Well-coiffed Harper won by more than a hair

Well-coiffed Harper won by more than a hair

Columns

By: Bernie O'Neill

I have grey hair. Quite a bit of it, in fact.

The first one was noticed way back, the summer before I was to start high school.

A friend pointed it out. Some friend. Looking at the top of my head (he was sprouting up more than me and had a good view of the top of my cranium), he said, simply, “Hey, you’ve got a grey hair!”

“I’ve got a what?” I said.

“A ... a... grey hair!” he cried, in a state of excitement.

It was like he was going to ride around the block on his bike, telling everyone in the neighbourhood I had a grey hair. And maybe he did.

You’d think something bad had happened to me and maybe I should go off and join the circus, where I would fit in.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce, under the big top, the Siamese twins, the bearded lady, and the 13-year-old boy with a grey hair!”

That’s kind of how you feel when someone points out an apparent flaw, one you really have no control over.

My father, of course,  looked like “a dad” from the earliest time I can remember. I never contemplated the thought that he once had mostly brown or black hair.

My mother, well, she had reddish hair, usually.

Sometimes it was brown.

Other times it was almost black.

In other words, she dyed it.

I never really wondered why.It’s just something she always did. Turns out she had grey hair, too, at a very young age. Or so I quickly found out.

I am not a genetics expert, but  put grey and grey together and you don’t exactly come out with jet black.

Within a few years there were more of these grey hairs sprouting from the top of my head.

You can only yank out so many of them without ending up totally bald. Fighting it becomes pointless and today you are just happy there are men around like Richard Gere and George Clooney or that guy on American Idol two seasons ago, so going grey prematurely is not considered completely unattractive. Just mostly unattractive.

I read an article years ago on a shampoo you would be able to use once and it would reverse the greying permanently. It would shake loose the colour that’s still in your follicles and your hair would be the colour it was when you were 7.

Of course that product never came to market, as the rights were probably bought up by Clairol or one of the other companies that makes millions off of people trying to hide their grey hair.

I mention my lack of follicle pigment in the wake of the federal election, one that not a whole lot of people voted in.

Not compelled by the issues? Frankly I heard as many people talk about the leaders’ looks and yes, their hair, as anything else.

In recent years Stephen Harper’s hair has begun to turn grey, although, having grey hair myself, I didn’t think he was looking that bad. I think it was more his haircut, a sort of helmet-head, as my sons would call it.

It was as if he had fashioned his own hair to look like a toupee.

Or that he had so much gel in there a protestor could whack him over the had with a placard and do no harm. That’s actually a product I want to pitch on the Dragon’s Den show. Gel-met (TM), a new hair gel that, when used in large enough amounts, turns your hair into a nice firm bicycle helmet. Go over the handlebars and “boing”, your head bounces right up. No more annoying chin traps to worry about.

The news flash with Harper’s hair was that, with about two weeks to go, he seemed to have gotten it styled a little bit. Shorter on the sides and I swear his stylist (he has a full-time stylist who travels with him — I’m not making this up) had darkened his hair, just a little. (I notice these things.)

Which is fine. It’s 2008 and if a male friend of yours wants to dye his hair or have orange highlights, there’s nothing wrong with that. Even if he looks silly. So long as he’s comfortable with his hair.  

Still, it was interesting he would change his look, even slightly, with only days to go in the campaign.

Maybe a focus group said he needed to do something about his hair, and fast. Maybe he was trying to differentiate himself.

Speaking of orange, Jack Layton has his own genetic situation going on — baldness. And what’s left is pretty grey. But he still looks good.

And then there was Stephane Dion, who is 53 but has the hair of an 80-year-old. After all he’s been through, I can understand why.

I’m not sure if being grey and distinguished cost him votes or won him some, plain haircut and all, but if the guy who came out on top employs a stylist full-time, I can’t help but think Dion simply got outcoiffed by his main rival.

Now the party is looking for a new leader, preferably one with a nice head of hair. Too bad Frank Klees isn’t a Liberal.

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