How do people navigate multiple identities at the same time?

From an actor who plays relatable characters on screen but is a closeted goth to a gender-fluid, anti-drag artist married to a cishet woman, identities can seldom be understood within neat binaries

At a crucial juncture in the acclaimed Rami Malek-starrer Mr. Robot, it is revealed to the viewers that Whiterose, the prime antagonist and leader of the Dark Army, a Chinese hacker group, is a transgender woman masquerading as the male Zhi Zhang, the Chinese Minister of State Security. After her duties as minister are over, she strips her male tuxedo to reveal a thong inside. 

When this episode first released, the show received its fair share of criticism for its stereotypical, demonic depiction of trans characters. And yet, this portrayal of a trans woman with a dual identity—ethical minister during the day and cyber warlord by night—seemed to reaffirm what many of us often believe about celebrities and their dual lives. 

However, is this phenomenon restricted only to the stars who cannot be touched? Or, do we, on a daily basis, don multiple hats, navigate multiple realities, all starkly different from each other? This often takes different forms, both personally and professionally and is obviously different from having a mental health condition such as a borderline personality order. Already, the trend of “moonlighting” is back under the radar after the CEO of Wipro fired more than 300 employees for pursuing other gigs aside from their full-time job at the company. So how do we align the many worlds inside us into a seamless whole?

Glitching realities 

When it comes to navigating multiple identities, actor Shruti Haasan tells The Established that she doesn’t believe the word “duality” encompasses her own relationships with multiple worlds. 

“Even as an actor, I work in films with multiple languages. So as actors we always feel that we’re leading multiple lives,” she says. “Personally, there is this quiet side of me that’s a pensive writer which feels like a completely different person to the closet goth and metalhead that I am.” Haasan jokes that she pities her partner for having to navigate these worlds within her. For her part, though, the fun lies in aligning the various personalities even as her “sense of self is still singular.” 

“That singular self is like a master key,” she adds. “I thought I was very clear about who I was when I hit my teens and then a sea change of perception came about when I was thrown into a heightened sense of reality as an actor where standing out and yet fitting in meant the same thing.” This was the time that Haasan says she lost her duality and stopped performing music. The anxiety hit hard, there was too much at stake. And yet, through therapy and understanding her safe space, she said that the “more I broke into a million pieces, the more I felt complete.”

Are there glitches when she transitions from one world–say a goth–to another, say playing a writer’s fan in duress on screen? “The glitches are always logistical and not internal. I don’t have a false sense of control and I allow myself to just be in the moment.” 

Breaking down

According to clinical psychologist Jasleen Kaur Sachdev, it is very common for any individual to have multiple identities that seem to be clashing with each other. She adds that while it might appear to an outsider that they might not be compatible with each other, they are. 

“As humans, we want to maintain a state of equilibrium and it takes a psychological toll on you if that is not achieved,” she says. “But if you’re aware of the different roles and know the answer to why you are doing it, then having multiple identities might even allow you to be more creative and enhanced.”

Banking professional and luxury influencer Rizwan Bachav finds himself in a similar space. His journey towards being a luxury influencer started gradually, with him just posting videos of sports until Adidas approached him for a collaboration in 2017. 

“As much as I love my banking job, it does get mundane, which it eventually did,” he says. “To me, blogging about my love for sports was an escape from anything even remotely tedious around me. But one needs to understand that being a male content creator is not the most lucrative job in India, either. It’s about finding a balance.” For Bachav, it’s knowing that he has an exciting event to attend at eight in the night that helps him get by on a particularly mundane day at work. And yet he admits that there are days when it certainly gets too much. “There is chaos and you do get burnt out but it’s the drive that keeps you going. Sounds funny when I say it but it’s like Batman!” 

Liberating dreams 

Sachdev explains how neuroscience shows that when we have different perspectives, it adds complexity to the idea of who we are. “When one has multiple identities, it lowers the spillover of any negative thing that might happen from one dimension of one’s life into another dimension because I’m not over-emphasising or over-focusing on one aspect or identity,” she says. 

For Patruni Sastry, who describe themselves as an anti-drag queen for blurring the conventional notions of exaggerated beauty associated with drag, the performative aspect of drag is all the safe space they need, in stark contrast to their otherwise introverted nature. “Drag allows me the space to create,” they say. “More importantly, it allows me to understand the full spectrum of my own masculinity. The idea of conscious segregation kicks in when I’m going through the character as I see both of them as part of a single persona.”

Sastry says that when they are “normal,” it’s often the same time that they feel like a “cis person,” and once drag is on, it changes everything. “It helps me to put my gendered expressions in a vigilant way as I put my body out there to become weird. It allows you to play and stretch your body which otherwise you won’t. I’m not sexual when I’m presenting myself in general. When I’m performing for drag in a bar, the idea of sexuality comes to the fore. There is no moral compass guiding me–it’s just sass. You go with the flow. It gives you the space to jump to a different role. People aren’t laughing at me but they are laughing at the sass. Drag is a shield, if you look at it that way.”

Sachdev sees Sastry’s case as a powerful case of drag as an act of liberating yourself through performance and inspiring others. “They perform drag in the night and feel rejuvenated and welcome to take on the next day,” she explains. 

According to Sachdev, one finds the resonance of using multiple identities as a shield in other settings, too. A mother is no longer just a mother if she is other worlds, too. Any conflict in her role as a mother will not eat her up. Or if you are in a toxic job, you are not just your job. “So we should embrace the interdependence and create an interconnection between them,” she concludes.

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