Many commented on Usha’s frozen gaze, and the smile that never left her face as her husband took oath as Vice-President. (AP/ PTI Photo)
Jan 22, 2025 17:53 IST First published on: Jan 22, 2025 at 17:53 IST
In his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, US Vice-President JD Vance described the woman who partnered with him every step of the way with these words: “She seemed some sort of genetic anomaly, a combination of every positive quality a human being should have: Bright, hard-working, tall, and beautiful.” His wife and US Second Lady Usha Chilukuri Vance not only embodied that thought at the inauguration of the second Donald Trump presidency, she also won hearts across the globe — even trumping First Lady Melania Trump with her elegant fashion choices.
For somebody expected to play only a spousal role in the new administration, despite her professional accomplishments, Usha, a lawyer, has a difficult time ahead, especially compared to another professionally accomplished woman in a previous administration, Michelle Obama. The former US First Lady, however, transcended her limited role during the charismatic presidency of Barack Obama. Born to immigrant parents, Usha is self-made and has succeeded in converting the American dream into her reality. She is the perfect poster girl for how enabling a democratic nation can be. Except, on inauguration night, she was a Brown woman amid a sea of White faces, supremacist ideologies and policy declarations against immigration and diversity hires in jobs. It was a night that reminded every minority that they remain outside the mainstream, one that they can no longer even aspire to be a part of. Yet, in that moment, which sought to negate stories like hers, disparage the origins of others like her and question their birthright citizenship, she stood tall.
Many commented on her frozen gaze, and the smile that never left her face as her husband took oath as Vice-President. Critics panned her determined posture, but she was speaking in a language that the majoritarian constituency understood. If it was a family picture they wanted, built around a supportive wife and mother, then she served them those very cliches topped with a warmth that was lacking when the Trumps took centrestage. She scored her first major win in the art of posturing.
In choosing to wear Oscar de La Renta and Reem Acra gowns that echoed the style of a former First Lady called Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis, she was conveying her suitability for that role in the future. Both Oscar de La Renta, who remained deeply committed to his Dominican origins till his death, and Acra, proud of her Lebanese heritage, resonate with Usha’s own connection to her origins. Like her, they’re immigrants. In a previous outing, Usha had worn an outfit designed by Indian designer Gaurav Gupta. Perhaps, the subtle language of fashion was used to convey a not-so-subtle message by a woman who keeps it real and honest, be it with her functional bun and minimal make-up or her decision to not convert into Christianity for political reasons.
Usha was born in 1984 in San Diego, California, to liberal Indian immigrants. Her father, Radhakrishna Chilukuri, is a mechanical engineer from IIT Madras, and her mother, Lakshmi, is a molecular biologist. While her father is a professor of aerospace engineering at San Diego State University, Lakshmi is a provost at UC San Diego where she has consistently pushed against barriers of race, ethnicity and gender. Little wonder then that Usha was raised a liberal and would move to academics herself, studying history at Yale University and then graduating from Yale Law School, where she met Vance. Thereon, she became a corporate litigator and even became a clerk for Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh.
With a wide arc of experience and perspective, she helped Vance in his political career, who quickly rose to be an Ohio Senator. The fact that she was a Democrat till a decade ago or worked at a progressive law firm in San Francisco never overshadowed her acceptance among Republican conservatives. That’s her pragmatism at play. By quitting her legal job when her husband filed his nomination papers, Usha appeared to be a woman with moral fibre and principles. And now that she has a platform, which guarantees her public appearances, she might just be able to soften the edges and get her point across.
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As one half of a power couple, second only to the Trumps, Usha is the great equaliser. She has been the hands-on mother that conservative America loves to see. And whom it trusts. We may see her attempting a cultural integration from within with intelligence and patience. After all, Trump himself appreciated her for being “smarter” than her husband.
While Usha may not do anything revolutionary as the first Indian-origin Second Lady, it is an opportunity for her to prepare for a larger role later. An outsider who became an insider, Usha Vance won’t wait for her day to come — she will lay the ground she prefers to walk on.
rinku.ghosh@expressindia.com
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