00:01:41.340mace they've got a particular look it's very specific yeah there is a lot of fillers especially
00:01:49.160on the lips and cheeks there's usually like a nude lip there is foundation that's like kind of
00:01:56.660the wrong shade, very large kind of feathery false eyelashes often. And there is a very specific
00:02:05.740hair, the Fox News hair, which is these waist length coiled waves, right? And in our doc,
00:02:14.180I've put in a couple of iconic examples. I've got Kimberly Garofoyle at the RNC. I've got
00:02:19.500And Laura Loomer, the sort of like right-wing troll who's had, you know, some procedures done to look a very specific way.
00:02:28.820I've got like kind of this picture of Kristi Noem at an ICE raid doing her, you know, Gestapo Barbie.
00:02:35.680Honestly, when I looked at that in the planning, Zach, I was like, well, did this like migrate over here from our planning for the AI slop one?
00:02:42.660Because this looks like someone was like, ChatGPT, generate Kristi Noem in an ICE uniform.
00:02:58.620And, you know, we're not the only ones who have noticed.
00:03:00.580There is a TikTok trend, hashtag Republican makeup, in which women, liberal women, have begun to parody their right wing look with women doing their own makeup in dramatic Republican fashion.
00:03:13.700J.D. Vance is like the patient zero of eyeliner abuse. Yes.
00:03:19.020And here to discuss this trend with us, both Republican makeup, the makeup and Republican makeup, the sort of media phenomenon and the hashtag is Jessica DeFino, one of my favorite writers who is a critic of beauty and wellness, but also the author of the absolutely excellent substack, The Review of Beauty.
00:03:40.300and I think one of the smartest people writing about gender right now.
00:03:44.180Jessica, thank you so much for coming on the show.
00:03:47.480Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
00:03:49.840So let's get into it. Jessica, what is this trend, hashtag Republican makeup?
00:03:55.680So Republican makeup, I believe it was started by this influencer on TikTok,
00:04:01.520Suzanne Lambert, who first pointed it out, and she described the aesthetic as,
00:04:05.500quote drained dusty and matte so the idea is that republican makeup is very overdone it's over the
00:04:13.740top it's under blended like you can really see the lines of foundation the lines of contour it's
00:04:19.860very conspicuous so the look is kind of like cakey the lips are over lined the eyebrows are like
00:04:27.240giant and blocky and overdrawn there's very severe eyeliner like it's definitely um sort of a
00:04:33.220caricature of femininity but worn sort of for the everyday yeah it does look very the skin looks
00:04:40.180quite dry it uses a lot of product the foundation is put on very thick and it's often kind of an
00:04:47.600orangey color i guess maybe in a nod to donald trump himself right the eyebrows look incredibly
00:04:55.180artificial it's like a solid like almost like a marker streak of eyebrow instead of the like
00:05:02.360more naturalistic like drawing of little hairs that you see some people do right it's a very
00:05:07.400peachy blush at least on this one that i'm looking at it tends to be like an interesting contrast
00:05:13.020between like the pink of the blush and the more like yellow warm orangey tone of the foundation
00:05:20.760yeah there's probably some like contour and bronzer going on underneath the blush as well
00:05:25.940so you can see like these distinct shades like popping out from under one another yeah i don't1.00
00:05:31.080totally know like like technically i don't know enough about makeup to know what these women are0.99
00:05:36.060doing but i'm like oh yeah you look bad you know yes it's like it's very over the top and it's
00:05:42.400taking a lot of cosmetic trends that i would say were really big in the 2010s like in the kardashian
00:05:48.860era yeah and kind of like dialing them up to 11 so i think part of the kind of like critique and
00:13:24.660And then I think the next, like, layer of why this song really hits on what people are getting at is that it's like these videos are kind of an attempt to expose the hypocrisy of Republican makeup and the Republican belief in gender essentialism.
