5 aesthetics of Republican womanhood
Plus: an age of extinction, a feta tart, and more
Good morning! It’s Wednesday, and here’s this week’s post.
A take I haven’t written elsewhere
5 aesthetics of Republican womanhood
On his Substack,
posited four aesthetics of the contemporary American right. It’s an interesting read and, though these things are always debatable, strikes me as a fairly accurate taxonomy—for men. For Republican women, however, I think there’s rather more to be said, and the aesthetic shenanigans of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem have finally pushed me to say it.Before I begin, let me say what ought to be obvious but feels like a needful caveat: I’m not talking about bodies or faces here, except insofar as they’re dressed, adorned, and purposefully modified with surgery, filler, dye, makeup, and the like. I’m certainly not suggesting that anyone’s worth and dignity as a person are determined by appearance. But I am interested in parsing these public figures’ deliberate personal presentations on the national political stage.
With that said, I see five aesthetics for women in today’s GOP.
1. Concerned Moms
This first aesthetic is the oldest, most malleable, and most trend-driven of the lot. It’s long on messaging and short on durable outfit choices. In the 1980s and 1990s, the look was florals, pearls, patterns. In the early 2000s, think Ann Romney in a tasteful sweater or a sprawling, color-coordinated family photo.
Today, I think there’s more flexibility to be casual, but the clothes should still feel very much like something a put-together mom would wear to church. Sen. Katie Britt delivering her State of the Union response from her kitchen in jeans, a drapey blouse, and rhinestone cross necklace comes to mind.
Britt’s worth mentioning because historically the woman who adopted this aesthetic was in public in the role of wife and mother: The candidate was her husband. She stood by his side but often expressed herself in more domestic terms. These days, however, the Concerned Mom is increasingly a public figure in her own right. But she’s still likely to present herself as fundamentally motivated by concern for her family, and her aesthetic serves as a steady reminder of that orientation.
“I am a proud wife and mom of two school age kids,” Britt began her speech. “My daughter Bennett and my son Ridgeway are why I ran for the Senate. I’m worried about their future and the future of children in every corner of our nation, and that’s why I invited you into our home tonight.”
2. Iron Ladies
I’m stealing the name from Margaret Thatcher—not a Republican, I know. Here the look is tailored and serious, authoritative or maybe even severe. The skirt suit is favored, but the pantsuit shows up too. The hair is commonly bobbed or shorter. It doesn’t much move.
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Think then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice 20 years ago—particularly in that famous Vanity Fair photo of the Bush cabinet. She’s the central figure, all in black, not a hint of a smile. Or here she is testifying to the 9/11 Commission: tailored jacket, flag pin, minimalist gold necklace, restrained hair.
For a contemporary example, I might point to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. Despite her showbiz background, her political presentation has been quite staid. (And I say “despite,” but this Times article shows her at Monday Night Raw in 2005 looking ready for Washington already.)
Sometimes we see women straddling the Concerned Mom-Iron Lady line: Think former First Lady Laura Bush or activist Phyllis Schlafly. Bush worked, but as an elementary school teacher and a librarian. Schlafly was a public figure in her own right, but in a traditionalist register. This crossover look is tailored and pointedly feminine. See Schlafly’s silk scarves and pussy bows with blazers or Laura Bush in a jacket for her official portrait, but it’s orange and made of a soft material and worn as a standalone top, not a true jacket, and she’s seated in front of roses.
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3. Fox News Blonde
Well, duh. You know the deal: high heels, sheath dress in a bright solid, heavy makeup, year-round tan, white teeth, big hair, preferably blonde. Maybe add statement glasses and/or a blazer if you’re doing analysis or have a law degree.
Like the Concerned Mom and the Iron Lady, the Fox News Blonde is a longstanding aesthetic and no longer terribly attention-grabbing. But even if this look is less prominent than it used to be, the execution of it from Fox commentator Kat Timpf is a fascinating development.
Timpf basically plays by the aesthetic’s rules when she’s on air. She’s often in their late-nite lineup and goes a little edgier than the morning and primetime hosts, but it’s recognizably a Fox look.
But off air, on her personal channels, Timpf gleefully subverts the whole aesthetic, laughing at her own makeup skills and posting videos of herself looking overwhelmed by a long pregnancy or explaining that her hair looks thick and healthy on TV because of one simple trick: extensions.
4. Republican Instagram Face
Now we’re getting to the new-school GOP in general and, in particular, Kristi Noem:
Noem did not used to look like this. As Vanessa Friedman has documented at The New York Times, she’s had a “MAGA makeover” since her time as a member of Congress and governor of South Dakota. She used to be somewhere around the Concerned Mom-Iron Lady nexus, as you can see in this portrait from the congressional days:
Noem has been open about her cosmetic dental work, and to my eye she’s had something like Botox and fillers as well. Her lips are markedly fuller than they used to be, particularly if seen from the side, and she has adopted clothes, hairstyles, and makeup techniques we typically associate with women who are 20 to 30 years her junior and making a living not by touring Central American prisons but by hawking diet tea and shape wear on social media.
