Aurelia Butler

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    Hair Transplants and the New Male Vanity

    Last year, I noticed that two comedians I like talked about getting hair transplants. One of them, Matteo Lane, named his special “Hair Plugs & Heartache,” which opens with an extended bit about the transplant experience. I appreciated Lane’s radical (and very funny) transparency regarding the cosmetic enhancement. He talked about the expense, described the 10-hour surgery and the long recovery, and joked about his hair growing in gradually “like a Chia pet.” He’s very happy with the outcome.Lane also talks about why he got his surgery in the United States instead of in Turkey. He said he didn’t want to go through customs with his head swollen like the alien from the movie “Mars Attacks”: “I want to be ugly at home.” Going to Turkey to get a cheaper hair transplant is such a cliché that there’s an entire genre of social media video dedicated to depicting men’s beef carpaccio heads on “Turkish hairlines” flying back to their homes from Istanbul.The British tabloid The Mirror just ran a story about one regular bloke who traveled to Turkey for hair transplant surgery and is quoted as saying that he feels he has “a new lease of life.”This is a marked change from just a few years ago, when men were less forthcoming about getting surgery on their domes. In 2021, my newsroom colleague Alex Williams wrote about the men who got hair transplants during the locked-down days of the pandemic. “There’s still that old stigma, where guys aren’t supposed to worry about how they look and spend a lot of money on their appearance,” one hair transplant recipient said at the time.That stigma is very old, indeed. There’s long been anxiety over hair loss among men, according to Martin Johnes, a professor of modern history at Swansea University in Wales who has researched masculinity, modernity and male baldness. But the stress really started ramping up in the 1930s, when men stopped wearing hats regularly and popular media started valorizing youthfulness more aggressively.In the 1930s, it was considered effeminate to pay too much attention to your appearance yet many of these men still wanted to take action if they were unlucky enough to go bald. They called baldness obscene, a major disaster and, poetically, a favored nightmare. One 30-year-old upholsterer said:I do not care to see bald heads. I can only tolerate them if the owner has a large head, or if his personality will not allow himself to look pitiable.While the bad feelings around baldness clearly aren’t new, talking about those feelings in public is. And hair replacement technology has improved so much in the last couple of decades that transplants look real now — it’s not just snake oil or cheesy infomercials for hair in a can anymore.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Joseph Gitnig, Central Park Minstrel Known as Pegasus, Dies at 95

    For nearly two decades, he delighted children and adults in New York City with songs and silly antics. He also scored a victory for free speech.Pegasus, the mythological winged stallion, symbolized divine inspiration and boundless freedom. So did Joseph Gitnig, the itinerant minstrel who called himself Pegasus and delighted children and adults who gathered spontaneously for nearly two decades to see him perform at the Central Park Zoo.Pegasus, the stallion, achieved immortality when Zeus transformed him into a constellation in the northern sky. Pegasus, the man, died on Sunday in Tilburg, the Netherlands, where he had lived since he gave up his New Age performance art in 1984. He was 95.Tineke Gitnig-Bertrums, his wife and only immediate survivor, said the cause was kidney failure.Pegasus — referring to him formally as Mr. Gitnig would be demystifying — epitomized a more innocent era, or at least one in which children, and adults, could be distracted and even entertained by a ballad, a soap bubble or a balloon and other less mind-blowing diversions than violent video games, Super Bowl halftime pyrotechnics and Las Vegas extravaganzas.“I’m a poet, writer, actor, dancer, and I put it all together in the package of a clown,” he told The New York Times in 1974. He once told Dramatics magazine, “I’ve been called an astronaut of inner space, a cosmonaut of the imagination, bard of brotherhood, troubadour, rhapsodist, folklorist and the indefinable fool.”Whatever you want to call him, he did more than entertain. After being arrested twice in the mid-1970s, he helped establish a precedent for free speech: For better or worse, according to Arthur Eisenberg, executive counsel of the New York Civil Liberties Union, the city agreed that performance art in parks and other public spaces is a form of free expression protected by the First Amendment.“Creative Sharer” was how he described himself on the business cards that he handed out, hoping to be booked at children’s parties and other events as a way to supplement the up to $3,000 a year in coins and small bills he collected in a basket at the zoo. He made a living in the off-season as a clerk and shoe salesman.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump’s ‘Gold Card’ Set Off Panic in an Unexpected Place: Real Estate

