Newly widowed, icy-eyed and perfectly made-up, Erika Kirk looks to the ceiling, her steely blue eyes holding back tears. Shimmery eyeshadow, thick lashes, and long, honeyed hair catch the light. Her glossed lower lip wobbles as she declares that her late husband, Charlie Kirk—assassinated while addressing university students in early September—will have his mission carried on “stronger, bolder, louder, and greater than ever.” It was riveting—but the full beat was key, underscoring a central tenet of MAGA beauty: the aesthetic is not incidental, it’s doctrine.
What with their form-fitting skirt suits, heels, and heavy make-up, usually replete with a bouncy blowout, President Trump’s female circle, which now includes Kirk, has an incredibly cohesive visual identity. Think of Melania and Ivanka, alongside the likes of Kimberly Guilfoyle, Kristi Noem and Laura Loomer. The public has cottoned on: “Mar-a-Lago face,” “Republican make-up,” and “conservative girl make-up” were all trending on TikTok last year, albeit with a satirising bent.
It’s incredibly intentional, 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. Whether it’s like a FLOTUS-style dress or sky-high Louboutins at a rally, she knows how to own her femininity and command the room, and she does it with unapologetic style.”
Last year, Rein Lively launched an unsuccessful social media bid for White House press secretary, yet remains in Trump’s orbit, staunchly loyal. “It’s Aspen meets Mar-a-Lago power princess with a Paris pharmacy in her Birkin,” she exclaims when I ask about her beauty aesthetic. But it’s deeper than looking good; it aligns her with right-wing, Trumpian ideology. “Conservative women are reclaiming femininity as a source of power. We know that you don’t need to tone yourself down or look masculine to be in a leadership role. 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 is a sentiment echoed by White House correspondent, 24-year-old Natalie Winters, who compares her aesthetic to that of Reese Witherspoon’s character in Legally Blonde: “Think MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] meets Elle Woods.” Unlike her friend Rein Lively, Winters basically resides within the west wing—she is frequently described as Washington’s most outrageous MAGA pundit, and is the protégée of Steve Bannon, with whom she co-hosts the War Room podcast. “It starts from the top down. Melania, Ivanka, and really all the Trump women have nailed this aesthetic,” she says. “I think a feminine beauty standard is the norm that women are drawn to, absent a culture that promotes gender as a spectrum or the masculinization of women. So the women who inhabit Trump’s world are naturally more immune to those forces—ideologically and in practice.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
“‘Mar-a-Lago Face’ and ‘Republican make-up’ are sort of ahistorical reimaginings of the ‘classic’ 1950s beauty ideal through the lens of 1980s excess, brought to life with 2025’s modern cosmetic technology,” comments writer Jessica DeFino, who explores how beauty culture impacts people physically, psychologically and spiritually. “Beauty is a core tenet of traditional femininity in conservative circles, and beyond. The closer a woman is to the ideal, the more power she might have access to, in terms of financial, social, and political capital. Republican women see this and adhere to it to align themselves with power and protect themselves from a certain amount of discrimination. In doing so, they reinforce the very systems of discrimination they seek protection from. If I appreciate anything about this particular aesthetic, it’s that it lays bare the reality of beauty standards: They are political weapons.”
Simultaneously, then, figures like Sydney Sweeney—who is arguably the apotheosis of this ideal—have been co-opted by the right, especially following her American Eagle “good jeans” row, which detractors criticised for its alleged overtones of eugenics ideology. And of course, this is an administration that openly praises women who meet their beauty standard. Back in August, Trump gushed about his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt’s appearance: “She’s become a star. It’s that face. It’s that brain. It’s those lips, the way they move,” he said.
DeFino adds that something that has been overlooked in most of the coverage of MAGA aesthetics is just how many of the biggest players in the beauty industry have aligned themselves with the Trump administration.
She points out that the executives who stood with him on his inauguration day included: “Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, which is the number one online beauty retailer in the US. Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, owner of Instagram, whose photo-editing technology and algorithms helped to mould ‘Instagram Face’. Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok, where beauty and personal care products are the number one driver of sales on TikTok Shop [and] Bernard Arnault: CEO of LVMH, which owns Sephora (“the world’s most powerful beauty retailer”) as well as Benefit Cosmetics, Fenty Beauty, and Make Up For Ever.” It’s worth noting that Trump also has his own beauty line: Trump Fragrances.
As such, there is a clear vested interest in beauty writ large, and this perhaps explains why the administration increasingly attacks the appearances of women on the left. Beauty has always been currency, but never so much as it has been in 2025, where the sky is the limit on aesthetic transformation. Not engaging with it is seen as a moral failure—something deeply at odds with the essence of femininity and womanhood. To abstain from it is, then, slobbish.
Rein Lively makes her derision clear: “I find them flat, uniform, stripped of individual beauty or soul. There’s no celebration of grace, elegance, or feminine allure. 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.”
She adds, “To those who deeply value what it means to be a woman, spiritually, biologically and emotionally, the rejection of beauty feels like a rejection of womanhood itself.” Winters is more flippant: “I think women on the left would be happier if they embraced their internal beauty by focusing on the importance of feminine energy instead of trying to be a masculine version of themselves. Just try it for a week!”
The shift towards more traditional beauty standards works in tandem with the pendulum swing to the right in American politics. Trump set the scene for what’s happening now during his first term—a series of moves that led to the overturning of Roe v Wade (the constitutional right to abortion) in 2022. Now, his administration is clamping down further: in September, it was reported that $10 million in contraceptives, including birth control pills and IUDs, had been destroyed on orders from his officials. Kirk, for her part, is staunchly pro-life—she took a moment during her speech at her husband’s memorial service to assert that “being a mother is the single most important ministry you have.”
It wasn’t a surprising utterance. DeFino highlights that in conservative ideology, ‘woman’ is synonymous with ‘wife’, ‘mother’, and object of beauty. “They believe it’s a woman’s duty to sacrifice her body to the demands of all three of these roles.” Accordingly, this rigid beauty standard echoes a core tenet of right-wing politics—gender absolutism, that a woman is a woman, and a man is a man.
When embarking on his second term, Trump launched a veritable crusade against trans rights. Early executive orders included efforts to eradicate “gender ideology”, bar trans people from military service, restrict transgender care for minors, and he also attacked organisations that offer gender-affirming care. “On the first day of his second term, Trump declared there were ‘only two genders: male and female’, and the exaggerated ‘feminine’ aesthetic that’s currently trending with Republican staffers, policy makers, and pundits is 100% an anticipation of and a response to that statement,” DeFino points out. “The aesthetic is also predicated on whiteness—light but tanned skin, blonde hair or highlighted hair worn in loose waves, narrow noses—and we see this glorification of whiteness playing out in policy, too, with the Trump administration’s attacks on DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and immigrants.”
I can’t help but return to the image of a defiant Erika Kirk. To me, it sums up the inherent juxtaposition of the aspirational conservative woman. You must overachieve, yet preach traditional family values, and you must meet the criteria of femininity no matter the situation. A hair cannot be out of place, even if your husband was murdered days ago. For her part, the former beauty pageant queen and business owner has just been named CEO of her late spouse’s company, Turning Point—an organisation focused on spreading right-wing ideology on college campuses. I’d argue that the way she presented herself—coiffed, beautiful, woman—was absolutely critical.