letter from the editor: september '04.

All-American Beauty

I got an urgent phone call from the Clinton White House one day in 1993. My assistant looked ashen as she told me who was on the line. A spokesman for the President had a few issues to discuss about an article I'd written. I was stunned; perhaps he had the wrong number. What could I possibly have written in Allure that would inspire a call from the White House? The piece in question, called "Hairanoia," was about the President and First Lady's exceptional attention to their hair. The White House objected to a line about Bill Clinton's infamous haircut aboard Air Force One that resulted in closed runways and delayed flights at Los Angeles International Airport. The man on the phone said the President's haircut didn't cost anywhere near the estimated $76,200 ($200 for the fancy cut; $76,000 for the airport) that I'd printed. Good to know. Now there are two new hair apparents. When Senator John Kerry announced that John Edwards would be his running mate, he enumerated their superiority over George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, explaining, "We've got better vision," and "we've got better hair." Their hair is truly impressive. Edwards, with his shiny, prom-king mop, could moonlight as a model in a Pantene commercial. When Edwards was running for president, his aides handed out bottles of Breck shampoo to supporters. After Kerry's "better hair" speech, Teresa Heinz Kerry told her husband, "You just lost the bald vote." ...