Face-off: ABVP candidate literally changes her face to win DU election

When it comes to the Delhi University student elections, the posters can be slightly misleading. Women candidates in DUSU election posters are often fair to the point that you start to wonder if they are vampires.

But as the latest DUSU elections reveal, mere photoshopping is passé. According to the   Indian Express , ABVP candidate Kanika Shekhawat who won the DUSU Secretary post took her marketing campaign to a whole new level. Her mantra: Why bother with airbrushing your face when you can just opt for that of someone else, in this case, well-known model and VJ Nauheed Cyrusi.

The report says that the posters were posted all over Delhi including flyovers etc. After the election results were declared, students were shocked when they saw the real candidate. Some students felt cheated. One student Rahul Mehra told IE, “These leaders don’t usually visit off campus colleges, so the only way we know them is through posters.” Now in the case of Shekhawat even this was too much to expect.

Of course, Shekhawat denied any wrongdoing and instead blamed rival NSUI for the trouble. She told the paper, “I am sure this was done by the NSUI so that they could get my nomination cancelled. I have filed a complaint regarding this in the police headquarters. The fact that I have won is a tight slap on their faces.” NSUI has denied Shekhawat’s charges, and few are convinced that this was an NSUI conspiracy.

One student Swati Sinha speculated that perhaps Shekhawat didn’t think she was “photogenic enough” a euphemism for the fact that she doesn’t fit the tall, fair and sharp-nosed beauty standard that rules Delhi. More alarming is the revelation that even politics is not immune from sexist standards of beauty, where women are valued for their look while men are evaluated on their ability, in this case, as politicians.

And our esteemed leaders have not been above using a woman leader’s appearance against her, as when Mulayam Singh Yadav famously quipped about Mayawati,“Is she so beautiful that anyone should want to rape her?”

Would Shekhawat still have won if she used her own face on her posters? Most likely, but we’ll sadly never know for sure.