Inae Oh

And then also Matt Gaetz. At the RNC specifically, you know, his, I mean, apparent use, I'll say again, of Botox was just like, what am I watching?

I don't think there is any kind of official mandate that if you want to be in Donald Trump's either cabinet or just his inner circle that you have to achieve this look. But I think that as someone who very blatantly values the appearance of someone and the aesthetics of someone is literally obsessed with the pageantry of beauty.

I think that you know that you are performing a key part of his political persona by adopting this very camera-ready aesthetic. And as we know, Donald Trump comes from a reality TV background. You're fired. But I think it goes a little more than that. This is someone who, I don't know if you saw the way he's transformed the Oval Office with extreme gold trimming. Gold, all gold, look.

And not an inch of the wall is not covered in these huge, over-the-top portraits.

That extends, you know, to the faces and the appearances of the people around him. But I think now that they are the ruling class who has been voted back into power twice, I think that the looks feel inescapable. I think that while there was some sort of discretion or... subtlety or anything back in the first administration. And I mean this both in policy and aesthetics.

I think that now it is just like, it is just fully out there. It is Trump 2.0 is extreme in every way you can imagine.

I think that also goes to like these Kristi Noem videos.

You know, she's posing in front of these migrants who have been locked up, but she's in heels and like perfect makeup, perfect hair.

There are a lot of things going on there, but one of those things is like their appearance at these jails is going to create their own news cycles. You know, they know how this works. Mass deportations, but make it hot, make it sexy. This is what a real woman looks like, even if she's performing a job that is maybe seen as traditionally male.

You know, it's like a law and order, but hey, I can also look like a supposed quote unquote 10. This is what the ideal woman looks like. It serves many goals for Donald Trump. And she literally recalls Donald Trump telling her, like, I want your face in the ads, these crackdown ads that were going on television. Like, I want your face in them.

And I want you to, like, thank me for shutting down the border. I don't think that he cares whether or not she might have the experience or the credentials. It's does she have the face to carry out an extremely cruel policy but, like, make it look good, you know? And they absolutely delight in that. And they want you to be triggered. They want to shock.

And ultimately, what do these aesthetics that so many people in this world are chasing like symbolize? Is it is it just an affinity to like Donald Trump's aesthetics or is it something greater?

I think it's that. I think it has a lot to do with traditional gender norms, perceived hotness as a power play, but also reaffirming the femininity of women, even if they're in power. You don't have to be threatened by this woman of power because she is also what a real woman looks like. It harkens back to like a desire to return to a quote unquote golden age of American dominance.

I think that you see that a lot in Donald Trump's rhetoric and what his policies are supposedly trying to do. But that's not just in aesthetics. That's also, you know, we want to return America to a pre-Roe era. So it's twisted in all forms.

For Suzanne Lambert, it all started with TikTok.

Unlike Suzanne Lambert, who we talked to earlier in the show, you're not a comedian. When you were writing this piece for Mother Jones, were you at all worried about toeing the line between critiquing a certain aesthetic that the most powerful people in the world right now have and being mean to people about how they're presenting themselves?

Oh, absolutely. I'm not someone who wants to just point out a specific look or something in a woman's face that I might not agree with just for the sake of pointing that out. But what's going on with this MAGA aesthetic is political. The image is political. The image that they're crafting is political.

And I think that to ignore it would be a mistake, especially when we have a president in power who is all about the appearance as opposed to the actual substance. You dovetail that with just how much more certain procedures are more accessible than they were decades past. You know, it just feels all turbocharged. And a lot of things in our politics right now feel very turbocharged.

And I think to ignore what might be happening to women's literal faces around Donald Trump would be a mistake. You know, I'm 37 years old. You know, I'm a young mother. I have a three-year-old. I am constantly tired. I have not gotten Botox or fillers yet, but they are certainly on my mind. I'm actually going to Korea next month. Yes, it is the plastic surgery capital of the world.

Being in Seoul as a person who has not... gotten the same popular procedures as many people in South Korea do. And to know what it feels like to be sort of the odd man out when it comes to a beauty standard, And then feeling just kind of bad about it. You know, I think it helps me in some way empathize also with these MAGA figures.

