Ocasio-Cortez Responds To Conservative Outlet That Tried To Shame Her For $300 Haircut

US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez  served up a bit of sass in response to a news article that criticised her for spending $300 on a haircut.

On Wednesday, the freshman congresswoman was targeted by conservative news outlet The Washington Times in an article titled “EXCLUSIVE: Self-declared socialist AOC splurges on high-dollar hairdo.” The piece explained that Ocasio-Cortez “spent nearly $300 on her hairdo” at the Last Tangle Salon in Washington, DC, last month.

The article went on to say that she “shelled out $80 for a haircut and $180 for lowlights” and that a “20% tip would have added $52 to the bill.”

It’s unclear why hair maintenance would be news. The outlet also clearly does not understand how much it costs for a woman to get her hair done in America, as it quoted the president of Americans for Limited Government, Richard Manning, calling Ocasio-Cortez “the Eva Peron of American politics.”

“She preaches socialism while living the life of the privileged,” Manning said. “There is nothing wrong with spending money to make yourself look better, especially as a personality who depends upon visual mediums for her power. But it is a bad look to spend hundreds of dollars to get your hair done to make a video decrying income inequality.”

Democratic socialist publication Jacobin tweeted about the article, quipping that it’s sad to see democratic socialists like Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) “do things like buy winter coats and get haircuts.”

On Thursday morning, Ocasio-Cortez responded to Jacobin’s missive about the article with some statistics about poverty in America and how the policies of democratic socialists are not to blame.

“Our policies, like Medicare for All, advance prosperity for working people. They’re just mad we look good doing it,” she wrote, accompanied by a hair toss emoji.

Many people on Twitter were incredulous that the cost of the New York congresswoman’s haircut was “news”:

The Washington Times piece also notes that the 29-year-old “could have saved roughly $100 for the same hairstyle at the government-subsidized Capitol Hill barbershop.”

“Her high-dollar hairdo stands in stark contrast to that of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a former senator from Alabama who is a regular customer at Senate Hair Care Services,” reads the piece, which explains that the barbershop serves “members of Congress and the public” and charges $20 for a men’s cut.

Anyone who has ever been to a hair salon can tell you that a men’s haircut almost always costs less than a woman’s, which the article does acknowledge, even though it undercuts the main point of the piece.

The absurdity of that comparison was also not lost on Twitter: