Replay: Kristi Noem and the MAGA Beauty Aesthetic

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0:37You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.

0:44I'm Meher Ahmad. I'm an editor for New York Times opinion. From right-wing influencers to trad wives, there's an immediately recognizable aesthetic that's easy to clock. Let's call it MAGA beauty. It's visible everywhere, from TikTok videos to White House press briefings. And for the women in Trump's world, that look often goes hand in hand with an aggressive approach to politics and power. But it didn't necessarily start with the GOP. So to unpack the look and what it means, I'm joined by Jessica Gross. She's a writer for Opinion who covers family, education, religion, and culture. And she recently wrote a piece about this aesthetic for her newsletter.

1:21Jessica, thanks for joining me.

1:23Jessica Grose:My pleasure. Thanks for having me. So I guess to start, I wondered if you could describe what the conservative female aesthetic looks like. So it starts with so-called Utah curls, and those were popularized by Mormon momfluencers. They are usually center-parted curl. Okay, so this is what the hair looks like. After it's been curled, you can see the swoopy front pieces. They're not too crazy volumized. You can see the straight ends. The makeup look is very heavy. It is flat and matte, as the influencer Suzanne Lambert told me. She is a comedian and content creator who has made a number of incredibly funny TikToks about what she calls Republican makeup.

2:06Jessica Grose:Hey, I noticed that all of the Republican girlies in my comments do their makeup the exact same gorgeous way. So I thought that I would try to do it myself. It is often cosmetically enhanced or appears to be cosmetically enhanced. I wanted a really matte finish. It's giving drained. It's giving dusty. We want to make sure that it doesn't look like we've ever used moisturizer once in our life. Often it is accessorized with big old crosses, so a big cross necklace or earrings. And the clothes are always form-fitting, whether they are casual or corporate wear or cocktail dress. And how does it stand out to you?

2:44But like, I guess in a lot of ways, I feel as though what you've described is a little bit out of touch with the like mainstream of what beauty standards are currently, which is more dewy, minimalist, like a no makeup, makeup, clean girl aesthetic. It kind of contrasts from it in a big way, right?

2:59Jessica Grose:Well, I think it depends. I think there are a lot of influencers who are making money with that look. I would call it runoff Kardashian. The Kardashians themselves have moved on from this look. the sort of heavily makeup contoured look. And because algorithms run on homogeneity, I think having that look makes it easier to go viral because it's already saying, I am part of this particular team. And so before anything actually comes out of their mouths, you already have an idea of who they are and potentially what they stand for. It's like an aesthetic signal of their politics. Right. And I mean, to be clear, we are all aesthetically signaling.

3:45Jessica Grose:I remember the New York Times style section ran an article about how all Brooklyn moms wear number six clogs. And I was like, you didn't need to call me out like that. Like, I'm not trying to say that I'm any different. I am responding to my own sociological cues and the women who are around me. And I'm saying we're all making aesthetic choices when we put ourselves out there. This is just sort of anthropologically looking at the types of choices that a lot of prominent female politicians in the MAGA universe are making. And who are those prominent politicians? Like, who are the kind of like faces of this aesthetic in the Trump White House in particular?

4:21Jessica Grose:So Christine Noem, who is the Secretary of Homeland Security, is sort of the most prominent and obvious choice just because she has contrasted that particular look with an incredibly brutal message, both visually and the words that are coming out of her mouth. So, you know, our colleague, M. Gessen, called this out as the image of the first hundred days of the Trump presidency was Cristina standing in front of a jail full of mostly shirtless prisoners in El Salvador. door. She is heavily made up. She is wearing a$50 ,000 Rolex. And the contrast of the amount of care that went into her image against the brutality of these imprisoned men was obviously an image that stays with many of us.

5:18Jessica Grose:But also Trump's press secretary, Carolyn Levitt, and Nancy Mace, who is not in the Trump cabinet or chosen by Trump, but she is a Republican congresswoman from South Carolina. Yeah, I wanted to kind of dig into that Kristi Noh moment a little bit further. You know, the contrast of her and her kind of like exaggerated glam with the men standing behind her in the prison. In a way, it's one of those things where I can't imagine the man version of it, where it's like, what's a man MAGA look like? So do you think part of this has to do with the fact that they're women and they're a kind of like extra scrutiny on like how they appear because of the fact that they're women in politics?

6:01Jessica Grose:I do think that is part of it. I think the image is more provocative because it's unusual, right? I mean, although other women have obviously served in the role that Noam serves in, none have been so outspoken or created so many press moments that she has chosen to create. However, I do think that the male version is probably Elon Musk. He is wearing the baseball cap like she's wearing. He's out here with the chainsaw. So I think that there is sort of a male version in the MAGA multiverse. But I don't think it would have been as indelible an image if there had been a male politician in the same role.

