“Swagger: prideful, arrogant walk or stride…”
“Swagger: poised, sassiness that can't be touched. It may be in the walk or it may be in the talk, but there is no doubt it means you own the room and you have that natural charisma. Basically, one with swagger dominates at life…”
“Swagger is the confidence exuded as a reflection of ones dress, shoe game, attitude, and how one handles a situation.”
Urban Dictionary
You can learn how to dress just by jocking my fresh
Jocking jocking my fresh
Jocking jocking my fresh
Follow my steps, it's the road to success
Where the niggas know you thorough
And the girls say yes
But I can't teach you my swag
You can pay for school but you can't buy class
School of hard knocks
I'm a grad
And that all-blue Yankee is my graduation cap
--Jay Z////Swagger Like Us
“Swagger: poised, sassiness that can't be touched. It may be in the walk or it may be in the talk, but there is no doubt it means you own the room and you have that natural charisma. Basically, one with swagger dominates at life…”
“Swagger is the confidence exuded as a reflection of ones dress, shoe game, attitude, and how one handles a situation.”
Urban Dictionary
You can learn how to dress just by jocking my fresh
Jocking jocking my fresh
Jocking jocking my fresh
Follow my steps, it's the road to success
Where the niggas know you thorough
And the girls say yes
But I can't teach you my swag
You can pay for school but you can't buy class
School of hard knocks
I'm a grad
And that all-blue Yankee is my graduation cap
--Jay Z////Swagger Like Us
I’m not feeling the whole “swag” thing. When I was younger, long before the term "swag" became popular slang, I used to laud my own swagger. I would walk around with an attitude... sometimes it was a nasty attitude... sometimes it was just arrogance... I told people about it, and explained that it was my "edge." It was what allowed me to have the self confidence I needed to succeed. When people told me it was arrogance, I explained to them that it was just self esteem. Some of it was a carryover of having to carry yourself in a certain way because you lived in a hostile environment... an environment where being soft could make you a casualty. I understood that being a member of a marginalized group meant that I needed to believe in myself, to be able to hold my head up, to be "black and proud."
While I would still argue that this is a truism, and that it is important that certain groups have this sense of self affirmation, I must also admit that there is a fine line between arrogance and self confidence. One displays a humble assuredness, the other reeks of pride. Pride is an ugly image to see when the man in the mirror is wearing it.
Sociologiaclly, "swag" is related to a fragmented gender identity among marginalized males that frequently renders them (us) invisible to mainstream society. The result is an exagerrated masculinity that masks an inner struggle with the feeling that one’s talents, abilities, personality, and worth are not valued or even recognized
because of structural prejudice and racism in society (Franklin, A. J. (1999). Invisibility syndrome and racial identity development in psychotherapy
and counseling African American men. The Counseling Psychologist, 27, 761-793.).
I don’t care how you try to dress up and recreate the term to mean confidence, manners, and style… When I hear the term “swag,” I hear arrogance, conceit, self-righteousness, pride, and vanity. I see the seeds of chauvinism, misogyny, and megalomania. Do me a favor; trade in your “swag” for some self respect, integrity, accountability, character, and humility…
In the words of Gang Starr's The Guru Keith E., "If you don't like it kid, take it personal."
Peace
2 comments:
Great words. I recently used the swag term in an article I wrote, even though I knew I felt very indifferent about it-- meaning I felt exactly like you felt about it. Swagger reeks of the standing on the corner as young men, "holding ourselves". I remember when Richard Pryor joked about that old move... "Why are you holding your n**s? Hell, we ain't got nothing left."
Exactly. Its the newest way to say "I'm a bad nigga," "hustler," "pimp," "player." It's street corner bravado, and let's face it, you wanted that with your peers to some degree and so did I. It feels better to have "swag," than not... but its easy to confuse swagger with true manhood, and not enough men are teaching young brothers what true manhood is.
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