March 31, 2015--Hillary's Hair

There was a flap last week when Michelle Obama showed up on Jeopardy with what appeared to be a shaved head. The photos I saw tended to confirm that. She looked real good to me but I could only imagine what they must have been saying about her in the Heartland.

"You see. I told you. She's a militant. A black militant, and this proves it."

Well, there were official White House denials (about the hair). It seems she had her actual hair pulled way back in a tight bun.

This obsession about First Lady hair is nothing new. It goes back at least to Mamie Eisenhower's bangs and there was tons of commentary about Jackie's bouffants. But nothing, nothing like all the ink that has been spilled about Hillary Clinton's literally dozens of different looks. From her days when Bill was first a presidential candidate (shoulder-length hair and headband)  right up to this month (short, slightly off-center part, no bangs).

When I think about other prominent professional women (and men) most have "signature" hairdos. Condi Rice has that lacquered helmet with a dip of hair swept onto the left side of her forehead, Barbara Bush has that crown of soft white-gray curls, Dianne Feinstein consistently has a sweep of dark brown waves, Elizabeth Warren that unchanging Page Boy plus rimless signature glasses, while Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton's and Barack Obama's hair pretty much always looks the same, albeit in Obama's case grayer day by day.

Even those political women who have made some changes along the way have not done so as radically as Hillary. Senators Barbara Boxer and Kirsten Gillibrand come to mind.

When I asked Rona and Cousin Esther about this, simultaneously they said, "You just don't get it." But, I pointed out to them that they themselves have not swung from style to style over the years. Maybe this year a little longer, perhaps next a bit shorter. But that's pretty much it.

But do all the changes tell us anything about Hillary that we should know when considering her for the presidency?

Plenty. Just as her shape-shifting move from name to name to name tells us something.

Is she Mrs. Bill Clinton? Hillary Clinton? Hillary Rodham? Hillary Rodham Clinton? All of the above? Most likely the latter--all of the above--which would not be uncharacteristic of women of her generation who came to embrace feminism later in life. Women who had been raised to think that life for them would be determined largely by who they married. And then, in many cases, when that didn't prove to be satisfactory they came to acquire a liberated consciousness as fully formed adults--they weren't born to it as later generations of women were. Their feminism was put on, applied to an already-exisiting, well-developed sense of self.

But as with other forms of gender and cultural identities taken on later in life they do not always sit well. They are never fully assimilated, there are contradictions; and thus, in Hillary Clinton's case (a very special case indeed considering husband Bill's aberrant behavior and Hillary's serial public humiliations), living in the spotlight for decades, filled with unfulfilled ambitions of her own, she tried on different personalities as she tried on different names and hairstyles.

It comes with the territory when 67. All of this is very much who she is. Take it or leave it.