Washington - The first known published description of Donald Trump's hair, as an entity that deserved its own description, was mild.
“His sandy hair is probably a bit long by standards of the corporate world,” read a 1984 newspaper profile of the then-38-year-old mogul. “With the sides slicked back just a bit.”
Three decades later, describing the headstuff of the leading Republican presidential candidate has been elevated to an art form. Is is swirled or swooped? Animal or vegetable? (Mineral?) Burnt sienna or orange Creamsicle?
Last week one website published an extensive investigation asserting that the whole concoction might actually be a $60 000 (about R720 000) weave.
Here, in the most comprehensive and highly scientific endeavour of its kind, culled from 30 years of news articles, we present the top 100 unique descriptors of the Trump mane, written by journalists or pontificators who secretly fancy themselves poets:
1. The complex superstructure that is Donald Trump's hair
2. A masterpiece whose guiding principal is a heroic desire to completely conceal the forehead
3. A thin sheath of perfectly placed strands
4. An abandoned nest
5.A hairspray labyrinth
6. It appears to be a comb-over, but, incredibly, it doesn't arrive from any direction. You cannot stare at The Donald's hair very long. It's like staring into the sun.
7. A decomposing ear of corn
8. A corn husk doll cursed by a witch
9. An ambitious corn dog that escaped from the concession stand at a rural Alabama fairground, stole an unattended wig, hopped a freight train to Atlantic City and never looked back
10. The furrowed wake that a speedboat would leave on a lake of orange sherbet
11. A Mobius combover
12. (His hair) resembles the behaviour of alpha chimps who, as primatologist Frans de Waal reports in 'Chimpanzee Politics,' make their hair stand on end in order to look large.
13. The male equivalent of a push-up bra
14. An upside-down Twitter logo
15. A mullet that died in some horrific accident
16. Carefully crafted helmet of fine gossamer, woven into a precise immovable template
17. Golden fleece
18. Dyed the nascent yellow of a baby chick
19. A hue best described as 'Cigarette-stained teeth blond'
20. The patriotic shade of amber waves of grain
21. A ginger forest
22. Orange fizz
23. Burnt Cheetos auburn
24. The same unplaceable tinge as the marble in the Trump Tower lobby
25. The ginger flank of Trump's hair was plastered firm down at the sides, and a side parting had emerged. The back was long, straggly, and running free.
26. Orange and matted on the sides, and now white/silver, wispy, swept back, defying the laws of physics and practicality on top
27. More flyaways than LAX
28. More soft-serve swirl than Dairy Queen
29. An aggressive cowlick gone rogue
30. An unruly shrub
31. An unfortunate situation
32. This multidirectional comb-over is so complex that even engineers marvel at its structure. Resistant to wind and rain, NASA has looked at it as a possible Shuttle Shield.
33. The roll of sod that never looked quite right in your yard
34. Farcical follicle humiliation
35. Combed like he's televangelist Benny Hinn
36. Like Biff, from “Back to the Future”
37. Like Lucille Ball
38. Like a troll doll
39. Dyson Airbladed
40. Norwegian bunch grass
41. Mexican feather grass
42. A South American Flannel caterpillar
43. The hair of 33 Barbie dolls
44. A hairpiece come to life
45. It is a fluorish. On top, it flows forward to the forehead where it does a fine, serpentine U-turn, while along the sides it sweeps over the tops of his ears like rows of cirrus clouds.
46. (It) appears to be courting the women's vote, combed on the left side of his head in the shape of a vagina.
47. A pancake hat
48. An omelette
49. Bread at the end of the loaf
50. A wavy slant that seems to defy gravity
51. White roots and light filaments wrapped and wrapped around the back of his head
52. An airboat skimming the Everglades
53. The halo of meticulously crafted bullsh*t
54. A Kangol hat made of spun sugar
55. What appears to be Daniel Boone's mythical coonskin cap
56. A pumpkin having a nervous breakdown
57. Bolted down like a storm cellar door
58. Decomposing pumpkin pie inhabited by vicious albino squirrels
59. A viscous, bird-killing oil slick
60. Fine strands of gold-plated fur
61. A horse's mane blowing in the wind
62. A dead skunk
63. A radioactive skunk.
64. A dead squirrel
65. A mutant squirrel
66. A beaver's tail
67. A very well-behaved guinea pig
68. A badger sitting atop his head
69. An actual, live woodchuck
70. A dishrag that on closer inspection is alive with maggots
71. It may look like a dead gerbil, but it actually advertises both his vanity (hence, his humanness) and his imperviousness to ridicule. It would qualify as the most original Washington haircut since Ronald Reagan went prematurely orange.
72. A dead, furry lobster
73. Diffused, unsavoury salmon
74. Artless
75. Banjo strings
76. That thing
77. That construction
78. That curious thatch, which he wears longer than most men of his generation who are not in a 70's revival band.
79. A small straw hut
80. Wisps of insulation material
81. Best left to an architectural critic
82. A face on the top of his head. A twin, all but absorbed in the womb. The eyes move. The lips quiver.
83. Buttery-fluffed
84. Souffle'd
85. Miraculous, restorative-powered
86. Epic and luxuriant mop
87. Billowing golden pompadour
88. Weird piece of velcro
89. Strange phenomenon
90. A glowing orb presiding over the night's spectacle
91. A creation consisting of two different parts, like an Ikea shelf
92. A comb-over from hell
93. The new wave of comb-overs, (which) drops the lie and the shame and just asks onlookers to marvel at the scale, vision and depth of the comb-over you've just created.
94. The grotesque, exhibitionist, peacocky mutation that adorns his skull
95. The Trump Crosshatch (TM)
96. A mound of cotton candy
97. A bridal-level updo
98. A blow-dried confection
99. An inter-dimensional, gravity-warping vortex
100. “Hair”
Washington Post
Sources: The Washington Post, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Haaretz, the Weekly Standard, (Canada's) Globe and Mail, Jezebel, Nerdist, Reddit, Psychology Today, the (U.K.'s) Guardian, Quartz, Rolling Stone, the AV Club, the Los Angeles Times, the Daily Beast, Huffington Post, St. Petersburg Times, (Ontario's) Hamilton Spectator, Men's Health, the New Hampshire Union Leader, Esquire, Buzzfeed, Wired, Yahoo!, Gawker, the Vancouver Sun, Smosh, NME, the Irish Examiner, the Washington Times, Odyssey, the National Report, the (U.K.'s) Daily Mail, the Herald Times, the (Bloomington, Ind.) Waterloo Region Record, People, the (U.K.'s) Daily Mirror, the Toronto Star, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, the (U.K.'s) Independent, the New York Observer, the New York Post, the Irish Daily Mail, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Moscow News, the (U.K.'s) Telegraph, (Canada's) National Post.