Cole, 26, appears in a television ad in which she sings the praises of L'Oréal Elvive Full Restore 5, a shampoo and conditioner range. "My hair feels stronger, full of life, replenished with a healthy shine. It's got its mojo back," she says as she parades in a red dress.

It could prove nigh-on impossible for viewers to get the same result simply out of a bottle, however. Cole owes her look to hair extensions, which cost up to £1,000, to give her hair more volume and bounce.

During her TV commercial, a message flashes up, saying her hair is "styled with some natural extensions", but it remains on screen for fewer than two seconds of its 30-second duration. In magazine advertisements, the hair extensions are mentioned in print 2mm high.

Viewers of the ad have lodged complaints with Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), saying that the tiny script was "misleading" and the commercial leaves the impression that it is Cole's hair that is swinging and shiny with the help of the product.

Among those who have complained that they are misleading is Daisy Goodwin, the television producer and occasional Sunday Times columnist.

Goodwin, 47, said last week: "My daughter, aged nine, has been saying, ‘Please can we buy the shampoo because I want to look like Cheryl Cole'. But her hair is not her own. The reason her hair looks fabulous is because of hair extensions. I didn't even see the reference to them in the ad."

She added: "Women are being taken for a ride. It is not the same as having your own hair. It's bonkers."

The ASA doesn't believe the commercial is problematic, and point out that the extensions are mentioned in the ad, and are presumably being treated with the product. But is that really what passes as truth in advertising?

L'Oréal Row Takes The Shine Off Cheryl Cole's Hair [Times of London]

Over at the L.A. Times, James Rainey is asking himself — apropos of McCain's media ubiquity, which one safely assumes is based less on talent and expertise than on her surname — "Shouldn't I be disgusted? Why can't I get more disgusted?" Dude, I have asked myself that more than once. And yet I'm not, for the same reasons Rainey lists, which boil down to this: "she has tried to do some good, and tell at least a few small truths, on her initial orbit through the media firmament." Yes. Also, telling off the likes of Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham never diminishes my esteem for a person, I can tell you that much.

And as Rainey points out, we should be grateful for McCain's name recognition because it gives a platform to the sort of Republican who would otherwise be crowded out of the spotlight by Teabaggers, Birthers, Dittoheads and sundry other ignorant fools. Better still, she has no patience for them: "Giddy girl-gab notwithstanding, McCain is one of the few voices in the Republican Party to speak out against the extremists who lately have been spinning out dark conspiracy theories about the fate of the nation. She has called for a more civil public discourse." As the media insists that Americans are more polarized than ever, trotting out fringe nutcases as representatives of mainstream opinion, McCain is there acting as... well, not exactly a bridge between the two camps, but maybe a butterfly Band-Aid on a gaping wound.

And the way she does that is instructive: Her bipartisan appeal doesn't come from wishywashy triangulation, but from expressing strong opinions that don't follow any particular party line. She's for both gay marriage and gun rights. She was educated at an ivy league school — in New York City, no less — yet came out of there in favor of small government and a big military, suggesting that the supposed brainwashing going on on liberal, elitist east-coast campuses these days may not be as effective (or, you know, existent) as some fear. Everyone in politics seems to believe that the way to bridge the divide between right and left is to avoid giving either side anything to reject — which essentially means refusing to take a firm stand on anything, thereby coming off as spineless and fake to both sides. Meghan McCain comes off as neither; the fact that she doesn't hesitate to choose a position on divisive issues, regardless of whom she ends up aligned with on any given one, makes her seem like — what's this? — a reasonable person who thinks things through and comes to her own conclusions. And that's something anyone who's not a fringe nutcase can respect, regardless of how closely our views match hers.

That's not to say I'd vote for her, if she ran for anything other than Self-Identified Republican I Find Most Tolerable. Nor is it to say, even, that she's qualified to opine on politics half as much as she's asked to; she's awfully young and, as a recent showdown with Paul Begala on Bill Maher's show demonstrated (read Rainey for the nutshell), hasn't yet educated herself enough to mitigate that. But then, a lot of the people talking publicly about politics — myself included — are scarcely qualified, and she's far less cringeworthy than many of the most vocal.

Moving right along, I'll tell you what Meghan McCain is qualified to offer an opinion on: Hair extensions! If you miss her talking about them on Tyra today, you can get the scoop from her column at The Daily Beast. "If Tyra had the courage to go on TV without a weave," McCain writes, "I wanted everyone to know this: Not all the hair attached to my head is real. Yes, I have been wearing different variations of permanent and semi-permanent hair extensions since high school. Even as far back as middle school if you count the banana hairclip with the sliver of hair attached to it I wore to my eighth-grade dance."

I have to say, like Crystal Renn's cellulite, that came as a surprise to me, even if it shouldn't have been one. (In this case, I plead both old and terminally unhip. I spend a lot of money ensuring that my own hair never reverts to its natural state, but extensions are not even on my radar.) As inconsequential as Meghan McCain's fake hair may seem — or may, in fact, be — it is exactly this sort of exposure and rejection of bullshit that makes her so appealing to me. And I'll let her make the argument that this confession is, in fact, consequential:

It's admitting that we as women-especially women who appear on television-don't just wake up like this. It takes hours and hours of sitting in the hair and makeup chair. Sometimes when people meet me they are surprised by, among other things, how pale I look in person. Basically, because I don't run around every day with fake eyelashes and extensions in, it's all a part of the smoke and mirrors of television.

