The Right’s Crusade to “Make America Hot Again”

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1:36Hi, Jen. Hi, Tyler. Thanks so much for coming on the show to talk about this really fun piece. It's not often that I get to talk about lingerie on the podcast. On the political scene, you don't talk about lingerie that much. That's shocking. Yeah. So in your most recent piece for The New Yorker, you wrote that breasts have somehow become Republican-coded. When exactly do you think that this shift happened? I mean, it caught me by surprise. I mean, I think that we all remember this kind of moment when Sidney Sweeney was on Saturday Night Live wearing a dress, a low-cut dress, you know, as is her right.

2:12And I didn't think anything of it. You know, she's a glamorous, young Hollywood actress. Then all of a sudden, social media just seemed kind of flooded with these kind of conservative figures saying, you know, woke is dead. Actually, there was the, you know, writer for the National Post had an op-ed. You know, she said, are these double D harbingers of the death of woke? And I just thought, what are they talking about? You know, what does having big breasts have anything to do with being Republican or a Democrat? You know, it just, and that sort of was my clue that sort of something was going on.

2:46And, you know, and then the political right was trying to sort of claim Sidney Sweeney's body. But sort of like sexiness as it defines sexiness for itself. And that was interesting to me as someone who writes often about sex for The New Yorker.

3:05That's Jennifer Wilson, a staff writer at The New Yorker who recently investigated, in her words, the political implications of cleavage for a feature piece in The New Yorker's false style issue. While the left has been grappling with what sex and sexuality should look like in a more inclusive, post-MeToo world, parts of the conservative movement have started presenting the right as the place where it's okay to embrace beauty and desire, free of shame. Now we have conservative women's magazines offering detailed sex advice that could make a Cosmo reader blush, lingerie brands marketing themselves to a right-wing audience, and organizations with names like Make America Hot Again, making the case that being a Republican isn't just cool, but sexy.

3:46I wanted to talk with Jen about how this new strain of conservative sex appeal fits into the right's longer history with sex and sexuality. How much of this is actually new, and how much of it is just a repackaging of older conservative ideas about gender, relationships, and desirability? And if the right is starting to claim this territory, how does that affect the left, and the culture around sex and beauty more broadly? This is The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker.

4:18Let's start off with your trip to Indio, California, which is a city that hosts two different music festivals in April that seem to cater to opposite ends of the political spectrum. So the first one is Coachella, which is probably the biggest music festival in the U.S. And then the second is the country music festival Stagecoach. So can you talk a little bit about Stagecoach and what brought you there, aside from what must be an undying love of country music? I should say I do love country music. I'm not a diehard fan. But, you know, I was happy that this assignment took me to stagecoach. I had heard of it, and it had always been described as sort of the conservative Coachella, that sort of, you know, after the regular Coachella, like, the grounds were still there.

4:58But now suddenly everyone had a MAGA hat on and was wearing, like, kind of Marlboro Man kind of, you know, jackets. And you could take, you know, photos with the Budweiser Clydesdales. Yeah, I mean, I saw someone on Reddit called it Trumpchella. You know, they actually had to ban displays of the Confederate flag because at a certain point people were actually selling it in like Confederate flag bikinis. And, you know, in the piece I call it a kind of a safe space for these kind of, you know, uncritical displays of, you know, red-blooded American patriotism. And I was very surprised to learn that Sidney Sweeney was going to be launching a pop-up for her lingerie brand Siren there.

5:38just because she had been trying, to me it seemed, for about a year to kind of distance herself from politics on the whole, you know. And I thought maybe this was someone who had just kind of gotten caught up in sort of this kind of firestorm, and, you know, a lot of things had been projected onto her. But then I just thought, my gosh, this is such an interesting choice for someone, though, to become the official lingerie partner of Stagecoach. Yeah, so I went there. She had a pop-up karaoke bar, the Siren Saloon, and it was very raunchy inside there. You know, at the bar, I ordered a Made You Look Margarita, and there were two tip jars.

6:19One was labeled titties, the other ass. There was a dartboard, and on top of the dartboard was a neon sign that said, shoot your shot. And you could buy, like, some stuff from her special capsule collection for Stagecoach. So I bought a three-pack of thongs. They were part of the Hoedown Throwdown collection. And one of them said, tight jeans, loose morals. And then I think another one said, cowboys ride harder and stay on longer. And, you know, for me, it was just— I hope you expensed those. Oh, I definitely did. Yes. And then there was at one point when everyone was sort of singing along to the Shania Twain song, man, I feel like a woman.