    The president initially said his $5 million green card alternative would replace a visa for foreign investors that has become a favorite financing tool of major developers.President Trump’s plan to sell green cards for $5 million each, a program he is calling a “gold card,” has largely been met with a shrug. It’s not clear exactly how the program would work, if it’s legal or how many potential immigrants would really pay $5 million for a path to U.S. citizenship.But in a niche area of dealmaking, alarm bells are blaring.Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said on Tuesday that the plan to effectively sell green cards would replace the EB-5 investor visa, a favorite source of funding for major real estate projects.Massive developments — from New York’s Hudson Yards to the San Francisco Shipyard to, yes, Trump Plaza in Jersey City — have been financed in part by overseas investors applying to the EB-5 program, which grants permanent U.S. residence. Such investors are motivated by a green card, not by maximizing returns, and so for developers their capital tends to be less expensive than borrowing money from a typical commercial lender.The real estate company owned by the family of Trump’s son-in-law, Kushner Capital, drew scrutiny for its use of EB-5 funding during the first Trump administration.Overall, the EB-5 program does not bring in a lot of money — about $4 billion last year in the context of the $28 trillion U.S. economy — but it represents a huge profit bump for a small but powerful political contingency: major real estate developers. They are not likely to see EB-5 killed without a fight.“Cheap capital is the crack cocaine to the real estate industry and probably every other industry,” said Matt Gordon, the C.E.O. of E3iG, which advises both foreign investment-based visa applicants and U.S. companies seeking funding.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    2 Books for Jazz Age Enthusiasts

    A Scott and Zelda roman à clef; a photo collection of 1920s Paris.Museum of the City of New YorkDear readers,The Museum of the City of New York recently unveiled the refurbished Stettheimer Dollhouse, the decades-long creation of Carrie Stettheimer — who, with her sisters Florine (a painter) and Ettie (a writer), hosted notable salons for the 1920s avant-garde in their vast suite of apartments at a Midtown apartment building called Alwyn Court.I have been to see the house (“dollhouse” is almost a misnomer) a number of times since the museum brought it back on display, and have admired the miniature Marcel Duchamps and Gaston Lachaises as well as the fabulous interiors. It’s a true work of art in its own right. And it’s sent me down a rabbit hole.—Sadie“Parties: Scenes From Contemporary New York Life,” by Carl Van VechtenFiction, 1930Any discussion of the New York 1920s avant-garde must include Van Vechten — music critic, drama critic, photographer, novelist, Florine Stettheimer subject, and friend and editor to Gertrude Stein, among many, many other things. Van Vechten is frequently described as a champion of the Harlem Renaissance and is often credited with sparking interest among white bohemians (and bored socialites) with jazz and Black culture. For a full and nuanced portrait of his contradictory and wildly prolific life and career, I implore you to read his collected correspondence with Langston Hughes as well as Edward White’s excellent 2014 biography, “The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Dark Heart of Trump’s Foreign Policy

    The journalist Fareed Zakaria discusses the worldview emerging from Trump’s foreign policy decisions regarding Ukraine, Gaza, China and beyond.The New York TimesThe Dark Heart of Trump’s Foreign PolicyThe journalist Fareed Zakaria discusses the worldview emerging from Trump’s foreign policy decisions regarding Ukraine, Gaza, China and beyond.This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.What is the Donald Trump doctrine? What is Donald Trump’s foreign policy?I think the place to begin to try to untangle what we’ve actually seen is to listen to the way Trump and Vice President JD Vance speak about our allies.Archived clip of Donald Trump: I’ve had very good talks with Putin, and I’ve had not such good talks with Ukraine. They don’t have any cards, but they play it tough.Archived clip of JD Vance: The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values — values shared with the United States of America.Archived clip of Donald Trump: I mean, look, let’s be honest: The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. That’s the purpose of it. And they’ve done a good job of it, but now I’m president.Something is new here. The Trump doctrine that we’ve seen in the first month of this presidency is going to reshape the world much more fundamentally than Trump did in the four years of his first term. That’s in part because of who is around him now — JD Vance and Elon Musk, instead of the foreign policy establishment.So I wanted to have a bigger picture conversation about what this Trump doctrine is. I’m joined today by Fareed Zakaria, the host of “Fareed Zakaria GPS” on CNN, a Washington Post columnist and the author of the best-selling book, “Age of Revolutions.”This episode contains strong language.Ezra Klein: Fareed Zakaria, welcome back to the show.Fareed Zakaria: Always a pleasure, Ezra.To the extent you feel you can define it, what’s the Trump doctrine?Part of the problem with Trump is that he is so mercurial. He’s so idiosyncratic that, just when you think you figured out the Trump doctrine, he goes and says something that kind of sounds like the opposite of the Trump doctrine.But I do think that there is one coherent worldview that Trump seems to espouse and has espoused for a long time. The first ad he took out when he was a real estate developer was in 1987. It was an ad about how Japan was ripping us off economically and Europe was ripping us off by free-riding on security. And what that represents, fundamentally, is a rejection of the open international system that the United States and Europe have built over the last eight decades.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    More Women File Lawsuits Against Brothers Accused of Sex Crimes

