IFRAME: [1]https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-NX5LSK3

IFRAME: [1]https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-NX5LSK3

[2]Skip to main content
[3]The New Yorker
* [4]Newsletter

To revisit this article, select My⁠ ⁠Account, then [5]View saved
stories.
(BUTTON) Close Alert
[6]Sign In
[7]Search
* [8]News
* [9]Books & Culture
* [10]Fiction & Poetry
* [11]Humor & Cartoons
* [12]Magazine
* [13]Crossword
* [14]Video
* [15]Podcasts
* [16]Archive
* [17]Goings On
* [18]Shop

(BUTTON) Open Navigation Menu

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then [19]View saved stories.
(BUTTON) Close Alert
[20]The New Yorker

The Coronavirus Crisis
* [21]Latest Coverage
* [22]The Variants
* [23]The Vaccine Resisters
* [24]The Plague Year
* [25]The Economic Impact

[26]On and Off the Avenue
[27]March 29, 2021 Issue

Is the Pandemic Breaking Our Backs?

Test-driving a batch of posture-enhancing devices that are supposed to
make you stand tall.

By [28]Patricia Marx
March 22, 2021
*
*
*
*
* Save this story for later.

Ironing boards coffee tables and laps pinchhitting as desks could be
taking a toll.
Ironing boards, coffee tables, and laps pinch-hitting as desks could be
taking a toll.Illustration by Anna Haifisch
*
*
*
*
* Save this story for later.

IFRAME:
[29]https://audm.herokuapp.com/player-embed?pub=newyorker&articleID=605
0c69a5ba5e8e64ec2e405

I am sitting with my shoulders scrunched, my feet up on my desk, and my
rear end tilted so that I am as close as one can be in a chair to lying
down. In a pasta police lineup, I’d be elbow macaroni. “Did you nag me
about posture when I was young, back in the sixties?” I asked my mother
recently. “Evidently not,” she said. Remarkably, I am not among the
estimated eighty per cent of Americans who suffer from back troubles.
So far. Can I continue to get away with my saggy posture forever?

“The answer is no, and here’s why,” Robert DeStefano, a chiropractor
who works with the New York Giants, told me. “It might take years for
bad posture to rear its head, but the effects are cumulative. You might
feel fine, fine, fine for a long time, and then you go to bend down and
pick something up and your back goes into spasm.” The choice was clear:
work on my posture or never bend down to pick anything up again. (I’m
thinking about it.) Shani Soloff, the founder of The Posture People, a
company of physical therapists based in Stamford, Connecticut, was less
dire. After examining my conformation, over Zoom, she said that, “while
you like to fold in on yourself,” I had other bad habits that kept me
from being hobbled; namely, constant fidgeting and frequently visiting
the refrigerator. (My theory is that because I’m short I try to stand
as tall as possible in conversation with others.)

“The key thing is that you want a setup where you can change your body
position every twenty to thirty minutes,” Tasha Connolly, a physical
therapist, told me in a video chat. She explained that a prolonged hold
of any position overstretches certain muscles and shortens others, and
that that can create asymmetries. A few years ago, the news was full of
warnings about the “sitting disease.” Sitting, everyone said, was the
new smoking. A study reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine in
2017 found that subjects who interrupted their sitting every half hour
reduced their chance of dying by fifty-five per cent. Not long ago,
with the reputation of chairs in ruins, standing desks became
fashionable—that is, until new studies showed that prolonged standing
was just as bad as sitting, leading to muscular fatigue, varicose
veins, and a doubled risk of heart disease.
[30]Read The New Yorker’s complete news coverage and analysis of the
coronavirus pandemic.

Let’s start at the beginning. The story goes that when Plato was asked
for a definition of a human being he came up with “featherless biped.”
This prompted Diogenes the Cynic to present Plato with a plucked
chicken. Not to be outwitted, Plato modified his definition. “A
featherless biped with flat nails,” he said. My point is not that
philosophy in the fourth century B.C.E. was a sport for smart-alecks
who had a thing for poultry but that standing on two feet, which became
habit among our ancestors seven million years ago, according to Ashley
Hammond, of the American Museum of Natural History, is a defining
aspect of the true human condition. This milestone may have also marked
the beginning of slouching, the phrase “stand up straight,” and
backache.

