00:12:13.680And those group of women were also spread out, but they were in really high centers of power.1.00
00:12:19.420So sometimes, you know, directly working for the president.1.00
00:12:22.320Other times they were working for the Heritage Foundation, think tanks. And I think that it is a little bit misleading to just focus on Phyllis Schlafly because she was part of a group of women who were active, successful and extremely savvy politically.
00:12:39.140Well, I also think that the press and also history likes to pick out the most photogenic camera ready woman in a group.
00:12:46.600yes and uh yeah and she was had a really good sort of media presence when you look when i look back
00:12:53.720in interviews of that time and debates she was great yeah it was she was really great she was
00:12:59.240really great yeah and i want to i want to talk a little bit about that mediagenic presence and
00:13:05.020you know also how that ties into all of the ideas of how a christian woman should present herself
00:13:11.860when we get back from a quick break, starting with the blondes of the 90s.0.64
00:13:24.600Okay, we are back. I love talking about the blonde Christian ladies of the 90s, Ann Coulter. I mean,0.93
00:13:31.520Ann Coulter had a particular shade of blonde that I remember. I can picture her hair
00:13:37.860even more than I can picture her voice at this point.1.00
00:13:42.480So talk to me a little bit about the blondes.1.00
00:13:46.920that's how they were referred to by journalists at the time.1.00
00:13:49.760They rose up in the 90s when talk radio
00:13:52.640was really becoming dominated by conservatives.
00:13:56.440So Rush Limbaugh is a notable figure during the 80s
00:13:59.520that rose into prominence into the 90s.
00:14:02.720And these women shared several characteristics.1.00
00:14:05.360So they were blonde, hence their name.1.00
00:14:07.220They were often quite mediogenic. They were thin. They were white. They wore, let's say, hyper feminine style of clothing. So tight skirts, high heels, very high heels, short dresses. Their hair was always worn long and feathered and they had a lot of makeup on.1.00
00:14:23.940And yet their presentation style when it came to talking about politics was pretty feisty.
00:14:32.800You could even say quite rude at times.
00:14:38.000And Ann Coulter has even famously said, I'm empowered by my looks to say things that a lot of other pundits couldn't say.
00:14:44.680So it was as if their hyper-feminine appearance and aesthetic offset their more masculine and aggressive style of communication when it came to politics.
00:14:55.660And they really perfected this combination, utilized it to their advantage, and they're the antecedents for what we see now with social media influencers on the right.
00:15:07.880Yeah, I don't think that it is an accident that so many of the women on Fox News look the same.
00:15:14.680And I'll tell you, too, I used to do a bunch of TV talking head stuff when I was a celebrity journalist.
00:15:22.360And, you know, when you're when you're talking about celebrities, you're you're pretty agnostic about what cable network you're going on.
00:15:27.840I mean, Fox did so much entertainment. So I was on Fox a lot.
00:15:30.840And I remember and some days I was on CNN, MSNBC and Fox on the same days.
00:15:36.000And I remember going into hair and makeup at Fox, and it was a totally different experience because it was big hair, heavy eyeliner, and massive fake lashes.
00:15:46.080They had a formula for me, which I thought was fascinating because I think appearance does matter so much to the very vocal Christian woman, and it works.
00:15:59.040Yeah. There's a scene I have in my book where Megyn Kelly spoke at a Women's Turning Point USA summit in 2024, and she tells the women, you need to make yourself presentable, do your hair, put on makeup every day, don't look like these student protesters at Columbia University.0.91
00:16:18.380And of course, she's referring to the college protesters protesting Israel's assault in Gaza. And she's also, though, tapping into this longstanding binary between women on the right being presented as attractive and hyper feminine and well put together and then women on the left being unattractive or overly masculine.
00:16:37.760And, you know, we saw this energized when Hillary Clinton with her campaign and when she was the first lady.
00:16:43.120And so Megyn Kelly's drawing on that history, but she's also making it very contemporary in her address to these young conservative women.
00:16:52.400Yeah. And I mean, now we're seeing it so much with Erica Kirk and and all of the young women's turning point conferences.
