The first time I heard a Billie Holiday vocal track out somewhere in a public space, I was instantly enthralled. It's been the same ever since. Can't remember whether it was a restaurant or what, but my ears swam toward her sound as fast as they could. Lately I finished reading a nifty little biography on Holiday (1915-1959) that seemed a bit different. How so? The words are crisp and simple, yet the subject matter remains rich and complex. This works, the tension between delivery mode and content. The book? Leslie Gourse's Billie Holiday: The Tragedy and Triumph of Lady Day (Franklin Watts, 1995). I finally figured out that this particular book ("An Impact Biography") is deliberately written for a grade 7 to 9 reading level. But Gourse doesn't sugarcoat, and so we learn both of music and performance in detail, but also of paternal neglect, her hard-working, sometimes needy mother, mean relatives, societal racism, prostitution, a parade of men of all stripes, heroin, marijuana, police harassment (cruel and unnecessary in all cases), alcohol (nasty doses of gin stick to mind) and death at age 44. Not to despair, we also learn of good friends, supporters, admirers and fellow musicians, too -- and her music that endures.
About Billie Holiday's vocal delivery, Gourse notes: "The power of her unique storytelling ability came from her feeling and . . . embellishment of the melodies . . . Most of all, her sound [is] earthy, musical and a little strange." (Billie Holiday: The Tragedy and Triumph of Lady Day, page 37). In another deeply considered meditation on Billie Holiday, Angela Davis observes that: "With the incomparable instrument of her voice, Holiday could completely divert a song from its composer's original and often sentimental and vapid intent. She was able to set in profound motion deeply disturbing disjunctions between overt statements and their aesthetic meanings. (Angela Y. Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Vintage Books, 1999, photo caption between pages 140 and 141). A salute to Billie Holiday and the people who dig her. Today's Rune: Partnership.
Shola Lynch's Free Angela and All Political Prisoners (2012) is a nifty companion documentary to her Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed (2004). Between Shirley Chisholm and Angela Davis, there's a lot of ground to cover. So much so, given the context of the times both then and now, they'd make for an absorbing, expanded mini-series. In each case, Lynch provides an exciting introduction.
Free Angela and All Political Prisoners focuses on Angela Davis in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when she twice became a cause célèbre, first in California and then worldwide. Strong reaction to her intellectual engagement came from such high profile characters as Governor Ronald Reagan, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and US President Richard M. Nixon. As we know now, Hoover died in 1972 before the end of Davis' trial, Nixon went down as a result of Watergate, and Reagan went on to become president of the USA in the following decade.
Lynch's documentary starts off at an even pace, then picks up steam when Angela Davis becomes a fugitive, then slows into the details of her final trial, leaving me wanting more, more, more. A sequel about Davis' work from the mid-1970s until now (she just turned 70) would be equally fascinating, I suspect, as would even more about her family -- including her parents, from Birmingham, Alabama -- and siblings Fania, Ben and Reggie. (In the small world department, Ben Davis, now 68, played for the Detroit Lions in the 1970s.) Today's Rune: Opening.
Clarence Williams III (with Aml Ameen) early on in Lee Daniels' The Butler (2013). I still remember him well from his original Mod Squad days. If I understood correctly, this scene is at a hotel somewhere in North Carolina.
Camelot comes to the White House: JFK, Jackie and Caroline meet the staff. That's Colman Domingo on the left.
David Oyelowo and Yaya DaCosta in Black Panther mode, the latter in iconic Kathleen Cleaver and Angela Davis fashion -- a cool look for the ages. Today's Rune: Fertility.
There's a new film out about Angela Davis, which reminds me to put up a handful of additional notes about her from reading Alice Kaplan's Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis (The University of Chicago Press, 2012). Besides, the book's due again after renewing it three times from the library already, so . . . here we go.
Angela Davis' (b. 1944) development as a thinker and activist embraces a lot of territory, including French and German philosophy. In addition, when imprisoned, she received moral and some support from engaged French philosophers, poets, and general fans.
