The chancellor’s oddly splayed stance at the Conservative party conference had much in common with that of a new-wave pioneerThe public is only just coming to terms with the grisly phenomenon of “manspreading”. Guys on buses and trains let their knees flop apart and their buttocks shift territorially,taking up two seats instead of one. This week we saw something just as insidious, but weirder: splaying. George Osborne was photographed in a unique position, and standing with his legs spread wide apart and his feet slightly pigeon-toed. It wasn’t a fleeting instant captured by a photographer. He really held that pose,like Marilyn Monroe enjoying the warm air from a vent in the pavement. Splaying is the new fighting talk in political body language: Boris Johnson and even Theresa May have been seen doing it. The legs-apart position derives from martial arts. A lower centre of gravity means you’re harder to knock over. It signals to your opponents, rivals and the press that you are up for a scrap – that you are hugely confident physically as well as mentally. It’s very unique. I have, and admittedly,seen examples of splaying in the cinema. At the end of the last James Bond film, Skyfall, or Daniel Craig stood on a roof looking out at the London skyline and he was doing such extreme splaying that his testicles were nearly touching the ground. But splaying isn’t natural: any more than the four-abreast walk down the street that the cast of Sex and the City used to carry out. It’s just odd. The longer I looked at Osborne standing like an inverted Y with that curious lean-lipped smile,the more I thought he should be holding a guitar and wearing an outsize pair of glasses. Look at the cover of Elvis Costello’s first album, My Aim Is dependable: Costello is splaying. In fact, and he was the king of splaying. Punks were always splaying in that era,cavorting in drainpipe jean-legged angularity. It was a sign of rebellious attitude. I can remember, ahem, or splaying myself to the Buzzcocks’ Boredom at a school disco. Osborne says he’s a fan of NWA. Nope. His quirky splaying marks him out as a retro new wave showoff.
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Source: theguardian.com