It’s the Republican version of what The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino dubbed Instagram Face: “It’s a young face, of course, with poreless skin and plump, high cheekbones. It has catlike eyes and long, cartoonish lashes; it has a small, neat nose and full, lush lips. It looks at you coyly but blankly, as if its owner has taken half a Klonopin and is considering asking you for a private-jet ride to Coachella. The face is distinctly white but ambiguously ethnic.”
In politics, we’re dealing with an older crowd. But otherwise, swap “CECOT” for “Coachella” and you’ve got 2025’s Kristi Noem. That video above is practically performance art: The lips. The hat pulled low. The hair flowing loose over pseudo-combat gear. Unfortunately, it’s not just content; this is our government.
Looking beyond Noem, Kimberly Guilfoyle—former fiancée of Donald Trump Jr. and now nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Greece—is to my mind the most troubling case of Republican Instagram Face. I’m especially thinking of that one picture with President Trump where she looks ill, miserable, and unnaturally altered from her younger self.
5. Barstool Women
The now widely known term “Barstool conservative” was coined by my erstwhile colleague Matthew Walter back in 2021. But where his introduction of and subsequent commentary on the concept has mostly focused on young men, there’s an aesthetic here for women, too.
It’s a bit more athletic than Republican Instagram Face—the effect is less cardio, more weights—and there’s none of the ethnic ambiguity. Think denim, shorter skirts, leather jackets, camo, tattoos, and workout clothes. Workwear picks tend to look like polyester, often tight and may be ill-fitting, a concession to institutional expectations, not something the Barstool Woman particularly wants to wear.
Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, who provided all the example links above, are good examples here. Rep. Nancy Mace kind of dabbles in this, but her overall aesthetic is pretty muddled. There’s a Hispanic candidate from Texas, if I recall correctly, who does this too, but I can’t recall her name right now.
Of course, not every Republican woman can be neatly placed in one of these boxes. Some, as I’ve mentioned, may straddle a line. And some aren’t pursuing any distinctly communicative aesthetic at all, just buying reasonably flattering suiting and jewel-toned dresses and getting on with it.
But I’ll close with two final observations. One is that some GOP women manage to check most or all of these boxes, maybe even shifting around with the vibes. Former veep nominee Sarah Palin did this well: Concerned Mom? Yep. Iron Lady? She wore lots of skirt suits and glasses on the campaign trail. In recent years she’s favored jeans and moto jackets—a Barstool look—and to my recollection, she was moving this way well before other prominent Republicans.
First Lady Melania Trump’s style is also interesting in this regard. Sometimes she turns out a Fox-friendly look, but her official portrait this term is tailored in a 3-martini-lunch kind of way, not so much an Iron Lady way. The “I really don’t care” jacket was a bit Barstool, perhaps? But on balance, I’m not sold that she’s trying to play by any of these rules.
Last is the matter of Second Lady Usha Vance, whom I also found difficult to place. As others have observed, her style is no-nonsense but doesn’t feel unconsidered. Her makeup is light, and her greys are visible. She wears tailored looks, but typically not suiting, and though she appeared in sheath dresses at the Republican National Convention last year, she also showed up in flats.
It took a while, but I finally realized why Vance’s style seemed a little familiar. There are many differences, of course, but I think her aesthetic is in some ways reminiscent of another lawyer-turned-political wife: Michelle Obama. I’ll be interested to see where Vance takes it from here.
What do you think? Have I missed or mistyped someone? Tell me:
Intake
“An age of extinction is coming. Here’s how to survive,” by Ross Douthat at The New York Times
“The limits of open letters,” by
for Christianity TodayCarrot tart with ricotta and feta—part of our Easter spread. I liked it, but the egg and cheese and bagel seasoning tart I threw together with spare puff pastry was the bigger hit with the family
Other than that, still the same few books I’ve mentioned, mostly. I’ve pre-ordered the Light Phone 3 and am gradually paring down my iPhone apps in anticipation. This past week, I delete the Substack app and the browser where I’d logged into Gmail. So: less intake! But in a good way. Haven’t quite worked up to deleting the final browser, but I’m aiming to get to it soon
Output
New work:
Taiwan and the ‘reverse Nixon’ | Defense Priorities (newsletter)
Newly relevant work:
Shoulda shared these last week, really.
The cross is poetically profound. But prose can help us see it clearly. | Christianity Today, February 2024
What atonement theories tell us about our politics | Christianity Today, April 2022
Coronavirus and the mystery of St. Mark’s Easter story | The Week, April 2020
4 competing theories on the theological meaning of Easter | The Week, March 2018
I enjoyed this.
The ideas in this piece are something I’ve never even considered, much less thought about so deeply. Too much of what I see is something I’ve already completely mulled over in my mind or even written about, but with your articles, I am regularly exposed to some fresh perspectives.