Celebrated Canadian author, and perennial favourite to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, Margaret Atwood doesn’t take herself too seriously. A genre-fiction writer who Tweets jokes and appears on television to offer tips to ice-hockey goalies, last week she penned a tongue-in-cheek column about the role of hair in Canada’s forthcoming general election. And was promptly censored.
Um, did I just get censored? For my flighty little caper on Hair? @nationalpost @fullcomment @CANADALAND http://t.co/3OHkiVaWXP …
— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) August 21, 2015
Atwood (75) rose to literary fame off the back of her dystopian fantasy The Handmaid’s Tale, which envisioned a future US where women are forced to subject themselves to men, cover their hair, forbidden to read, and commanded to remain stoically silent.
And now life is imitating art, as Atwood’s frivolous column ‘Hair is in the election-season air, but is it crucial to the question of your vote?’, which had been available in full on the Canadian newspaper The National Post’s website, was hastily pulled on Friday evening at 6pm.
The Atwood column in question is titled "Hair is in the election-season air, but is it crucial to the question of your vote?" It was available earlier Friday, at least for a while, on the website of The National Post. And then, as of around 6 p.m. ET, it was nowhere to be found.
A trimmed version of the story, which relates to an attack advert issued by Prime Minister Stephen Harper against Justin Trudeau – described in the spot as being too inexperienced, but having "Nice hair, though," – then resurfaced later that day, quickly becoming the most read article on the site.
Several edits had been made to the newly released version of Atwood’s article, including the scrapping of references to people donating money in the race. But Atwood immediately held the National Post to task, asking the editors for clarification:
OK, Deep Throats rumour is that the Hair piece is being "evaluated" by "leadership." @nationalpost @fullcomment http://t.co/3OHkiVaWXP
— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) August 21, 2015
In her column, Atwood archly skewers the political attacks by Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party against Liberal leader Trudeau, whose father Pierre was twice the Canadian PM. Atwood suggests that Harper may, as rumours claim, be wearing a hair piece and that he travels with a “personal grooming assistant” funded by taxpayers.
"Why should the taxpayer foot the bill for the micromanagement of Harper’s hair?" she writes. "Is his hair in the public interest? Is it crucial infrastructure? A matter of national security? Or is the pampering just a matter of narcissistic vanity?"
Canadians go to the polls on October 19th.