00:17:01.040And these are and I think that they get dismissed by the left a lot as kind of frivolous and frothy and like Christian lady summer camp.0.69
00:17:08.540I'm like, no, this is boot camp for like the next generation of Christian politicians and far right politicians.0.61
00:17:16.920And yes, they may be very blonde and they may have a full face of makeup on, but you are discounting them at your own risk.0.64
00:17:23.960And I think the left is way too quick to discount women, even though we claim that we don't, to discount women based on what they look like.
00:17:31.040Sure, absolutely. And I mean, the tell is in the name of these conferences for right wing women. They're often referred to as a leadership summit or a training conference. And they are very much set up to train young women to be politically engaged, to be political operatives in the future of the conservative movement and the Republican Party.0.96
00:17:52.620So, yeah, the more articles, you know, I read on Mar-a-Lago Face or critiquing right-wing women's clothing or sheath dress, the more I think to myself, you know, you're missing a whole part of the story.0.96
00:18:05.920And these women are going to be running the country potentially in 10 years time.1.00
00:18:12.880These women are going to be powerful.0.79
00:18:14.280And, you know, I mean, I'm guilty of it, too.
00:18:16.360I've written about Mar-a-Lago Face and it is amazing to me that everyone seems to have the same filler doctor.
00:18:21.840It's really interesting. I mean, I'm really interested in it as well. And the way that femininity is presented and the way that it's exaggerated by the right and becomes a focal point. And yet equally, their politics are hugely important to their feminine presentation.
00:18:41.120You know, they it's almost like an exaggerated femininity signals their ideas of gender and this gender binary and what they are thinking and saying is showing up in the way they present themselves physically.
00:18:54.700And it allows the left to honestly dismiss them, like we said, you know, to write them off because of, you know, what we see as an appearance.0.63
00:19:01.860It's like, I think we're just as guilty of judging women as the other side is.
00:19:08.000It's like, oh, no, like you care about a nice barrel curl and a pink lip and therefore you shouldn't be taken seriously and they should be taken very seriously.
00:19:35.920And I think there's something to be said about the fact of sort of those, you know, I identify myself as a feminist and what it means as a feminist to spend too much time focusing on appearance, even when it's women on the right who don't share our politics.
00:19:49.380Right. Exactly. It's like, oh, no, as a femme. And I don't like those ideas about feminism.
00:19:53.860right? It's like, if you're a feminist, then you just, this is so superficial. You don't care about1.00
00:19:57.520that. And I think that that has also been a turnoff to a lot of young women who are like,
00:20:02.000well, we live in the social media age and people are looking at our faces all the time. Of course,
00:20:06.040we care how we look and how we're presenting ourselves. Don't tell us we're superficial
00:20:10.180for caring about how we look. And I think we also often think that, oh, these women are0.98
00:20:17.620portraying themselves like this for the benefit of a man. And I'm like, no, I think they feel
00:20:22.240powerful by putting on essentially what is a costume every day. Yeah, absolutely. And it allows
00:20:28.600them as well, as I said, with the blondes to sort of engage with a very masculine sphere of politics1.00
00:20:34.500and a style of communication that would be more associated with men, style of aggression, because1.00
00:20:39.960they've got the balance with their appearance. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I would have liked to0.58
00:20:45.180see Rush Limbaugh try to pull off what Ann Coulter pulled off in Stilettos on a regular basis.
