What Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Veep Hair Says About the Unspoken Rules for Women in Politics

Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s four-season turn as Selina Meyer on Veep has been remarkable, earning her Critics’ Choice Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Television Critics Associations Award, and possibly tonight, her fourth consecutive Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for the role. If Louis-Dreyfus’s raw talent is indisputable (Seinfeld and The New Adventures of Old Christine both took home their fair share of statues), then so, too, is her ability to infuse the familiar ticks of America’s top politicians, from the strained clearing of a throat to the awkward subtext of public posturing, with the blackest of humor. Even the very dry subject of campaign hair is handled both deftly and comically. From her right-on-the-money voluminous bob to her season three “re-branded” eyebrow-skimming pixie, the show acknowledges the unspoken codes for female politicians.

A quick survey is proof enough that few women in positions of power, and namely in politics, have long hair. From Hillary Clinton to Angela Merkel, cuts rarely ever graze a shoulder—a fact that did not go unnoticed by the show’s creators when designing Louis-Dreyfus’s look. “This is a powerful woman,” says Daniel Howell, her lead hairstylist on the series. “[The hair] doesn’t distract from what’s going on. It’s almost like a helmet ready to do battle. You have it done and don’t deal with it [again] all day.” For the swingy bob wig he uses to transform the actress, who often wears jeans and a long curly ponytail when she’s out of character, “half of my job is to make sure there’s nothing sticking out—nothing falling in her face or getting caught in her collar. That would be a distraction.”

It’s not the first time that Veep’s creators have addressed the gravity of such decisions with characteristic satire: In the show’s first episode, Meyer dismisses glasses as a sign of weakness (“wheelchairs for the eyes”), while the statement hat she wears on season three becomes a recurring joke as one of her most damaging decisions. Improbable as it may sound, such visual distractions can be the difference between winning and losing favor in real life. Howell points to Sarah Palin’s chameleonic hairstyles during her campaign for the vice presidency as an oversight. “Whether it was straightened out or curled, you were aware of her hair,” he says of the look that erred on pretty, or, still worse by Washington standards, sexy—a regrettable reminder of her beauty pageant days.

It should be noted here that the other side of the gender equation isn’t completely immune to the phenomenon: see current presidential candidate Donald Trump’s much discussed comb-over. And yet Veep exposes the prerequisite for female politicians to be seen as capable of their jobs, yet fully stripped of any sexuality from their personas. Even Meyer’s form-hugging Dior and L’Wren Scott power ensembles tow the line between appropriately flattering and gender-neutral. It’s a point corroborated by Meyer’s closely shorn crop at the height of her presidential campaign, when she explains (in a deleted scene on HBO) that even the 10 inches she had before were “too sexy . . . people didn’t take me seriously enough as a result.” Her staff may have hated the haircut—but she won the election.

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