THAT UNDENIABLE TRUTH.

I refer, dear reader, to the late Rush Limbaugh's Undeniable Truth of Life N^o. 24, "Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream."  That's been useful in a variety of ways, including some sort of squabble among the intersectional wokies over the way male-to-female crossers generally present themselves as well as some sort of Theorized argument about why working out is an oppressive regime.  Recently, Marie Claire offered its own twist on "the personal is political" with "The MAGA Beauty Aesthetic Tells the Story of America Today."

Maybe that's making a case that it's OK for the women of the fevered brow to be as hard on the eyes as they are on the ears.

It stands to reason, though, that a silly article by one Nessa Humayun includes the "interrogate" currently au courant among silly pseudo-intellectuals.

When a newly widowed, icy-eyed and perfectly made-up Erika Kirk steps up to a podium days after her husband’s assassination to declare his mission “stronger, bolder, louder,” she’s doing more than delivering a political message. She is embodying it. Her full lips, thick lashes and coiffed honey hair underscore a central tenet of MAGA beauty, that the personal is political. The aesthetic is not incidental—its doctrine.

What once could have been dismissed as vanity is now being weaponised by the right-wing as a visual language of loyalty. “Republican make-up” or “Mar-a-Lago Face” isn’t just about contour and lipstick. It’s a declaration of alignment and a form of control. This is what “Republican makeup” or “Mar-a-Lago Face” really means—and why it’s urgent to interrogate it.

While MAGA beauty may seem like an American export, its logic is already seeping into Britain’s own political and cultural bloodstream. From the tradwife revival on TikTok to the glossy image management of Conservative MPs and members of the Royal family, the equation of beauty with virtue and polish with power is firmly taking root on this side of the Atlantic. The same ideology pulses through the UK far-right “protect our girls” rhetoric—an ostensibly chivalric slogan with racial undertones and themes of patriarchal control.

Scroll through the feeds of conservative influencers and politicians’ wives and you’ll notice it instantly. Form-fitting skirt suits, sky-high stilettos, bouncy blow-dries and full coverage makeup: the look is immaculate, hyper-feminine and expensive. And, in the MAGA camp, it’s carefully engineered as a political tactic, as Melissa Rein Lively, founder of America First PR, an anti-woke publicity firm, tells me. “The Trump woman is elegant, powerful, hyper-feminine and always looks impeccable. Femininity is our weapon, and by being beautiful and elegant, you can get a lot more out of life than you can by looking like crap.”

This somewhat reactionary ethos is echoed through the movement. Natalie Winters, a 24-year-old White House correspondent and co-host of War Room with Steve Bannon (a podcast with significant force on the far-right of the political spectrum), compares her aesthetic to that of Reese Witherspoon’s character in Legally Blonde. “Think MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] meets Elle Woods,” she tells me. Unlike Elle Woods, however, this version of womanhood prizes polish and glamour not as rebellion, but as compliance and confirmation of traditional gender norms.

Why this Melissa Lively decided to play in the culture-studies sandbox with the likes of Marie Claire is beyond me.  Nearly forty years ago, didn't P. J. O'Rourke note that the hot girls who used to be protesting the Vietnam War were now volunteering for Republican campaign efforts?  But to quote from a song popular fifty years ago, there's something happening here.

Back in Washington, the administration increasingly undermines women on the left by attacking their appearances. Not engaging with the favoured aesthetic is seen as a moral failure—something deeply at odds with the essence of femininity and womanhood. Rein Lively makes her derision clear: “I find them flat, uniform, stripped of individual beauty or soul. All their ideas about feminism seem tied up in this notion that you can’t be both beautiful and powerful. As a result, they have stripped themselves of power by not using the way they look.”

The Trumpies don't have to work too hard at mocking the visual aspect of the women of the fevered brow.  "Leaked text messages from Democratic Senator Reuben Gallego of Arizona reveal him griping about his own party, and acknowledging that Democratic men, look like women and Democratic women, look like men."  Marie Claire's Nessie, though, opened her article slagging on the recently widowed Erika Kirk, which Pajamas Media's Scott Pinsker recently noticed was one of the more recent leftist feeding frenzies.  That doesn't strike me as a good way to win hearts and minds, but thinking like a woman of the fevered brow is not something I've ever done well.  Apparently after singer Taylor Swift announced her engagement to footballer Travis Kelce, at least one feminist enforcer wanted her excommunicated from the Woke Congregation.  Victory Girl Lisa Carr brings the wood that enforcer likely secretly longs for.

Melissa Fabello wants white women to look in the mirror and be as self-loathing as she is. She wants Taylor Swift and her Swifties to reckon with themselves and undergo a major makeover. Gain a couple of hundred pounds, dye their hair blue, cover themselves in tattoos, swear off men and sing about socialism and queer love and, of course, how much they hate Donald Trump. Hell, an album like that would sell like hotcakes, don’t ya think?

For the first time, I am Team Taylor here, which is saying A LOT. There’s a mental asylum bed waiting for Melissa Fabello somewhere. Now, give me another cup of coffee, some sequins and bubblegum and let me move through this world as the heterosexual, white, Conservative, educated, vibrant, daughter, wife, mother, God-fearing, 80s punk/new wave-loving, “dangerous” woman that I am.

There might have been other irritated intersectional types sounding off after that gym teacher popped the question, but that conversation covered other dimensions of the Battle of the Sexes, not necessarily focusing on the Undeniable Truth structuring this post.