The vicious trap

The exterior appearance and fashion norms have perpetually failed as symbols of gender, personality, or leadership style, writes Prof Nishant Uppal

Prof Nishant Uppal

D Huang and Y Wang versus Y Huang and S Zheng were at their fiery peak in the badminton mixed doubles semi-finals at Tokyo Olympics when my eleven-year-old son abruptly enquired who between D Huang and Y Wang was a female contestant. I was perplexed as I was oblivious to it till then and astonishingly it was challenging to decipher the gender of the two players by popular Indian yardsticks. Whereas, Y Huang with her braided ponytail and a skirt was evidently the female partner in the opposition fitting the Indian definition of feminism, D Huang and Y Wang both wore similar sports gear and had short ‘boyish’ crew haircuts. Reflectively and instinctively, I revisited the page where Noah Harari in his international bestseller Sapiens presented portrayals of Louis XIV and Barrack Obama to showcase the equivocal nature of physicalities such as exterior and fashion as symbols of gender, personality, or leadership style. With this empirical reference thankfully, although momentarily, I could satiate my son’s intellectual appetite. Exterior appearance and fashion, collectively and independently, have perpetually failed as symbols of gender, personality, or leadership style. Moreover, fashion experts have continued to extensively collaborate with behavioural analysts and now with social psychologists to produce and propagandise exterior appearance and fashion in an attempt to differentiate the more equals from the equals. Why has physicality enduringly sustained as a qualifier? What are the stimuli that inspire such social and collective consciousness? Can these stimuli be manufactured inorganically?

A social rank, status

According to Smith, “At the head of every society or association of men, we find some persons of superior abilities; in a warlike society the men of superior strength, and in a polished one a few with superior mental capacity.” The person (since the expression men in current times may unnecessarily provoke gender activists; simpler were the times of Gandhi and Smith with binaural gender definitions) with superior and desirable abilities attains a rank. While rank initially operates in a cocoon with limited contextual acknowledgement and admiration by predefined and targeted spectators, usually commoners, it eventually evolves to attain the form of a social rank when the ability under focus becomes of particular importance, i.e., becomes the object of desire. The three main preconditions for a rank to evolve into a social rank are: the difficulty in attaining the ability under focus; the perceived stature of the rank holder as ‘successful’ in popularly acceptable parameters; and uniqueness or rarity of the ability in focus.

It’s illusory

Superfluous exhibitionism is tremendously desirous for social rank holders. It does not only permit them to escalate to leadership positions, it further validates and solidifies their higher social rank status. It thus is in social rank holders’ favour to adopt a style that is replicable and adaptable for the commoners and low-rank holders and is within their disposable resources. If the process prolongs further, it creates an isomorphic brigade of low-rank holders ready to expend their personal resources to gain illusory social rank. I am sure neither Virat Kohli became a successful cricketer by wearing a brand’s wedding trousseau nor Modi attained Indian premiership repeatedly just by wearing a self-named embroidered suit. Unmistakeably, leadership precedes propagandist artefacts and physicality, not the other way around.

Nehru’s jacket and mass appeal, Indira Gandhi’s sari and stoutness, and Modi’s charismatic rhetoric, are all examples of popular (or popularised) artefacts relatable to their leadership styles.

(The author recently published Narcissus or Machiavelli? Learning Leadership from Indian Prime Ministers with Routledge India.)