XXYYXX

SXSW 2013

As a person with moderate to high public self-consciousness (Feinstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975), the way I appear outwardly to others is important to me.  In addition, I am also moderate to high in self-monitoring, meaning I monitor social situations and will change my behavior to suit the social situation (Snyder, 1974). Thus, although I can be more outgoing in a social situations where I feel that being an outgoing person is more beneficial for my interactions with others, the confidence I have in being outgoing stems from having confidence in my outward appearance.  My confidence in my outward appearance is both behavioral and physical.  I have to have confidence in how I am carrying myself socially and in how I appear: from hair, clothes to makeup, if I don’t feel confident about what I’m wearing and how I am dressed, my confidence usually plummets. Therefore, to be a different person for a day I decided to:

• Be a confident person in my social interactions throughout my day.  Not because it was beneficial or right thing for me to go but just be constantly confident

• I was going to give up my constant worrying and focus on my physical appearance in public for a day as one of the main ways I was going to remain confident throughout my daily interactions with others.

I signed up to volunteer for several days at SXSW this year as a way to do something different for my spring break.  My first full day volunteering was this past Thursday, working from 9am to 10:30 pm.  I decided this would be a great, full day of social interactions where I could work on being a different, more confident person for a day.  When I woke up in the morning I went through my usual morning routine for my hair and makeup and dressed comfortably for the day.  Rather than stuffing my bag with some extra makeup or my compact mirror, I left them at home.  As a confident person, I was going to be confident that I did not need to look in a mirror several times a day and touch up my makeup to have a positive outward appearance.  In addition, facial expressions have an affect on how we feel known as the facial feedback hypothesis (Laird, 1974).  Laird (1974) stated that when we change our facial expression, it triggers changes in how we feel emotionally.  Therefore, I also left my apartment with the best accessory of all, a huge smile on my face that I planned to wear all day throughout my day of confidence.

After arriving to the Austin Convention Center for my first shift I went straight to my first shift with Registration/Wristbands.  Just walking through the convention center became my first test.  Uusually, I fall into constant cycles of self-focused attention as predicted through the self-awareness theory (Duval & Wicklund, 1972).  The self-awareness theory indicates that when we are engaging in self-focused attention, such as looking into the mirror, we will begin to pick out self-discrepancies about ourselves and seeing such discrepancies motivates us to change our negative self-image.  According to Carver and Scheier (1981) the two ways we can escape are to ‘ship up’, by changing our behavior to improve our discrepancies or ‘ship out’, by escaping or retreating from the negative looming over discrepancies.  Therefore, to avoid getting trapped in my self-focused attention, as I walked through the convention center I avoided looking at my reflection in the glass windows as I passed by them.  Normally, I spend most of my time scrutinizing the way I walk, my posture and others aspects of my physical appearance when I pass by anything that is reflective.  However, I knew that avoiding that common habit of mine was part of being a confident person for a day.  I personally found it very hard to avoid looking at myself and did glance every once in a while but avoided it as much as possible.

When I arrived to my post at the convention center, I was all smiles and greeted everyone with a friendly hello or nod of acknowledgement.  Almost immediately after arriving to my post, one of my shift leaders pointed me out from a couple feet away and asked me to come with him.  He said to me, “You look like you have an engaging face, I have a job for you.”  It was amazing, in less than 10 minutes since I had arrived at the convention center someone had noticed the confidence I had in my demeanor.  I followed my shift leader and was given a job to direct people to different registration booths to pick up their SXSW badges.  For several hours I stood next to people and asked them to be prepared with the necessary materials needed for registration, answered questions and directed people to booths.  I tried to keep my section running as smoothly as possible by being assertive but polite with people who tried to jump ahead of their lines.  After a few hours directing people, I was rotated to work behind the registration booths.  I knew that several hours had passed by since I had last looked at myself in the mirror.  I looked down (long hair so I can see a big part of my hair) and could see that the air in the convention center had made my hair slightly frizzy.  Looking at my hair was the starting point of my self-focused attention cycle.  I started to think about how my makeup was probably off and that I must look pale and lifeless.  However, I stopped myself from keeping my mind from going further off on discrepancies (using the ‘ship out’ strategy as mentioned above) and ignored these otherwise unsettling signs.  I took a deep breath and just started to smile larger so that I could continue to have a positive and confident emotional state.  As people came over to my booth I decided to be very engaging. I asked people how their flight was, if it was their first time at SXSW, encouraged them that if it was their first time they were going to have a blast, told people they were looking great in the pictures I was taking for their badges (regardless of the several hours they spent traveling) told people they had a terrific smile in their pictures and complimented people in general.  Almost everyone thanked me for my speedy service and several people told me, “You’re doing great/awesome at your job”. 

In addition to being engaging with registrants at the convention, I also confidently engaged with my co-volunteers.  Normally, I wait for people to make small talk with me and it usually takes time for me to feel confident enough to speak to others.  However, this past Thursday I spoke to everyone around me without letting my shyness hold me back.  Through these conversations with everyone around me I experienced the immense diversity of the people working with me.  From college students to parents, people came from all different countries and backgrounds.  One particular guy my age told me that he is a virology major at UT (didn’t know virology existed).  Another young man told me about his physical and cognitive rehab experience after flying 8 feet in the air, falling down and slipping into a coma for 2 months.  Being confident and engaging helped the day pass by quickly and I made a lot of new acquaintances at my station. 

