Margo Gray

Even the fitness test part of it.

Imagine showing up to college and getting tested on pull-ups, push-ups, and sit-ups.

Why did Yale care?

Here's how Richard explains it.

I still don't know why my future doctor or lawyer needs to do pull-ups, but I get the idea.

Yale wanted the next generation of American leaders to be physically fit.

What I can't understand is why posture mattered so much.

So much so that students were tested on it and had to take classes if they failed.

So I reached out to a historian for answers, Dr. Beth Linker.

Dr. Linker wasn't planning on writing a book about posture.

She stumbled on the topic while doing research for another book at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

It turned out that those footprints belonged to World War I draftees.

The military had taken them as part of the medical screening process.

At the time, flat feet were considered a disability.

Men with low arches were routinely rejected for military service.

And flat feet weren't the only thing that could disqualify you from joining the Army.

A posture defect could, too.

So you could be rejected from the draft simply for having bad posture, and not because the army cared about how commanding you looked in a uniform, but because of a widely accepted idea at the time that posture was tied to overall health.

The belief was that slouching didn't just look bad.

It made you physically weaker and more susceptible to illness.