Everybody remembers Kathy Griffin, 56, comedienne, TV personality, and hapless Trump critic whose life was socially destroyed by her photo of herself holding a latex mask made up to look like the decapitated head of President Donald Trump.
Since then she has been the target of shaming and death threats both, CNN has booted her from her annual hosting duties at the networks New Year’s Eve broadcasts, and all her future comedy tour appearances were canceled.
Griffin was rendered so persona non grata to the public by her Trump-head stunt that she pretty much dropped out of public view. And when she started showing up on social media again, attention immediately went to her new look: a shaved head.
Cancer solidarity
Kathy Griffin’s Trump photo came out back in May and the comic had pretty much gone to ground as much as she deemed necessary ever since. In fact, her new bald look may never have registered any attention at all, had writer Yashar Ali not taken photos of it and put them up on his Twitter page. The reason for Griffin doing away with her locks is a subject heartwarming family spirit.
Her sister, a cancer patient, has been undergoing chemotherapy with all its expectant results, and Kathy decided to shave it all off her head as a token of solidarity.
The two Twitter photos Ali shared showed the comedienne with her new do – or lack of it – in “action.” One has her running a hand along her smooth and shiny dome. The other depicted Kathy with her mother Maggie Griffin, who had a hand on her daughter’s bald head and was doing the exact same thing she was in the first photo. Ali finished off his caption with an admonition to donate something to the voluntary health organization American Cancer.
Past loss
Kathy Griffin and cancer have had a previous association already. She is one of five siblings, and aside from her sister for whom she had recently shaved her head bald, Griffin also had an older brother named Gary, who was stricken by the condition and eventually succumbed back in 2014.
The comic had composed a farewell post to her brother on Instagram, wherein she also took a photo with singer-songwriter Joe Walsh, Gary Griffin’s favorite artist, with an autographed picture.
It seems there is still a long way to go before Kathy Griffin could perhaps recover from her heavily criticized photograph. Her apology for posing with a decapitated Trump head effigy – enough to be considered a threat worth investigating by the Secret Service – may not be enough to salvage her reputation. Perhaps a reminder that Griffin is still a human being, as attested by her mother in her shaved-head picture on Twitter, can start a road to normalcy for her.