In the high-definition show business of politics, as in everything else, looks matter. These days, we are constantly checking out the person behind the platform to see how well they live up to the image we have of them.
"The apparel oft proclaims the man." Written over 400 years ago, these lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet, about appearance and ambitions, are still pertinent for men and women aspiring to a higher role in public office.
Candidates running for local and general elections must realise that their 'dress code' provides a subtle message to potential voters in a culture where 'the clothes make the man' (and woman!).
Idealistic political candidates may think that their message is the main thing and eschew paying attention to appearance to avoid being seen as 'vain'. However, the reality is that the public notices details about a candidate's appearance long before a candidate even starts to voice the 'vote-for-me' pitch.
Leadership is a commodity, and the voter has become a buyer. The question of consensual reality is a wavering proposition at best, and when it comes to the infinitely fungible context of political reality, you might as well give up and accept the truth of illusion or, perchance, masterful sleight of hand. What, then, does integrity, that quality of unimpeachable conviction we insist we are looking for in those who represent the common interest, look like? How readily can it be faked? And does it matter either way, especially in the political realm, where simulation is all and authenticity often resides in the details rather than the message?
The fact is that we live in a profoundly surface-oriented, looksist culture that has permeated our way of perceiving those who would be in charge of our lives. Women are implicated every bit as much as men in the pyjama-party speculation that fuels the politics of appearance.
It is precisely because our interior selves are essentially inscrutable (most of us can't unscramble the psychological coding of our spouses, much less the machinations and motivations of public figures) that we depend so much on surface clues. The whole superficial everything, from hairstyles to accessories, provides us with the contextual tools to read the other, the person who is not us, be it the stranger across the room or the stranger angling for political office.
We study our female politicians as closely and obsessively as we do, in part because they still remain something of an anomaly. We are, quite simply, less used to women standing in the spotlight demanding our close attention, and in part because their costuming is less homogenised than men, offering up an abundance of opportunities for inductive analysis: we study their shade of lipstick, we listen for a note of defensive shrillness in their voice, we infer, we project, we accept or discount official positions for reasons that are neither fully conscious nor even rational.
And perhaps it's admirable that Rosianne Cutajar didn't let the politics of appearance confound her, much less stop her in her tracks. Then again, the one thing that seemed real about her-all too real, you might say-was her ambition. How well that will play in the coming months, even with her aubergine eyeliner softened and a hint of coral lip gloss, we will just have to wait and see.
Neither do men escape microscopic assessment, but they present a bland and unremarkable canvas compared with women.
The idea that looks matter in politics is hardly new, but it continues to gain ground. Political candidates' physical appearance strongly influences voters. People's judgements are about who should be their rightful leaders. While certain broad traits like dominance, attractiveness and competence tend to describe successful candidates' appearances, it's hard to point to specific attributes.
Still, it is shocking to learn how uninformed many voters actually are. People just don't know anything about so many candidates, so they use very simple cues like faces. Knowing how uninformed many voters actually are is worrying for democracy. The trend may be different with incumbent politicians, whose faces may be more familiar to voters. When people get to know a politician really well, their face becomes irrelevant.
Still, many voters don't know enough about their incumbent representatives to recognise them by their accomplishments. As a result, appearance still plays a big role in an incumbent's reelection campaign.
Heuristics have rapidly become a core concept in the study of political behaviour. The term heuristic stems from the ancient Greek heuriskein, which means "to discover." In political science, the term is used to describe cognitive shortcuts in decision-making under uncertainty.
It has long been hailed as a possible remedy for citizens' lack of political knowledge. Citizens participate in democratic decisions, but these decisions often pose high cognitive and informational demands. Ideally, citizens with little information about a political issue or a candidate could use heuristics to reach decisions resembling those of their more well-informed peers. Informed voting is costly; voters use heuristics such as party identification and retrospection to make choices that approximate enlightened decision-making.
To obtain good political representation, citizens must possess information with which they can discriminate between desirable and undesirable candidates.
Our behaviour reveals that we are cognitive misers attempting to maximise the utility of the limited information we do have while avoiding the time-consuming search needed to enact a fully informed vote.
This is all an impediment to democratic accountability.
Dr Mark Said is a lawyer