Married to the job

America may obsess about its First Lady but in India, we simply don’t care about political spouses

Last week I devoured the controversial new book, The Obamas, by New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor, in one greedy gulp. But even at the half-way mark I could understand why the book had so upset the White House. The story may ostensibly be about the Obamas as a couple and the dynamics of their relationship but its focus is undoubtedly the First Lady – her resistance to her husband’s joining politics; her difficulties in adjusting to life in the White House; her extravagance; her stormy relationship with her husband’s staffers; her struggle to find a meaningful role for herself other than that of First Mum; and so on.

But what intrigued me was not so much that Kantor had spun a book – and a very readable one at that – out of meeting the Obamas for about half an hour several years ago (as the White House bitterly pointed out). What really leapt out at me as I raced through the chapters is how important spouses are in American politics.

They may not be running for office themselves but political wives are subjected to much the same media scrutiny as their husbands. Their every move is analysed, every statement mined for sub-text, and every wardrobe choice picked over. Whatever the merits of the men, they inevitably end up being judged by the women they married – and if they managed to stay married to them. And wives can often make or break a political career.

Remember how Hillary Clinton was pilloried for making dismissive remarks about stay-at-home moms who baked cookies when her husband was running for President? Such was the backlash that she had to turn up on a television show with some home-baked cookies she had rustled up herself to prove that she – a high-flying lawyer – was a regular mom like any other. When the ‘bimbo eruptions’ hit Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign, it was Hillary who gave a joint interview with her husband to shore up his image. And again, when the Monica Lewinsky story hit the headlines, it was Hillary who came up with the infamous phrase, ‘a giant right-wing conspiracy’ to defend her beleaguered husband.

Yes, wives have the power to shore up their husbands’ political careers if they so choose. President George W. Bush’s image as a warmonger was softened by the gentle presence of his wife, Laura, the school-teacher turned librarian, who spent all her time doing good works and reading to children. And more recently, when Barack Obama’s ratings plummeted to abysmal levels, his wife’s soaring popularity helped to even the score a bit.

Now, as the scrimmage over the Republican nomination for the next US Presidential election continues, political wives merit more coverage than ever. Mitt Romney scores by the simple expedient of staying married to his high-school sweetheart, Ann, with whom he has five strapping sons. Newt Gingrich hasn’t been so lucky. Last week, Maureen Dowd devoted her entire New York Times column to eviscerating Gingrich’s current wife, Callista. Describing the third Mrs Gingrich as a ‘tranformational wife’ who wants her husband to go out there and conquer the world, Dowd wrote, “Draped in Tiffany diamonds, Callista is the embodiment of the divide between Gingrich’s public piety and private immorality.” Ouch!

This American-style spotlight on political wives has now even spread across the Atlantic, with the wives of British Prime Ministers playing a more visible public role. Nobody either heard or saw Norma Major when her husband was Prime Minister. But you couldn’t possibly say that about Cherie Blair now, could you? Even the more low-profile Sarah Brown was pulled out at the Labour Party conference to introduce her husband Gordon to the delegates in a speech aimed at ‘humanising’ him.

Now Samantha Cameron is a visible presence on the British political scene, supporting her husband at political events, flying the flag for British fashion, or hosting a gaggle of political spouses on the sidelines of major conferences. On the Continent, it is Carla Bruni who is flying the flag for the political wife, making joint appearances with her husband, Nicolas Sarkozy, to give his image a much-needed dose of glamour.

Thankfully, we in India are still holding out against this trend of making political spouses part of the political narrative. The only time we see Gursharan Kaur, wife of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in the papers is when she accompanies her husband on some foreign trip. Otherwise, she stays very much in the shadows, preserving her privacy behind the ramparts of Race Course Road.

Of the putative Prime Ministerial candidates on offer, Rahul Gandhi does not have a spouse (though it’s probably fair to say that she would get a fair amount of media attention if she did, in fact, exist). But even among the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidates, it is hard to put a face on the spouses of any of them. It has been rumoured that Narendra Modi has a wife, but I can’t seem to recall a single picture of her being published in the media. And I doubt that most people could identify Arun Jaitley’s wife or Sushma Swaraj’s husband if their lives depended on it.

No, in India, political spouses are just not part of the political discourse. We don’t care what they think about the political issues of the day; what they do to earn a living; or even, what they wear. And long may it stay that way.

