Just shoot me. There’s no point in continuing on.
Mr. Romney’s head of impeccably coiffed black hair has become something of a cosmetological Rorschach test on the campaign trail, with many seeing in his thick locks everything they love and loathe about the Republican candidate for the White House. (Commanding, reassuring, presidential, crow fans; too stiff, too slick, too perfect, complain critics.)
Mr. Romney’s advisers have been known to fret about the shiny strands, and his rivals have sought to turn them against him. Asked by the late-night-television host Jimmy Fallon on Monday what word she associated with Mr. Romney, a businessman, Olympics executive and governor, Representative Michele Bachmann replied, “Hair.”
Nobody has a more complicated and intimate relationship with Mr. Romney’s hair than the man who has styled it for more than two decades, a barrel-chested, bald Italian immigrant named Leon de Magistris.
For years, Mr. de Magistris said in an interview, he has tried to persuade Mr. Romney, 64, to loosen up his look by tousling his meticulous mane.
“I will tell him to mess it up a little bit,” said Mr. de Magistris, 69. “I said to him, ‘Let it be more natural.’ ”
The suggestion has not gone over well. “He wants a look that is very controlled,” Mr. de Magistris said. “He is a very controlled man. The hair goes with the man.”
I was going to speculate about what Romney’s wife might have been trying to persuade Romney to do for years, but I decided that that would be juvenile.
