Styles, fashions, body language... We give ourselves away

Andrea writes:

I have only one thing to say about this Elizabeth Warren person: for God's sakes woman will you do something about your hair? That flattened thing with the part in the middle and that inane flip at the bottom looks good on no one above the age of twelve. You look like a female Emo Phillips. You look like you can't bear to cut your hair completely short because deep in your hind-brain there's a little voice telling you that women with short hair look like dykes. Let me give you some advice: women of a certain age should cut their hair short. No one will think you're a lesbian — they'll think you're a mature woman who has accepted her age. Middle-aged women who cling to little-girl hair fashions make other people uneasy. They sense — and rightly — that they're having a little problem coming to terms with reality. No "compassionate" liberal who is currently drooling over your bland and unoriginal pronouncements because it echoes what they believe will tell you any of this, and you work no doubt among other females in your academic milieu who are just as delusional as you are, which is why you've been allowed to go through life with no one pulling you aside and saying "Honey, I need to tell you something." Fortunately for you, I'm here to help. Cut your hair.

I was going to pummel Warren's snippet of thought, then a whole bunch of people beat me to it. But since I'm *ahem* here at the topic... There are two things obviously wrong with what she said. One, it's a straw man argument. Nobody's objecting to taxes to pay for roads or police or national defense. We conservatives are objecting to government growing into an all-consuming monster that tries to control every aspect of our lives. (And destroy souls; that's the underlying plot.)

The other thing is, yes it's true that the factory depends on things like rule of law, and roads, and fire departments... But, those governmenty things are also all dependent on the factory. None of them would exist without the wealth and technology produced by the private economic sector. You might say it's a chicken/egg question. Well, the theory that underlies our country is that the people came first, and then formed a government to serve them. If what Warren is saying, or rather sort of just assuming, has become our principle, then in a real way America no longer exists. My answer is government should be the servant, not the master.

(The "theory" of the typical European state is exactly the opposite. The state came first—maybe growing out of some Medieval kingdom—and it then allowed allowed the people various rights and privileges, which it can take away.)

But I think Andrea's point is the gravamen. "Middle-aged women who cling to little-girl hair fashions make other people uneasy." We do, and I suspect we feel uneasy for deep and important symbolic reasons. Something is more wrong here than just bad fashion sense. This woman is a major figure in the government of the most powerful nation in history, and she is running for the dignity of the US Senate. And yet she is giving off "I don't want to grow up" vibrations. Something's very off.

Update: I also suspect that this is a painful example of how our academic institutions have decayed. The poor girl may have become a full "professor" at Harvard without ever having a stiff argument with a conservative colleague--because none are allowed in. (This is called "Academic Freedom," as in freedom to not think.)