With exlusive access to salons, gyms and more, the coronavirus...

With exlusive access to salons, gyms and more, the coronavirus pandemic has proven that cultural elites are not suffering in the same way as everyday people. Credit: Getty Images/Thinkstock

As COVID-19 rampages across the world, it doesn’t play favorites: a prime minister, a cable TV anchorman, a nurse, a store clerk. For those of us diligently social distancing and wearing masks, we’ve got no restaurants to visit, no gyms, no hair salons, no nothing. But we all suffer equally, right?

Not quite.

“If you think I’m letting my roots show, you’re crazy,” says Colette, a 50ish, well-to-do divorcee who lives in a luxury high rise on the Upper East Side. But hair salons are all closed, right?

Maybe to you and me. But not Colette.

Why not just use a store-bought hair dye? “Are you kidding me?” scoffs Colette. “I’ll ruin my hair if I do it myself.”

So Colette calls her salon and makes a secret appointment. Back door. Cash only.

The old speakeasy (a club illegally serving alcohol during Prohibition in the 1930s) has reemerged in a different form: still back door, still illegal, cash only with a jacked up price. But now it’s available only to the ultra rich.

Meanwhile in Miami, baseball’s Alex Rodriquez (ARod) and his fiancé, Jennifer Lopez (JLo), were seen entering a gym supposedly shuttered by the pandemic surge. According to the New York Post’s Phil Mushnick, their limo driver disinfected the car entrance handles while they sneaked in to shape up on the sly.

In the near future, you will be able to tell the haves from the have-nots by their appearance. The regular folk with wild hair, roots showing and a few extra pounds (us), versus the trim, manicured, perfectly coiffed few (them).

Rules? Ha! We don’t need your stinking rules. We need our professional manicures and pedicures!

“[The ultra rich] have this feeling that rules don’t apply to them,” Brad Klontz, a psychologist and certified public planner, told The New York Times. “If they’re told something can’t be done …, they find a way around it.”

Hotel tycoon Leona Helmsley once sneered, “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”

The 2020 coronavirus version seems to be “We don’t play by the rules. We break 'em.”

So what say you, little people? No big deal? Or time to crack down on these double standard beauties and lawbreaking establishments?

Follow playwright Mike Vogel at @mikewrite7.

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