Some of the people we encounter in Dreaming in French who connect to Angela Davis include a German boyfriend, Manfred Clemenz. "Intellectual passion is a kind of love, and the love she might have had for Manfred Clemenz would be hard to separate from her discovery of philosophy" (Kaplan, page 179).
In 1964, Davis began a thesis on Alain-Robbe Grillet (1922-2008), the novelist and scriptwriter for indie films such as L'Année dernière à Marienbad / Last Year at Marienbad (1961); he went on to direct his own films, such as Trans-Europ-Express (1966). Grillet wrote fiction and about fiction; he wrote about film, and he wrote about Michelangelo Antonioni, the Italian director often discussed on this very website. In approaching Grillet's work, Angela Davis utilized both existentialist philosophy (freedom and responsibility) and the "new" anthropological structuralism. Kaplan notes of Davis' emerging thought: ". . . in addition to her attentiveness to structures and signs, she maintained a deep commitment to the idea of human freedom;" she paid close attention to both "conciousness and concept" (Kaplan, page 180).
To make a long story short, other influences on Davis included Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno, Albert Camus, the civil and human rights movements, the US-Vietnam War, Cuba, the Black Panthers and all the other interconnecting frisson of the 1960s. Some additional characters that come up: Ronald Reagan (as governor of California), Jean Genet, Jean Seberg, Jane Fonda and Yolande DuLuart (Angela Davis: Portrait of a Revolutionary, 1972). Even the Rolling Stones came to her support as needed with an eccentric song, "Sweet Black Angel" ("Exile on Main St.," 1972).
More to say, but that's it for now except: Happy Earth Day!
The third main section of Alice Kaplan's Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis delves into Davis' initial exploration of Europe, particularly France. But it does more. It provides an overview of her Alabama childhood, early experiences with segregation, then jump off to New York City for summer school, then back to Birmingham ("a terrible awakening" -- page 147), studying French, studying at Brandeis University, learning, absorbing, making new friends. And then off to France.
In the wake of the Algerian Revolution / Guerre d'Algérie (1954-1962), Davis spent a year as a college student living in France, responding to chaotic events in the USA, as well. "For France . . . the end of the Algerian war was only the begining of a fomentation, a questioning of national values that would last beyond the revolutionary days of May '68" (page 143). Davis took it all in, acquired a German boyfriend and studied German philosophy, as well.
Kaplan takes us through the unfolding of Angela Davis' ideas, her response to the ever-changing 1960s, involvement with the Black Panthers and Soledad Prison, imprisonment, trial, and dramatic support rendered in France and by French artists. More on some of this at some point, no doubt.
The main Susan Sontag (1933-2004) part of Alice Kaplan's Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis (The University of Chicago Press, 2012) provides a substantial backdrop to her life, covers her intense 1957-1958 Parisian residency, then looks at her life and career afterwards, though not detailing much about her many years (1989-2004) with Annie Leibovitz, her last partner.
Because Kaplan was able to go through voluminous notebooks and other manuscripts, this thick middle section is sometimes dizzying to keep up with on a first read-though. One thing is certain: born in New York, having lost her father as a small child, and relocated to Arizona presumably due to her asthma, Sontag had a strong desire to escape her circumstances. Which she did -- inspired by French literature, among other things.
I was happily surprised to learn from Dreaming in French that another Francophile, my old buddy Wallace Fowlie (1908-1988), helped her clear a significant academic hurdle at the University of Chicago in praising and passing her junior paper on Djuna Barnes' 1936 novel Nightwood. Fowlie was her fourth reader, brought in by her principal advisor, Kenneth Burke, to save the day.