7:00And, you know, that line when she's like, I'm going to act politically correct. I mean, just like the crowd went nuts. And I just remember thinking like, this is so crazy because I remember, you know, I was in high school for the Bush era and it was like abstinence only education, the Christian evangelical movement, you know, purity rings and there was the true love weights movement. You know, I think in the piece I say conservative have meant conservative. And, you know, Shania Twain, when she first kind of came onto the scene in Nashville, I mean, she got a lot of crap for just sort of burying her midriff.

7:38And, you know, and people were saying, you know, her hair looked a little too tousled. What has she been up to? And that was sort of like the country music scene, like, you know, the country music establishment, I should say. So for me, I was like, gosh, this is so different from the Republican Party from the end. I should say Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican. And there were people performing there with her on stage doing karaoke who, you know, have been performers at the Turning Point USA Festival. But when she was singing I Got Friends in Low Places by Garth Brooks, it just felt like, you know, what's going on here?

8:14Is this provocation? Is this real? So Sweeney actually is a registered Republican because I thought that there was a lot of part of what has always confused me about the rights embrace of Sidney Sweeney, at least up until this point, is just that I feel like, as you mentioned earlier, she's, there have been some instances where she's basically said, you know, I don't really want to take a side. Like, she tells Cosmopolitan, I'm not here to speak on politics. There was the whole American Eagle jeans ad controversy where, you know, the tagline was Sidney Sweeney has good jeans, and it was supposed to be a pun on genes, you know, G-E-N-E-S, but then also J-E-A-N-S.

8:53But then I think a lot of people sort of use that to kind of launch into this discourse about the kinds of people who we think are beautiful and, you know, sort of taking the more like racialized understanding of that term, good genes. But I mean, I think what's funny is that at least for a while, it seemed like Sidney Sweeney was actually just kind of trying to have it both ways and not exactly saying that she's a Republican, but not saying that she isn't a Republican. I kind of thought that she wasn't necessarily openly MAGA, but she was still being anointed a MAGA sex icon in a way that was interesting.

9:25But it does seem like she's definitely a Republican, if not outright MAGA. Yes, it's worth distinguishing Republicans from MAGA. Not all Republicans are MAGA. And it's possible that she just, you know, has friends who are to her right, and she doesn't have a problem with, you know, performing alongside, you know, singing karaoke with them. But as I sort of say in the piece, if there has been a year-long campaign to kind of paint you as this kind of pinup whose beauty is kind of representative of, you know, a certain kind of like 1950s gender ideal and, you know, launching a lingerie brand, it's just kind of, it's her right to do that, but it just seemed like an interesting choice.

10:16And I went there with an open mind, more interested in sort of what the people there thought. But yeah, I mean, a number of people there, I said, what do you love about Sidney Sweeney? And, you know, I mean, one woman said, I love that she's a diehard Republican. And, you know, I asked these other guys, like, what do you love about her? And they're like, you know, she's got great genes. And for people in the MAGA space, they believe that she is on their side. Like, they have taken all of these things as cues. And, you know, I mean, the point of my piece was not to sort of get to the bottom of Sidney Sweeney's politics, but to just think, like, why, you know, there are so many attractive young actresses.

10:57You know, why did this person become so symbolic of what MAGA wants to be? you know, how are they thinking about this shift in their party? Many of them are the same, you know, they're old enough to remember, like I do, purity culture. How are they thinking about this huge cultural shift in their own party? You know, and that's one of the things I was using lingerie to think through. Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's a difference between Sydney Sweeney is hot and she's Republican, so we love her versus like Sydney Sweeney's hotness itself is the thing that is defeating wokeism as opposed to her just being like a hot MAGA person.

11:35So that's been interesting. In your piece, you also talk about other lingerie brands, and one that everyone listening to this podcast has heard of is Victoria's Secret. And you use them as a sort of case study in how the politics of lingerie and sex appeal have just shifted so dramatically over the past decade. Can you tell us a little bit about what we've seen from Victoria's Secret and how that brand has evolved and just how we might see what is happening with Victoria's Secret as being of a piece with other brands that one might think of as more conservative coded these days. Well, I mean, Victoria's Secret is not, there's not a lot about Victoria's Secret in the piece, but Victoria's Secret is why I wanted to do this story because I was really taken aback by some statements that the new CEO, Hillary Super, made.