6:37Yeah, I was thinking back to the comment that Vivek Ramaswamy made about Nikki Haley's heels. And I remember that was something that you had discussed as well. Her kind of comeback about it was like, it's not a fashion statement, it's for ammunition. And in a way, I'm interested in knowing what you think about the understanding that some of these women have about how they're perceived and like the kind of decision making that might go into how they look.

6:58Jessica Grose:I think any woman who's in the public eye at all has to grapple with this. They will get comments based on their appearance, attacking their appearance in ways that male politicians never would. And so I think having a sort of uniform look, whatever that look may be, like with Hillary Clinton as the pantsuit, that is a kind of armor. It's a kind of mask. It's a kind of way to prevent people from talking about what you look like if the way that you look is the same every time. And it is potentially a way to get the message across further. And so part of the argument that I make in the piece is that by using the sort of vernacular of influencers, it's something familiar to viewers of social media and it helps them get their message across even further than they might have otherwise.

7:46Yeah, you've covered the intersection of politics and culture for a while now. And I was curious to know how you feel like the roots of the current conservative beauty trend might have come about because, as you said, like it's come kind of like from a Kardashian runoff. And I think this look in particular, the matte foundation and like over accentuated eyes, that's something that I feel like people associate with like 2016 makeup. So like, I wonder why, if you've thought about like why it's become this look of conservatism in particular.

8:17Jessica Grose:I think some of it is from Southern culture, from pageant culture. I think some of it is it's Trump specifically his preferred look. I mean, he famously ran a beauty pageant, you know, so it is in some ways appealing to this audience of one, which is a prerequisite for this role. But I also think it is a way to hold themselves in opposition to people that they feel are not gender conforming. And so you see it with Nancy Mace a lot. She is often attacking trans women specifically and holding herself separate from them and saying, I'm a real woman. And so this sort of hyper feminine look, I think, is a way to communicate that as well.

9:03Yeah, I know. It's one of those things where I think it's kind of fascinating and ironic that a lot of the aesthetics of this are kind of like playing up and performing gender in a way that like they're in a camp where they're like, this is what a true woman should look like. Yeah, it all feels drag adjacent.

9:20Jessica Grose:So I don't know what to say. I mean, it's the big fake eyelashes, like they're really just, it's exaggerated. But I think part of that is also about knowing their audience. I think they consciously know that their images are going to be reproduced on social media. And I think just having things be sort of exaggerated looks better. Well, the other thing, I guess, about the folks that are not in political power, more in the influencer side of it, you know, you wrote a little bit about the kind of like avenues to power and influencing for women and like how that kind of fits the mold of a more conservative viewpoint of what a woman should be, which is not in the highest positions of power.

10:02But influencing kind of provides this like alternative pathway to having influence.

10:06Jessica Grose:Having influence. And so when I wrote my book about American motherhood, I have a chapter about social media and momfluencing. And one of the major revelations of that chapter for me was that in a lot of conservative communities where women are not encouraged to have, you know, day jobs, to have any kind of corporate job outside the home, influencing was the only way for them to have a real voice and for them to make money while still fulfilling their communities perceived as their real role as wives and mothers. And so that's where a lot of paid influencing started was in communities like that.

10:40Jessica Grose:And so I think it is still considered an acceptable way to make money because, again, you can still look perfectly feminine in a way that is very conformist and in a very specific idea of beauty. and you're still at the whim of the algorithm and at the whim of the companies that are paying you for brand deals. So you're not ultimately the person who is making the decisions, but you're still making money in some way. And you still have a kind of power, particularly over other women. Right, right. There's this term being used now, the womanosphere. It's like the woman version of the manosphere. You wrote in your piece about Carolyn Leavitt and her kind of doing a video with a TikTok influencer, like a running influencer.

11:28What is your roles and responsibilities at the White House? Yeah, my job is to relay the president's message and his agenda and his views and feelings to the American people through the press. What is the quote or motto that you live by? God is within her. She will not fail. So it seems like these kind of even the people in position and power in White House also kind of go hand in hand with the influencer womanosphere part of it as well.

11:49Jessica Grose:So, yeah, they have been incredibly smart about co-opting these channels to get their message across. And it is sort of, in some ways, the female version of going on Joe Rogan, but it has a much smaller reach. And there's a much greater backlash to it, I think, because, you know, if you look at the statistics, Gen Z women in particular are not conservative, overwhelmingly. And so if you're trying to appeal to women, especially women under 30, being very conservative and emphasizing roles as wives and mothers isn't necessarily the way to do it. It's really interesting. I spent some time reading new conservative women's magazines.