It was also gratifying to read Kaplan's comparison of Susan Sontag's married, with child life to that of the Jeanne Moreau character in Louise Malle's Les Amants / The Lovers (1958). Beyond that even, everything being connected -- especially everything French -- it turns out that the screenplay for Les Amants was "written by the same Louise de Vilmorin whose blue salon at Verrières-le-Buisson had welcomed Jacqueline Bouvier in 1949" (pages 111-112). After her 1957-1958 Paris residency, Sontag emerged as a leading proponent of French culture back in the USA, abetted by a durable friendship with poet-translator Richard Howard. "The two were leaders in the conversation that was bringing that thing called French Theory to the United States, made of equal parts Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida" (page 127). Which reminds me that I was lucky enough to hear Richard Howard give a reading in Chapel Hill, North Carolina at UNC, and bought a couple of his books then and there. Now, thanks to Alice Kaplan's alluring account, I wish I'd have met Susan Sontag, too. Today's Rune: Signals.
The first part of Alice Kaplan's Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis (The University of Chicago Press, 2012) delves into Ms. Bouvier and her cohort's Smith College study-abroad residence in France in 1949-1950. JB's status was closer to genteel poverty at the time than today's Romney rich, but she had plenty of friends and mentors. Travel across the Atlantic was still primarily by ship, and Smith students boarded with French families just recovering from the damages of the Second World War.
Kaplan summarizes nicely: "Throughout her year in Paris, Jacqueline Bouvier inhabited several worlds and managed to keep them separate -- a talent she would need to maintain throughout her complex life" (page 36). French immersion proved helpful in the long term. Bouvier studied at the Sorbonne and Reid Hall. Smith professor Jeanne Saleil noted at the time: "Jacqueline is so brilliant, she could be a stellar academic, but she hasn't thrown herself into the intellectual life. Her heart is elsewhere" (page 38).
Upon return to the USA, Bouvier became engaged to stockbroker John Husted, but this was ended in short order. She considered applying for a CIA job, and did apply for a position at Paris Vogue via a contest that she had for the taking, but then thought better of it. She met JFK in 1952 and married him in 1953. When her husband became president, she drew upon her knowledge of French culture and history to act dynamically as his unofficial advisor and cultural ambassador. In 1961, the American president quipped about their official state trip to France, "I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris" (page 64).
JBK brought style and insight to "La Maison Blanche," aka the White House. Later, after the Dallas 1963 nightmare, after her secondmarriage, she became an influential acquisitions editor at Doubleday.
There's more to go into -- Proust, Simone de Beauvoir, André Malraux and other influences and connections -- at some point, perhaps. Overall, the tone of Alice Kaplan's section on JB/JBK/JBKO is sympathetic and the details interesting. Jacqueline in all of her incarnations comes off very well, indeed. Today's Rune:Journey.
Right now, I'm halfway through the Angela Davis section of Alice Kaplan's marvelous book,Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis(The University of Chicago Press, 2012). The excitement of study abroad is made palpable -- seeing the world anew. Kaplan's comparative study works twice over -- by bringing readers to the experiences of these three iconic people at salient points in their lives before they became well-known, it also invites remembrances of comparable experiences in readers' lives.
For me, such initial conciousness-raising came as a significant personal breakthrough on my first overseas adventure as an undergraduate student. But the ground had already been prepared by family moves when I was a kid, by a large family library often discussed, and by engaging teachers.
Have you experienced a major move, or trip, or work or study program or service far from whence you first came? If so, how did it change or enhance your worldview?
Göran Olsson's The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011) contains so much material, I can barely tick off all that's shown or heard. In addition to MLK, we see Coretta Scott King (1927-2006). And the Black Power salute at the Olympic Games in Mexico City (1968). The Last Poets, inspired by Malcolm X and formed in 1968. Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, the Black Panther Party. Bobby Seale in Stockholm, saying "in the final analysis" -- a phrase nearly identical to today's "at the end of the day." Free food, free breakfast program hosted by the Black Panthers. J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO. Exile in Algiers, Algeria. Huey Netwon, From Russia With Love in the background. TV Guide taking issue with Swedish journalism. Emile de Antonio (1919-1989 -- director of In the Year of the Pig, 1968, and other influential films). The Attica Prison uprising (1971). Civil rights lawyer William Kunstler (1919-1995). Elaine Brown, Black Panther. Governor Ronald Reagan of California vs. Angela Davis (1972) and her aquittal; her earlier study wih Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979). Robin Kelley, Sonia Sanchez, John Forté, Erykah Badu, Louis Farrakhan, Harlem and Lewis H. Michaux (ca. 1884–1976).