00:20:50.020Yeah. Also, I would not like Ann Coulter would beat anyone in a bar fight. I'm sorry. She just would have like she's terrifying.0.99
00:20:57.740Yeah. I mean, we can say that about some of today's right wing, powerful women as well.1.00
00:21:03.480Well, exactly. I mean, I think that all I think that all the time. I also, you know, I look at Eric Kirk and I'm like, wow, I think that you may end up having even more influence than your husband at the end of the day.1.00
00:21:16.000uh because of i i think she's a little bit smarter um and a little even even more media savvy
00:21:23.060and we and i don't think that we should be underestimating her and yet like so much media
00:21:30.000coverage that i see of her once once the left decided that they were going to finally you know1.00
00:21:34.020feel comfortable going after the poor widow again was oh my god look at this flowery dress she's1.00
00:21:39.260ridiculous and like listen to the words coming out of her mouth and look at the girls in the1.00
00:21:42.740audience that are just nodding along and they're like yep yep i mean i have a question for you joe0.96
00:21:47.060if i can turn the tables for a second please do please do i love it i love i love it when the
00:21:51.360tables are turned okay i know it's quite a bold move but since you are so engaged with media and
00:21:57.280run a podcast related to it why do you think erica kirk's been so vilified by the media
00:22:02.320i mean number one because she is a woman and number two because she and when we're talking0.99
00:22:10.840about the media we're talking about the left-wing media yeah um because she is a woman who has
00:22:15.480openly said that she is submissive or was submissive to her husband i also think that1.00
00:22:21.940it's fair to call her a liar because she's an overly intensely educated smart woman who ran0.74
00:22:27.180her own company who is preaching that young girls should drop out of school uh and you know take on1.00
00:22:34.200the most important calling in life as a wife and a mother when we know that she was running her1.00
00:22:40.140own business. She was much older than Charlie when they got married. I do not think that she0.99
00:22:45.040gave up any of her agency in their marriage. And that is my bone. I mean, I have many bones to
00:22:50.140pick with right wing women, but they are often preaching something they themselves do not1.00
00:22:54.740practice. It is, you know, no, it is the family is all that matters. You should stay home with
00:22:59.840your kids. And I'm like, none of y'all are. OK, all of you have an army of nannies to be able to
00:23:04.860do the job that you're doing because none of us could do this without without help and without
00:23:09.180support. And so they're massive liars. Yeah. But I do think that Erica gets unfairly vilified0.59
00:23:15.120because of her appearance, because of how she dresses, because of how she presents herself.0.99
00:23:19.200And because she does put the idea of being a wife and a mother very much in the forefront and very
00:23:26.300much first. And that seems at odds with the traditional idea of being a feminist where it's1.00
00:23:33.280like, no, you are going to climb the corporate ladder and there is one way to be a feminist.
00:23:36.160And I think that is why, you know, feminism has become very unattractive to some young women who are like, but I want to be a mom. Is it okay? Is it okay if I want this thing? And maybe I also want to be a wife. And I wish that we could enlarge the tent a little bit more in terms of feminism because I am a feminist with a capital F.
00:23:57.960OK, like I'm just like that is that is what is I would tattoo it on my forehead, on my boobs, like and I like it's what's going to be on my gravestone.
00:24:06.620I believe in the elevation of women and equity for women.
00:24:12.200Well, I'm a I'm a single issue voter. OK, but it's just there. There we are.
00:24:16.760And yet I also love being a mom and I love being a wife most of the time.
00:24:21.620And I these are all parts of myself that are equally important to what I do for paid work.
00:24:27.800And so they're equally part of my purpose in life.
00:24:31.080And I think that, you know, a lot of the left wing media does get turned off when someone puts wife and mother on the same level as your career, which is something I think we really have to let go of.
00:24:44.560Yeah. Well, I think you just hit the nail on the head.
00:24:47.440I think it's the hypocrisy that is deeply unattractive and frustrating to people.0.72
00:24:52.180And it's the way you present yourself.
00:24:53.740I mean, your bio, for example, very clearly states the numerous accolades and the work that you've done. You also include the fact that you have children and you have a spouse. And I think that presents a whole person and a whole character. And that is that genuine sort of presentation of self is contrasted when we talk about right wing women like Erica Kirk.
