Do you look stooped?

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''Stooped'' means when you walk with your head and shoulders forward, a bit like how teenage boys sometimes hold theirselves (or so I've seen).

I look stooped all the time. I don't walk hunched, in fact my back is actually straight, but I can't help my neck stooping forwards, and if I try to hold it back my head just looks like I'm looking up at the sky, so really I can't get my neck to move at all, it's like it's always going to be forward like that. I really hate it. It causes anxiety, self-hatred, and Agoraphobia (being afraid to show myself out in public like it). I do have a lanky sort of build, which I f*****g HATE, and I think my neck is a little longer than average, which I also f*****g HATE, but there's nothing you can do to change the way your neck is built, it's just my luck to have a neck like this. I've also got a small head, which doesn't help.

But anyway, anyone else here look stooped? Does it come from having an awkward posture? My posture if fine otherwise, just apart from my stupid stooped neck. It makes me feel very self-conscious and I'm trying to figure out if people stare at me because of my plain hairstyle, my stupid expression on my face, or my stooped neck. I reckon it's my stooped neck, because having a stooped neck is unusual in girls.

Depends on what is going on in my head at the time. Sometimes i walk head down eyes a few feet in front of me. Sometimes with a very erect posture.

Yup! Never have been able to do much about it, either. When I was in college my roommate was trying to help me be more attractive (in the literal sense of attracting men) and she made me walk around the dorm with a book balanced on my head, an old charm school trick. The practice didn't cure me, though, because a couple of years later the guy who was to become my husband commented on the posture. With me, though, my back isn't straight: my shoulders are involved, too. The same roommate also put a note on the inside of the door: "Clank clank clank! Clank clank clank! Do NOT walk like a Sherman Tank!" to remind me about my mechanical walk, and to _think_ about the way I was walking. (I could be more "graceful" when I thought about it.

I think it's characteristic, though I don't see much about it in reading matter. But I was able to see "attend" a Web Seminar originating at the University of Kansas with Tony Attwood, and he was illustrating a game called "Spot the Aspie", with a lot of tips for recognizing us, and he illustrated that exact walk, not only stoop-shouldered, but also mechanical, and with the addition of a pile of books carried on both arms in front of him.

But I think a really long neck is lovely in a woman. See the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti.
http://ascendingpassage.com/Akhenaten-and-Nefertiti.htm
a standard of beauty for the ages. I have practically no neck, especially since I'm overweight and have a double chin on the front. MODELS are tall! (I'm average height).

Yes. In my case it could be substandard eyesight, avoiding eye contact, my slight spinal curvature, or maybe even trying to avoid being hit in the head--by tree limbs, or symbolically by people. I list these in case it helps anybody think of causes.

Really, people look all kinds of ways, and I wouldn't think that most people find you noticeably weird.

Kind of. I even sit like it. My mom tells me that it makes me look weak and unhealthy.
Who knows, maybe I do it because I am weak...

Yes. My Mom always tells me to pull my head back, but it naturally leans forward, pulling my shoulders with it.

Appearances can be deceiving. I'm pretty sure that I look like an easy mark when I schlump around. But I'm actually in pretty good shape and I'm working towards a black belt in Krav Maga (Israeli army uses it). I know how to defend myself.

Thanks, mate, that has actually made me feel better .

I'm 5 foot 6, very skinny, so I suppose having a bit of a stooped neck practically suits my figure, making me look less weird. If I was a bigger built person, and more wider, but still had a long neck and looked stooped, I think I would look a little weird (according to other people). Or if I had my figure but with a big, plump head and a fat neck, I would also look weird. So sometimes your posture has to depend on your build.

And like you said, people look all kinds of ways. Well, where I come from they do. I see young people with glasses and a hunched back, and I don't consider them Aspies. I know an Autistic boy who walks up straight, and you wouldn't even guess that he's Autistic when you're looking at him walking along (if he doesn't flap his hands about, which sometimes he does). He walks in a cocky way, and is a very good-looking young man.