More recently, as the coronavirus continues to keep us mostly indoors,
working in improvised offices where ergonomically unsound ironing
boards, coffee tables, and laps pinch-hit as desks, our sloppy ways of
sitting could be taking a toll. Parked in front of a computer, we tend
to tuck under our tailbones, candy-cane our spines, scrunch up our
shoulders, and crane our necks forward like wilted sunflowers.
According to many experts, for every inch that the head lists off
kilter, the force impinging on the neck and the back increases by ten
pounds. A survey among seven hundred and seventy-eight software workers
in lockdown last spring found that shoulder, elbow, and wrist pain had
doubled. Bad posture has been blamed for indigestion, constipation,
high blood pressure, cracked teeth, infrequent orgasms, negative
thoughts, and difficulty performing arithmetic calculations; somewhere,
someone has probably implicated it in the Presidential-election
results.

Before we work on improving our internal scaffolding, it would be
useful to define the ideal. If you are a soldier, G.I. Joe sets the
standard, according to Sergeant First Class Erik A. Rostamo, the U.S.
Army’s Drill Sergeant of the Year. What if you’re a civilian? When
viewed in profile, the average human spine, a stack of twenty-four
articulated vertebrae and nine fused ones on the bottom, should be
shaped like a seahorse, curving gently inward at the neck (cervical)
and lower-back (lumbar) regions and outward in the middle (thoracic)
region. These three curves help us maintain balance, facilitate
flexibility, and serve as shock absorbers. (Wouldn’t you rather be
going down the stairwell as a Slinky than as a pretzel stick?) The
curves are supported by muscles. An exaggerated curve—called kyphosis
in the upper back and lordosis, or swayback, in the lower back—can lead
to discomfort and, in extreme cases, can reduce mobility. Seen from the
front, you should be more or less symmetrical. A balanced alignment of
your spine, referred to among the posturati as a “neutral spine,”
exerts the least amount of strain on muscles, tendons, and the
skeleton, allowing us to function efficiently.

Toward this end, when sitting, you should have your back touching the
chair’s back, derrière scooched into the crook of the seat, shoulders
relaxed, legs uncrossed, knees bent at a right angle, feet on the
floor, and head erect (it helps if the computer screen in front of you
is at eye level and an arm’s length away). When standing, you should
have your feet shoulder-width apart and parallel, knees gently bent,
arms hanging nonchalantly by your side, stomach pulled slightly in, and
shoulders relaxed and pulled back. If this is too many body parts to
keep tabs on, perhaps one of the many pointers I found on the Internet
will help: imagine there’s a string attached to the top of your head,
pulling you upward; walk as if you’re wearing a cape; fantasize that
you are being interviewed by Beyoncé and hold yourself accordingly; or
pretend that someone’s punching you in the stomach (maybe Beyoncé?).

It’s time to buckle up into a posture corrector. You wouldn’t be the
first. The duchess Consuelo Vanderbilt (1877-1964) wrote in her memoir
about the “horrible instrument” she was ordered to endure as a child to
enforce a plumb stance, describing it as “a steel rod which ran down my
spine and was strapped at my waist and over my shoulders—another strap
went around my forehead to the rod.” Even more adorable is the neck
swing. Invented in France in the eighteenth century, this
tackle-and-pulley system, fastened to the ceiling on one end and on the
other to a headpiece worn by the user, supposedly stretched the spine
and not supposedly left the user dangling with only her toes touching
the ground. Today’s so-called posture correctors are spa-like by
comparison. The majority fall into two categories: restrictive braces,
harnesses, shirts, and bras that encourage the alignment of your torso;
or small electronic gizmos, the size of brownies, that ping or vibrate
at the inkling of a slump. Amazon sells dozens of varieties; posture is
an approximately $1.25-billion industry. Many of the physical
therapists, chiropractors, and osteopaths I talked to said that these
aids are fine to use in the short term, helping you identify postures
you should be emulating. Others regarded them as Rembrandt might a
paint-by-numbers kit: gimmickry that gets in the way of learning
technique and that might foster dependence.

Tony Pletcher, a Seattle physical therapist, is concerned that these
quick fixes could lead to muscle atrophy. “When our bodies are provided
constant external support, we often actually lose the ability to
perform these movements on our own,” he said in an e-mail. Anil
Nandkumar, who works at the Orthopedic Physical Therapy Center, at
Hospital for Special Surgery, mentioned that eight out of every ten
patients ask him about the correctors, and said, “Long story short, I
usually do not recommend these correctors to patients, because they are
‘passive’ tools.”