00:25:15.160truly it truly is i want to take another quick break and when we get back i want to talk a
00:25:20.480little bit about pageants and the pageants to politics pipeline which is another thing we
00:25:25.880don't talk about enough that you just you so brilliantly talk about in your book
00:25:29.640chew on this bold question from dentine gum is it ever okay to compliment a millennial
00:25:40.720on their skinny jeans in 2026 dentine too bold
00:25:49.420okay we are back i am fascinated by beauty pageants and i will tell you i remember writing
00:26:01.300a sub stack i think i wrote a newsletter about um hannah nealman from ballerina farm participating
00:26:07.260participating in a beauty pageant. And one of my one of my readers very rightly called me out and
00:26:13.560said that I was being condescending about pageants. And I was like, come on the show and let's talk
00:26:18.300through it. And she was not wrong. And it made me want to compete in the Mrs. America pageant. So,
00:26:24.880I mean, I still may do this. I still may run for Mrs. Pennsylvania. I mean, I think I could kill
00:26:31.260it in everything except for the bathing suit competition. And I can't walk in heels anymore.
00:26:35.180But I do think that there's a general dismissiveness of pageants. But we have seen a kind of pageant to politics pipeline, especially when it comes to the Christian right. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?
00:26:47.580Yeah, this was one of these surprise findings in my research that I didn't set out to find. And it was only when I was sifting through the data and doing the analysis that I realized, hey, there are a lot of women who are social media influencers right now on the right who have a background in beauty pageants, winning beauty pageants.1.00
00:27:07.460So Erica Kirk is an obvious example, of course. A California influencer named Carrie Prejean Bowler, who was on Trump's faith advisory board and then got kicked off. It's another story. She was Miss California and was the runner up in Miss America. And there are a few examples like that that I note in the book. And I found this really interesting. So it's not 100 percent surprising. We've already talked about the way that hyper femininity is put forward by right wing women.0.55
00:27:33.040But there's something about the training that goes on with pageants, the sort of camera ready, the savviness that comes with having to compete.1.00
00:27:42.140And that has also allowed these women now to move into a new career of social media influencers.
00:27:48.820So it's a really interesting pipeline and it's something that I'm not sure we've fully paid attention to.
00:27:55.440No, because the pageant world, it is, again, something written off as frivolous and superficial.
00:28:03.040But and I think in Trump's hands, a lot of it was as well. But I will tell you that some of the training that these women go through is is grueling. And it is work and it is work and it is labor that is just often dismissed. And it's often a path as well for scholarships for young women who do not necessarily have an alternative, another way of getting into and then paying for college.0.92
00:28:31.420And I think that that is also something that is often dismissed by a very liberal elite who have had their path to colleges paved for them for generations.
00:28:42.700Yeah. No, you raise a really good point.
00:28:44.620So an example that I mentioned a minute ago, Carrie Prejean, as she used to be called, ran for Miss California.
00:28:50.760And in the Miss America pageant, she was asked about gay marriage by Perez Hilton.
00:28:55.800And she responded that marriage is between a man and a woman.
00:28:59.660she got vilified for that comment she got so much negative press she credits she blames that on as
00:29:07.060being the reason she didn't win Miss America and it kind of catapulted her into politics so you
00:29:13.980know there's that's a really interesting example for me of something that I talk about in the book0.97
00:29:18.700which is this feeling by a lot of right-wing women that they're under attack by an unfair0.99
00:29:23.860liberal elite. And I think that crosses social class lines. I think that crosses1.00
00:29:29.240race. I think it crosses where you live in the country, if you're on the coast or more central.
00:29:35.080But that was a resounding theme. And that came up a lot with Carrie and as part of her role as an
00:29:40.800influencer now. Yeah. And I want to talk a little bit, just to close us out, with the Christian
00:29:47.040influencer ecosystem, again, tradwives get all the attention, but it's so much bigger than that.
00:29:52.880What did you see in your research about the different kinds of Christian influencers out there that are truly making a difference when it comes to getting women to go to the polls and then also to run for office?
00:30:04.560Yeah, good question. So this is this really astounded me, Joe, is the conservative media ecosystem, the way that it is a wraparound service and that it hits every emotional balance, every interest, every age group.
00:30:22.100There is an influencer for you. And what I mean by this is I saw everything from mom influencers who were encouraging women to be involved in school board races or to vote on certain issues to young Gen Z influencers to women who were older, like the Megyn Kelly type of listeners in their 50s and 60s.
00:30:46.280And there were also influencers that were very angry and some women gravitated toward that. There were some influencers who led with Bible verses and kind of a more gentle mothering approach, but also slipped in politics.