    Tal Alexander and his brothers, Oren Alexander and Alon Alexander, who are twins, now face at least 24 civil lawsuits, as they await trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.Seven lawsuits were filed this week against one or more of the Alexander brothers, who are facing multiple accusations of sexual assault in both civil and criminal court. The newest allegations against Tal Alexander and his brothers, Oren Alexander and Alon Alexander, who are twins, came this week in a flurry of last-minute claims all brought against the men as a legal window for decades-old allegations is closing. Two of the lawsuits were filed on Friday night to meet a midnight deadline.The Alexanders are collectively now facing at least 24 lawsuits, deepening the legal troubles for the brothers once known for their jet-setting lifestyles fueled by the work of Tal Alexander and Oren Alexander in the luxury residential real estate. In the latest batch of lawsuits, the net of allegations has widened to include their parents; Douglas Elliman, the real estate brokerage where Tal Alexander and Oren Alexander once worked; the Alexander family business; and the owner of an estate in the Hamptons who frequently hosted parties that the brothers attended.The claims add new twists to the maze of sexual assault allegations against the brothers who were arrested in December in Miami Beach on federal sex-trafficking charges. Currently jailed in New York, they are scheduled to go to trial early next year. All three have pleaded not guilty.Just a few years ago, the brothers were fixtures of a social circuit in Miami and Manhattan, making their nightlife adventures part of their brand. Tal Alexander and Oren Alexander were among the country’s most prominent real estate agents, while Alon Alexander, who ran the family business Kent Security Services and did not work in real estate, accompanied them on the circuit.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Intelligence Officials Continue Chat Messages Inquiry

    Officials confirmed that the N.S.A. managed a system that had been used for sexually explicit chats and L.G.B.T.Q. discussions. An order to fire dozens after the chats were revealed drew scrutiny amid a military purge of transgender soldiers.Intelligence officials are continuing to investigate sexually explicit messages that were posted on a government chat tool, the National Security Agency said Friday, exchanges that prompted the nation’s top intelligence official to order the firing of more than 100 officers this week.In a statement on Friday, a spokesman for the National Security Agency said the messages were posted on Intelink, a tool that the N.S.A. manages for the entire intelligence community.“N.S.A. takes the allegations of recently identified misconduct on Intelink very seriously,” the spokesman said in a statement. “Behavior of this type will not be tolerated on this or any other N.S.A.-hosted system.”The existence of the messages was disclosed on Monday by Christopher F. Rufo, a conservative activist. Intelligence officials confirmed that the National Security Agency managed the system that had been used for the sexually explicit chats.People briefed on the inquiry said some of the chat logs that were made public had been altered or manipulated, in some cases to remove classified markings or other material. But the people familiar with the inquiry said some context was removed from the exchanges and screenshots in other instances might not have been accurate representations.Long-serving U.S. civil servants said there was little doubt that some of what was posted was inappropriate for any workplace, much less a system in classified networks that is meant for intelligence sharing. At least one of the chat rooms involved was shut down last year, according to a U.S. official.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Homeland Security Officials Push I.R.S. for 700,000 Immigrants’ Addresses

    The tax collector has so far denied the request because of concerns it violates taxpayer privacy laws.The Department of Homeland Security has pushed the Internal Revenue Service to turn over the addresses of roughly 700,000 undocumented immigrants it is seeking to deport, according to three people familiar with the matter, in a request that could violate taxpayer privacy laws.I.R.S. officials have so far denied the department’s attempts to verify the addresses, the people said, because of the legal concerns. But the request is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to enlist the tax collector in its plans for mass deportations.Many undocumented immigrants file tax returns with the I.R.S., giving the agency information about where they live, their families, their employers and their earnings. The I.R.S. gives immigrants without Social Security numbers a separate nine-digit code called an individual tax payer identification number to file their returns.Taxpayer information is typically kept closely held at the I.R.S., with improper disclosure barred under federal law. I.R.S. officials have told their Department of Homeland Security counterparts that they need to follow rules governing taxpayer privacy, the people familiar with the matter said.Representatives for the I.R.S. and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Washington Post reported earlier on the request.The request is a sign of the lengths Trump administration officials are trying to go to deport millions of immigrants in the United States illegally. Administration officials are preparing to create a registry listing migrants and are using military sites to help deport them.The Trump administration has repeatedly sought access to taxpayer information at the I.R.S. in ways that officials at the tax agency have worried could violate federal law. The agency recently signed an agreement allowing a member of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to view anonymized taxpayer data as part of a push to modernize the agency’s software. The Musk team is leading an effort to shrink federal programs and the government’s work force.The Department of Homeland Security had previously tried to enlist I.R.S. agents in its broad immigration crackdown, asking for agents to audit companies that might be hiring unauthorized immigrants, according to a copy of a memo viewed by The New York Times. President Trump has also suggested that I.R.S. agents could be sent to the border with Mexico.The requests have added to the tumult at an agency that is already reeling. The I.R.S. has been hit with more than 7,000 layoffs under the Trump administration so far, and its acting commissioner, Doug O’Donnell, stepped down on Friday, the second resignation at the top in little more than a month.Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have both suggested that the I.R.S. should be abolished. More