I cannot vote for Donald Trump. My reasons are not high-brow or intellectual. Still, I have put a great deal of thought into them. I hope my tribe of liberals can forgive me.
Putting Trump’s message and his demagoguery aside, my reasons have more to do with his hair and his love of self-tanner, than they do with his political beliefs. On the face of it, a person’s appearance may seem like a shallow reason not to vote for him. Stay with me, though, it will all make sense in the end.
His absolute insistence on maintaining a bad haircut says a great deal about him, both as a person and as a leader. His commitment to embracing something that is so clearly wrong, something that he could very easily change, does not scream “I like my hair and I am leaving it as it is!”. Rather it says, “I’m not taking suggestions from the crowd.”
This is a fine attitude for a rock band who does not want to play “Freebird” to adopt, but not the attitude that a person who wants to lead a country should embrace. Leading is as much about recognizing situations where compromise may be in order as it is about being in charge.
It has not gone unnoticed that plenty of dictators throughout the course of history were also in possession of bad haircuts. Hitler. Stalin. Kim Jong-Il.
We all have a bad haircut story. Bad haircuts are part of life. Most of us, though, have the sense that God gave a cow and we do something about it OR we, when we can, wear a hat. At the very least we explain our bad haircut. “I had a groupon” pretty much says it all.
Even though he is a billionaire, I would still accept the groupon explanation. Frugality is not a bad thing.
The very fact that he has failed to demonstrate any common sense where his hair is concerned has always troubled me. In fact, he is pretty resolute on the hair thing. Even prior to listening to his rhetoric this political season, I could not get behind anything he said or did because I could not get past the message his hair puts out.
I do not believe for a minute that his children, a couple of whom seem like sensible people, have never looked him in the eye and said, “Your hair is crazy, Dad!” I know mine would. I wouldn’t get away with sporting that look for a minute!
Are we supposed to believe that his daughter, Ivanka, a woman with a successful fashion line has failed to have any conversation with her father about his hair? The more likely scenario is that he has just refused to listen.
It is hard to fathom that a woman who puts her name on some very fine products—have you seen her shoes?—has not taken the opportunity in a quiet moment to have a frank discussion with her father about his hair. I would never expect her to go public with this information, though. I feel certain that she feels awful about her inability to convince him to make a change.
I know that I would. I also know that I would be shaking my head and telling my father that “it’s not a trademark, Da, it’s a hot mess!”
The Donald has fancied this bad comb-over with a mind of its own style for years. The self-tanner, though, that is more recent. I can understand a person who wants to have a healthy glow without subjecting themselves to harmful UV rays. I can understand a person on a budget who ducks into the local CVS and plops down the ten bucks for the self-tanner that she can afford. What I cannot understand is how Donald Trump, a billionaire who is running for President of The United States, thinks that the best place to cut corners, financially-speaking, is in the self-tanning aisle.
It is not. It is just not. His orange face in combination with that awful hair does not project self-confidence; it projects his inability to recognize bad decisions.
He has managed to be in out of a several marriages, though. He does not seem to have the same level of commitment to the women in his life as he has to the misguided belief that he looks fantastic.
He looks orange. He looks weird.
He looks very much like the crazy person that he has turned out to be.
Still, even had he not proved himself to be an authoritarian, hate-spewing, violent reactionary with no real qualification for public office, I still would not be voting for him. Because of the hair. Because of the self-tanner.
Shallow though my reasons may be, I think I have a point, don’t you?
Photo Credits:
Ambling & Rambling 