In a few weeks, when Donald Trump takes over as the US President once again, people will wonder if things might have been different had his opponent been someone other than Kamala Harris. By which, they also mean someone with a game, who was not so ordinary. There is an implication in this view that one has to be exceptional to become the American President or reach the top of other fields. Yet, they would struggle to list what is exceptional about Trump. In fact, his strength lay in connecting with ordinary Americans because he was ordinary enough.
A way of the world is that it punishes the ordinariness of women and is more understanding of the mediocrity of successful men. A right that women do not have is the right to mediocrity. I call it a right because it is what most people are, by definition, and people have the right to be themselves.
There was a Trump before Trump, and her name was Sarah Palin, a former governor of Alaska who was a vice-presidential nominee when John McCain ran for president. She once said that she could see Russia from her house in Alaska. She said things an average person would; she said the sort of things Trump does. She did not survive the torrent of ridicule. You can argue that she did not survive because it was a time before social media and Americans were not accustomed to a public figure who spoke like a simpleton. But I think America was ready even then for a man who spoke like that. Sarah Palin became a joke (in a bad way, because we can’t take all political jokers lightly anymore) because she was a woman and she spoke like Trump.
The word “mediocrity” has come to mean something demeaning, but it is intended to describe something that is between excellence and terrible—the common output and condition of an average person. Ideally, the capacity of most people, their ordinariness, should not be held against them. And it often is not held against male leaders in any sphere. If anything, their ordinariness makes them endearing to others. But when female leaders slip up, or are just dour or mediocre in other ways, or even just fat or poorly dressed, they face more severe scrutiny.
When feminists speak of what the world does not grant or allow women, they often speak of how exceptional women have suffered. Their mascots for all that women go through are exceptional women. This is a mistake, partly because it is not true. It is hard for the world to suppress exceptional people, even when they are women, because it is in the self-interest of society to let them thrive. In any case, exceptional people are rare, and they constitute a tiny proportion of women, too. The real bias against women is in how the world perceives the ordinariness of ordinary women as opposed to the ordinariness of ordinary men. All around us are ordinary men in leadership positions getting away with being ordinary.
The movement to set things right for women had no choice but to glorify success and brilliance. As a result, it is easier today for a man to be unambitious, to choose an ordinary, quiet, and healthy life, while it is complex for a woman to overtly say that she wants to achieve nothing. Even Barbie had to become more than an alluring girlfriend and get dressed in career uniforms and other ambiguous clothes of success.
Mediocrity is not only about the capacity of the mind; it is also about the ordinariness of aspiration. Most people do not aspire to anything extraordinary, and it is easier for men to be that way or even say that they want to be that way. In the film Barbie, a character tells the CEO of Barbie’s maker, Mattel, that the company should create an ordinary Barbie who just wants to be a mom. But it is a passing moment, and the film is nervous to state what it seems keen to say: that women have a right to be ordinary.
There is stigma attached to mediocrity and even to wishing for an ordinary life, even though this quality frames the lives of almost all the people on earth. The bias against women is actually routed through allegations of their ordinariness; so their champions feel they should never speak of all that. As a result, no one speaks of the actual place where the bias is cruel, where a woman has no defense because what she is accused of may be true, even if it is an unfair charge because a man in her position would not be so conspicuous for his mediocrity.
When I say that exceptional people are rare, I mean that exceptional people are rare among the successful. (The unsung story of the world is how exquisite many people are as lovers or parents or caretakers, or even in their pursuit of the right way to be.) But genius or even brilliance is not the defining quality among successful people, barring sports. To be successful, being exceptional is not the prerequisite that the world pretends it is. There is a whole educational system, self-help system, and motivational talk system, all of which suggest that people have to be readied to be special in some way to succeed. This is a part of our modern nonsense. In the real world, people succeed because of ordinary reasons like social networks and dumb luck, and because they are so ordinary that they are likeable, fun, and are allowed to belong to a tribe. While there are advantages to being ordinary, there are naturally some drawbacks. Ordinary people are sometimes caught out of their depth. That happens all the time to men in power, but they survive unscathed compared to women in the same position.
At first glance, it may appear that Indian female politicians are an exception. Isn’t it true that the Indian public forgives their failings? Some of the women have held real power for many years and still do.
I grew up in Tamil Nadu, where J. Jayalalithaa defeated powerful men and held on to power for long. She routinely made men stand in line and fall at her feet. And the way Tamilians fall at feet is nothing like the nominal action of north Indians, who appear to reach for the elder’s crotch. When a Tamilian man fell at Jayalalithaa’s feet, he went full belly and face down on the ground. That could happen not because India is a great country for women, but because, like other major Indian politicians, she was dehumanised, but in a good way—she was de-gendered, especially by the men.
Women knew that they were voting for a woman, but men had to deify her as someone more than just a woman to grant her power over them.
When her aura began to fade and her popularity began to slip, when she was faced with corruption charges and could not stave off her political adversaries, she fell faster and harder than men because suddenly she was revealed as a mortal woman, and her moral mediocrity had a greater consequence than it would have had for male Tamil politicians, who are widely known to the public as very corrupt.
The bias against ordinary women exists only in roles that were traditionally held by men. For instance, the captain of a female football team will not be particularly vilified for her ordinariness. Nor will a housewife be vilified for her ordinariness within the boundaries of what is expected of her in this role.
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