The extreme right wears their hair strangely: when a haircut becomes a political manifesto

Luigi Amara tells us in his splendid Wild Story of the Wig that Andy Warhol revolved his entire personal brand around a haircut that was actually a hairpiece. That “broom-style bundle of platinum hair” sold for $10,800 at a Christie’s auction in 2006, having already become a consumer item.

It is not trivial that the man who dedicated his artistic career to reflecting on pop fame was so clear that he needed to turn his hair into an icon to be one himself: it is something that the extremist leaders of the 21st century, that of social networks, seem to have very clear. social problems, atomized fame and unpredictable leadership.

On Friday, after the victory of Javier Milei in the presidential elections in Argentina and the rise to power of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, memes circulated on the internet pointing out what is beginning to be a constant: the link between the extreme right and strange hairstyles. Does the link exist? And if it exists, what is its reason for being?

There was a time when the fact that a prominent man, with power or ancestry, wore his hair long, full of artificial curls, pigtails with bows or strands disheveled in an outlandish way was normal.

The psychologist John Carl Flugel already told it in one of the first treatises on fashion semiotics that were published in the 20th century: before the French Revolution, when what he called “the great renunciation” occurred among men, the that turned austerity into a sign of respectability and manliness, the most sumptuous fabrics, the most prestigious colors and the most exaggerated wigs had also been a masculine issue.

In fact, the latter were an infallible status symbol. Curiously, the fashion for the pelucón began in the 16th century with the outbreak of syphilis in European courts, which left men bald. King Louis among his subjects and a symbol of ostentation and inequality so powerful that, in 1792, the Convention abolished the wig, and the more than 20,000 hairdressers in France were forced to become barbers. The material they had to work on now were real hairs attached to their respective heads.

Fashion changed and affected everyone. “At the beginning of the 19th century, the short haircut became the standard of neatness throughout Europe: cutting it was a way of saying goodbye to the Old Regime,” explains Ana Velasco Molpeceres, author of the book History of Fashion in Spain: from the mantilla to the bikini and professor of communication at the Complutense University of Madrid.

The liberal revolutions and the values ​​of the Enlightenment had a certain symbolic projection in those new short hair for gentlemen that also began to be seen in England, where the reason for the disappearance of wigs was different: the State (embodied in the Prime Minister, William Pitt), faced with the shortage of talcum powder, essential for the preservation of artificial hair, invented a tax that turned them into an economic problem among the upper bourgeoisie.

The same romantic ideas that were feeding the nationalisms on which the new Europe would be built, and whose aesthetic inspiration came from classical Greece and Rome, imposed haircuts on men’s heads similar to the emperors and wise men of the old civilizations. . The most popular of all, a favorite of the dandy Beau Brummel, was the Brutus.

If you want to know what this haircut was like, you can do two things: look for the characters in Jane Austen’s novels or look at Milei’s head. “Every time I see him he reminds me of one of those characters that Jacques-Louis David painted. If you realize, it is curious that those revolutionary rebels, who built the liberal States, are the precursors of the ideas of Milei, who is another rebel in a change of era and also liberal, although in its most extreme expression,” explains Velasco. Molpeceres, for whom the capillary strategy of this leader, although he accepts remote historical references, actually has more to do with the idea of ​​not adjusting to the canons of his time, precisely to convey difference.

The same applies to Dutchman Geert Wilders. “I think they have chosen those hairstyles because they are disconcerting and therefore very high-profile. The quirky and disruptive aesthetic that had always fit into the left now embodies the individualist neoliberal right: it is a frontal opposition to the bourgeois and, at the same time, a vain reaffirmation,” continues Velasco Molpeceres.

Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí, director of the public and institutional communication consultancy Ideograma and advisor in the campaign of Sergio Massa, who lost to Milei, agrees: “In this type of new leadership, like Trump’s for example, the appearance of striking hairstyles has a lot to do with the rise of digital culture and the possibility of turning heads into graphic icons. The hair acts as a digital gadget, which in turn conveys the idea of ​​forceful and unclassifiable leadership. For them, the idea of ​​the unclassifiable contains the seed of true freedom.” In the case of Milei, the hair has served to structure an entire campaign around the figure of the lion.

There are more ingredients

In the opinion of sociologist and political scientist Luis Arroyo, director of the consulting firm Asesores de Comunicación Pública, male hair has always been a sign of strength and wisdom, while the absence of hair has been decoded as the complete opposite, which could explain the effort of Donald Trump for hiding his baldness at all costs, with his outlandish toupee. But there is also the conscious search for difference. “In the most recent literature on the phenomenon of new hyperleadership, such as Spin Dictators, by Daniel Treisman, or Facha, by Jason Stanley, there is an almost Freudian analysis of these profiles and talk about neurotic personalities. “They believe they are special beings and find in the disorder of their hair a way to challenge the establishment.” In this category, for example, is Boris Johnson, who despite having been educated in the best private schools in his country, has always made hooliganism and defiance of good manners his hallmark and his hair a sign of distinction.

Hair, then, can convey wealth and privilege, explains Arroyo, who refers to the Instagram account Pel de Ric. This account, which collects the scalps of upper-class men, was born as a hobby of four friends who, every morning, at the same time, observed the men who went to have breakfast at a cafeteria on Jorge Juan Street, in the aristocratic and Madrid neighborhood of Salamanca. “You could tell that they led an absolutely idle life. I don’t know if because they were retired or because they had never worked,” explains Javier López de Hierro, one of its creators. Pel de Ric is today already a brand “for fans of the good life” in which it is not uncommon to see hair very similar to Geert Wilders’.

If the revolutionaries and dandies were the promoters of short but messy hair, the first silent film leading men were the ones who gave good press to neat, orderly haircuts, parted on one side and gel that always kept them unscathed. “At the height of 1900, the ideal of a gentleman was already configured. Then Hollywood will be in charge of turning it into a world standard that continues almost to this day,” says Velasco Molpeceres. Gelled hair, which Hitler used to convey an idea of ​​order and inflexibility, however, has been associated with conservative positions since the mid-20th century.

In any case, hairstyles have deeply cultural meanings and attributions that vary depending on the country: Argentina has already seen the rise of an unclassifiable leader like Carlos Ménem, ​​whose unforgettable sideburns also did not conform to the dominant canons of the moment. The Bolivian Evo Morales made his black plume the symbol of a certain type of pride.

Gender also influences when decoding hair. Gutiérrez-Rubí argues the essential difference: “Women care much more about their hair being clean and healthy.” Vázquez Molpeceres brings up the spectacular and folkloric braid with which Yulia Timoshenko starred in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine: “If she had lived through her boom in the era of Instagram, her braid would be an icon. That hair with which she paid homage to the peasant women of her country was a manifesto.”

(Raquel Peláez – El País)