Populist pompadours
The year in right-wing hair
Does hair make the man? Looking back on 2023, we’re inclined to say … maybe?
This week at Public Seminar, we’re reading two of our favorite pieces of political and sartorial commentary from last semester.
Paloma Velasco delves into the TikTok-friendly dimples of Daniel Noboa—and what part his clean-shaven presentation played in the center-right newcomer’s rise to Ecuador’s highest office. And Adriana Piatti-Crocker scrutinizes how the chaotic sideburns of Argentinian president-elect Javier Milei augment his nutty economic policies. As Piatti-Crocker points out, the libertarian extremist is hardly the only leader known for “using big hair to volumize their bad ideas.”
Why Does the Far Right Love a Pompadour?
Adriana Piatti-Crocker
Brandishing a chainsaw as a symbol of what he would do to the “political caste,” Argentina’s Milei is said to be a libertarian with bad ideas but little-known policies. This is another distinctive characteristic of populists, who tend to say what they would do to appeal to the masses but provide very few details on how to do it. Milei gathered the support of young voters, primarily male, and the poor, even though these voters would not likely benefit from his self-defined “anarcho-capitalist ideas” that accompany a radically chaotic hairstyle similarly at odds with itself. Perhaps these voters believe that an outsider with distinctively extreme ideas can fix a country in desperate need of fixing.
In Ecuador, a New Beginning?
Paloma Velasco
In the first presidential debate on television, young Noboa’s cool and calm style grabbed the attention of Ecuador’s voters. He presented a sharp contrast not only to his father’s cartoonish persona, but also to the heated rhetoric and wild gesturing of his rival candidates. By his stoic demeanor alone, he dissociated himself from Ecuadorian machine politics altogether.