One leg in the air like you just don’t care? Eight classic power poses – and what they really mean

You think you know your culture back to front, all the snooker moves that drove us to this point, and then something happens and you realise you haven’t been paying attention. I’m thinking of the modern celebrity power pose: one leg shooting high in the air, preferably while wearing a ballgown. It has to be a woman. If a man did it, he would be mocking a woman, making his power message: “I’m brave enough, and comfortable enough in my own skin, to mock ladies.” Which is powerful, to be fair.

When women do it – Victoria Beckham started it, Myleene Klass has dabbled, Amanda Holden does it all the time (even standing up) – other women liken them to a cat licking, sorry, grooming its butt. Once, memorably, Taylor Swift posted her cat doing this very thing on Insta. But what is this pose meant to be saying? “I may be a pop star or a TV celebrity, but with my flexibility and muscle tone, I am ready at any time to give my services to ballet”? “I don’t want to flash my pants, but I do want to show that I have a tan all the way up to that area, so while I fix this conundrum, may I treat you to one of my legs”? This can only be understood as the natural end point in the complete history of the power pose.

Wonder Woman

It wasn’t until a 2012 Ted talk by Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist, that the concept of the power pose went viral. Cuddy was not interested in the effect such a pose could have on others, but on whether it would make the poser feel more confident. While this remains a matter of scientific debate, the evidence seems to agree with her finding that it can boost confidence. Cuddy’s take was that anything open and expansive evokes power. The classic athlete’s V for victory, both arms outstretched as if to hug the sun, is open, but so is the slightly languid boss-of-the-room seated power pose, leaning back in your chair, legs crossed, feet on the desk and hands clasped behind your head. Cuddy also talked about the Wonder Woman, which caught on with celebrities because it needed neither context (such as a recent sporting win) nor equipment. You simply stood on the red carpet, hands on hips and legs apart. Triceps analysts praise its flattering upper-arm effects, but it’s more a timeless expression of confidence and agency.

The Angelina leg-flash

Also in 2012, at the Oscars, Angelina Jolie posed with half her body as Wonder Woman and the other half with one leg jutting out from a Versace gown, as if it were making an escape. Who knows, this may have been a contractual agreement with the fashion house: “You can wear our dress as long as you make it look racy and not like a nun.” The important thing was a complication around coquettishness and power. Wonder Woman is not flirtatious: she is going to save whatever she’s there to save, and if you fall for her in the process, that is on you. The leg flash is more ambiguous. It is still very dominant, but it is undeniably erotic. Other celebs mimicked it, but more memorable were the memes, in which a long shapely leg was Photoshopped on to, among others, Miss Piggy, Meryl Streep and Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. I think it was the assertion of power through sexiness that made people copy it, hold it up to the light, laugh at it and puzzle over it.

Hands in pockets

Jennifer Connelly loves shoving her hands in her pockets. If she were the only one doing it, it could mean anything – she might feel the cold. Only when you see Emma Watson, Olivia Palermo, Kristen Stewart and Marion Cotillard doing it can you place it on the power spectrum, and its vibe is rebellion. There is a trace of brat – taking your hands out of your pockets being the second law of the ladylike, after taking your elbows off the table – and a likable nonchalance. It’s not classically powerful, being a little more closed, but it’s very low cortisol. You don’t run away with your hands in your pockets.

Backwards lean

Before Victoria Beckham popularised the radical high leg shoot, her look was the lean: hips forward, shoulders back. It’s quite a catwalk standard and makes more sense as a gait than a still photo. Walking along with a backwards lean, you look a bit gangster, whereas standing still, you look a bit out of whack. It transmits power, I guess, with the message: “I take no rules from anyone, not gravity, not the complex interrelation of muscle groups.”

Pocket/lean combo

Just before the TV adaptation of Normal People landed, in 2020, Paul Mescal was freaking out about his inexperience on the red carpet, and Andrew Scott gave him some advice: walk up to your mark, overshoot it, spin round, lean back, stick your hand in your pocket and – wham – you have maybe the most perfect guy-pose there is, the pocket-lean. Mescal and Scott can be relied on to do this on every red carpet, and it gives power-with-a-touch-of-humility, which is more important for a guy than for a woman. Yes, because of the patriarchy.

The neutral

When Lupita Nyong’o poses on a red carpet, there is no discernible artifice. She stands up straight, her hands resting at her sides. You don’t need to flex all your muscles in a primal display of force and dominance. It is sometimes enough simply to hold your shoulders down and your neck long, your elegant collar-bone exposed, with the timeless message: “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.” To be able to chill in a not-chilled environment is quite a statement.

The shooting leg

This, you will immediately notice, is not a red carpet pose, since it is usually only attempted while sitting or lying down. Its visual language is heavily borrowed from the front of a Jane Fonda Original Workout video, circa 1982, and I think we have to assume involves some self-parody, since it takes all the elements of powerful body language – physical openness, muscular display, self-celebration – and chases them to their farthest edge, a stance no one has ever arrived at by accident. You would never watch TV with one leg perpendicular to the rest of your body.

Are the leg shooters mocking their own vanity, or the contradictory demands that a celebrity be superhuman yet relatable, strong yet fragile, and fantastical yet self-aware? You can tell when a power pose is effective because (to return to Cuddy), an interlocutor won’t mirror it, they’ll complement it. You loom, they shrink. Although how anyone would complement the shooting leg is impossible to say.