I chose fifteen devices and sent them to people I know who want to
improve their posture. The group included a man who was still
traumatized by being punched in the back as a child by his alcoholic
mother, whenever she observed him slouching. Another volunteer was
motivated by the memory of a seventy-five-year-old actress she’d once
seen at Saks—her cosmetically altered face made her look youthful, but
when she turned around a severe hunchback exposed the Dorian Grayish
truth.

The most common type of corrector on the market is the upper-back brace
for clavicle support. This looks like a backpack without the pack, or
like an emotional-support-animal harness, and tends to be made from a
black stretchy synthetic material. It is worn over or under one’s
clothes, with adjustable straps that exert a backward tug on the
shoulders, and after prolonged use, according to my volunteers, makes
the wearer’s armpits ache. Beginners are advised to wear the brace for
five to fifteen minutes a day, and then incrementally progress to an
hour or two. Vi Weeks, a college sophomore, appreciated the three
inches she estimates she gained in height when her Selbite Posture
Corrector ($9.98) was busy doing its job, but, when the brace was off,
her spine reverted to its previous convexity, despite the product’s
claim to effect “long-term muscle memory.” David Kim, a dermatologist,
wore his ComfyBrace ($19.97) on four consecutive workdays, for nine
backbreaking hours a day. His once admirable carriage had deteriorated
after years of hunching over his patients. Of his brace, Kim said, “It
definitely made me more cognizant of my posture. I feel like my lower
back was less tired and achy toward the end of the day.” Will
Ameringer, an art dealer in Palm Beach, found himself looking at his
watch after only ten minutes of wearing his VOKKA corrector ($27.99),
whose padded, shield-shaped panel runs the length of the back and looks
sturdy enough to joust in. “The directions warn that your back and
shoulder muscles ‘may feel stretched.’ They’re not kidding,” he said.
“A bit jarring on the kidneys, too.” Ameringer gave up after a week.
“It’s designed to pull your shoulders back while pushing a metal plate
against your lower back,” he said. “The problem is that it does one or
the other.”

Is it possible that something could be good for you and also feel good?
According to one tester, who is parked at her desk in Los Angeles all
day, such is the case with Dr. Toso’s BackRX ($39). This remedial belt
loops around your waist and knees, while you are seated, thereby using
the weight of your legs to exert a forward tug that supports your lower
back, undoing your slouch. “It’s restrictive and weird but really
comfortable, sort of like a girdle but just for your back,” she said.
“I’ve used it while working and I definitely sit straighter, and my
lower back feels better.” It also helps to make you sit ergonomically
in any chair—even in a canoe, the Web site brags, because hasn’t the
world been crying out too long for a way to paddle without lumbar
strain?
[31]Man calls up to Rapunzel whose roots are growing out while she's in
quarantine. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, your roots are showing.”
*
*
*
*

Cartoon by Jon Adams

Until a philosophy grad student named Luke tried the AlignMed
compression shirt ($95)—a black zippered short-sleeved top that could
pass for a wetsuit—only his mother’s nagging had kept him posturally
respectable. Aspiring to the silhouette of a four-star general, he wore
the shirt on three occasions, a few hours each time (“I can’t say it
was comfortable”), and found that he was more upstanding, but not
dramatically so. Actually, he realized that his original posture was
better than he’d thought. He decided he preferred his natural, relaxed
physique to one that hinted at a lifetime of maternal psychological
abuse.

Posture is a body language that everyone understands. “People with good
posture seem professional and confident,” a friend who fears that her
posture may be amoeba-like told me. “They wear suits and heels and
don’t complain. They are the kind of people who wink at you.” Lia
Grimanis, the founder of Up with Women, an organization that helps
recently homeless women and families, regards the ramrod-straight with
awe. “They are like the children of gods,” she said. “Doors open easily
for them.” Or, as another volunteer confessed, “I could never have good
posture, because people might think I have a high opinion of myself.”
Among certain types—the rebellious, the avant-garde, hipsters, Oscar
Wilde—slouching is cooler than erectitude. (Certain actresses, too.
“Don’t copy those slouching celebs!” a headline in the Daily Mail read
in 2011. “Bad posture won’t just cause a bad back, but depression too!”
The droopers listed, spotted slouching at the Golden Globes, included
Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway, and Tilda Swinton.)

