Ask A Genius 1552: Swagger, Gait Studies, and the Reality of Toughness
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/10/22
How do gait, posture, and clothing shape perceptions of toughness and deter aggression?
In this candid interview Rick Rosner dissects swagger, perceived toughness, and the theater of fighting. He traces changes in media tone, references gait studies that link movement to social impressions, and contrasts performative bravado with quiet confidence exemplified by fictional Reacher. Rosner recounts his own history—from peak physicality and bouncer days on roller skates to underestimating real fighting skill—and admits both theatrical and regrettable violent episodes, including a work altercation. He reflects on deterrence tactics, the paradox that confident individuals often do not swagger, and how clothing and posture can alter others’ behavior, mixing wry self-awareness with practical lessons.
Rick Rosner: Drudge Report, which is now my news aggregator, used to be heavily in Breitbart land—super Trumpy and conservative. In 2019–2020 it shifted and got more critical of Trump, so it reads more neutral to me now.
There was a report on Drudge about a study where researchers translated the gaits of men—their walking styles—into stick figures. You couldn’t tell the actual size or appearance of the men; you could only see how they moved. Research using stick-figure or “point-light” walkers does show people infer traits from gait, but I can’t verify that exact “6.6% of badass perception” number; call it a small slice of the overall impression.
You want your shoulders held wide—which I assume means pulling them back a bit so your chest sticks out. You want to stand straight, like they teach you in dance class—imagine there’s a string coming out of the top of your head. Paradoxically, or maybe not, the more you swagger, the more you swing your body around, the more badass you look.
However, people who are more confident about winning in a fight don’t swagger. They just walk quietly down the street. Think Reacher—the giant drifter and ex–U.S. Army Military Police major who’s the star of Lee Child’s novels, two films, and an Amazon TV series. He just walks the way he’s going to walk without swinging his arms around. Confidence means maybe you don’t need to swagger.
I used to be a dog. I was 175 pounds at my heaviest, around 5% body fat, maybe six or seven. Now I’m under 140, so I’m not a dog anymore—I’m a cat. But I still think I walk in a way that makes people not mess with me. The last time somebody gave me shit, like I was a pussy, I was wearing a mask at the Fish Grill restaurant in a little mall with Carol. I was wearing a shirt that was too big for me, which made me look very small. A guy dissed me for wearing a mask, and I started screaming, “Fuck you,” at him. Carol freaked out, but if I’d been wearing a tighter shirt, he probably wouldn’t have messed with me.
When I bounced at bars, during the last few years I wore roller skates because it was fun and made me taller—more “bouncer-sized.” There was no way I was going to win a fight on roller skates. If somebody grabbed or punched me, I was going down. Ideally, I’d hold onto them, and we’d both go down, which was fine. You’re both on the ground—that’s one person being a dick who’s taken out of the fight. Even without the roller skates, I would’ve gone down anyway because I’m not a good fighter. I didn’t win fights as a bouncer.
At one chain of bars I worked for, Grand American Fair, you got fired if you punched somebody. If a customer punched you, you got 25 bucks. If you punched them, you got fired. We weren’t supposed to be in the “winning fights” business.
In any case, I wouldn’t have won anyway because I forget that I can hit people. So in bar fights, I didn’t win. Sometimes I’d put somebody in a sleeper hold, but I didn’t know how to do it right.
And they didn’t go to sleep, and people screamed that I was strangling them, which I was, so I’d let go. Then they’d often turn around and just hit me, and then I’d put them in a bad sleeper again, and people would scream, and then they’d hit me yet again. Anyway, not great in bar fights.
But the last extra—well, it was a work fight. I sucker-punched my writing partner. I won that fight. I pushed him over, and then I hammered him in the eye three times. So, I guess I’m reasonably willing to step into a fight, though I’m on Toprol, which is an adrenaline blocker and blood-pressure drug, so maybe I’m not as enthusiastic or angry enough to get in a fight now that my adrenaline is knocked down. But in my dreams I win a ton of fights, which is weird, considering my record is not great.
Like when I used to go up against Cousin Sal—Jimmy’s cousin—he was a wrestler in high school and I think even in college, and he did one appearance as a pro wrestler. When I wanted him, in a second or a second and a half I’d be on my back on the ground without even understanding how it happened. So my logistical command of fighting is not good, but in dreams I get a hold of people, and I hit them.
It’s generally implied—dreams don’t give you much information—that the person deserves it. But that aside, they will not stop fighting back, and I end up just beating the shit out of them. I’m like, just hit them, and I’m like, stay down. I don’t know if I say “stay down,” because that’s such a movie thing to say when you’re beating somebody up in a fight, but I don’t know. I think I walk confidently and badassly if somebody who’s 140 pounds can be a badass, which they really can’t, but it’s more based on what a badass I am in dreams and when I’m sucker-punching somebody, rather than in anything like a fair fight.
But anyway, when we do the Lance versus Rick thing in a couple of weeks, I’ll walk, and then people will say what kind of pussy I look like. No—Rotten Tomatoes. When was the last fight you got in?
Jacobsen: Never.
Rosner: Never? You never have been in a fight—like is that just because Canada? Does everybody just wait till Maudie shows up and then he decides he’s right? What the fuck?
Jacobsen: I have a very long, illustrious, honorable, verbose, loquacious, convincing, soft, and subtle history of talking my way out of them.
Rosner: No—see, I would talk myself into fights, because that’s also a skill. In bars, I worked a lot of places with large bounce staffs, and often the bouncers would think I was kind of a pussy. I was not at home with beating the shit out of people, but what I could do was take a punch. If you talk to a drunk person and tell them why they’re getting kicked out in a real condescending voice—like they’re a piece of shit and you’re better than they are—and they’re in your face saying they don’t deserve to get kicked out, and you go, “You’re going to get kicked out, you did this,” and you talk to them like they’re a stupid baby in a way that is infuriating, since they’re drunk a lot of the time, they will just go ahead and hit you.
I was glad to do this because they would hit me, and since they’re drunk, they don’t realize there are two or three bouncers clustered behind them waiting for the hit to come. Once they hit me, shit would happen.
If the guy was wearing a jacket or an untucked shirt—you grab the jacket and lift it, and their arms come up in the jacket with them, and now they’re trapped. Then you take them to the ground, and other things might happen. I was happy to participate as the guy who got punched in the face because I have big eyebrows and pretty big cheekbones; nobody ever managed to get a finger in my eye and really fuck up my eye.
It would bounce off the bony parts of my face, plus they were weak because they were drunk. I was just happy not to lose a contact when I got punched. It was win-win: the bouncers got to take a guy to the ground, I got to show I wasn’t a pussy by getting punched, and I got to be a dick to somebody. It was pretty fun and made me feel like a tough guy, though I am not really.
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