The ugly truth

When it comes to romance, beautiful people tend to gravitate towards others of their kind

Would you sign up for a dating site that announced proudly that it was meant for the “aesthetically challenged”? Which was called TheUglyBugBall.co.uk and abbreviated to the very appropriate-sounding acronym TUBB? And which declared proudly on its home page, “If you are one of the millions of people who don’t like what they see in the mirror, then this is the place for you!”

Well, when they put it as charmingly as that, who could possibly resist?

And certainly, there seem to be lot of people who have posted their pictures – some frankly ugly, some less so – on the site but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out if it was for real or just one big wind-up.

Take these sample quotes from the home page: “instead of fishing in a small pool of prettiness and getting nowhere, dive into an ocean of uglies and have more choice”; “a recent TUBB survey also proved that they (ugly people) try harder in bed”; or even “once with an ugly partner it is unlikely that anyone will try and take them from you meaning you can let yourself go completely once you are together”.

I mean, this has to be someone taking the mickey out of those with self-esteem issues? Surely, all these people who sign up looking for love, romance (or a particular favourite:`anything’) on this site cannot be serious?

But when you think about it, the site is only saying upfront what the rest of us don’t have the courage to acknowledge (except maybe in the privacy of our own hearts and minds). The truth is that pretty people like to date other pretty people. Good-looking folk tend to marry other good-looking folk. Beauty gravitates towards beauty.

Look around you. The odds are that you will find that the couples around you are well-matched in terms of attractiveness. The beautiful women tend to be paired with handsome men. The merely pretty have to make do with those who could be described as attractive. And those who aren’t at all physically appealing end up with other aesthetically challenged people.

Rare is the ugly man who gets a very beautiful woman – unless, of course, his bank balance is very, very attractive indeed. And on the whole, ugly women don’t score with handsome men no matter how rich these women may be.

By now, of course, most of you are probably fuming at the suggestion that all our romantic choices are based on something as frivolous as appearances. What about true love? What about the possibility of falling for someone because of who they are, not for how they look? Surely not all of us are as shallow as that?

Of course not. But scientific studies have shown that even small babies – who really should not know any better – are pre-disposed to respond favourably to pictures of people who are conventionally good-looking as opposed to those who are not. So, let’s accept that most of us are more responsive to pretty faces. Once you accept that, then it is just a question of finding your own level of prettiness/ugliness and operating within that comfort zone.

And however much we may protest, there is no denying that we are conditioned to seeing good-looking people paired with other equally good-looking folk. In fact, such is the incongruity of seeing pretty people paired with ugly ones (on the rare occasions that we do) that we cannot refrain from commenting on it.

“What does she see in him?” “Surely he can do better?” We’ve all said this kind of stuff (even if it’s only to our own horrible selves) at some point or the other when confronted with an incongruous pairing of beauty and ugliness. We are inclined to be suspicious of such pairings, which seem to go against the natural order of things. However we try and dress it up, this discomfort is a sure indication that we take the beauty-goes-for-beauty principle as a fact of life.

One reason why people were so suspicious of the Clinton marriage was because they couldn’t conceive how a man with so much natural charisma as Bill, who could have had any woman he wanted (and frequently did) could have chosen to marry the plain, bespectacled Hillary. Could it be love? Nah. No chance. It must some diabolical political imperative that kept them together.

I think the Prince Charles-Camilla love story arouses so much antipathy for the same reason. If Charles had left Diana for another fragrant English rose, the British public and media would probably not have reacted with such visceral rage. But what nobody could fathom was how he could leave the lovely People’s Princess for a frumpy, dumpy, middle-aged woman with no pretensions to beauty or glamour.

And so it goes. We marvel at the fact that the dashing Pierce Brosnan of James Bond fame is married to a woman who is double his size. We wonder why Kajol fell for the saturnine Ajay Devgan. We find Aamir Khan’s taste in women rather quirky because he doesn’t go for the usual model types.

Let’s face it. We are used to seeing beauty paired with beauty. To seeing pretty people getting off with other pretty people. To seeing couples at the same general level of attractiveness. Because, on the whole, this is how the world works.

Which is why maybe, just maybe, a dating site for the ‘uglies’ is not such a bad idea.