Not in policy, but in terms of, you know, if you're at Mar-a-Lago, if you're just staying there for a week and everyone around you... looks a certain way and you notice like, oh, I'm different. I can see why you would feel attracted to that look and think, oh, maybe I should do such and such too. And I think when you're constantly served a specific look and a specific beauty ideal, I see the pull.

So maybe we don't need to be super judgmental either, but we can be judgmental about people who are posing in front of prisoners for kicks.

Because right there, the look is political and that is absolutely rife and it deserves our interrogation at the very least.

Ine O., senior editor, motherjones.com. The required reading is titled, In Your Face, The Brutal Aesthetics of MAGA. You heard from Suzanne Lambert earlier in the show. You can find her on TikTok, on the gram. Her handle is itssuzannelambert. What else can I tell you? Gabrielle Burbey made the show today. Amina Alsadi edited. Laura Bullard was on Facts.

Patrick Boyd and Andrea Christen's daughter were on Sound. Avishai Artsy, Hadi Mawagdi, Amanda Llewellyn, Miles O'Brien, Victoria Chamberlain, Devin Schwartz, Carla Javier, and Peter Balanon-Rosen also make the show with executive-level supervision from Jolie Myers and Miranda Kennedy. We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder. My name's Sean Ramos.

You can send me any and all complaints about the show any time. The door is open. My email is noelle at kingmail.net. Today Explained is distributed by WNYC. The show is a part of Vox. If you'd like to complain about the ads on this show specifically, you can listen to us ad free by signing up at vox.com slash members. Thanks.

And where did you go from there?

So you just said Republican makeup. For people who are maybe unaware, what exactly is Republican makeup?

And how did people respond when you decided to mock Republican makeup?

I accidentally just colored in my entire eyelid.

Interesting.

I heard a rumor that you used to be a Republican, that you were the president of the young Republicans in college, maybe.

I hit my eyeball.

In high school.

It's okay. I'll make it.

And how did you go from being a high school Republican and a college Republican to being a liberal woman? What happened? Was it the makeup?

Hi, we're doing Mar-a-Lago makeovers on Today Explained. Join us.

You said you started doing the mean thing after the election. Of course, it was a few months before the second Trump administration entered office. But since they've entered office, there have been... a lot of mean things happening. You could argue, you know, Elon Musk saying he needs to take a chainsaw to USAID, an agency that literally keeps the poorest people on earth alive, is mean.

Deporting people who are here legally for things they may have written, exercising their First Amendment free speech rights, you could argue is quite mean. Taking photo ops in front of Prisoners in El Salvador in prison who apparently... With your $50,000 Rolex and your mismatched extensions. Didn't even commit a crime other than entering this country without papers. Arguably quite mean.

Have you seen people come around to the meanness thing in the intervening months since the Trump administration took office?

Yeah. Well, I was entertained and I definitely look very interesting now. So thank you so much, Suzanne, for taking me and our audience on this journey.

All right, so Suzanne Lambert is making fun of Republican makeup on TikTok for the lols, but also to process this political moment of ours and her feelings about it. Ine O has been writing about MAGA glam for Mother Jones because it's her job.

So, you know, it has been disparagingly called Mar-a-Lago face. I would describe it as something of a phenomenon, a trend in the physical appearance of those who support Donald Trump. And whether that's, you know, you being in a prominent position of power or, you know, simply like an everyday MAGA supporter trying to express affinity or membership with his politics.

But the aesthetic, if you want, like, specifically, like, overly taut faces, I would say, is, like, a big thing. Puffed up lips, lots of apparent use of Botox, fillers. And, yeah, and then that makeup that you were talking about. For me, when I think about it, the effect is this cyborgian smoothness sort of gone wrong, though.

And for legal reasons, yeah, I cannot say for a fact that any of these people that I mention or that come to mind have gotten these procedures, but it feels apparent. And it feels not just because of the way they look now, but if you compare their faces to maybe five, 10 years ago, they look drastically different.

Oh, who's a good example of that? Who can we look up a before and after on?

Well, Kristi Noem is a huge one, and she has admitted to dental work.

Laura Trump is another one that people mention.