If you spend any time on social media sites - or at least ones that displays images - you are likely to have noticed a trend in pictures of young women posing the "Chicken Wing."
You probably know the pose, if not its name. It's the one where the photo subject places her hand on her hip forming a nice triangle.
I had noticed the pose some years ago on Facebook. It seemed as though one of my young friends always appeared in pictures with hand-on-hips. I thought it was just her thing.
But then I started noticing photos of other young women who were striking the pose. Interesting. I began to think there must be something more to this than just a casual coincidence. If there is something more, Google must know. Google knows everything.
My Google search turned up 836,000 hits on "girl chicken wing pose." Aha!
The Chicken Wing is really a thing! It seems that I'm late to notice the trend, as articles on the Chicken Wing already date back several years.
The author of one article explaining the trend wrote, "It's a pose that senses any sort of camera pointing at a female within a 50 foot radius. You try to point the camera, they pop it and lock it."
It turns out the Chicken Wing pose is known by other names as well. It's also known as the Sorority Girl pose, the Hand-on-Hip Pageant pose, and (my personal favorite) the Sassy Arm Triangle of Insecurity pose.
The purpose of the pose, according to the articles I reviewed, is to make one's waist look thin (the hand on the hip cinches in the waist) and to angle the arm in such a way as to make it appear at its thinnest.
The Chicken Wing has plenty of detractors who believe the pose makes the subject look like she is airing out her armpit, or to appear as a little teapot, or (in a group) as a line of poultry.
Apparently the source of the pose, like so much in pop culture, has its roots in celebrity behavior. The Chicken Wing dates back to the 2005 Oscars' red carpet.
Sources:
DavidsonNews.net
http://davidsonnews.net/blog/2013/05/10/ok-ladies-lets-stop-the-chicken-wing-pose/