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Barack Obama is noticeably greyer than he was some
24 months ago on the campaign trail. You can put it down to the weight
of the office, but his greyness has become a hot topic following a
picture taken of Obama during the state dinner in honour of visiting
Chinese president, Hu Jintao, where Obama’s hair, so his country people
say, appeared to be darker in photos taken in the evening than it had
been in a photo taken the same morning.

The question agitating the minds of some who have no serious issues to worry about was: Had Obama dyed his hair?

But knowing the wonderful ways of airbrushing and
Photoshop the question could just as easily be had someone done the
dying for him? In different pictures of the same dinner with his wife
standing at his side, Mr. Obama’s hair appears as flecked with grey as
we have come to know it.

Ordinarily it would not matter; vanity is
universal and non-gender specific and it is not listed among the seven
deadly sins, which are: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and
gluttony. But these days the emphasis that is laid on appearance and
creating the right perception, (who cares about reality?) shows how
skewed certain values have become in the socially narcissistic world we
are building.

It is quite insidious this enthronement of the “me” culture:

It comes through in rap music where for many
artists the subject is the self, the language is the extolling of the
self, and the tone is the affirmation of the self:

It absolutely pervades the corridors of the social
networking site, Facebook, where members can constantly update their
profile pictures and dictate just how they want to be seen, in other
words you become the sole filter of the me you present to the circle of
friends you interact with and ultimately you can create and manipulate
the brand of you that you wish people to see:

It has become the be all and end all of fashion;
you have to get the look, the clothes, make up, hair, accessories and
all; because that creates the right impression, that will ultimately
determine how you will be treated by others. This is the underlying
premise of the programmes that flood the Style Network on Television
channels all over this continent that our daughters feast their eyes on
everyday. This is underlined by fake ‘reality’ shows of so called
celebrities ostensibly living their vacuous lives in front of a camera,
scripting their experiences for ‘entertainment’. In the final analysis,
what is real about a reality show? Is it not just another brand of
entertainment?

The Nigerian government decided it was going to do
the same kind of put up job for the country. It was going to rebrand
Nigeria, like some cheap commercial item. The fact that citizens were
so infuriated by the idea is the biggest affirmation of our genuineness
and authenticity as a people.

Tony Blair became prime minister of the UK with a
full head of hair in 1997 and with Bill Clinton and Al Gore, the trio’s
lustrous locks signalled the advent of a new energy in the leadership
of the Western world. By the time Blair left office, the hairline was
receding and you could see through the thinning. The bloom was gone;
the reputation had taken a battering from the disaster of the
non-existent weapons of mass destruction and the painful untidy mess
that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had engendered. Tony Blair is
revisiting those decisions he made over people’s lives in the enquiries
that are being conducted now into how he led his country into that war.

For all his 84 years there is not a strand of grey
in Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s jet-black curls, or for that
matter Italian leader Papa Silvio Berlusconi’s slicked back locks.
These two examples can clearly be attributed to vanity, and there is no
sin in that. But it does make you wonder that in spite of the fact that
Nigerian cultures generally extol age and hold in reverence the
evidence of wisdom and longevity written in the features of those who
have acquired it, few of our leaders leave office looking as if the
weight of leadership left a mark on them.