The President of France Pays Hairdresser $10,000 Per Month
François Hollande is bringing new meaning to the term “tax cuts.” The president of France is at the center of a growing controversy over his high-priced haircuts. According to the New York Times, Hollande has been paying his personal hairdresser 9,895 euros — the equivalent of more than $10,000 — each month since he took office in 2012. And French taxpayers are footing the bill.
The controversial leader promised to be a “normal” and “exemplary” president during his campaign, but his wasteful ways don’t exactly set the best example: 9,895 euros is more than half the annual salary of a French citizen making minimum wage. “For many people in France that really, really, really is a lot of money,” Thierry Mandon, the junior minister for higher education and research, told the LCP news channel. We’d really have to agree!
The hairy situation made its way to Twitter, of course, and the hashtag #CoiffeurGate (“coiffeur is French for hairdresser) became a trending topic on Wednesday. “What’s funnier. The aide who justifies it. The exorbitant cost. Or the lack of hair to style #buyacomb,” wrote @thedanburdett, pointing out the obvious: Hollande doesn’t have a whole lot of hair to begin with.
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If this debacle sounds familiar, that’s probably because it’s not the first time a politician has been called to the carpet for forking over an exorbitant amount of cash for haircut. Back in 2007, former Senator John Edwards came under fire when a Beverly Hills stylist revealed he was paid $1,250 to cut Edwards’s healthy head of hair.
The hefty fee covered the cost of the stylist’s commute to Atlanta and compensated him for missing two days of work to tend to the senator. Around the same time, Hillary Clinton was criticized for paying $2,500 for two styling sessions while campaigning, and Bill Clinton had his own diva moment when he shut down two of four runways at LAX airport so that Air Force One could fly the president in for a $200 trim in a controversy dubbed Hairgate.
But that’s peanuts compared with what the Sultan of Brunei forks over to fly in his favorite stylist for a snip. In 2009, the Daily Mail reported that Hassanal Bolkiah hired a private jet to fetch a hairdresser from an upscale London salon to tend to his tresses. The bill came out to an extravagant 15,000 euros — chump change for a billionaire like the Sultan.
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And what’s a political controversy without input from Sarah Palin? The former Alaska governor faced the heat when she spent more than $165,000 during her campaign with former GOP nominee John McCain. Palin actually traveled with her stylist, Angela Lew, paying her $42,615 over the course of two months, according to the New York Times. She found the hairdresser on the recommendation of Cindy McCain, who frequented Lew’s salon.
As for Hollande, it’s uncertain whether he knew how much money he was actually paying for his pricey cut; his former chief of staff signed the contract. Hollande’s former companion Valerie Trierweiler came to his defense though, tweeting: “Let’s be fair: F. Hollande was not aware of the hairdresser’s salary. I can attest to his anger when he learned about it later.”
No doubt social media critics will be splitting hairs over the debate for weeks to come.
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