An alternative perspective from the Beasley household

I see that my husband managed to find the bottles I had hidden so carefully. Now he has gone on a toot and inflicted more of his Neanderthal opinions on your unfortunate readers. Really, between my husband and that awful self-righteous megalomaniac Eric Bahrt, I don’t know why anybody reads The Nation’s Letters column at all.

I have re-hidden what was left of the bottles, locked Horace in the garage again until the end of March, and apologise to your readers for his boorishness.

There is, however, one aspect of the US presidential race that I wish to comment on. Assuming that Hillary and The Donald become their parties’ nominees, it looks very much as if we will get a blond(e) as our next president. Hillary has admitted, speaking of her own hair, that “the hair is real, the colour isn’t”. The Donald’s golden mane looks somewhat, shall we say, contrived. One Internet source, a professional hairdresser, characterises it as neither a toupee nor a comb-over, but “an aggressive cowlick with a forward-aiming growth pattern”. He says it is natural, “growing out of his head, long, combed back, and dyed the nascent yellow of a baby chick”. 

I don’t believe we’ve ever had a blond(e) president before, never mind that it will be a dyed one. This is American politics, where we don’t expect anything to be genuine. So let’s hear it for the blond(e)s. They have received very bad press in America, with all the crude jokes about dumb blondes. Having a blond(e) as president will give a much-needed boost to their self-esteem and strike a blow against hairism. I say this as a person of greyness myself.

Constance Beasley