When conventions are held, the main goal is to get down to business, teaching new skills, and exchanging ideas. For medical conventions, that might mean new procedures, new med inventions, or an exchange of thoughts on medical failures. It can be hard to get people to attend these things if there is nothing fun to do, so when the nation’s chiropractors descended on Chicago for a weeklong convention in May 1956, they decided to throw a beauty contest. This was not to be your average beauty contest, however. In true chiropractic style, this was to be a posture beauty pageant. I’m sure it was a novel and almost shocking thought, as beauty pageants go. Nevertheless, the women decided to compete, and the pageant was set.
Contestants were judged not only by their apparent beauty but were also judged by their X-rays and also by 
their standing posture. Each girl was to stand on a pair of scales. This was a strange idea, but they stood one foot to each scale. The idea was that they should register exactly half their weight on each scale, thereby confirming the correct standing posture. I would never have thought that posture could have been measured in such a way. Nevertheless, contests like this were pretty common. The idea was to polish the reputation of the chiropractic profession which had been considered “quackish” in those days. Basically, chiropractic had a serious public relations problem. They held no medical license and so carried little weight in the medical community, according to Dr P Reginald Hug, who is a past president of the Association for the History of Chiropractic. Hugs says, “We were the new kids on the block and medicine didn’t like us.”
To improve their plight, they began crowning posture queens. That way, the chiropractors could build goodwill without making waves with traditional doctors. Hugs says, “It was a way to get PR that was kind of middle of the road.” The point being made was that good posture leads to good health. And chiropractors were the people 
to get you on the right track. That May, the judges crowned Lois Conway, 18, Miss Correct Posture. Second place went to Marianne Caba, 16, according to an account in the Chicago Tribune. Ruth Swenson, 26, came in third. The contests date back to the 1920s, but they became the rage during the 1950s and 1960s. The contestants were typically judged on beauty and poise, posture, and X-rays to evaluate their spinal structure. That was allowed then, because “In those days, nobody was concerned about radiation,” Hug says. We have learned much since then. We have also changed our thought…for the most part anyway…concerning chiropractic, and many people see a chiropractor on a regular basis, although, I doubt if the beauty pageants have continued at the conventions.
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