I found myself watching this TED talk about how you can alter your behavior via your own body language. I can definitely agree with Cuddy’s thesis; the time I spent in burlesque class taking confident, sexy poses very quickly seeped into how I carried myself on a regular basis, and into how I think about myself. But watching this, I realized something.
My tattoo is accidentally designed to make me assume the kind of pose she describes as “powerful” at exactly the times when I need a dose of self-confidence. I’m sitting behind a table at a con, trying to sell my stuff; someone is interested enough to stop by, and if they look me over, there’s a good chance they’ll say “ooh, what’s going on with that tattoo?”… which of course means that I stand up and spread my arms as wide as they’ll go. People are asking me to take a dominant, confident pose right in front of them. If I was out at an interview, or out at a bar prowling for conquests, it’d be the same thing: “Oh wow can I see your tattoo?”.
This wasn’t intentional. All I wanted was for a better way to present a pair of wings coming off the shoulder blades than folded up along my back. But I got a regular boost of “hi there I am an awesome powerful lady” as well.
As side effects go, that’s pretty damn awesome.
(And since I haven’t mentioned it lately here, an update on the tattoo status: It’s pretty much done! At my last session, we realized that every single color had been put in; there are some gaps of blank skin where there shouldn’t be, and that’s entirely due to Alexis erring on the side of caution whenever she got lost in this insanely complex design. So the next few sessions will consist of filling in these gaps and doing some fine touch-up here and there, then the UV. I might even have the UV in by Anthrocon. Perhaps I’ll make Nick take a few photos next time he visits.)