Postureo: when the image we project is everything

The society of appearances reaches its peak with "postureo".

We all know that, wherever there is society, there are people who judge.. From haircuts to the aesthetics of tattoos, from the nonverbal language we use to the products we consume, everything that binds us to life in community is traversed by a thousand and one labels designed in the most sophisticated marketing factories.

Yesterday, it was the urban tribes who were in charge of keeping these codes of aesthetics and behavior for themselves. Today, these pieces of wearable personality have been diluted in a much broader concept: the postureo.

Postureo: about posers and ghettos

It is clear that the postureo is not a concept coined by sociologists or psychologists, but a new word that probably comes from the English "poser", which in turn is borrowed from 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 people who pretend to be what they are not.. It was the urban tribes who were responsible for extending 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 where to externalize one's personality is, in part, to reinvent oneself.

Thus, to show off postureo meant to imitate the imitating the aesthetics of a given collective without doing the same with its ethics, the content that gives meaning to these aesthetics.The content that gives meaning to those haircuts, those sensations that music transmits and that way of dressing to recognize oneself among comrades.

Today all that has been left behind. Now, postureo has become independent from those little ghettos of youth: it has become part of the everyday life of most urbanites. urbanites. It consists of giving the desired image, but not just any desired image: specifically, the one that allows us to blend in 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.

Posturing is no longer related to the community, to specific groups. Today, to pretend what one is not means to do it as an individual who wants to pretend to be something much broader, much more to pretend to be something much broader, for all tastes, without stridency.without stridency.

The new forms of postureo: personality to wear

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

Today, the "beyond work" means, plain and simple, leisure time.

Not everyone shares the struggles of the left-wing punk movements, nor 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 vacation or meet up with friends from time to time. And many of these people have access to their profiles on social networks. social networks.

It's all about social networks

It is in the laboratory of our facebook and twitter accounts where the new postureo takes place. If before we tried to copy some elements of an easily recognizable local band, today we 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 the leisure time.. This song by the Sevillian rapper ToteKing sums it up quite well:

If before the postureo was exercised in the street, today it is exercised from the loneliness of the electronic devicesWhen you select pictures and hit the upload button. It is something that everyone with access to technology can do, regardless of social dynamics or local customs.

The selfie stick as a paradigm of something going wrong

An example of this is the extremely rapid popularization of the selfie stick, whose function is to to make it easier to graphically capture a fact: "I was here".. The new postureo is such a refined form of pretending that it is not based, as it was a few years ago, on great artifice. It is based on selective attention. I've been here, and for some reason I'm showing you this. I've also been scrubbing the kitchen, but for some reason I'm not showing it to you. I want you to know that I've been there, but not here. And if need be, I'll buy a stick to take a picture of me when no one is there to accompany me.

On the Internet you can find videos of people posing in the belief that they are going to have their picture taken. It's an awkward few seconds, and it's this awkwardness that makes the videos funny. This feeling of making a fool of yourself is one of the symptoms of faking it..

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 abstract image of a person who lives life, if you will forgive the redundancy.

The totalitarianism of appearing normal

The new postureo is an artifact born of globalization that is governed by an all-or-nothing mechanism. an all-or-nothing mechanism. If two years ago people laughed at the first Chinese tourists traveling 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 all like to live life, they seem to want to say.

Increasingly so, our social life relies on the avatars we use on social networks.. More and more, the image we give looks like the one we want to give through these virtual profiles. Let's hope that, in this eagerness to show what we are, the ways of living life in a spontaneous and original way are not eclipsed.