Rakhi Sawant and the Politics of Desirability: Feminist Icon or Not?

Simran Mendon
TYBA, 2021-22

It was the early 2000s when Rakhi Sawant, a girl in her late teens, properly broke into our world with a raunchier remix of an old song that played frequently on  MTV. The song is picturised as an office romance. Sawant is attempting to seduce her boss and mid-way through finds out he is just as interested. The opening shot of the song is Sawant’s derriere, shrouded by the shortest of short skirts, bent over an office table. With a host of songs where she danced with similar abandon, Rakhi quickly achieved sensational stardom. She was the stuff of secret dreams; equipped with the ability to fit any mold, any tune, any move, Sawant quickly became a household name. 

Rakhi Sawant in the hit music video for ‘Pardesiya Yeh Sach Hai Piya’ Remix song released in 2005. This is one of the opening shots in the video. 

In retrospect we have the ability to scope out details that might’ve evaded critical notice. For instance, the fact that Sawant’s complexion had been significantly lightened in the final production of the song. That she was in her late twenties when the song was released; contradicting the initial claim of being much younger. That the song itself is littered with close up shots of Sawant’s breasts and waist; no heed is paid to make this subtler. 

But over the decades since, Sawant’s popularity, appeal, and desirability have peaked and waned. She is no longer the stuff of dreams; a career in films never took off, reality show offers quietened, and perhaps, a gradual decline in popular memory is something predictable and digestible all the same. But that is not the case here. Sawant, today, is a laughing stock -- an unlikely comedian whose entire punchline is that she never realises she’s being obnoxious. At a press conference when she says that she wants to ban ceiling fans in order to curb celebrity suicides -- she’s saying it like she means it. When she says that she hates former porn star Sunny Leone for ‘ruining the youth’ and then in a later interview (upon being told that Leone had garnered immense support from the film industry), promptly declares that she too will be becoming a porn star -- she’s saying it sincerely. 

Whether or not this is testament that Rakhi might be an impeccable actress, a consistent show-woman, a diligent shapeshifter, one begins to wonder just why she is the way she is. What is the need to be so publicly absurd? Sure, it is not the first time a waning actor/actress has resorted to the ploy of making outrageous statements in order to be relevant in the news -- the joke or the outrage is still consistently about someone else. For instance, Hindi comedian Sunil Pal’s plethora of interviews dismissing, humiliating and even outright denying the rising popularity of Tanmay Bhat who was a younger, English-speaking comedian.  

Because with celebrities, the self is a constructed reality. It must withstand the gruel of constant scrutiny, must be malleable and adaptable to changing times, technologies, clothes, shoes, and even other constructed selves. It is a looking glass self -- created solely out of how one thinks others think of them*. 

But with Sawant, all the mirrors upon which to construct the self and reflect it forward are inverted.  She’s exactly who she isn’t supposed to be -- at least as a national celebrity. A clown, an obnoxious ‘fake’, a pagal aurat. Why?

Herein enters the new and emerging concept of Desirability Politics. Initially conceptualised keeping in mind the identities of queer folk and other subordinated masculinities, I aim to stretch this concept further. Desirability politics, as understood by scholars, revolves around the system of patriarchy -- its connection with an idealised masculinity that is informed by colonial thought. It essentially states that the bodies deemed most desirable in popular culture -- and the bodies that are not; the un-bodies, so to say-- are deemed so by a hegemonic masculinity that claims its rightful ownership through a colonial script and heritage. 

The most desirable man today, whose masculinity is constructed in the most ideal way, i.e. hegemonically, is at the top of the so-called gender food chain. This man can be many things; walking into a room with violins playing at the back, an aura that gives him a halo at all times, a celebrity star with millions in his chest, or a humble savior for those less privileged or deprived. He could be the college bully, or the romantic, or the relentless womanizer. He has the ability to oppress and to save; the liberty to choose between the two. 

In a similar fashion, there is also the ideal woman whose femininity takes many shapes and forms. A working woman in a metro, a nurturing wife and mother, a Bollywood celebrity acclaimed for doing female-only, ‘feminist’ films. But here’s the catch. She is always compliant to patriarchy, accepting of her subordinate position on the gender food chain, ready and willing to be the ‘woman behind every man’s success’. Because let’s face it, the core of an ideal femininity conceptualisation is that women look best when they stand by their men and their families. Supporting and defending the very institutions that may be oppressing them, making it look ‘flawless’ all the same. 

The ideal woman does play savior, however -- to her man’s honour and his most dominant masculinities -- and also plays oppressor to the un-bodies. Unlike the ideal man, the ideal woman is more modest than sexy, more loving than lonely, more Manic Pixie than actual rebel to the system, more White than Black or Brown. 

So where does Rakhi Sawant fit into all of this? 

Not really anywhere. Rakhi Sawant, as an un-body, is devoid of all the ‘qualities’ or essentials that make her attractive enough not to be just consumed but to also be idealised. Today, Sawant is older -- her face worked and reworked till the flaws in her cosmetic surgery have become the stuff of tabloid musings; her body no longer fits the bill of the idealised woman’s, and for the most part, Sawant has all but disappeared as a ‘sex symbol’. 

As a contestant on the 14th season of reality show Bigg Boss, Sawant however - besides coming heartbreakingly close to the finish line - also became one of the most liked and ‘entertaining’ participants. Sawant quickly established herself as the class clown -- her greatest punchline is saying things we don’t think a woman who has been a celebrity and ‘sex symbol’ for more than a decade will say, and saying it over and over again, very, very seriously. 