She's hardly the first public figure to say that, but it really can't be said enough. In the last year, I've been made up for TV and magazine shoots for the first time in my life, and oh my god, the amount of fuss — and product — that goes into making you look halfway normal on film is unimaginable. And it's no coincidence that after I appeared on CNN a few months ago — for which I spent literally ten times longer in hair and make-up than I did onscreen — the majority of the commenters on my body image blog couldn't help commenting on how pretty I looked. Yes, because a very skilled professional spent a very long time covering up what I actually look like.

I love Meghan McCain for being honest about shit like that, and it's the sort of thing that makes me trust her — not to be right all the time, but to say what she actually thinks. That appearance of genuineness is what makes me willing to listen to her even when I couldn't disagree more, and I would like to see a whole lot more of that from people involved in politics (however tangentially). She may not be an ace political scholar, but that doesn't mean our politicians, on both sides of the aisle, couldn't take a lesson from her.

Meghan McCain Speeds Ahead [LA Times]
Yes, I Wear Fake Hair [Daily Beast]

• The body of former model Katoucha Niane, one of the first major black models, has been found in the Seine river, in Paris. Missing since January, she lived in a houseboat and is presumed to have fallen off after a night of partying and drinking. Her career highlights included walking for Thierry Mugler, Paco Rabanne, Lacroix and serving as a muse to Yves Saint Laurent himself. [AP]
  
• Tom Brady is rumored to be the next face (well, chest) of Calvin Klein underwear. [Page Six]
  
• The BCBG Max Azria Group: 100% fur-free starting with its Spring 2009 collections. This is a huge sacrifice for them since BCBG has always been sooooo closely associated with fur coats, so don't forget to spend more money next time you're there! [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• Rag Trade quote of the day: "Any woman over 40 has extra flesh here and here. I never hesitate to say to Alber [Elbaz, Lanvin's designer], 'Think of older women!'" Lanvin chairwoman Shaw-Lan Chu-Wang. [WSJ]

• Halle Berry is doing a fragrance deal with the sophisticated likes of Coty. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Why is Fendi excited that its new Paris flagship store has a courtyard? So that they can stage fur fashion shows there during couture season. Are you reading, Ingrid Newkirk? [WWD, sub req'd]
• In other Fendi news: Amy Winehouse is performing at the party for the store tonight. [WWD, 1st item]
• Twiggy's daughter is an assistant designer at Stella McCartney. [WWD, 3rd item]
• Julia Restoin-Roitfeld was given free clothes straight off the motherfucking runway by Givenchy. Because we all know she's truly a girl in need. [Fashion Week Daily, 6th item]
• Armani and Chanel are in the tennis racket business now. [Sassybella]
• Lutz & Patmos is doing a more "affordable" secondary line called Leroy & Perry. T-shirts retail for $300. [WWD, sub req'd]
• The Gap's key to success: shutting stores. [WWD, sub req'd]
• New Zealand: has a fashion industry?! [Economist]
• Shocker: Nicole Richie wears hair extensions. [BellaSugar]

• Zac Posen for Target Australia?! I would be super excited if I weren't super depressed that he's not designing for Target U.S.A. [Sassybella]
  
• Parisian rock band Rock & Roll has written a new song about their experience attending Milan Fashion Week. The song's name? "Coke Freaks and Fashion Whores." Of course. [WWD, 1st item]
  
• Claudia Schiffer's favorite image of herself in the upcoming "Metamorphosis" campaign she shot with Karl Lagerfeld? "The one where I look like a man. It reminds me of my brother." [Vogue UK]
  
• The latest limited edition Marc Jacobs fragrances are supposed to smell like sorbet. So, y'know, you can smell like food instead of eating it. [Nylon]

• Roberto Cavalli on Elton John's Oscar party: "I think it was one of the best parties I've ever been to. And, my dear, I've been to a lot of parties." [Fashion Week Daily]
• Carla Bruni: Not attending Paris Fashion Week. [WWD, 2nd item]
• Petra Nemcova: Sex kitten or philanthropist? [Chic Report]
• Tod's just got a little cooler: It's having a party. In March. And Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys is performing. [Vogue UK]
• Another big crackdown on NYC's Canal Street counterfeit bag sellers. Sigh. We'll be sad if never again can we take a walk without being offered a Fundi or Preda bag. [WWD, sub req'd]
• $20 million in jewels, missing from a Milan showroom. [Fashion Week Daily]
• Everything you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask about hair extensions. [BellaSugar]
• Theodora (daughter of Keith) Richards is the new creative director of 4 Stroke Jeans. Which sounds like the dumbest poser name for a denim line ever. [Page Six]
• Puma now partnering with Hussein Chayalan. Which is definitely one of the wackier fashion world pairings we've heard of in a while. [WSJ]