Short Style Icon: Rahm Emanuel
This week Gawker polled their readers, asking folks to pick their favorite “Obama Hottie.” The winner, with 1,492 votes: Rahm Emanuel. Seems the results came as a surprise to Gawker:
Amazing what people fetishize these days: Gray hair, dark circles under the eyes, average-at-best height, a missing middle finger? Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, beat conventionally gorgeous policy advisor Melody Barnes in our poll.
OK, OK. Sheesh. We get it. The guy’s not conventionally handsome. In fact, the description alone sounds like some sort of grizzled, Dickensian villain, wronged at some murky point in the distant past and hellbent on revenge. Well, throw in a peg leg, maybe.
But the numbers don’t lie. I mean, the dude was up against Reggie Love! People obviously find him attractive. Call it a mandate.
Self-confidence is a big factor. Besides that, all those supposedly unattractive qualities that Gawker listed off (short stature, gray hair, dark circles, a missing digit) at the very least add up to a striking figure. I mean, he stands out from the crowd.
That was apparent back in November at Obama’s first news conference as president-elect. At the time, I remember being really struck by this photo by Doug Mills in the NY Times:
For one thing, you can see how short Rahm is in relation to everyone else. And it totally works for him. Apparently, I’m not the only one who picked up on this. That Freakonomics guy wrote a blog post analyzing his body language:
The real outlier here is Rahm Emanuel, hands on hips, eyes scanning the room, looking ready to intervene in any way necessary. What shall we call this pose? “Football coach”? “Bad cop”? Or, as some have said of Emanuel, “absolute enforcer”?
It’s not about his clothes. In fact, his suit looks a bit baggy, the tie too long (and the brown color not working for him here). Overall, he might be the worst-dressed guy up there. But it doesn’t matter.
Sometimes style is more about who you are and how you carry yourself. Good thing to remember when you can’t find a suit that fits but you still have to nail that presentation/job interview/marriage proposal/George-Bush-ass-kicking anyway.
But enough analysis. Here’s a funny clip of Obama roasting Emanuel at a charity event:
“I used to think that Rahm was slightly abrasive because he’s short and sort of funny looking. Then I met his brother Ari who is tall and good looking and also abrasive and annoying.”
