Political Hair



For some time this blogger has been acutely fascinated with the fastidious manner that male political rulers assign their hair (Averted Gaze). Oftentimes -- particularly, though not wholly relegated to eastern European and Asian nations -- these rulers coif their hair, pick at it, in fucking awesome patterns. Verticality is the rule when a ruler crafts his -- and it is always his -- coif. Much has been made of the evolution of Hillary's hair, but what of the men, who are just as vain?

"Ruler hair" is teased and moussed up in such a way as to feign a couple extra inches onto the leader's height. The act is an antidote to political insecurity. Very alpha-male Chimpanzee stuff, this. Height, in the animal kingdom, serves as a deterrence to threat from competitors for food and sex as well as punchy predators. That would go a long way in explaining former Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's fucking gorgeous head of goddam feathered hair. His hair had flair:



(A goddam manly head of hair via ftd)

Farah Fawcett in her prime had nothing on the Japanese Prime Minister's generous locks. One can almost understand -- at least theoretically -- why Koizumi had felt the need for well-administered follicles as protection. Koizumi lives, to be sure, in a bad, nuclearized neighborhood; he is in charge of the security of over 100 million people. That abundant fur made Japan -- or at least Koizumi -- appear larger than the tiny island nation that he governed. As regional bulwark against Chinese hegemony and batshit North Korean aggression, the un-nuclear power was, understandably, vulnerable. And Koizumi's hair expresses, follicularishly, a raffish Japanese masculinity.



(image via patrickgaley)

What of Serbian strongman Radovan Karadžić? Borborygmous is his extravagant 'do. Not unlike a peacock reconnoitering its physical resources to wow potential mates with its enormous and gaudy, fan-like tail plumage, so .. is ..Karadžić. This asshole currently resides in the United Nations Detention Unit of Scheveningen for war crimes. But he probably has the best hair in gen pop. And over the weekend The Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits's President Chen Yunlin and the Taiwan-based Straits Exchange Foundation's Chairman Chiang Pin-kung attended a signing ceremony in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu Province. It was a "hair-off" (see below):



(Qien es mas macho? via beijingdaily)

"Ruler Hair" is not wholly a Eurasian phenomenon, though it does seem to be universally masculine in nature. Stately silver foxes roam both houses of the United States Congress, weilding the levers of power. Senator John Kerry, in the run-up to the Presidential race in 2004, clipped his famously obnoxious hair. It was de trop. And former Senator John Edwards -- bless his narcissistic, "Breck Girlish" locks -- also used his hair as political ornamentation. United States Senators, since the beginning of this great Republic, have had resplendent, almost ludicrous heads of hair. Hair, in rulers, is a sign of Chimpish masculinity. Although there are no daguerotypes, John Clay probably had a fucking significant head of hair. We simply cannot imagine otherwise.

It just goes without saying ...