When Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was feeling a bit shaggy last month, and concerned that she had to look her best for the press briefings in which she scolds her constituents for gathering with friends or engaging in commerce, she procured something that would have been illegal for any other Chicagoan: a haircut.
Of course, Lightfoot had to call in a traveling hairstylist, who certainly did not stand 6 feet from the close-cropped mayor, because Lightfoot had ordered all barbershops and hair salons closed throughout the city in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
Her Honor isn’t the only client for illegal haircuts — just the most hypocritical one.
State Reps. Steve Toth and Briscoe Cain in Texas both protested Gov. Greg Abbott’s shutdown orders to get a trim May 5 in Montgomery County. Unlike Lightfoot, the Republican lawmakers posted their transgressions on social media themselves.
Twitter reactions included “What salon? Because they need to be arrested and shut down” and “License needs to be removed.”
But politicians are simply the most famous ones to receive illegal haircuts.
One Texan bragged on Twitter in late April, “I got an illegal haircut and tattoo today. F*** the government. Texas is open.”
“I Need A Haircut,” read one orange sign at the statehouse in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, at an April 20 protest. According to political consultant Charlie Gerow, “There was a woman standing there with us, and she said, ‘I’m a stylist, and I’m out of work.’ She said, ‘I would do anything to be cutting his hair right now.'”
As Washington Examiner columnist Salena Zito reported, one of Gerow’s friends “offered her a rather large sum of money to cut his hair right there on the spot.”
The alternatives are going very shaggy or trying to cut your own hair — or roping a family member or roommate into playing barber.
This virus will surely lead to plenty of unfortunate innovation in hair styles. It’s already introduced many people to the unfortunate phrase “illegal haircut.”
