The lesson of Tony Blair’s lengthy hair

Written by Vanessa Friedman
What is it with male politicians and their hair as of late? After many years — centuries — of nondescript quick cuts, their crowning glory has all of a sudden changed into a type of inventive expression. And supply of controversy.
It typically appeared as if nobody may prime Donald Trump’s extremely sophisticated cream puff of a development — till Boris Johnson, along with his signature flyaway platinum locks (those that he makes use of to distract, amuse, disarm and in any other case manipulate these round him), arrived at 10 Downing St. as Britain’s prime minister.

But then, earlier this week in an ITV tv interview, a former prime minister one-upped them each.
Or, moderately, Tony Blair’s lengthy, flowing grey hair did. There hasn’t been a former member of the league of NATO nations who let all of it down like that since President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Although Blair was on digital camera to debate devolution and the potential for one other Scottish independence referendum, it was clear nearly instantly that his evolution from chipper, reform-minded PM with barely spiky New Labour/Cool Britannia-era hair to Samson-like determine was making many of the information. Comparisons on social media ranged from Doctor Who to “the possessed Vigo painting in Ghostbusters.”
On the one hand, the hair shouldn’t have been shocking. Everyone, in any case, has spent the final 12 months having to do house hair care as COVID protocols meant salons have been closed and grooming routines interrupted. Many folks found their pure hair colours for the primary time in years, in addition to the enjoyment of the ponytail. So, Blair’s hair obtained lengthy; so did all of ours. Former PMs — they’re similar to us!
On the opposite hand, nevertheless, it’s not as if Blair would have lacked entry to house hair care instruments. Unlike many, he didn’t select to develop a pandemic beard, so some trimming was occurring. And his spouse Cherie, or their grown kids, may most likely have helped with a minimize or two.

Also, salons reopened in Britain on April 12, which means that Blair was having fun with his experimentation with hirsuteness — at the very least till the judgment of the watching world rained down.
And therein lies the lesson.
Blair’s hair was a shock, partially, as a result of we’re merely not used to seeing lengthy hair on male world leaders, former or not. (When it involves feminine leaders and hair, as with feminine leaders and costume, the foundations are totally different.) They are alleged to have hair, in fact. Famously, no bald man since Dwight D. Eisenhower has received the presidency. Hair equals testosterone within the lizard mind — and since he had been a wartime normal, Eisenhower was the exception that proved the rule. The balding former Tory occasion chief, William Hague (keep in mind him?), was roundly mocked for the baseball caps he wore to cowl up his shiny pate.
But Blair’s hair was additionally a shock due to what it revealed about our personal prejudices and expectations — not nearly feminine hair, with all its many associations (Medusa, Lady Godiva, the Salem witches), however male hair, too.
For each sexes, hair is, as anthropologist Grant McCracken wrote in his e-book “Big Hair,” “our court of deliberation, the place where we contemplate who and what we are.”
And what males can we affiliate with lengthy hair, particularly lengthy grey hair? It performs a job in so many cultural traditions that it may be exhausting to decide on.
Long hair is related to the pictures of heavy steel rock stars and hippies, for instance. And certainly, Blair informed The Evening Standard he had not had such lengthy hair since his days in a rock band generally known as the Ugly Rumours at Oxford University. Which raises all kinds of questions on his later-in-life need to relive them.
Beyond that, lengthy hair additionally evokes the Bible, to not point out Moses (and another variety of Old Testament prophets). Also, it connects to Gandalf the Grey and magicians of his ilk in addition to Albert Einstein and the parable of the mad genius scientist too busy experimenting with electrical energy to cope with a comb-over.
Also poets, although their lengthy, flowing hair tends to not be grey, at the very least within the collective creativeness.
What we don’t affiliate with lengthy hair: former world leaders.
Indeed, what Blair’s hair reveals as a lot as something is the unstated public assumption that when our leaders depart the best workplace in no matter land, they’ll stay frozen as they have been at that second, preserved in amber and reminiscences simply as they have been once they steered the ship of state — even when they have been comparatively younger whereas on the helm.
That manner, once they reemerge as elder statesmen each occasionally to bestow their hard-earned knowledge on the world, their authority is recognizable. Sure, we all know they might be getting on with their lives as non-public residents, however they aren’t alleged to flaunt it. It makes them appear inconsistent. (Remember the hoo-ha round Hillary Clinton’s first woman hair cuts?) Unreliable.
As Blair apparently is aware of. He later informed the Standard he was heading to a barber “imminently.”