“When I finally met Berlusconi — ‘Mr. Winner, Mr. Machismo,’ as Flavia Perina described him — I was shocked. He is tiny, no more than five feet four inches tall. He wears white eyeliner on his lower lids to make his eyes pop in photographs, and he uses heavy foundation on his face, which renders him the same orangey-brown color as the cast of ‘Jersey Shore.’ His hair is thinning — ‘because I had too many girlfriends,’ he once said, before he got implants — and dyed a vivid burnt sienna. Despite these efforts, he is not a young seventy-four; Berlusconi, in the words of his best friend, is a bit dilapidated.”
This is from an article on Italy’s three-time and current prime minister Silvio Berlusconi in this week’s New Yorker. And here is Ariel Levy, the author of the article, talking about Silvio Berlusconi’s rise to power and political career.