00:30:59.180So I was just blown away at how many different types of influencers there were on the right and how the women I met and interviewed all over the country had a range of influencers to follow and listen to when it came to politics and how they often were drawn to them because they consider their content apolitical and yet were also receiving a lot of political news in the process.
00:31:25.580Well, yeah. And we've talked about that a lot on this podcast about how, you know, they have created a lifestyle ecosystem. And then through that, you know, it's a slippery slope into the politics of it.0.95
00:31:43.520And where does the lifestyle end and the politics begin? And, you know, it may start with just like beautiful family photos and outfits to wear to church or, you know, you made it. And also, you know, sometimes religion is very quietly coded in these accounts in the beginning. Right.
00:32:03.100And then once you develop this kind of parasocial relationship with an influencer, then these views seem like you're just talking about, you know, what's the best toddler lunch recipe to pack in their lunchbox?
00:32:19.360And suddenly you're also getting inundated with stories about how you should never be on birth control because it'll make you more attracted to your cousin.
00:32:27.420Right. Yeah. I mean, I was part of a Facebook group of 4,000 conservative Christian women. And what I noticed in that group over the years is that exactly as you say, there would be tips on what is the most organic or natural body wash that we could have in our home to how the measles outbreak in Texas is being misrepresented by the news and nobody's dying and we can't believe it and stick to your guns and don't get vaccines.
00:32:55.040So and I think that toggling between the two as well allowed participants who maybe would be turned off by more overt political commentary to stay in the group, to keep engaging with it, to build that trust, not only with an influencer, but with each other and feel that that community was almost more meaningful than their community in real life where they lived.
00:33:17.040and i think that's become true as communities have you know become more frayed and things like
00:33:25.700this have moved online i'm i mean we've definitely saw that you know with the male loneliness crisis
00:33:31.020and then you know men really being pulled into the bro manosphere podcast youtube ecosystem but
00:33:40.840it happens to women too it just happens a little more quietly and i don't think that we talk about
00:33:45.260that aspect of it enough. Right. And that's hugely attractive for women who I interviewed who said,0.99
00:33:50.040you know, politics is too divisive. It's so stressful in our country right now. I'm just
00:33:56.280trying to tune it out. But then when I dug a little bit deeper, especially when I asked about
00:34:00.180their online activities, I found that actually they're quite politically engaged. They're talking
00:34:04.520about it regularly on Facebook or they're receiving information from an influencer that they're
00:34:09.480implementing in their daily life. So what gets coded as politics or not politics has been
00:34:14.120completely reshuffled in the present day. It truly has. And everything is political
00:34:19.160these days. It is. And frankly, because we haven't paid enough attention to that,
00:34:25.060I think that is how we lost abortion rights. It's how we will ultimately lose birth control rights
00:34:31.040because we haven't realized that everything is political. Lifestyle is political. And that's
00:34:36.160how women's rights get eroded at the end of the day. Yeah, it's true. It's true. It's more subtle,1.00
00:34:40.620every day, slow chipping away that is tenacious and continuous. And then we wake up one day and
00:34:47.780we're surprised when a major piece of legislation has been overturned. But really, it's been 55
00:34:52.620years in the making. 55 years in the making, all of which you talk so beautifully about in Esther's
00:35:00.980Army. Will you tell our audience where they can find you and this wonderful book? So I'm on book
00:35:06.400tour this summer um you can check out on social media my profile page to get more updates on my
00:35:12.440book tour i'm doing a bunch of podcast interviews like this wonderful one and then you can buy my
00:35:16.900book it's out june 30th buy it anywhere that good books are sold and it's a slim 50 000 words i
00:35:23.620should add again slim and sexy 50 000 words i love a short book i truly do i just i just finished
00:35:30.700a 90 90 96 000 words but i've got a lot of a lot of murder in mind yeah that will keep us hooked
00:35:36.040You know, when you're reading about the political right, which can be quite heavy, especially for a summer read, you've got to keep it short.
00:35:43.060You keep it short. Keep it short. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on today, Katie.