Whatever else you might think about breasts, they are on gravity’s
side, not yours. That’s where the Leonisa posture-corrector bra comes
in ($45). Every day for a week, from nine to five, my friend Jancee
wore one. She described the sleek, wireless, lightly padded garment as
“a cross between a sports bra and a compression sock.” Initially, it
felt “comforting and warm, like a tight hug,” she said, but by
afternoon the hug became “creepy and uncomfortable,” and she looked
forward to clawing open the hook-and-eye closures. The bra lessened her
back pain, pulled her shoulders back, and compelled her to walk tall.
She plans to wear it on days that she does not exercise, in order to
have something to feel virtuous about.

Must we be pushed and pulled and squeezed into verticality? Isn’t there
a more civilized way? Sort of. The Upright Go 2 ($99.95) is an
electronic “wearable” the size of a Tic Tac box that sticks to your
back with reusable adhesive, or, if attached to the necklace provided,
is worn as a pendant. If the device detects that you are orthopedically
out of line, it vibrates. It knows when you’ve been bad or good
because, at the outset, you calibrate your alignment settings to an app
on your phone connected to the device by Bluetooth. The app keeps a
tally of your vibrating vs. non-vibrating minutes, along with other
stats you won’t care about unless you are writing a Ph.D. dissertation
on the topic of your spinal deviations. A casting-director acquaintance
sampled an Upright for a couple of weeks. It made her feel like a
failure. “I want to go to sleep, but my goal is a hundred and sixty
more ‘upright minutes,’ ” she said. She was not sure that watching
Netflix in bed counted. Her daily goal, determined by the app, was five
hundred minutes. Although she is now more conscious of how she
positions herself, she recognizes that the device is fallible. “When I
empty the dishwasher, it buzzes like crazy,” she reported.
Advertisement

How do the electronic gadgets compare with the glorified rubber bands
that yank you upward? Two Brooklyn sisters, nine-year-old Rosie and
six-year-old Bella, tried one of each: the Semloo intelligent posture
corrector ($12.99) and the Aaiffey back brace ($14.99). The sisters
differentiated the two types by calling them Buzzy and Not-Buzzy.
“Not-Buzzy is very annoying,” Bella said. “It hurts your shoulders and
it’s not tight, but it feels like it’s tight.” Rosie had a different
problem: “If you wear Not-Buzzy to school, it could look like you’re
wearing a bra.” Also, once, when she was wearing Buzzy and leaned down
to snuggle the cat, it buzzed, “so unless you want to snuggle by
squatting somehow, it’s very hard.” Do the girls consider posture
important? Rosie: “I think it may be important to your body, but I
don’t really know, because I don’t know a lot about bone stuff. Whether
it’s important to your life, I think, depends on who your parents are
and if they care.” Bella: “No.”

Unlike wearables, the Gaiam Classic Balance Ball Chair ($70) wears you.
Josie Abugov, twenty, spent an hour a day for two weeks perching on
what is essentially a desk chair with a small backrest and a yoga ball
substituting for a seat cushion. “While using the device itself, I do
have better posture,” she e-mailed. “The contraption forces your back
straight and core to be engaged—but I haven’t noticed a marked
improvement in my default posture.” The real benefit, she concluded, is
that the device makes you think about your posture.

Not everyone agrees that sitting on a sphere is beneficial. And some
doubt whether sitting, or even slouching, is toxic. Kieran O’Sullivan,
a physiotherapist at the University of Limerick, believes that people
today are almost paranoid about posture. When I asked him about the
widely touted claim that being immobilized in one position does damage
to tissues, he replied, “Yet a baby spends nine months in the womb
completely flexed/curled up and doesn’t seem to have irreversible
contractures when it comes out.” Gavin Smith, an osteopath in London,
goes even further, suggesting that slumping can increase spine length
and reduce stiffness in vertebral joints (by increasing the amount of
fluid between disks). Smith told me that, in the comments section of an
article in which he was quoted, someone had written, “What’s next?
‘Experts say that jumping into a hungry tigers den might be good for
your health?’ ”

