PrintFebruary 9, 2011
Michelle Obama denies husband is dyeing hair
Michelle Obama, who yesterday claimed that her husband has quit smoking, now claims that he doesn't dye his hair to get rid of gray. Rachel Rose Hartman of The Ticket blog writes:
First Lady Michelle Obama addressed recent speculation about whether the president dyes his hair during an interview Wednesday on NBC's Today Show."Is he dyeing his hair?" host Matt Lauer asked the First Lady after showing her pictures snapped last month of the president's coif."No," she replied. Obama then commented that her husband looked "pretty gray" in the images shown. "I think if he had known he would be president, he would have started dyeing his hair ten years ago," she added.
Really?
Obama's barber avers support for the First Lady:
When the graying speculation first whipped the press into a frenzy back in 2009, media outlets including the venerable Gray Lady herself spoke to Obama's barber, the single-named Zariff. After just 45 days in office, Obama appeared to be rapidly graying, which set off the first round of color touch-up speculation about the presidential noggin. But Zariff insisted that the amount of gray in Obama's hair simply depended on how close it was cut. "I can tell you that his hair is 100 percent natural," Zariff said back then. "He wouldn't get it colored."
Did his hair grow out a lot between the morning and evening of 1/19? Color me (and my hair) skeptical.
If the President has truly managed to quit smoking while enduring one of the highest stress jobs in the world (even with frequent parties, vacation breaks, golf games, shooting hoops, and 2 weeks in Hawaii), more power to him. But the short hair versus long hair explanation looks pretty questionable, and throws doubt on the smoking claim.
It's not exactly a hairgate situation, but merely another mystery to add to the many others: the hospital where Obama was born, his college and law school transcripts, the girlfriends pre-Michelle, and all the other strangely absent details.
