You can parse a voting record. Flip-flops  political ones  are fair game. But don’t talk about a woman’s hair.

In one of those classic campaign gaffes, Carly Fiorina, the Republican nominee for the Senate seat held by Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, was caught mocking Ms. Boxer’s hair into an open microphone on Wednesday. She also had a few tough words about the newly minted Republican candidate for governor and her B.F.F.-on-the-stump, Meg Whitman.

Ms. Fiorina’s comments were, all told, really no more incendiary than a bit of warm pasta salad  who hasn’t indulged in some off-the-record chitchat about the grooming habits of others now and then? But they presented her with a political problem that could haunt her throughout the campaign.

They both inform and confirm the image from her days as chief executive at Hewlett-Packard that she is tart and unpleasant. And they open the entire campaign to perceptions, however tired or unfair, that women can be dragged down the road of pettiness, perceptions that detract from the serious and pressing issues of the day.