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The Hair Tells a Tale
Trump Wears Mother’s Influence on His Head
By Susan Caba
Look no further than her hair.
Mary MacLeod Trump’s hair, in her later years, swept upward and back like a tsunami about to break for shore. Back-combed, buttressed and lacquered to a staggering height, the ‘do is the original Trump Tower, an impressive piece of Oedipal architecture. A single metaphor could never do it justice.
Donald J. Trump’s mother is, many people are saying, responsible for the infantile, craven and craving puddle of Id that once — and may again — occupied the White House and even now threatens the mental health of the nation. Her hair alone puts Mary Trump in the pantheon of toxic mothers, somewhere on the spectrum close to Norma Bates.
The hair, I’m telling you, is the tell.
Put photos of Donald and Mary side by side. Is his hair not the same (unnatural) color as his mother’s? Did he not (until an unsung post-Presidential-election stylist did a gradual nip-and-tuck) swirl and sweep and tease and spray his locks into a pale imitation of her inimitable coif? The former president hasn’t — so far — managed to merge as fully as Norman Bates did with his mother, but the urge is clearly there.
Oh, sure, Donald — his mother’s fourth child — describes Mary MacLeod in anodyne terms such as “fantastic” and “tremendous” and “very warm” and a “great beauty.” He mentioned her meatloaf in 2005 on Martha Stewart’s show. “My mother was a wife who was a really great homemaker. She always said, ‘Be happy!’ She wanted me to be happy.”
Please note that he misspelled her maiden name in his 2009 book, Think Like a Champion. But then, he’s misspelled the name of his current wife, too.
Let’s not go all psycho-babble — although many people do.
“A solid relationship with what we sometimes call an ordinary, devoted mother establishes a foundation on which critical personal and emotional architecture can be built,” writes an expert whose name has been lost in the mists of time. “Your mother helps you identify your…