12:22So it's important to know that in 2019, the Victoria's Secret kind of iconic fashion show was put on indefinite pause because Ed Razek, who's the chief marketing officer and the producer of the show, you know, in the kind of wake of Me Too, had just made these comments. Like, he had gotten criticized for the fact that there were no transgender models, that there were no plus-size models in the show. And he just said, this is, you know, they have no place here. He called transgender models, transsexuals. He said they have no place here because this is a fantasy. And there was huge pushback. So it was put on pause and the brand got rid of the angels.

13:03They're kind of iconic supermodel brand ambassadors. You know, that's the Gisele Bundchen, the Tyra Banks, the Gigi Hadid's. And they created something called the VS Collective, which was comprised of women who've been involved in progressive causes to varying degrees. So one of them is Megan Rapinoe, the soccer player. Another is Priyanka Chopra, the actress who's spoken out a lot about diversity in Hollywood. But then in 2024, you know, Hillary Super takes over and she makes these comments. You know, she says, you know, in the past we were operating out of fear. We were too afraid to offend people.

13:42You know, she said, you know, it's not that we're not going to continue to practice, you know, diversity, but we're not going to check off every box that someone could possibly think of, you know. And she also, she only really spoke to, you know, outlets like The Wall Street Journal and Fortune. And I was really taken aback by that because to me, you know, I talked to Lauren Sherman, who co-wrote a book, Selling Sexy, about Victoria's Secret. And she said to me, you know, Victoria's Secret is doing well. And she said, you know, super managed to kind of de-ick it. But, you know, and she kind of played a little bit into this kind of MAGA, kind of, you know, we went too far during Me Too.

14:25But she, you know, she didn't go all the way. She sort of like found this middle ground. You know, she's trying to kind of, I was just stunned that the head of a major, you know, underwear brand was saying things It just felt so clearly that they were kind of playing into this narrative that there had been kind of overreach during Me Too, that it had gone too far, that we needed that. And then also around the same time, Trump bought up to a million dollars worth of corporate bond, Victoria's Secret corporate bonds. You started seeing people like Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Lauren Sanchez investing through this venture capital firm.

15:04They all invested in Siren as well. And it's just – Lauren Sanchez also wore a bra to Trump swearing in. So, yeah, I just sort of – I started thinking, gosh, there's something really going on here with sexual politics since Me Too. And I was really kind of using lingerie and lingerie advertising to understand, you know, what are the stories that we're telling ourselves about Me Too, about the present moment, about what's happened in between. and, you know, I think for me, lingerie was such a powerful way to do that because, you know, in America, we don't have, like, a shared vocabulary to talk about sex.

15:44Like, we don't, you know, it's not really in movies as much anymore. It's not in TV shows as much anymore. So you're often, you don't have that many things that everyone can point to and start to have a conversation around sex. And I think Victoria's Secret advertising has been one of them. I think you see even in this kind of this current moment with Siren, you know, a number of people have been talking about the advertisements and the way they kind of play on kind of 1950s kind of housewife fantasies. I mean, this is like not even a question that's super related to the topic at hand. But I wonder with the advertising for a company like Siren, is the ideal lingerie customer a woman or is it a man who was buying lingerie for his girlfriend or wife?

16:32And I guess how much of this is about, you know, sort of catering to a way that the person wearing the lingerie might want to look and sort of like what their views about these things are versus just focused on the male gaze, essentially. You know, it's so funny. Whenever I would go, I went to, I visited various lingerie boutiques for this piece. I, you know, went to Agent Provocateur, Fleur Dumas. I went to this place called the Rack Shack in Bushwick, which sells bras. And one thing that everyone kept saying was that men don't really care. When they come in trying to buy a gift, they're pretty clueless.

17:08You know, their tastes are quite simple. One of the women that Rackshack said, it was so funny. She was just like, they just like crotch out, ass out, everything out. And I realized we're not really talking about them. You could say that women maybe have internalized some of their ideas about what they think men might want. But this came up a lot, you know, the male gaze. And, you know, I think during Me Too, a lot of lingerie brands, they felt like consumers were accusing them of catering too much to the male gaze and tried to sort of rethink some of their advertising accordingly. But, you know, that's just so tricky because I want to distinguish lingerie from just underwear in general.