12:32Jessica Grose:One is called Evie and one is called The Conservator. And one of them had an interview with Caroline Levitt. And it was praising her for basically taking no maternity leave. She spent very little time off the campaign trail. And like, look, I was someone who was eager to go back to work after maternity leave. So I have absolutely no judgment on, you know, the choices one makes around those things. But from a party that is emphasizing women's sort of natural, and you can't see me making air quotes over this podcast, roles as wives and mothers, it's really interesting to see them also really praising someone like Carolyn Levitt for not necessarily putting that first.

13:16Jessica Grose:So I think it's just they're working out how to graft their message onto a generation of women that has clearly moved forward in some profound way. Well, one of the things I wanted to talk to you about, you've written about how this look combined with kind of an aggressive social media eclipse often leads to virality, right? And that can grow into a national platform. And so with Congresswoman Nancy Mace, like she's considering a run for governor of South Carolina. It seems like this formula could either work really well for her or it could backfire. Just for our listeners, like, could you tell us a little bit more about that Nancy Mace story and what happened in the beauty store?

13:54Jessica Grose:So she is a supporter of Donald J. Trump to the extent that on her TikTok, she has an entire library of videos that are titled DJT with a little American flag emoji. And we know exactly what happened because they were both filming. So the constituent asked sort of pointedly, when's your next town hall going to be? You're going to host a real town hall for the people. Did you miss the 15 I had last year? That wasn't a town. When are you going to host one this year? And it sort of escalates from there. Are you going to do any more this year? Are you going to do it? I'm asking if you're going to have any more town halls this year.

14:31Jessica Grose:Any more that you're going to this year or not. She then says to him, well, you know, I voted for gay marriage twice. What does that have to do with me? So I'm just saying, it has everything to do with you. Do you think everything about me has to do with gay marriage? I do, absolutely. And she's clearly sort of trying to point out to him that, like, it just gets pretty ugly. Like, I can't read her mind. I don't know what. her intention was there. Because he's a man in the beauty aisle? Yes. I see. And he is, you know, I think confirmed that he is gay. And then when she posted it to her social media, she, you know, said that he was basically like a liberal maniac and that, you know, he was wearing Daisy Duke shorts.

15:09Jessica Grose:And by the way, those shorts were not that short, but it was clearly like a dog whistle about his masculinity and it was not appropriate. I mean, the fact that an elected official a congressperson did that i know that we have lost the capacity for you know disgust or shame or any of that but i even found that shocking that she would do that and so it can be sort of a turnoff even for people within your own camp you've seen even in very very red states there can be a bridge too far in terms of the sort of rage baiting really out there conservative behavior So, you know, we'll have to wait and see.

15:54Well, one of the things your piece and kind of this discussion made me think about is the fact that there's not necessarily a cohesive Democrat aesthetic. You know what I mean? I was thinking about how like the right often kind of uses, you know, mockingly the blue hairs as sort of describing like woke reactionaries, people who dye their hairs in crazy colors. But I wondered if you had any thoughts on like why it feels like the conservative aesthetic of a woman is so clear and clockable and why that hasn't really manifested in the left as much.

16:28Jessica Grose:I do think because they have such a narrow vision of appropriate femininity. So it is easier to have the trappings. I think just it is more of a challenge for liberals to speak in a uniform style vernacular because part of the liberal ethos is like, wear what you want or have more sort of individuality in terms of your fashion or gender expression. I guess, should Democrats spend time trying to make a female mascot akin to Carolyn Leavitt or Kristi Noem, or do you think that's antithetical to what Democrats stand for? Is it not something that they should fight back with? Or do you think the fact that there's no alternative on their side is kind of a sign of what the party stands for?

17:13I think there'd just be no way to do it and

17:16Jessica Grose:have it feel organic. It's like why we keep having the discussion, why isn't there a liberal Joe Rogan, it's like, well, he wasn't built in a lab. He gained that organic popularity and association with right-wing ideas over time, and he doesn't just talk about politics. I mean, it's interesting to know that one thing about a lot of these social media platforms is that viral trends are fickle and they can change very quickly. Do you see, you know, in the near or long-term future, this kind of reward for this type of aesthetic or even kind of like political stance taking a turn? Do you think like potentially audiences might tire from it?

17:52Jessica Grose:I think they absolutely can. I mean, you see a TikTok has 7 million views. Well, you don't know how many of those are hate views or hate comments. And so there's not necessarily a linear correlation between everybody seeing something and everybody supporting something. And so it could really have a different outcome in terms of how people are voting. I mean, And you saw this with Carrie Lake in Arizona, right? I would say that she has that sort of same aesthetic and that same really combative approach. And she did not win in that state. So we'll see what happens. I can't predict the future. I do hope people tire of this because it is exhausting.

18:31And will you be buying Matt or Dewey Foundation?

18:36Jessica Grose:I'm Dewey. I just want to look like a glazed donut all the time. Who doesn't? Coastal Elite. Coastal Elite glazed donut. That's me. Jessica, thank you for joining me. It's been a lovely conversation. Thanks so much for having me.

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