Sarah Palin Underweight, Anxious, Needed "Emergency Help" For Thinning Hair: New York Times

Update: Sarah Palin's hairdresser speaks! 9 days after the Times pondered the possible reasons for Sarah Palin's sudden withdrawal from the Alaskan governorship, at least one thing has become clear: it wasn't really a hair emergency. "It wasn't like I did an intervention,'' Jessica Steele, Palin's long time friend and hairdresser, told the Boston Globe in a phone interview from her Wasilla beauty parlor, the Beehive. "I think the combination of traveling and just being down there in the lower 48... We needed to get her back to shiny.''

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The New York Times has a lengthy story on Sarah Palin in Monday's edition, examining the personal and political pressures that may have driven her to resign her governorship.

The article, like many others before it, describes Palin's political operation as largely dysfunctional, to the point that prominent Republican adviser Fred Malek felt the need to personally urge her to have someone "set up a mechanism so you can return calls."

"You are getting a bad rap," he recalled saying. "Important people are trying to talk to you. And she said, 'What number are they calling?' She did not know what had been happening."

The piece describes Palin as obsessed with her critics, and under severe strain from souring relationships with Alaska legislators and encounters with the national media and paparazzi. Perhaps the strangest details of the story come from accounts from Palin's friends about her physical deterioration:

Friends worried that she appeared anxious and underweight. Her hair had thinned to the point where she needed emergency help from her hairdresser and close friend, Jessica Steele.

Read the full story here.

Comments

[Fled Sanford]

She should just have the hair from her upper lip transplanted to the top of her head...

[StopGlobalWarmingBeVegan]

Palin should become a veg to have healthier hair. :D

[boredwell]

I'm not a medical professional but it was evident in Palin's resignation speech that she's suffering from anxiety. I don't mean the normal stage fright one would experience while the world's eyes are focused intensively upon one's every word. I'm talking about what sounded like hyperventilation, those gasps, sharp intakes of breath after each sentence. They didn't subside but continued throughout her speech. While I'm eschew Palin's persona and politics, I empathize with the stress that comes from being in the glare of the unremitting spotlight. It's got to take its toll on anyone so minutely scrutinized and analyzed as the ex-governor. It's no wonder she hung up the GONE FISHING sign.

[lynettema]

I am sure she went through a depression immediately after the election. Why wouldn't she? But what I took from this article is that many Republicans gave her some excellent advice on how to handle herself and the media after the election and she chose to act like she was still in high school. The woman is just either not aware she is a part of the big time stage, not ready for it or both.

[weatherwaxx]

If she hadn't spent the past year or so attacking everyone else, she would be an object of pity. What goes around comes around.

[ShakeYourComplacency]

I think that's exactly right, and if she hadn't done that, she'd still have a career right now.

[Dustee]

Don't you think Obama was 'scrutinized' and 'analyzed' just as harshly as Palin (and with Palins help). As Palin herself once said to Obama during the campaign "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen". It appears she couldn't take it. We can't give that *pit bull with lipstick* a break just because she's a woman, bin-Laden wouldn't give her one. It's part of the job.

[Harmony1812]

People that are quilty of something also breathe like that.

[elr50]

Sarah loosing her hair? Is that what happened to her running mate?

[Layman23]

The person that needs to be blamed is McCain. He picked her out of the blue. No vetting, nothing. What is a woman from alaska to do, when she is thrust on the national stage all of a sudden?

Good thing people saw McCain's ploy of deploying Palin to get the Hillary votes.

[pharmmajor]

Thinning hair, eh?

I know this is going to sound really weird, but am I the only one who thinks that Palin would look pretty good if she was bald?

[Buffington]

Yeah, you're probably the only one.

[lazercat2008]

You're definitely the only one.

[LemonMeringue]

Likely.

[hottingers]

I heard she can't even cover her Bumpit any more.

[ChoppyBob]

lol

[heyjude4545]

It's because it has to stretch over that BIG head

[ChoppyBob]

bwahahahahahahahahahahahah

[Haitiana4Obama]

I am by no means a Palin supporter, but this is truly a new low for HuffPost (in posting this nonsense) and her so called "friends". What does thinning hair and possibly weight loss have to do with her failing policies and inability to govern Alaska? This isn't journalism, it's pure hate propaganda, this should have been in the Enquirer not NYTimes. I'm disgusted as a woman (to see this particular attack) and personally offended as a reader that someone would find this newsworthy. Shame on you who can find something to smirk over in this "article" if it qualifies as such.

[myfatherschild]

Read the article in its entirety. It is quite enlightening.

[vegasobserver]

Her hair had thinned to the point that, without her wig and glasses, many mistook her for Pat Buchanan.

[lazercat2008]

I thought she was Pat Buchanan in drag.

[ccoppe]

Blame her friends, not the HuffPost or New York Times (from which HuffPost quotes).

Her friends are the ones providing all this personal information to NYT journalists -- perhaps with her approval -- or perhaps not.

Face it, at one time this woman exulted in the personal power she achieved from the cult of her own personality, both in Alaskan and national politics. It now appears to be consuming her alive.

Someone should have warned her:
Power can be a catalyst -- or a cannibal. One's use or abuse of it determines the outcome.

[diak0n0s]

I agree.

I'm at a loss to see why the venom still flows against Palin after all of these months.

People should be able to disagree with her, without the personal attacks, especially against her family.

For a professional woman to advance her career while raising a large family and a special needs child, should cut her some slack. Even if you don't like her politics.

Instead, and sadly, it infuriates some people.

[Harmony1812]

She is pretty good at personal attacks. She can dish it out but she can't take it.

[Gup]

Wow. You really didn't read this, did you?

[johnie2xs]

If she is losing her mind, she brought the pressure upon herself. If she reacted like a seasoned politician,she could have had the sycophant press eating out of her hand. Instead, she whined and complained; pointed fingers and retaliated,instead of handling it intelligently.

I agree that the press can be relentless, but given the position she was campaigning for; scrutiny comes with the territory. Then you add to that the thinness of her resume', her cock-sure arrogant attitude, her inflammatory rhetoric, her continual sniping while not being able to handle being sniped at, and then her continual use of her flawed dysfunctional family as political props' what exactly is it that you would want the MSM to ignore?

Ya wanna play, ya gotta pay!! She just doesn't have the nads to handle it.

She brought a sling-shot to a gun fight!

[NSeagle78]

True that

[GreatTruthsSeeker]

Gee, what a log jam of posts. I don't know if any of mine made it through the debris field and don't have time to scroll and check. i would just like to suggest that Sarah be given a rest. I do not enjoy seeing anyone suffer, and try not to react to the feeding frenzy. When she starts forming a third party, I will be first in line to chew. Poor Republicans, they are stuck with a silver Sarah spoon in their mouths.

God bless Ann Richards. She was a great teacher.

[Owlygirl]

Ohhhh, so it was the thinning hair. Mystery solved.

[lisakaz2]

Underweight? No such thing for TV. She was just getting ready for her closeup, Mr. DeMille.

[ccoppe]

Bravo!

She IS Norma Desmond incarnate.

[SouthernYankeeBelle]

You described her excellently. Yuck, she was a scary numb nut.

[yvonne61]

SHE WORRY ABOUT GOING TO JAII THAT WHY HER HAIR COMING OUT.

[JillScumber]

While I wish her well as a fellow human being, I think she might look very striking as a bald woman who was also on the light side. That would match the persona, eh?