17:49I mean, I really think of lingerie as something almost kind of a sexual aid, almost kind of a, you know, a sex toy. I do think people buy it to be gazed at, you know? And so I was interested in that as kind of a way to kind of test the limits of the male gaze as kind of a negative concept. I mean, some of this lingerie is quite expensive. I mean, you're going to buy a$300 bra and you don't want anyone to gaze at that. I don't know. He must be doing quite well. That's how I felt, yeah. So let's take a quick break. And then when we get back, I want to get into sort of what you were talking about earlier with the right being known at one point for purity and modesty culture and abstinence pledges and how that has changed.

18:34And also you're reporting on the emergence of a conservative cause. Oh, yes. This is the political scene from The New Yorker.

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20:17So Jen, before we get into the rights embrace of things like lingerie and sex appeal, I'm wondering if you can just kind of reiterate how the right used to relate to these things more broadly and when exactly that changed in your view. I mean, I think, you know, and it's important to distinguish sort of ordinary people who vote Republican from kind of like the political establishment. Right, yeah. Right, the right. Because people were probably doing what they've always been doing, you know, since the beginning of time. But I thought one thing that was really interesting is that, you know, I said earlier that I grew up in this era of, you know, abstinence-only education.

20:54You know, I was starting high school during the Bush era, and everyone was very worried about, well, what's going to happen in schools? What are high school students going to learn? Because, you know, it just seemed like the Christian evangelical movement had kind of taken over the Republican Party and was setting the agenda. And then I found out this year, the Trump administration had decided to pull funding from organizations that were, you know, designed to prevent teen pregnancy unless they emphasized abstinence only until marriage education. And that until marriage is a little different from abstinence only in the sense that Like what's going on now is that you have a lot of people on the right saying, no, like lots of sex when you're married.

21:41Like they're really trying to. Because also birth rates and stuff. Yes, yes, yes. Like they're trying to kind of rebrand as this kind of party of, no, don't think it's just sex in the city and women in Democratic parties who are, you know, wearing stilettos and drinking mimosas and moaning into the night. We do that too as soon as you're married. As soon as you're married and our sex is better. I mean, that's kind of the narrative that, you know, I was hearing particularly from a woman named Brittany Hoogaboom, who's the editor of a magazine called Evie, which is sort of billed as the conservative Cosmo, Evie as in Eve, the first woman.

22:18But yeah, I was sort of – I learned about this world of just hot and bothered married Christians on the internet. Like, so there's this website called ChristianFriendlySexPositions.com. Which I'm sure you visited on your work laptop. That has kind of, you know, marriage-honoring sex positions. There are lingerie brands for, you know, Christian wives. Like, there's Mentionables, the Mormon-owned underwear brand that doesn't use models. And, you know, on its website it says, this way your husband can look without feeling guilty for, you know, seeing pictures of other women. You know, they're— Is it like stick figures instead or—?

23:00It's just the underwear like kind of— I see. On like a table or a tray or something. Yeah, I find it unhelpful. But I don't know. So, and what else? Yeah, and there's also this phenomenon of Christian lingerie showers. There is this Christian writer who has a blog called Every Woman a Theologian, and she talks about, you know, having these lingerie showers where she and her other Christian friends would sort of go into the dressing room with the bride-to-be who's in her lingerie, and they would just kind of prey on her future sex life. And so, yeah, like there's this kind of new idea that they are the party of great sex.

23:48You just have to wait until you're married. And that's a little different from before. That's interesting because I was going to ask if you thought that evangelical Christians like and the religious right more generally, if they seem like they were on board for the goal of making America hot again. Or if what we're seeing is kind of another example of Trump's coalition just being so fractured where you have the make America hot again types and then you have the evangelical Christians who are really upset about the way that Sidney Sweeney is being treated as, you know, just the icon of all icons.

24:22But it does seem like there's actually a way that these two things have been kind of reconciled. Just sex but only after you're married and then you have a ton of it and it's super hot and you wear lingerie while you do it. Yes. And but you are not really supposed to use sex toys because you because they might embarrass your husband if they're too good. Like there's a lot of kind of, you know, they kind of one of the things I was really interested in the piece was also like the limits of their kind of reevaluation of purity culture. But, yeah, I mean, listen, I'm sure there are, you know, there are people who in the Republican Party who are critical of this, who prefer the kind of the modesty of the Bush era, you know, who vote for Trump but are sort of disgusted by him.