The bonus "reels" are also well worth delving into in their own right. There's a heartbreaking section about Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005) and her bid for the presidency in 1972 -- ahead of her time, she was hopelessly outnumbered, defeated but unbowed. There's more with Stokely Carmichael. And there's a very interesting section on the 1974 trial of Joan Little in Raleigh, North Carolina -- charged with first degree murder for stabbing a rapist-prison guard with the ice pick he threatened to kill her with, immediately after he raped her. She was eventually found not guilty.
Göran Olsson's The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011) begins with footage from 1967 when the US population is 210 million (it's now 312 million at the time of this posting) at the height of the US-Vietnam War, with a military draft in place and 525,000 American soldiers deployed in Vietnam.
Swedish archival footage gives us fresh glimpses at people, places and events, including stellar footage of Stokely Carmichael (or Kwame Ture, 1941-1998, pictured above) and his mother -- she has a fascinating Trinidid-New York City hybrid accent, while he retains a subtler Trinidadian lilt. When asked in Paris if he fears being imprisoned upon his return to the USA, he responds, "I was born in jail." He relocates to West Africa in 1969.
Martin Luther King is clearly against the US-Vietnam War, as Angela Davis notes in narration made for parts of the documentary. His "Beyond Vietnam" speech at Riverside Church, NYC on April 4, 1967 -- exactly one year to the day before his assassination in Memphis -- epitomizes his overall stance: "We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a
person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and
property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets
of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
There's footage of MLK and Harry Belafonte meeting with King Gustaf VI Adolf (1882-1973) of Sweden in Stockholm, reminding us of ongoing Swedish support for human and civil rights as well as the international dimensions of American society.
Black Power kicks into high gear when MLK is killed in 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive and sometimes called Revolutionary Year Zero. (To be continued).
Göran Olsson's The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 brings to light exciting and empathetic archival footage of the movement from a Swedish perspective. I loved it. There's the backdrop of the US-Vietnam War, riots, upheaval and assassination, the Black Panthers and Attica Prison uprising, with contemporary commentators. More to say about it, with more details -- soon. Anyone interested in human/civil rights and/or the 1960s and 1970s would probably dig this for any number of reasons. I sure did.
Already with her in spirit despite differences in gender and race, I learned a lot from Angela Y. Davis' Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (Vintage, 1999, Random House, 1998). Building as it does on Daphne Duval Harrison's Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s (Rutgers, 1988), this work has deepened and broadened my perspective, certainly. In addition to rendering a compelling analytical study of the three major recording artists enumerated in the subtitle (who were also very popular live performers, all with enduring impact) -- and with due consideration and attention given to race, gender and class -- Davis also provides her own very helpful transcriptions of the lyrics of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.
Davis' introduction concludes:
"Finally, I hope this study will inspire readers to listen to the recordings of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday both for pleasure and for purposes of research, and that it will occasion further interdisciplinary studies of the artistic and social contributions of blues and jazz women." (p. xx).
Toward these goals, I've been working on two St. Louis and Chicago-based blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s, Luella Miller and Mary Johnson, mostly listening to their recordings and transcribing their lyrics as sung. Some of the initial results have been posted on this blog. The work of Davis, Harrison and others gives these kinds of studies impetus, direction and added relevance.
One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society by Herbert Marcuse (1964, 1991) is a book I find worth picking up again every so many years in order to check against current actualities. Reading Angela Davis' take on blues singers recently prompted me to do it again -- for in Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (1997), she noted how much Marcuse influenced her thinking and writing about the subject at hand.