00:13:39.020because like this party is very much attached to the idea that God made man and he made woman and
00:13:43.600he made them different for very specific reasons. And it's God's plan to have masculine men and
00:13:49.020feminine women and nothing in between. And that like women being wives and mothers and objects1.00
00:13:54.960of beauty is their biological destiny. And of course, that all like falls apart when you look
00:13:59.200at these like very extreme and unnatural interventions required for the Republican
00:14:04.060version of femininity like you're claiming biological destiny and there's nothing biological
00:14:09.580or natural or god given about like this caricature that you're embodying right like if it was so
00:14:17.560innate it would not require so much consumption so much time so much effort and artificiality
00:14:24.960right right right and i think that's kind of what the people making these videos are trying to get
00:15:29.480it's interesting, right? The trend is called Republican makeup. But as you say, these kinds
00:15:37.200of interventions that are necessary to create this supposedly natural feminine ideal, like that0.68
00:15:43.920doesn't start with makeup. You're supposed to also inject and cut and modify surgically, right?0.98
00:15:50.880And I do wonder, why does that kind of drop out in the critique? Or does it drop out of the
00:15:55.960critique and what is the role of those kinds of interventions here right no i mean i think they
00:16:01.440play a huge role particularly in the republican attacks on gender affirming care which i think
00:16:07.200is what a lot of people are trying to get at and point out like specifically i'm thinking of like
00:16:12.100trump's recent like youth care ban executive order right which defines gender affirming care
00:16:17.860as like quote chemical and surgical mutilation um and what's interesting there is that what
00:16:24.160that order calls mutilation is normalized and even encouraged for cisgender people
00:16:29.880of all ages and particularly the people in power of this party. So it's like those interventions0.67
00:16:35.800are okay so long as it's in the name of heteronormative beauty. Yeah. Just to give our
00:16:41.980listeners a sense of that in researching a reaction piece to that executive order,1.00
00:16:45.760I looked up how many girls in the United States get breast surgery before they turn 18,0.60
00:16:51.400You know, cis girls, that is. And the numbers are obviously way higher than the number of trans kids who go in for any kind of treatment. It's utterly normalized. And then you're right. It's treated as this absolutely abhorrent, you know, an obviously immoral thing when it's done for the benefit of a different group.
00:17:13.360what kind of procedures does the mar-a-lago face require we mentioned a lot of fillers yeah and you
00:17:20.960do see like sort of this tightness or hardness of the face that i understand to be like a signature
00:17:29.380of injectables right but then there's also like a lot of changing of the shape of the face
00:17:36.320like much bigger lips much more like exaggerated cheeks like what are they going for there1.00
00:17:44.740totally yeah i mean i would say the procedures that these republican women are seeking out like
00:17:50.840aren't particularly out of the ordinary like these are the procedures that are trending across the0.95
00:17:57.440political spectrum with people who are getting cosmetic work done they're just being done in a
00:18:02.200different way. So the procedures are Botox, which is a neuromodulator that kind of relaxes and
00:18:11.380freezes your facial muscles so that you don't get expression lines or like fine lines and wrinkles
00:18:16.480from aging are kind of, you know, disappeared for however long the neuromodulator lasts.
00:18:21.760There's fillers, which are used to like inflate the lips, inflate the cheeks, often like inflate
00:18:27.840the chin you can even do like a nose job with filler as well a non-surgical nose job so all
00:18:33.300of that's being done there's definitely a lot of facelifts like that tight look is usually the
00:18:39.520result of like a surgical facelift or a half facelift brow lifts that will lift the brows
00:18:45.300up to look younger blepharoplasty is something that's really popular right now which is like
00:18:50.780the surgical removal of part of the skin on your eyelid like above your eyelid or a lower bleph
00:18:57.160below the eyelid to like take away some of that puffiness and make the eye look more open and
00:19:03.020animated. I mean, breast implants are a huge part of this. Liposuction is a huge part of this.0.99
00:19:10.100Even fat transfer, there's like fat transfer is very popular now where doctors will take
00:19:15.200fat from a part of your body where it is not desirable and re-inject it into a different
00:19:20.220part of your body where fat is more desirable, like, you know, the upper cheeks, for example.
00:19:25.860So, yeah, that's all being done by a lot of people.
00:19:28.580But in this subset of women in particular, I think what's different is that you want it to be noticed.