What is it about posture that evokes such visceral feelings? Beth
Linker, a history-of-science professor at the University of
Pennsylvania, told me, “If I tell people the title of the book I’m
working on”—“Slouch: Fearing the Disabled Body”—“they immediately sit
up straight, as if I’m judging them.” She went on, “For a long time,
posture was something that only queens and kings and the upper class
would talk about. It was seen as a matter of discipline and appearance.
Then, in the nineteenth century, Darwin and other evolutionary
scientists claimed that human posture led to brain development.” That,
she said, led to doctors linking poor posture and poor health. “It gave
rise to a lot of aggressive and reductionist public-health campaigns.”
In the early nineteen-hundreds, hunching over was said to cause
“sinking organs,” and in the nineteen-twenties a poster created by the
National Child Welfare Association showed a little boy standing tall in
an attempt to defend himself against a baseball-bat-wielding ogre who
was labelled—in black letters—“TUBERCULOSIS.”

“It is a topic you bring up only if you want to do something about
it—namely, improve yours or someone else’s,” the historian Sander
Gilman said, over Zoom. In “Stand Up Straight!: A History of Posture,”
Gilman looks at posture as a cultural construct, a way to read an
individual’s social status, and “a means for society to separate the
‘primitive’ from the ‘advanced’, the ‘ugly’ from the ‘beautiful’, and
the ‘ill’ from the ‘healthy’.” At Ellis Island, immigrants’ spinal
bumps and bows were thought to indicate moral weaknesses, and provided
grounds for denying people entry into the country. In many American
colleges, from the nineteen-forties through the seventies, compulsory
nude “posture photos” were taken of freshmen. Among the disquieting
purposes: studying the connection between personality types and
morphological traits, aiming ultimately to create a master race through
matchmaking.

It’s hard to be a biped. Yes, it may be easier to send a text standing
on two legs than on four, but the advantage comes with a lot of wear
and tear on our skeletons. I asked around for ideas about how to
redesign the human body so that it might better accommodate our modern
needs. Rodney Brooks, a roboticist, suggests that we implant two
titanium pegs into our backs, roughly shoulder width, and use them to
hang ourselves up on the wall, placing our desks and computers in front
of us. Kyle Jensen, a senior lecturer at the Yale School of Management,
would move our eyes to stomach level to avoid slouching toward the
computer screen. The most radical redesign suggestion came from a
ten-year-old named Najya, who said, “I would take out the spine, so
you’re lying on the floor.” ♦
__________________________________________________________________

More on the Coronavirus

* There are [32]three moments in the yearlong catastrophe of the
pandemic when events might have turned out differently.
* Citizens around the world, from Brazil to Rwanda, [33]share their
experiences of the pandemic.
* In countries where the rate of infection threatens to outstrip the
capacity of the health system, doctors are [34]confronting ethical
quandaries.
* Surviving a severe coronavirus infection is hard. [35]So is
recovering.
* Can the COVID-19 vaccine beat the proliferation of [36]new virus
mutations?
* The pandemic has presented companies with an unprecedented
opportunity to [37]rethink the fundamentals of the physical
workplace.

Published in the print edition of the [38]March 29, 2021, issue, with
the headline “Stand Up Straight!.”
[39]Patricia Marx is a staff writer. Her latest book, “[40]You Can Only
Yell at Me for One Thing at a Time,” was illustrated by Roz Chast.
More:[41]Health[42]Bodies[43]Exercise[44]Bras[45]Pain

This Week’s Issue

Never miss a big New Yorker story again. Sign up for This Week’s Issue
and get an e-mail every week with the stories you have to read.
Enter your e-mail address
____________________
(BUTTON) Sign up

Will be used in accordance with our [46]Privacy Policy.
Read More
[47]
What Artichokes Teach Us About the Pandemic
Video
What Artichokes Teach Us About the Pandemic

In “Until Further Notice,” chef Luke Donato—out of work owing to the
pandemic—finds an even more profound connection to food and people by
teaching cooking classes online.

