Deportment
Deportment means behaviour, manners, or posture.
A Deportment School is a school where students (typically young ladies or gentlemen) receive instruction and training on good deportment. Such schools, or deportment classes, were particularly common from the late-19th to the mid-20th century, and were particularly strict at that period. Today, deportment training still exists, but in more relaxed forms.
Posture training
Common methods to train an erect posture while sitting, standing or walking, as opposed to slouching, included balancing a book or wooden block on one's head, or the use of a backboard (or posture aid, posture corrective, posture corrector, harness) to pull back the shoulders and keep the spine straight. Corsets, too, were used to improve a person's posture.
Deportment/posture training is also common in BDSM, for example in slave or ponygirl training. An example of deportment training in a spanking video is Deportment with Aunt Lucy by Northern Spanking (2006).
The posture collar is a special collar used in BDSM to keep the wearer's head up.
See also
Links
- Vintage photo: Young debutantes at a deportment school in Kensington, London, are shown the correct and incorrect way to retrieve a handkerchief from the floor in this demonstration.
- Vintage photo: Trainee fashion models learn how to carry themselves gracefully by balancing books on their heads.
- Vintage photo: Lucie Clayton instructs pupils in the art of correct posture by balancing a glass and book on their heads at her finishing school in Old Cavendish Street, London.
- Vintage photo: Instructor Dawn Zajac holds a deportment class for synchronized swimmers at the Seymour Hall Swimming Baths in London.
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