I don’t know how I am going to break this to my wife, but I’m not sure we can afford for her to look “natural.” A “celebrity cosmetic dermatologist” in Beverly Hills tells Vogue that we “are moving towards a period where natural, timeless beauty is increasingly valued.” A Beverly Hills plastic surgeon says this look is “characterized by elevated brow, prominent cheekbones and taut skin.” They’re calling it “Mar-a-Lago face,” and I can only imagine how much it would cost to achieve this look.
“Trump’s America is driving shifts in aesthetic ideals and appearances,” Vogue tells us. The country has lurched to the right, and the sartorial evidence for this shift has been on display at least since the inauguration. There was a “uniform look” among the fashionistas surrounding the incoming president, standing tall with their “bouncy blowouts, overdone makeup and ultra-traditional skirt suits.” They were “severe and demure…bold and brash [yet] unmistakably Republican.” This is not the aesthetic of Barbara Bush’s GOP, of course, but something altogether new and exciting: Little House on the Prairie, perhaps, if relocated to Trump Tower.
This move, at least in terms of immediate clothing choices, is of greater importance to women than to men, I’d guess, but the political sociology of it concerns us all. Something called Utah curls are in (not sure what those are) and tattoos are out. “With shifting ideals and morals come shifting appearances,” Vogue reports, and one mark of this conservatism is “a return to ultra-gendered values; be it hyper-femininity or hyper-masculinity.”
We’re seeing “a rejection of non-binary aesthetics,” and increasing “gender stratification.” On fashion-show runways, “size inclusivity rates” have continued to drop, meaning fatties need not apply. “It’s a sign of what’s to come: a continued shrinking and toning of bodies in the name of control. The resurgence of diet culture, the popularity of Ozempic and the decline in alcoholic consumption aren’t just about health or aesthetics.” These trends, someone at a “strategic foresight agency” tells Vogue, “reflect a deeper societal push towards restraint, discipline and control over one’s body.”
None of this is a surprise to Neil Howe, the author (with the late William Strauss) of Generations: A History of America’s Future, among other books, and, most recently, The Fourth Turning Is Here. I’ve known Neil since, back in the Pleistocene, he was an editor at what became The American Spectator, and I was a contributor. Whenever I need advice on, say, which ascot to wear the next time I head to Hooters, I call Neil. So I rang him up the other night to ask what he makes of this news from the world of Anna Wintour and Michael Kors—that Neverland, that is, where people wear sunglasses indoors.
Vogue is correct that the women around Trump, “appointees as well as family and extended family, take the way they present themselves very seriously,” Howe tells me. “Aesthetics are clearly important to this administration and its constituency. These women don’t look like they spend a lot of time barefoot in the kitchen, like some idealized ‘trad wife.’ But they do embody a kind of subservience to the patriarch. And the way men look is important, too. Trump seems to pick his cabinet based on how they look on TV. He wants men with that Hegseth jaw.”
Subscribe Today
Get daily emails in your inbox
This is not to suggest that what is signaled here is without substance. “Loyalty is important to these people,” Howe says. “Except for that one niece, who seems to have made a career out of trashing Trump, he maintains a good relationship with all these children. He’s not loyal to his cabinet—there’s no one from his first term around for his second—but he is loyal to his family. The whole Melania/Ivanka style is one of respectful subservience. He’s in charge, and they are his helpmates.”
And it’s not just the inner circle. “You see this kind of gender bifurcation in younger people these days, with the ‘manosphere,’ Andrew Tate and all that,” Howe goes on. “Younger Americans think about money all the time, but not in an optimistic, upwardly mobile way. They are worried about their financial future. They’re in a kind of defensive posture, and this administration, stylistically, speaks to all that.”
Hey, I get it. I’ve never gone a day in my life without worrying about money, even when I had it. There’s no way we can afford to send my wife to a plastic surgeon in Palm Beach, so she is going to have to achieve that “natural” look on her own. We’ll have to work on that “subservience” business, too, of course, and that is not a conversation I look forward to. What I can do, in the meantime, is wear sunglasses indoors. I might need to do so after we discuss her “subservience.”