[48]The New Yorker

(BUTTON) Sections
* [49]News
* [50]Books & Culture
* [51]Fiction & Poetry
* [52]Humor & Cartoons
* [53]Magazine
* [54]Crossword
* [55]Video
* [56]Podcasts
* [57]Archive
* [58]Goings On

(BUTTON) More
* [59]Customer Care
* [60]Shop The New Yorker
* [61]Buy Covers and Cartoons
* [62]Condé Nast Store
* [63]Digital Access
* [64]Newsletters
* [65]Jigsaw Puzzle
* [66]RSS
* [67]Site Map

* [68]About
* [69]Careers
* [70]Contact
* [71]F.A.Q.
* [72]Media Kit
* [73]Press
* [74]Accessibility Help
* [75]Condé Nast Spotlight
* (BUTTON) Do Not Sell My Personal Info

© 2021 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes
acceptance of our [76]User Agreement (updated as of 1/1/21) and
[77]Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated as of 1/1/21) and
[78]Your California Privacy Rights. The New Yorker may earn a portion
of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of
our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site
may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise
used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. [79]Ad
Choices
*
*
*
*
*

References

Visible links
1. https://www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-NX5LSK3
2. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/29/is-the-pandemic-breaking-our-backs#main-content
3. https://www.newyorker.com/
4. https://www.newyorker.com/newsletters
5. https://www.newyorker.com/account/saved
6. https://www.newyorker.com/auth/initiate?redirectURL=/magazine/2021/03/29/is-the-pandemic-breaking-our-backs&source=VERSO_NAVIGATION
7. https://www.newyorker.com/search
8. https://www.newyorker.com/news
9. https://www.newyorker.com/culture
10. https://www.newyorker.com/fiction-and-poetry
11. https://www.newyorker.com/humor
12. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine
13. https://www.newyorker.com/crossword-puzzles-and-games
14. https://video.newyorker.com/
15. https://www.newyorker.com/podcast
16. https://www.newyorker.com/archive
17. https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town
18. https://store.newyorker.com/
19. https://www.newyorker.com/account/saved
20. https://www.newyorker.com/
21. https://www.newyorker.com/tag/coronavirus
22. https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/what-the-coronavirus-variants-mean-for-the-end-of-the-pandemic
23. https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-populism/the-vaccine-resisters
24. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/04/the-plague-year
25. http://www.newyorker.com/tag/reopening-and-the-economy
26. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/on-and-off-the-avenue
27. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/29
28. https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/patricia-marx
29. https://audm.herokuapp.com/player-embed?pub=newyorker&articleID=6050c69a5ba5e8e64ec2e405
30. https://www.newyorker.com/tag/coronavirus
31. https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a24243
32. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/04/the-plague-year?itm_content=footer-recirc
33. https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/five-countries-five-experiences-of-the-pandemic?itm_content=footer-recirc
34. https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/here-the-terrorists-are-inside-the-french-psychiatrist-who-counsels-crisis-doctors?itm_content=footer-recirc
35. https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/the-challenges-of-post-covid-19-care?itm_content=footer-recirc
36. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/can-the-covid-19-vaccine-beat-the-proliferation-of-new-virus-mutations?itm_content=footer-recirc
37. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/01/has-the-pandemic-transformed-the-office-forever?itm_content=footer-recirc
38. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/29
39. https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/patricia-marx
40. https://www.amazon.com/You-Only-Yell-Thing-Time/dp/1250225132
41. https://www.newyorker.com/tag/health
42. https://www.newyorker.com/tag/bodies
43. https://www.newyorker.com/tag/exercise
44. https://www.newyorker.com/tag/bras
45. https://www.newyorker.com/tag/pain
46. https://www.condenast.com/privacy-policy
47. https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/what-artichokes-teach-us-about-the-pandemic
48. https://www.newyorker.com/
49. https://www.newyorker.com/news
50. https://www.newyorker.com/culture
51. https://www.newyorker.com/fiction-and-poetry
52. https://www.newyorker.com/humor
53. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine
54. https://www.newyorker.com/crossword-puzzles-and-games
55. https://video.newyorker.com/
56. https://www.newyorker.com/podcast
57. https://www.newyorker.com/archive
58. https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town
59. http://w1.buysub.com/servlet/CSGateway?cds_mag_code=NYR
60. https://store.newyorker.com/
61. https://condenaststore.com/art/new+yorker+covers
62. https://condenaststore.com/conde-nast-brand/thenewyorker
63. https://www.newyorker.com/digital-editions
64. https://www.newyorker.com/newsletter
65. https://www.newyorker.com/jigsaw
66. https://www.newyorker.com/about/feeds
67. https://www.newyorker.com/sitemap
68. https://www.newyorker.com/about/us
69. https://www.newyorker.com/about/careers
70. https://www.newyorker.com/about/contact
71. https://www.newyorker.com/about/faq
72. http://www.condenast.com/brands/the-new-yorker
73. https://www.newyorker.com/about/press
74. https://www.newyorker.com/about/accessibility-help
75. https://www.cnspotlight.com/
76. https://www.condenast.com/user-agreement/
77. http://www.condenast.com/privacy-policy#privacypolicy
78. http://www.condenast.com/privacy-policy#privacypolicy-california
79. http://www.condenast.com/privacy-policy#privacypolicy-optout