00:19:36.760Like being noticed is a big part of the appeal.
00:19:39.400Whereas in other demographics, the idea is that you don't want anyone to know you've gotten work done.
00:19:44.220You want to look like you just got like a really good night's sleep or something.
00:19:47.580So, I mean, I think there's like a couple of different reasons for this.
00:19:50.580I think obvious cosmetic surgery is a class performance.
00:19:53.660It's like showing that you are funneling wealth into your face for the sake of like looking like you can. And then I think there's also part of it where like the more work you have done like this, studies show the less able you are to sometimes see yourself accurately. So you don't realize how far things are gone. You don't realize that you're like moving into caricature territory.
00:20:15.400And then there's also like corruption of aesthetic doctors. Like there's been a lot of reports on the filler, like overuse of fillers. And doctors get paid by like how many units they put in. And the fillers also like wear away. And so doctors will often recommend you get them refilled sooner than you need to. And it creates this like very inflated look just because of, you know, that's capitalism, baby. So yeah, there's a lot of factors going on here, I think.
00:20:44.900I'm really interested in this idea that they are trying to make their plastic surgery and their work look conspicuous, that they're like not trying to look au naturel.
00:20:56.480They are trying to look like they spent time under the knife, like they put in a lot of money, like they put in a lot of effort.
00:21:03.120And it like, I think, frankly, like endured pain to look the way that they do.
00:21:08.980I mean, that's such a big part of it is just this idea that beauty is pain and beauty is a woman's duty and therefore being in pain for the sake of being beautiful is just part of what a woman must do or should do. And yeah, I mean, it signals like a really strong dedication to this sort of ideology. And I think, yeah, the uncanniness is a part of it.
00:21:31.880It's funny. I've been taking this class on puppets and automata and marionettes, kind of wanting to study why these things are so influential in the beauty space right now.
00:21:44.600Like, obviously, the most enduring beauty standard right now is this sort of mannequin perfect look. And what's been so interesting to me is this sort of object and God are two sides of the same coin.
00:22:01.260So I think, you know, a lot of what we would say about this uncanny look about this sort of like mannequin puppet look is it's objectification, which it is. But the other thing that you become when you remove like your human features is more godlike, you know, lacking that emotion.
00:22:18.760Some Henry from Kleist in there. I love it.
00:22:21.020Yeah. It's sort of like you reject your humanity for the sake of becoming this godlike figure with a godlike power. And that really is what Republicans are doing, particularly in this gender affirming care space. They're saying, I am a woman, so I am allowed to use these interventions and you are not.
00:22:40.260And you're really taking up this sort of, like, godlike authority. And I think this pull to get rid of, like, all traces of human life on your face really is part of that sort of performance of authority.
00:22:52.520Wait, Adrian, who's Heinrich von Kleissen? This is a Germany reference I did not catch.
00:22:57.700He wrote about the marionette theater.
00:23:15.220And I also think that like we could even make a slightly darker reading and say like the inability to express emotions or to read other people's faces, which is something that this makeup trend, frankly, has in common with AI.
00:23:28.380It's a pretty easy way to disable your own empathy.
00:23:31.400If you're gearing up to do something, say, really, really world historically regrettable.
00:23:35.820So I just, you know, I do think there may also be that, that, like, these are people who are trying to sort of dull their capacity for empathy in anticipation.
00:23:45.680I wanted to ask a little bit about, I didn't realize that, like, part of what we're seeing here might be that they're being taken for a ride by their doctors.
00:23:53.740And that seems to me also so emblematic that in some way, I wouldn't call that the Republican thing, but certainly on the Trumpist right, I'm always struck by how everything is both a grift and not, right?
00:24:07.160Like we called it the Mar-a-Lago look.
00:24:09.620Everyone at Mar-a-Lago is grifting Donald Trump.
00:24:11.780Donald Trump is grifting everyone at Mar-a-Lago.
00:24:17.180And so what better way to implementize that in your face is to be like, did I get taken for a ride by my plastic surgeon? That's for me to know. That's for him to know and for me not to say, you know.
