Clearly her hair is parted on the left. Now here she is in September, only weeks later, in Bunei. What happened? Now her hair is parted on the right! Look at that! It must mean something!
Here is our Hillary the last time we saw her in public in February at the Pentagon.
Long hair parted on the left. That was a little more than six weeks ago before she went completely underground and disappeared from our lives save for the looping 2016 headers heralding ever loopier evidence that she is definitely running!
Then came the dawn when, last night, the Mama of all PUMAs emerged from her winter nest to display this coif!
OMG! It's shorter! She cut it! Not only that, but what's with that part moving toward center? What??? What can it mean?
Our Jen stepped in on a comment thread last night to be the first to say that the new "do" is a definite sign! (Or rather that some people will think so.)
When, as a Senator from NY, speaking on the serious issue of funding higher education, WaPo's Robyn Givhan criticized her for showing what might have been a half-inch of cleavage on the Senate Floor, a woman commentator said, "Sometimes a top is just a top."
Corollary to that, I would say that sometimes a haircut is just a haircut. Did anyone really expect her to keep growing her hair until 2014 when she could possibly sit on it? I ask this, rhetorically, aware that back in 2010 when we were hoping for a 2012 challenge I did say that I would know she was running when she cut her hair. That was then. 2012 is over, and sometimes too much hair is just too much hair to be bothered with right now, and, when you get it cut and styled, sometimes it is your hairdresser who decides where the part will be today.
Take it any way you like. A lot of hair growth is sure to occur between now and 2016 and myriad styles are potential. When she speaks in Grand Rapids in June, I would love to hear her speak on the topic of "Hillary Clinton's Hair as Metaphor" in the same vein as Madeleine Albright's speech there about her "pin code."
No one expected Hillary Clinton to remain under wraps much longer than this month. She's Hillary! She is going to be out there, speaking and doing. She is not a recluse, she is not a nun, and, so far, she is not a candidate. The day she becomes one, if that day should arrive, we will learn it from her, and I doubt that her hair will have a lot to do with it. But I must admit, Hillary-Hair-Watching is a whole lot of fun!
Edited to add: Maggie Haberman, whom I have always regarded as a serious, coolly logical assessor of what's-going-on, actually said this today. In fact she might have been writing this as I was writing this post.
A viewer's guide to Hillary Clinton Fever
Of all the possible 2016 candidates, Clinton can most afford to take her time deciding. | AP Photo
By MAGGIE HABERMAN | 4/4/13 4:46 AM EDT
Will she run or won’t she?
The obsessive speculation about Hillary Clinton’s plans for 2016 promises to be the longest and most intense parlor game in the history of American politics. It is a consuming fixation already, not just among the operatives and reporters who always inhale this stuff but to an extraordinary degree among average Americans.
SNIP
... should Clinton suddenly focus on how she looks, it doesn’t necessarily signify a looming campaign — she is, for the first time in four years, able to stop and catch her breath and pay more attention to herself. And many of her fans have responded positively to the less buttoned-up version of Hillary Clinton — photos of her dancing in a bar on a foreign trip went viral on the Internet during the 2012 campaign.
That said, if her legendary pantsuits reappear, or if she cuts her hair shorter again, and so forth, it is at least a hint that she is future-focused.Or maybe a haircut is just a haircut.
