How Authentic Are You Comfortable Being?
Photo credit: FinnishGovernment
You might have noticed the uproar this week over a video of Sanna Marin, Finland’s Prime Minister.
It showed the politician dancing with friends at a private party (in someone’s residence) over the summer. She was enjoying herself and, as you might expect at such parties, letting loose. Well, somehow, the video was leaked online and the uproar it caused was relentless and global, as you might expect in today’s social-media driven world.
In her own words, Marin was partying with friends, “in a boisterous way”, but many viewed it as irresponsible, immature and unbecoming of a leader. Predictably, her political opposition made the most noise, but there was no shortage of questions and accusations from all and sundry - from the Finnish press to random observers on Twitter. What was going on? Were you on drugs? Are there other such videos? Are you being blackmailed?
Why the uproar? After all, this was a human being expressing herself and letting loose with friends in the privacy of someone’s home. Regardless of your stance on partying and what constitutes “appropriateness”, it’s really none of our business. (In addition, compare this to what many other leaders have gotten up to while in office, and it pales in significance.)
But the uproar happened and, in my view, it happened, first, because she’s 36 years old, but second and more to the point, because she’s a woman.
This raises three different issues worth talking about.
The first (and foremost) relates to gender. If she were a man, I fully believe the controversy would be far more muted. A dancing old man would be seen as just letting off steam or acting silly, given the ‘pressures of his job’. But the job’s the same and the pressures are no less whether you’re a man or a woman, so really, we need to face the fact that, while we give gender equality plenty of lip service, we still have some way to go in practicing it at a foundational, mental level.
The second issue is with her age - that is, the fact that she’s a leader of a nation at only 36. How can that be? We expect our politicians to be old men, because they’re more experienced and have weathered the difficulties of life. They’d do a far better job, surely. As real as ageism is, this is reverse ageism and it’s no better. The fact is that, in so many areas of life, we’ve baked in the view that age equates to responsibility, maturity and intelligence. And that’s simply false. (You see this in the workplace where older colleagues frown when a younger employee speaks confidently of what needs to be done.)
The third issue this brings up is with this idea of authenticity - and specifically our expectations of authenticity from our leaders. That is, we like to talk about the need to be human, to “drop the front” and to be real with our colleagues. We want our leaders to show us they’re approachable. We value vulnerability. But, at the same time, we’re quick to judge when this same vulnerability is actually practiced. When it is, instead of viewing it as a strength and as a sign of someone’s humanity, we see it as a weakness. It begs the question of how we view our leaders and what we expect of them.
(And, by the way, God help you if you display, or are seen to display, any vulnerability as a young, female leader. I can only imagine what the uproar would have been had she also been a person of color.)
It was interesting to see these biases unfold and become so evident in the reactions to this video. It really should have been a non-event - to quote Marin again, “I believe that Finnish society and its resilience can withstand me singing and dancing with my friends.”
My point is that we all have biases built in and so much of that is automatic, baked in via our upbringing and education and experiences.
But if we’re to progress, if we’re to improve as a people, it’s worth actively unpacking our biases and getting to the root of why we feel a particular way. It’s worth addressing why we turn on a dime on issues of vulnerability - praising it in one instance and then attacking it when it’s displayed.
The truth is that we’re not quite as evolved as we’d like to think. That’s for sure. Maybe, then, it’s worth addressing what we need to do to think differently.