00:24:27.920That's such a good point. And it's also, I think like this idea, I think a lot of women try to embody the beauty ideal to escape the clutches of misogyny because we're told like the more beautiful you are, the better you'll be treated, the more power you'll have. And it's just, it goes to show that like you really can't escape that through beauty. Like beauty is part of that. And you'll, you'll kind of like always be in its clutches.
00:24:56.420Yeah, it's interesting that there's something about these people who are very contemptuous of vulnerability, right? And there's one logic by which excessive cosmetic or like surgical interventions look invulnerable, right? They make you look less human. They make you like quite literally less capable of expressing emotion.
00:25:21.000But on the other hand, they make you look very, very vulnerable, right? Because this looks like somebody who, you know, I mean, there's a judgment that I'm maybe not entirely willing to endorse. But I always do when I see somebody who's had a ton of plastic surgery done to the point where they look kind of unhuman. My thought is that's a person in a mental health crisis.
00:25:44.960like that's a person who is suffering the effects of misogyny and no longer has a total grip on
00:25:52.780reality right and there's a way in which it's both broadcasting invulnerability and broadcasting
00:25:58.300your vulnerability to insecurity into the logics of misogyny at the same time well vulnerability
00:26:02.520in another way too right like i've long been fascinated with why republicans like lindsey0.94
00:26:08.360graham and i've come to the conclusion they like him because he's a gay man who thinks he's fooling
00:26:14.160them and part of the fun is the sadism of like oh this guy thinks he's fooling us he thinks he's in0.57
00:26:19.320the closet this man's not in the closet and there's something similar with plastic surgery
00:26:24.560right oh she thinks she's getting away with it we can all tell and you're right Maura that is a form
00:26:30.120of of great vulnerability and to accentuate that and to be like possibly either in on the joke or
00:26:36.780not in on the joke that that's new right the idea is if you get caught out it's like well this is
00:26:43.420obvious it gets embarrassing it's you're making a laughingstock of yourself you know if you deny
00:26:49.460it like men with hairpieces who deny they're wearing a hairpiece right like that the vulnerability
00:26:54.620is that other people can tell much more than these people think themselves they're giving away
00:27:00.220and that that does i think often lead back to gender and sexuality that people oh you think
00:27:05.120you're fooling me you think you're fooling everyone but you're not but so much about maga
00:27:34.340because I feel like every time he shows up
00:27:35.640on a Republican stage, all of Twitter used to go,
00:27:38.000oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah. What about the work that the men are having done? Because MAGA men also
00:27:43.560have a very particular look, even though like hashtag Republican makeup seems to be directed
00:27:47.280much more at the women. Right. Yeah. I think the longevity movement is a big part of this. I think
00:27:53.360for men, anti-aging has been rebranded as longevity. And there's this sort of like tech
00:27:59.360component to it. I mean, you even see it with all the MAGA tech guys who are next to these
00:28:04.600Republican lawmakers, they're all using this technology and it's been rebranded like kind
00:28:09.560of for bros. So, I mean, Botox is a huge part of it. The facelifts are a huge part of it. I mean,
00:28:15.040the very masculine like caricatured jawline is really prominent. Is that done with fillers or
00:28:20.360is that an implant? I think a lot of chin implants are happening, but you can get jaw filler to kind
00:28:25.820of create that like very angular sort of square look. And then I think hair plugs are really
00:28:32.300prominent as well. So it's, yeah, it's taking these like traditionally masculine features and
00:28:38.640just caricaturing them through injectables and surgery. So there's like a way in which the
00:28:46.880look itself serves as a signal of like membership in the group, right? Like just looking like this
00:28:57.640broadcast something about you and it broadcast something about like your politics right nobody's0.99
00:29:04.080gonna look at christy noem and be like that woman definitely voted for kamala harris you know and1.00
00:29:10.140and by extension kamala harris would never have that haircut or those extensions or those lashes1.00
00:29:18.920or those lip fillers you know and and it of course part of this is a race thing yes and like something0.82
00:29:24.820that i see a little bit in republican makeup is an attempt to like minimize ethnically ambiguous
00:29:31.580features like the nose is always very narrow yes like contoured so and like the lips are very big