Hidden links:
81. https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?&display=popup&caption=Is%20the%20Pandemic%20Breaking%20Our%20Backs%3F&app_id=1147169538698836&link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fmagazine%2F2021%2F03%2F29%2Fis-the-pandemic-breaking-our-backs%3Futm_source%3Dfacebook%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_campaign%3Donsite-share%26utm_brand%3Dthe-new-yorker%26utm_social-type%3Dearned
82. https://twitter.com/intent/tweet/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fmagazine%2F2021%2F03%2F29%2Fis-the-pandemic-breaking-our-backs%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_campaign%3Donsite-share%26utm_brand%3Dthe-new-yorker%26utm_social-type%3Dearned&text=Is%20the%20Pandemic%20Breaking%20Our%20Backs%3F&via=NewYorker
83. mailto:?subject=Is%20the%20Pandemic%20Breaking%20Our%20Backs%3F&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fmagazine%2F2021%2F03%2F29%2Fis-the-pandemic-breaking-our-backs%3Futm_source%3Donsite-share%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_campaign%3Donsite-share%26utm_brand%3Dthe-new-yorker
84. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/29/is-the-pandemic-breaking-our-backs
85. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/29/is-the-pandemic-breaking-our-backs
86. https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?&display=popup&caption=Is%20the%20Pandemic%20Breaking%20Our%20Backs%3F&app_id=1147169538698836&link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fmagazine%2F2021%2F03%2F29%2Fis-the-pandemic-breaking-our-backs%3Futm_source%3Dfacebook%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_campaign%3Donsite-share%26utm_brand%3Dthe-new-yorker%26utm_social-type%3Dearned
87. https://twitter.com/intent/tweet/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fmagazine%2F2021%2F03%2F29%2Fis-the-pandemic-breaking-our-backs%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_campaign%3Donsite-share%26utm_brand%3Dthe-new-yorker%26utm_social-type%3Dearned&text=Is%20the%20Pandemic%20Breaking%20Our%20Backs%3F&via=NewYorker
88. mailto:?subject=Is%20the%20Pandemic%20Breaking%20Our%20Backs%3F&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fmagazine%2F2021%2F03%2F29%2Fis-the-pandemic-breaking-our-backs%3Futm_source%3Donsite-share%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_campaign%3Donsite-share%26utm_brand%3Dthe-new-yorker
89. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/29/is-the-pandemic-breaking-our-backs
90. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/29/is-the-pandemic-breaking-our-backs
91. https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?&display=popup&caption=&app_id=1147169538698836&link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fcartoon%2Fa24243%3Futm_source%3Dfacebook%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_campaign%3Donsite-share%26utm_brand%3Dthe-new-yorker%26utm_social-type%3Dearned
92. https://twitter.com/intent/tweet/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fcartoon%2Fa24243%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_campaign%3Donsite-share%26utm_brand%3Dthe-new-yorker%26utm_social-type%3Dearned&text=&via=NewYorker
93. mailto:?subject=&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Fcartoon%2Fa24243%3Futm_source%3Donsite-share%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_campaign%3Donsite-share%26utm_brand%3Dthe-new-yorker
94. https://condenaststore.com/conde-nast-brand/cartoons
95. https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/what-artichokes-teach-us-about-the-pandemic
96. https://www.facebook.com/newyorker/
97. https://twitter.com/NewYorker/
98. https://www.snapchat.com/add/newyorkermag
99. https://www.youtube.com/user/NewYorkerDotCom/
100. https://instagram.com/newyorkermag/