Swaggering

{{Short description|Ostentatious style of walking with an arrogant manner.}}

File:Paul Sandby - London Cries- A Man Swaggering - Google Art Project.jpg which were drawn from life and published in 1760.]]

Swaggering is an ostentatious style of walking with an extravagant manner. The exact gait will vary with personality and fashion but it is generally more of a loose, rolling style than a stiff strut. The feet will be kept apart rather than following each other in line and the more swaggering the gait, the greater the lateral distance between them.{{citation |page=102 |title=Action!: Acting Lessons for CG Animators |author1=John Kundert-Gibbs |author2=Kristin Kundert-Gibbs |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |year=2009 |isbn=9780470596050}} Studies have found that people are able to determine sexual orientation from such cues and a shoulder-swagger was perceived as a heterosexual orientation.{{citation |title=Swagger, sway, and sexuality: Judging sexual orientation from body motion and morphology. |author=Johnson, Kerri L.; Gill, Simone; Reichman, Victoria; Tassinary, Louis G. |journal=Journal of Personality and Social Psychology |volume= 93|number=3 |year=2007 |pages=321–334 |doi=10.1037/0022-3514.93.3.321 |pmid=17723051}}

Among London cockneys, swaggering was stylised as the coster walk which became the dance craze of the Lambeth walk.{{citation |page=408 |title=Classes and cultures: England 1918-1951 |author=Ross McKibbin | publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-19-820672-9}} Among African-Americans, it is known as a jive-ass walk or pimp walk.{{citation |pages=1089–1091 |chapter=Pimp walk |author=Daniel Wojcik |title=Encyclopedia of African American Popular Culture |volume=1 |year=2010 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-0-313-35796-1}} The actor John Wayne was known for his swaggering walk which became a distinctive element of his screen image.{{citation |page=35 |title=Sex and the cinema |author=Tanya Krzywinska |year=2006 |location=Santa Barbara, California |publisher=Greenwood Publishing|isbn=978-1-904764-73-1}}

A cane may be used as a walking stick as part of the performance. In the military, this became stylised as the swagger stick — useless as a support and just used for gesturing and prodding.

Portraits which are ostentatiously posed in the grand manner are known as swagger portraits. The Tate Gallery held an exhibition of these in 1992, featuring the work of William Dobson, Anthony van Dyck and Peter Lely.{{citation |title=The Swagger Portrait |author=Richard Shone |journal=The Burlington Magazine |volume=134 |number=1077 |year=1992 |pages=816–818 |jstor=885365}}