00:29:39.380in this way that as you mentioned seems like a little bit of a like appropriation of the 2016
00:29:43.980like kylie jenner look like very much borrowing from black culture but that itself remains like
00:29:51.080an assertion of racial privilege, right? Right. It's like cosmetic colonization of taking this0.83
00:29:55.780feature that is associated with one race or ethnicity and grafting it onto like your white
00:30:01.240wealthy body because you can. But yeah, I think that's definitely a part of it. Like pretty much
00:30:06.880all beauty standards are born out of systems of oppression. They're the physical manifestation of0.65
00:30:11.380those systems. And yeah, beauty in that sense is a power structure. And so of course, all of these
00:30:18.300things influence what aesthetic signals we're adopting and why. And I mean, I think there's
00:30:24.560obviously a ton of overlap with the way, you know, the fascist movement shaped beauty standards in
00:30:29.580Nazi Germany, like physical perfection was a huge part of their political propaganda. It was blonde
00:30:35.680hair, blue eyes, fair skin, symmetrical features, like symmetry was a huge thing. And that's
00:30:41.440something that I think contributes to this uncanny look in the Mar-a-Lago face or the Republican
00:30:47.440make up, trying to draw those eyebrows perfectly symmetrically, like trying to get your lips to be
00:30:52.780a one-to-one perfect ratio. Like that's not what people look like. Like symmetry doesn't really
00:30:59.140exist for most of the population like that. But yeah, a lot of this is like to reinforce this
00:31:04.760like eugenics-driven racial hierarchy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a ton of overlap.
00:31:10.920Yeah. I mean, I think this podcast gets back to the question of physiognomy quite,
00:31:14.980quite frequently and it's true that like the idea there of course is that yeah that the face
00:31:19.940expresses what makeup can actually hide so right like early 20th century physiognomists and
00:31:25.540craniometrists were like well your bone structure doesn't lie it gives away what you can hide and
00:31:30.700what you could hide often enough was traits that they hated right like race mixing quote-unquote
00:31:35.940jewishness right right all these things and it's really fascinating to see it sort of here0.90
00:31:41.000put in the service of this exact same thing you create the norm face in order to be able to then1.00
00:31:47.020pathologize any deviation from it right because that's very much also implicit here that like
00:31:53.500the deviations from this are softness right like right these men get these chins in order not to
00:32:00.680look like beta cucks there's a very particular kind of soy boy they're not trying to be and that0.50
00:32:06.680they probably fear not so secretly they are in fact are right so to me the idea that someone
00:32:13.280says i'm going to get some injectables in order to look the way i used to look five years ago as
00:32:18.500opposed to the way i probably should look now totally the most understandable thing in the
00:32:22.660world the idea that i don't want to be this other person that strikes me as different and much
00:32:27.780scarier right like i i don't want to look like this other group um right not like myself but0.58
00:32:34.200a little bit more haggard like yeah that does suck but i don't want to look like these people
00:32:39.600seems to be very much the name of the game here doesn't it oh completely and it it's also it0.80
00:32:44.860makes it harder for people who aren't part of those groups those in groups people who aren't
00:32:50.920white to comply and part of the like evil genius of this system of of beauty standards is that0.52
00:32:57.440in incentivizing people to comply, you're stealing all of their resources in the process. You're0.87
00:33:04.180leaving them unresourced. They are funneling their time, their money, their effort, their attention,
00:33:09.220their energy, their headspace into this project of looking as perfect as possible. And yeah,
00:33:16.080they might eventually look that way, but what do you have left at the end of the day after you've
00:33:19.900reached that like aesthetic standard it occurs to me that we might have like come back here to the
00:33:28.900notion of like these very dramatic exaggerated sort of self-consciously artificial beauty standards
00:33:37.920on the political right as being again a rejection of transness right an attempt to like exaggerate
00:33:46.600and even almost caricature the sex binary right yeah because like both maga men and maga women
00:33:53.920to me look like they've had a lot done but they look quite different from one another
00:33:58.540and there's something about like a rejection of the trans or queer project of undermining the0.83
00:34:06.400social meaning of sex and the doubling down on like the sex binary and and their personal
00:34:13.180investments in their place on it that seems like just really honestly kind of sad.