One-Dimensional Man is both simple and complex; some of it is of historical interest but much is still also pertinent to the here and now of 2011. The original "Cold War" discussions can be updated by substituting "Drug War" or "War on Terror" or whatever it is that supposedly comes together as a unified narrative after the killing of bin Laden in Pakistan in our day. Wordplay and manipulation of "hearts and minds" continues, most certainly, just as it did fifty years ago, around the time Marcuse was working on the first edition of One-Dimensional Man. All one need do is listen (or read or watch or think) carefully: just about everything we need to know is right out in the open. Seek and ye shall find, indeed.
Der eindimensionale Mensch. Marcuse's discussions of language usage in advertising and the public sphere has gotten me over the years to pay more careful attention to phrasing and compressed concepts across languages. Examples might be "The American People" (what exactly is meant by that, so-often used by so many individuals to justify so much, yet meaning next to nothing?); and, in the USA, "Vietnam" as shorthand for the United States-Vietnam War, and "the Mexican War" as shorthand for the United States-Mexican War, American-Mexican War, or the US-Mexican War. Why the distinction? Because, because, because . . . the Devil is in the details, and so is history and so are cultural dynamics. If or when we accept concepts/images without weighing, considering and playing with them, we become spellbound or just plain unaware of the numerous "hypnotic-ritual formulas" used socially, clichés that tend to shut down further thinking about history and accepted reality.
L'homme unidimensionnel. Somehow "unidimensional" sounds cooler than "one-dimensional." But as we all know, 3D is better yet.
El hombre unidimensional. Man, homme, hombre, Mensch. A little outdated in a title for the 21st century, eh? Mensch is okay. People, humanity, society, civilization or culture might convey more universality today.
Thoroughly enjoying NYC Babylon: Beat Punks. Notes, Raps, Essays, Secrets, Transcripts, Opinions (Wise and Otherwise), and Pictures of a Gone World and of How the Punk Generation Typhooned Its Way Back Through and Harpooned the Beat Generation Harmonica Collaboration by Victor Bockris (1998). Coming up next for happy reading time: "The Captain's Cocktail Party: Dinner with Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol and William Burroughs" (pages 89-101).
It's astonishing to me to see so many of the people I've been reading about, listening to or watching on some kind of screen for many years all converge together in this one book.
So far, the most interesting sections (to me) have been transcripts of interviews with Debbie Harry, Marianne Faithfull and Susan Sontag, all strong and sharply observant people.
So where is this convergence of Angela Davis and Marianne Faithfull?
It is this: "Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Billie Holiday were my goddesses," Faithfull tells Victor Bockris in an interview circa 1991 (Bockris, NYC Babylon, page 66).
And in 1998, Angela Y. Davis' Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday is published.
Of course, Davis and Faithfull also converge through The Rolling Stones, but that's for another post. Time to get back to NYC Babylon first.
Already with her in spirit despite differences in gender and race, I learned a lot from Angela Y. Davis' Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (Vintage, 1999, Random House, 1998). Building as it does on Daphne Duval Harrison's Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s (Rutgers, 1988), this work has deepened and broadened my perspective, certainly. In addition to rendering a compelling analytical study of the three major recording artists enumerated in the subtitle (who were also very popular live performers, all with enduring impact) -- and with due consideration and attention given to race, gender and class -- Davis also provides her own very helpful transcriptions of the lyrics of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.
Davis' introduction concludes:
"Finally, I hope this study will inspire readers to listen to the recordings of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday both for pleasure and for purposes of research, and that it will occasion further interdisciplinary studies of the artistic and social contributions of blues and jazz women." (p. xx).
Toward these goals, I've been working on two St. Louis and Chicago-based blues singers of the 1920s and 1930s, Luella Miller and Mary Johnson, mostly listening to their recordings and transcribing their lyrics as sung. Some of the initial results have been posted on this blog. The work of Davis, Harrison and others gives these kinds of studies impetus, direction and added relevance.
