Description

We may regard Posture X as the proxy for the full-blown, the explicit yawn. Thus Posture X is the mimicked yawn-stretch, the abbreviation of the technically difficult, the aesthetically distorting and, moreover, the tabooed yawn, the substitute for the aesthetically and socially prohibited yawn-stretch. To add one more analogy: as the sigh mimicks the yawn acoustically, thus Posture X mimicks the stretch-yawn syndrome visually. To put it in scheme:

Posture X --> rake --> SYS --> yawn

In short, via the rake and the SYS, Posture X refers to the yawn. And thus we find ourselves in he fortunate position to be able to study the scarce yawn; indirectly via the omnipresent Posture X.

GAAP! p. 201.

Description

Not scarce however is a pose that we will call 'Posture X'. This posture is so often depicted in the arts, pure and applied (advertising), that it is impossible to miss it.

GAAP! p. 199.

Description

Filmposter (Czech version) for Tsai Ming-Liang's The Wayward Cloud (Taiwan, 2005)

The woman who 'lets her mussel gape' before the gynecologist, adopts as in a reflex Posture X. This posture we encounter in innumerable images. Explicitly in the poster for the film The Wayward Cloud by the Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang. The woman presents her most intimate parts and adopts Posture X.

GAAP! p. 205.

Description

Edvard Munch, Three Stages of Woman (1894)

Photographers prefer her to adopt this inviting pose. She stands, legs apart, tits forward, belly raised. Preferably also mouth opened, almost symbolically, as if to receive the lover. Or she sits down, arms crossed behind her head and thighs already opened.

Louis Paul Boon, Fenomenale Feminateek. Amsterdam/Antwerpen: Meulenhoff/ Manteau, 2004, p. 49.

Description

Then she dropped the coat, formed her lips into a sexy pout and assumed her best temptress pose with her forearm draped sexily behind her head.

Sue Margolis, Sisteria. London: Headline, 1999, pp. 273-74.

Description

Roy Lichtenstein, Girl with Ball (1961)

Behind the glass pane stood a young lady clad in nothing but a tiny bikini, hoisting a red ball above her head. To be sure, the young lady was made of wax. But she made Zsolozsmai, who in the meantime concluded that her nudity was disgusting, shiver all over. He also concluded that for some mysterious reason, her lasciviousness was heightened by the ball she held aloft.

István Örkény, 'Eroticism' in One Minute Stories. Budapest: Corvina, 1989 [1968], p. 49.

Description

Barberini Faun (Glyptothek, Munich)

He is a rather ghastly character, I'm afraid - the sort of man who is always sitting with his legs aggressively akimbo, offering a clearer silhouette of his untidy crotch than is strictly decent.

Zoë Heller, Notes on a Scandal. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 2004 [2003], p. 13.

Description

Through half-closed eyelids Miss Maunciple gave him a secret and somehow indecent look of understanding and complicity; then uttered a little laugh and stretched her arms. "Doesn't the sun feel good!" she said; and, closing her lids completely, she lowered her raised arms, clasped her hands behind her neck, and threw back her shoulders. It was a pose that lifted the breasts, that emphasized the inward curve of the loins and the contrary swell of the buttocks - the sort of pose that a new arrival in the seraglio would be taught by the eunuchs to assume at her first interview with the Sultan; [...].

Aldous Huxley, After Many a Summer. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961 [1939], p. 41.

Description

As he moved towards her she curved her body out of its calm immobility. He saw her eyes shining very faintly and her bare arms stretch themselves above her head. She did not speak; but somehow he knew quite well that she had been waiting for him to come.

H.E. Bates, 'The Little Farm' in Colonel Julian and Other Stories, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1955 [1951], p. 34.

Description

Man Ray, Blanc et Noir (1929)

Furthermore the pin-up girl can allow herself almost anything what a lascivious imagination may produce. [...] She stands provokingly straddle-legged, she stretches with her hands behind her head, [...]. Despite all of this the genuine pin-up girl is never realy obscene.

Willem Frederik Hermans, 'Fenomenologie van de pin-up girl', in Het sadistisch universum 1. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1977 [1949], p. 58.

Description

Leon De Smet, The Toilet (La Toilette, De opschik 1930)

Absently, she slipped off her blue dressing-gown with its cream-coloured lace, and stood there, white, as Don Saturno often saw her just before he fell asleep, but much more beautiful than he was capable of imagining her. After leaving aside the garments which she did not wear in bed she stood upon the tiger-skin, burying her bare feet, small and plump, in the fur with its brown markings. One naked arm rested on her head, which was slightly tilted, the other hung alongside her body, following the strong hip's graceful curve. She looked like some immodest model, transported by the sensuousness of the academic pose which an artist had told her to strike.

Leopoldo Alas [Clarín], La Regenta. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984 [1884-85], p. 65.