French president's $11,000 haircut mocked

By Hajer M'tiri

PARIS

With the approach of Bastille Day, France’s yearly commemoration of the 1789 revolution, public attention has focused on less momentous matters -- the president of the republic’s hairstyle.

Since a satirical newspaper revealed that Francois Hollande employs a personal barber at a cost of nearly 10,000 euros ($11,150) a month, one topic has dominated gossip in the nation’s cafes, restaurants and hair salons.

The controversy even cropped up during the president’s traditional Bastille Day TV interview on Thursday.

“I made 46 billion [euros] savings unlike my predecessors,” Hollande, who sports his thinning hair in a swept back style, told the interviewer. “I have reduced the Elysee budget… My salary was reduced by 30 percent.”

Naturally, the subject has spawned its own social media hashtag -- #CoiffeurGate -- and on Thursday Twitter users took to the platform to vent their fury and poke fun at their socialist president.

Mocked-up images showed him with hipster haircuts or in the guise of figures such as the British Queen, footballer Zlatan Ibrahimovic or his former partner Valerie Trierweiler.

Le Canard Enchaine newspaper sparked the discussion when it revealed the presidency had paid 9,895 euros every month -- not including benefits -- to a hairdresser identified only as Olivier B.

The figure, which puts the barber on the same salary as a government minister and three times the pay of an average French worker, was contained in a five-year contract published by the newspaper on Wednesday.

Olivier B.’s lawyer, Sarah Levy, defended his salary by saying he had closed his own business to be on-call to provide presidential hair care.

“He is available to the president around-the-clock, 24 hours a day and is never replaced by anyone else,” she said. “He missed the birth of his own children, their broken arms, their operations.”