Even with all her gusto and likeability while being an un-body, Sawant cannot be hailed as a liberal icon or an unlikely feminist trailblazer precisely because of her pandering and complicity to the hegemonic patriarchal structures and its idealised masculinities. The most obvious show of her complicity was ‘falling’ for a married man as a contestant on Bigg Boss and making overt gestures for him, including writing his name all over her body with lipstick.

Photo by Febronia Fernandes, indiashorts.com 

Now of course, one can argue that it had all been just a show. That Sawant is deliberate in her attempt at ‘seduction’ on national TV; that it is a sure-shot way of remaining in the spotlight. But playing seductress to a married man is not an easily digestible or acceptable role to play. In a traditional society that considers adultery to be a crime, it is neither likeable nor desirable. But here’s the catch: elaborate scenes of pining over him, weeping, at times risking her own position in the game in order to ‘protect’ him -- all of it made her even more likeable to the audience. It made her ‘genuine’ --  a woman in dire need of a man, driven by the desire to be ‘taken’ by him, to be made worthy of an identity conferred by him. 

Perhaps, Sawant knows it already but even if she doesn’t, the truth is impenetrable. If you are an un-body in this society -- darker skin, lower caste, lower class, excluded from the upper echelons of the educational system -- the luxury to be truly feminist, that is, to confidently assert, to oppose the existing hegemony and dare to exist outside of it, is subject to conditions of the patriarchal way of life. For Sawant it would be easier to play clown; to be the butt of all jokes than to yearn for desirability.

For desirability, in a postmodern, patriarchal society, ages in a rapidly linear fashion. It is largely ambiguous but also not -- that is, even if you do not know the extent or magnitude of a thing’s desirability you will still know exactly what is desirable. If you have sufficient social conditioning, that is. 

For instance, take the Slim-Thick influencer phenomenon on Instagram -- the desirability trend of women occupying significantly small waists and relatively larger hips; large breasts and derriere coupled with really thin arms and really thick thighs. Slim-Thick influencers are mostly young white women but now with rising exceptions of brown and black women as well. However, the demographic is still predominantly white, and therein lies the critique: that barring the fact that the body type itself is largely manufactured and unrealistic, it is also not one remotely associated with white women. But that does not matter. If you are a white woman, or just a woman, with an Instagram account, at some point you will encounter this trend. 

Kylie Jenner as exemplifying the Slim-Thick Body Type. Photo by OK! Magazine 

But herein also arises the question of origin -- who is deciding the delineations of desirability? Why does a thing need to be desirable? What purpose does it serve? 

The answer to those questions vary. But unlike desirability, the ones presiding over matters of want, desire, and appetite still retain one characteristic in common: they exist in the top strata of the gender food-chain. With the Slim-Thick case, it was a body type originally donned by the Kardashian-Jenner clan who have long dominated the beauty/desirability scene in the West and to some extent in the East. These are of course, wealthy white women who have built an empire around cosmetics and fashion that appropriates traditionally African American practices (Molina-Guzman, 2020). These are women with an idealized femininity who enjoy their prosperity and stronghold over matters of desire given their racially secure, historically colonising identities. 

Therefore, the body is still contested territory; needing to be conquered, made desirable (after it is done being exoticised, it is civilised), made complicit and then idealized. Rakhi Sawant is the un-body that did not disappear under the pressure of its existence. In an industry that rests on the principle and is also in the business of defining desirability, Sawant is the greatest success story. She is desirable -- when or if she is -- within the context of her outsiderness, her un-body-like features. But her desirability is rooted in her bizarreness too; in her ability to become a convenient joke, a failed attempt at beauty, a pagal aurat. 

This is the risk of living and then attempting to thrive in a hegemonically patriarchal society like ours. This is the risk of being a Rakhi Sawant, which in truth, quite a few of us are. And perhaps, this is the point she’s always been trying to make. 

Notes

*The Looking Glass Self theory created by Charles Horton Cooley essentially proclaims that individuals base their conception of self on how they imagine other individuals view them (Rousseau, 2002). 

References 

Hoskin, R. A., & Blair, K. L. (2021). Critical femininities: a “new” approach to gender theory. Psychology & Sexuality, 1–8. doi:10.1080/19419899.2021.1905052.  

Contributors. (November, 2020). Queer desirability politics and its implications on consent. BODY POLITICS, FEATURED, GENDER AND SEXUALITY, Black Youth Project. http://blackyouthproject.com/queer-desirability-politics-and-its-implications-on-consent/

Allie, L. (2019). Desirability Politics. Humans, Vocal.media. https://vocal.media/humans/desirability-politics

Molina-Guzman, I. (March, 2020). The End of the Kardashians’ TV Reign is Cause for Celebration. MsMagazine. https://msmagazine.com/2020/10/25/the-end-of-the-kardashians-tv-reign-is-cause-for-celebration/

Rousseau, N.(2002). Charles Horton Cooley: Concept of the Looking Glass Self.  Self, Symbols & Society. Rowman & Littlefield. http://www.csun.edu/~hbsoc126/soc1/Charles%20Horton%20Cooley.pdf 

Image Credits

Fernandes, F. (January, 2021). Bigg Boss 14: Rakhi Sawant’s new BIZARRE trick; Writes Abhinav Shukla’s name all over her body. indiashorts. https://indiashorts.com/bigg-boss-14-rakhi-sawants-new-bizarre-trick-writes-abhinav-shuklas-name-all-over-her-body/20789/

Clarke-Billings, L. (April, 2021). Parents of girls desperate for 'slim thick' Kardashian body slam dangerous appetite stimulant trend. OKMagazine. https://www.ok.co.uk/celebrity-news/parents-girls-desperate-slim-thick-23991645