I finished this before last Christmas, and really like Daphne Duval Harrison's Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s (Rutgers University Press, 1988). It covers somewhat lesser known 20s blues singers (i.e. beyond Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith) and looks to dovetail nicely with an Angela Davis book in the pipeline that proceeds from Rainey and Smith through Billie Holiday.
For now, here's how the contents break down. This'll give an idea of Harrison's focal points:
Riding "Toby" to the Big Time "Crazy Blues" Starts a New Craze "Wild Women Don't Have the Blues": Blues from the Black Woman's Perspective "Up the Country. . ." and Still Singing the Blues: Sippie Wallace Blues Was Her Business: Victoria Spivey "He Used to Be Your Man . . ." But He's Edith Wilson's Now "She's Got a Mind to Ramble: Alberta Hunter . . . Other Blues Singers [including Chippie Hill, sampled below with Louis Armstrong]
Happy 80th Birthday, Rip Torn! He's an actor who gets all the better as he ages. Above, his character Nathan Bryce faces off with David Bowie's alien (Newton) in Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). One of my favorite Torn characters is the "slightly bombastic" author "Q" in Curtis Hanson's Wonder Boys (2000). "I - am - a - Writer," he proclaims. He's got it down perfectly. I'm looking forward to the DVD release of Joseph Strick's Tropic of Cancer (1970) with Rip as Henry Miller.
Happy Birthday, Charlotte Rampling (65), great career actor along the lines of her peer, Catherine Deneuve (67). Whether in Georgy Girl (1966) -- popping out of the screen as Meredith -- or as Dorrie in Woody Allen's Stardust Memories (1980, above) or as Sarah Morton in Swimming Pool (2003), she rocks. Also like Catherine Deneuve, Charlotte Rampling has taken on many edgy roles.
RIP, Maria Schneider (58), most famous for her portayal of Jeanne in Bernardo Bertolucci's Ultimo Tango a Parigi / Last Tango in Paris (1972) opposite Marlon Brando, who lived to be 80 and died in 2004. For those who haven't seen it, Last Tango is dark, sandwiched between a suicide and manslaughter with Brando saying many bizarre things in French.
Let's not forget a belated Happy Birthday to Angela Davis, who turned 67 on January 26. She's now Visiting Professor (Distinguished Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and African American Studies) at Syracuse.
Recently rewatching Jeff Stilson and Chris Rock's Good Hair (2009) reminded me to post about changing -- and enduring -- hair styles. First, a shoutout via Good Hair to Joe Dudley and Dudley Products, Inc., of Greensboro, North Carolina. Second, a salute to Angela Davis for helping make the Afro and "natural hair" popular thorugh the 1970s (that's the cover of Angela Davis: An Autobiography, 1974, above).
Hair says a lot, speaks volumes, expresses either freedom or its opposite. Trends come and go though many seem not to recognize even this simple fact. For men, one look at a powdered wig in a painting and we can fix the approximate time frame. Beards in North America indicate the prevailing fashions of somewhere between the 1860s and 1880s, or again (starting as insurgent, then becoming more "tolerated" by the mainstream) between the 1960s and the present. Moustaches are more likely to fit with the 1840s and 1850s, around the time of the Great War and 1920s, and then peppered onward from the 1970s to the present.
For men and women, large afros indicate initially a 1960s and 1970s mission statement, then sporadically they persist through the present, but usually in shorter more "moderate" form. Short straight hair and preppy outifts in the USA have been the typical mainstream Republican uniform for men since the 1960s (even shorter hair before that); for women, specially coiffed blownout hair with many red outfits (usually pantsuits) seems to be the Republican norm for women. Democrats and Independents seem more eclectic regarding hair style and sartorial choices, harder to gauge except they are not Republicans.
And then there are hats and sideburns, wigs, weaves and colors. This could go on for quite a little while.
Do you have favorite type hairstyles? I still favor sideburns. As I post, my hair is cut short but no one would ever confuse me for a Republican, mainstream or otherwise, now, before -- or ever.