Overall, I felt I had a good, confident and engaging experience at my first day at SXSW.  Nonetheless, I think Thursday was just a small glimpse of how confidence can affect your day.  The next day (Friday), I decided to carry out this change in my behavior for an additional day to see how I would feel.  Little did I know that Friday became a real challenge for me.

First, I came home the night before (Thursday night) to a note from my house keeper.  Apparently, she had dropped my curling iron in my toilet, thus rendering it useless.  I immediately freaked out (not at her, accidents happen to every one) because I use my curling iron to style my hair every day.  Therefore, Friday morning I had no way of styling my otherwise frizzy hair.  I frowned in the mirror that morning when my hair was doing everything I never want it to do but just sighed and smiled as wide as I could.  Oh well, I just have to think I look great anyways!  After driving into Austin and taking what seemed eternity to find parking (because I did NOT want to pay $20 to $30 to park in some of the garages around the convention center), I was blocks away from the convention center and it was drizzling hard.  I did not anticipate having to walk so far from my car to the convention center and therefore only packed a light cardigan that did not help in keeping me dry.  As I walked to the convention center, I could feel my volunteer shirt starting to get soaked and my makeup run on my face.  I cursed the rain under my breath and cursed even more at the thought of my hair.

Humidity + Voluminous Wavy Hair = 90's hairstyle

I knew I was going to look like I couldn’t even run a brush through my hair that morning with how the rain was ruining the way I looked.  Nonetheless, I remained confident and avoided spending too long trying to fix myself after I arrived at the convention center.  I could feel my public self-consciousness creep on me as all I could think about was probably how ridiculous I looked with my frizzy hair and soaked t-shirt.  Suddenly, I felt that everyone was looking at me for how ridiculous I looked and that everyone was noticing me.  What I was experiencing was the spotlight effect (Gilovich, Medvec, & Savitsky, 2000).  Due to my public self-consciousness I started to feel that some spotlight of attention was being hung over my head and every one around me was noticing me much more than usual.  However, I remembered that we all fall victim to the spotlight effect and brushed off feelings of negative self-image through the self-focused attention strategy of just ignoring my negative thoughts about myself.  Confidence, confidence, confidence, is what I kept telling myself over and over.

The next highlight of my Friday where my confidence faltered because of my worrying over my outward appearance was right after I got off my shift for the night.  A friend of mine had invited me to attend a RSVP-Only show that night to see one of our favorite artists.  I had originally said I could not go because I was not going to get out of my shift with SXSW in time.  However, I still RSVP’d for the event online and brought an extra shirt to change into (I have to wear SXSW volunteer shirt) after work to see if I could catch the show.  I figured he would be seeing the show by the time I got to the venue so I probably would not see him anyways.  When I got out of the convention center I saw that I had a missed call from him and called him back.  When he answered he told me he was in line with several of his friends and that I should come join him in line to see the show.  I felt so mortified.  I was wearing an outfit that did not match, with some random shirt I just stuffed into my bag, half of my makeup was gone (falls off throughout the day), my hair was a big frizz ball and I was going to need to jog to make it in time because they were towards the front of the line.  I groaned in frustration and embarrassment.  Really, out of ALL the days, the day I look like a complete mess, this is the day you invite me out with your friends?!?!

On a day where I was not feeling confident about myself, I would have called back and say I felt too tired to meet up to avoid having others see me the way I looked.   Regardless, I just kept my insecurities to the side and confidently jogged all the way to the venue to meet up with him and his friends.  Although I felt embarrassed at first because of the way I looked, I ended up having a great time that night.

XXYYXX (yep, that's his artist name)

Overall, I was skeptical that I would be able to remain confident throughout an entire day (especially two) by not focusing on my physical appearance.  Although I was a little nervous at first I think the experience was very eye-opening.  People did not reject me or treat me differently because I had frizzy hair.  My smile, confidence and friendly demeanor made people gravitate towards me.  People attending the conference came to me with questions and made small talk with me.  I met all kinds of new people at my shifts and will enjoy engaging in conversation with them throughout the rest of my volunteering shifts at SXSW.  In addition, I am sure that I will now definitely seek them out if I run into them during SXSW.  In general, being confident about myself helped me feel better about myself throughout my day.  I don’t know if I would have been able to enjoy Friday (and Friday night) as much as I did if I had let my usual insecurities about my appearance take over. 

Being a different person for a day helped me see that although we may often be very set in our self-concept (Markus, 1977),  my self-concept or belief that my physical appearance is all I have to offer has been slightly changed.  I find that I do not need to always be worrying about how I look because:

• I probably look fine
• Other people probably do not notice all of the small details of my appearance that I notice
• A smile + confidence is the best makeup to wear on your face

Although we may be very set in our beliefs about ourselves, small changes throughout our day can help us feel better and more positive about ourselves.  In my case, it helped me enjoy situations where I normally would have felt very negative about myself. 

n = 2,371

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References

Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (1981). Attention and self-regulation: A control-theory approach to human behavior. New York: Springer-Verlag. 

Duval, S., & Wicklund, R. A. (1972). A theory of objective self-awareness. New York: Academic Press.

Fenigstein, A., Scheier, M. F., & Buss, A. H. (1975). Public and private self-consciousness: Assessment and theory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43, 522–527.

Laird, J. D. (1974). Self-attribution of emotion: The effects of expressive behavior on the quality of emotional experience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29, 475–486.

Markus, H. (1977). Self-schemata and processing information about the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(2), 63–78. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.35.2.63

Snyder, M. (1974). The self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal

of Personality and Social Psychology, 30, 526–537.