Letter: Short cut to the President

REGARDING John Carlin's profile on Clinton's ladies ("Women about the House", 25 January), the missing clue to the president's passions may be simplicity itself: it's in the bangs (aka fringes). Second lady (Flowers), third lady (Jones), and fourth lady (newcomer Lewinsky) are all photographed sporting the neatest (in the American sense) of bangs.

But what of First Lady Hillary? Bangless. She has a furrowed brow, not a rolling-in-hay kind of hairstyle - meaning what? A more purposeful sense to life? A possible lack of sensuality? After all, it is she who the writer claims "admires Bill more like a mother".

Carlin also suggests that one woman isn't enough for Clinton. Maybe to those fifth and sixth ladies waiting in the wings, the way forward could lie in a fringe.

Carol Godsmark

Chichester, West Sussex