00:34:19.640Yeah. Yeah. You know, when I look at Republican makeup and this artificial femininity as
00:34:26.440contrasted with the fact that they are blocking trans people who need gender affirming care from
00:34:32.260using these tools as well, I think they're sort of enforcing this new understanding of what is
00:34:38.400natural and that like an obviously effortful beauty is a sort of natural beauty, not in the
00:34:45.680sense that like these features are natural, but in the sense that it's considered a naturally
00:34:50.000feminine quality to pursue physical beauty. And like that's part of the myth of the eternal
00:34:55.780feminine, that women are meant to be beautiful. And if they're not, they're meant to make1.00
00:34:59.400themselves beautiful, to like put themselves through pain to do it. And the added element
00:35:05.640here is that you're only allowed access to those like painful interventions if you are you know a
00:35:11.480biological woman to begin with so there's sort of this strange acknowledgement of the fact that like
00:35:16.900yes it is work and we are restricting who is allowed to put in the work to appear quote unquote
00:35:23.140feminine or masculine in order to like preserve that hierarchy it also strikes me that like we
00:35:29.240can get to that central contradiction over and over and sort of say like oh they say they naturally
00:35:34.040know what a woman looks like they not know what a natural man looks like but then it's all totally
00:35:38.440unnatural but of course like in some way that's only a contradiction if you take nature to mean0.97
00:35:43.220a certain thing what they mean is nature is the thing that we say that it is right yes i can do
00:35:49.480this and i get away with it you can't right there are these kinds of people and these kinds of
00:35:55.420people and i feel like these weeks we see a good demonstration of this where like they're not trying
00:36:00.060to get away with everything they're trying to get away with things that other people cannot
00:36:03.700They're trying to say that there are two kinds of people in the system, some for whom this law applies, some for whom it doesn't. And here the same thing is extended to our very nature and personhood, it seems to me.
00:36:15.860Yes, totally. It's interesting because a lot of the sort of liberal critique of Republican makeup for these reasons is sort of tying into the same like moral judgments or ethical judgments that I think it's trying to be against.
00:36:34.120Like, you know, there's plenty of studies that show like people judge those who use overt cosmetics like makeup and tanner as morally inferior. And that is what liberals are doing here in this critique. They're sort of playing into the same exact playbook that there is like a moral hierarchy to beauty or to what kind of interventions you undergo.
00:36:55.920And so, yeah, I think there's like this element of like schadenfreude, you know, to be like, these are the women of the party that's policing our gender. But they're kind of saying, look, they can't even perform their gender correctly. You know, they're not even doing all the right things.0.89
00:37:12.860I would say, I think you're right in your critique of like the liberal, like hashtag Republican makeup trend, right? The mocking of the incorrect performance of womanhood by the standards that like those women who are making those videos are applying to. But I think that you touched on something really smart earlier, which is the actual standard isn't exactly beauty, right? It's definitely not naturalness, right?
00:37:35.600The standard for femininity embodied by Republican makeup is masochism, right? It's about a willingness to punish yourself, to expend money and time and to endure pain and to become, I think we can say grotesque, out of a pursuit and a desire for that approval and that sanction of, you know, male attention and social validation.
00:38:01.140Like that self-degradation that the beauty pursuit can imply is, I think, what the point is. And that's what they're considering, like the essence of womanhood. It's that masochistic drive more than the actual content of how they look.0.52
00:38:18.460On that entirely depressing note, Jessica DeFino, I'm so glad that we finally had you on the podcast. It's such a pleasure to see you always. And I hope all of our listeners will check out the review of Beauty because it's really excellent. And I learn something every time I read it.
00:38:37.860Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun.
00:38:40.580Thank you so much for coming on. This is absolutely fascinating. And now I'll be downloading TikTok and just scrolling for hours.
00:38:47.640God-made girls will be stuck in your head.1.00
00:38:49.760Yeah, it will be stuck in your head.1.00