Why Pressley ditched her wig
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) is used to being a trailblazer, said KK Ottesen in The Washington Post Magazine. Pressley was the first black woman to serve on the Boston City Council, and last year she became the first person of color to represent Massachusetts in the House of Representatives. She was inaugurated with her hair in Senegalese twists, but alopecia universalis, an autoimmune disease, caused Pressley to lose all of the hair on her head, face, and body over the course of 2019. Given how much her “ethno-Afrocentric” hairdo was part of her personal brand, the loss was “profoundly devastating,” says Pressley, 46. But in January she removed her wig in public and hasn’t put it back on. “I felt that I could not authentically lead if I was not transparent,” she says. “The shame of it was weighing heavily on me.” Women in politics are used to being viewed under a microscope, and ridiculed over their hair, clothing, and signs of aging. Pressley knew that baldness would be “disconcerting” since it “flies in the face of conventional standards of beauty.” But removing her wig, she says, “was a way of controlling my story.” Maybe one day Pressley will opt to wear a wig. “But for now,” she says, “this is me.”
Lebowitz’s self-quarantine
Fran Lebowitz is an expert at self-isolating, said Michael Schulman in NewYorker.com. After moving to Manhattan at 18 and becoming one of the sharpest and most sardonic chroniclers of life in the big city, Lebowitz hit what she calls “writer’s blockade” and spent years at home, working her way through her collection of 11,000 books. She won’t be gabbing with friends on Zoom during the lockdown, since the technophobe doesn’t own a cellphone or computer. In other respects, she’s well prepared for the coronavirus era, since she’s a germaphobe with a strong preference for solitude. “I’ve always washed my hands a minimum of 100 times a day,” she says. When she has dined out with friends, she’s refused to share food. “Everyone thinks this is an incredible eccentricity,” she says, “but the fact is, if you put your chopsticks in my plate, the plate is yours.” She admits, however, to being saddened by the city’s empty streets. “It is a very startling thing to be my age,” says Lebowitz, 69, “and to have something happen that doesn’t remind you of anything else.” Yet Lebowitz wouldn’t dream of fleeing the city. “A couple of people invited me to their houses in the country, houses much more lavish than mine. I thought, ‘You know, Fran, you could go away and be in a very beautiful place with a cook, but then you’d have to be a good guest.’ I would much rather stay here and be a bad guest.”