar or unhealthy fast food has a big lobby -  you don't hear much to protect children on that front, though timid attempts are made to implement a sugar tax - so: I am not against protecting children).

And now I found that dressing instructions for tights. 

Honestly: the triplets, now 4 and a half year old, can put on their tights without those instructions, thank you very much. 

What will they try to "teach us" next???