As a senior lifestyle reporter at HuffPost, Brittany Wong covers stories about wellness and health, gender, relationships, internet culture and more. She’s previously written for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Angeleno magazine and GOOD. She lives in Los Angeles.
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It’s a bit uncanny valley, but you know the look when you see it: The Mar-a-Lago-faced might start with lip injections, then move to Botox to achieve that taut, almost painfully tight-looking skin. Cheek filler to restore lost volume in the cheekbones rounds out the face.Then, it’s on to heavily contoured makeup that almost feels drag-adjacent . Some have likened Mar-a-Lago face toEric Trump poses with his wife, Lara Trump, and his brother's former fiancee, U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle. Some plastic surgeons suspect both women have gotten a few tweaks since President Trump came to power.The fact that it’s so cost-prohibitive to look this way may be part of why it’s so in demand. In an era when celebrities are increasingly transparent about, maybe the appeal of Mar-a-Lago-face isn’t so much “look how young I look,” but “look how expensive I look.”Other women in Trump’s inner circle suspected of undergoing some of the treatments associated with Mar-a-Lago face include the aforementionedRuth Holliday, a professor of gender and culture at the University of Leeds in the U.K., thinks looking snatched is a sign of success in Trump circles because it can be attained with the right financial and cultural capital. “Cosmetic surgery has the double-function of marking a body as valuable whilst adding value to it,” she said. “It’s an investment, and investing in your body under neoliberalism is key to being a healthy citizen ready for hard work.”, have also clearly “invested” in their faces. For the mostly post-50 socialites on the show ― which Newsweek has called a“It’s so much pressure to try to fit in, and I want to because I love going to Mar-a-Lago and being in the same room as the president and Elon Musk; that is such an amazing feeling,”On Netflix's reality show"Members Only: Palm Beach," the women seem to have undergone some Mar-a-Lago-inspired tweaks.Ultimately, the desire to fit in ― to have really made it ― is one of the central forces driving women to seek Mar-a-Lago face.Keagle practices in a hipster neighborhood of northeast Los Angeles where women are getting similar procedures ― Botox, fillers and fat transfers ― but with a much lighter hand. The goal is natural, “me but better,” Keagle said. Keagle generally tries to counsel patients to leave some wrinkles in their faces because if you completely fill them in, it looks “abnormal.” “You want to restore what was there 10-20 years ago while preserving the patient’s aesthetic and look,” she said. “I never want a patient to look weird or different. A 60-year-old woman should not have the same face as a teenager.”Since Trump’s second term began, plastic surgeons in Washington say they’re wrestling with their conservative clients’ requests for a more “noticeable” look. “I have to say: ‘I cannot put any more in there safely,’” she said. “To my eye, if I put any more in there, you’re going to cross over from looking like the best version of yourself to looking like Maleficent.”“When you go outside the range of what a normal human face should look like, that’s not a place I’m willing to go,” she added. Keagle thinks some women in the MAGA elite might have “filler blindness” since the uncanny valley look is almost all that they’re surrounded by. “And once you look at it in the mirror and see it again and again, it becomes your norm,” she said. “A face that erases all signs of aging.”Some experts believe the look is about signaling “loyalty and a willingness to submit.” Perhaps in individual cases, the Mar-a-Lago look is just filler blindness or facial dysmorphic disorder, but there are probably other dynamics at work for people in Trump’s sphere, said Samantha Kwan, an associate sociology professor at the University of Houston and the co-author of “Kwan thinks what’s happening instead is that the women are communicating their political allegiance to Trump via his favorite aesthetic:“By investing large sums of money into these procedures, as well as upkeep, this aesthetic is not only a status symbol, but a highly recognizable symbol that they’re a MAGA devotee,” she said.Because it’s such a sexed-up look ― bee-stung lips, exaggerated, Kardashian-esque contoured makeup ― it’s catering to the male gaze, too. The unspoken message Mar-a-Lago face gives to men in power is that the woman is willing to tear into their flesh and change their entire individual appearance to gain approval. “The women of the Trump movement, their facial disfigurations signal loyalty and a willingness to submit,” said Laurie Essig, a professor and chair of gender, sexuality and feminist studies at Middlebury College and producer of the podcast “It’s a sad but effective strategy. When Trump deems a woman unattractive, he tends to dismiss her outright, regardless of her resume. Former U.N. Ambassadorfor the role of U.S. secretary of state because of “blotch marks on her cheeks.” Trump has been caught on tape saying he’s a “Kristi Noem, pictured when she was a member of the United States House of Representatives in 2011, left, and now as homeland security secretary under Trump, right. As Essig explained in an email, the “highly produced ‘mask of femininity’ helps prop up the very fragile and also highly produced masculinity of the movement’s leaders,” who also aren’t averse to going under the knife to make themselves look more masculine.“Gaetz’s chin has been enhanced giving him a ‘Chad’ profile seen as the necessary profile of any successful man,” Essig said.The aesthetic suggests a “deep hatred of what women might look like as they age,” say experts.“Kimberly Guilfoyle is 56; Kristy Noem is 54,” noted Essig. “By their 50s, women in Trump culture are past their time as worthwhile humans making the need to reshape the face to look younger more imperative.” The only woman in Trump’s political sphere to rise through the ranks but remain relatively intervention-free may be White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, 69. “Within this highly misogynistic culture a woman is only beautiful to the extent she is considered desirable by Trumpian men who clearly lean toward young,” Essig said, before adding a caveat.“I realize they don’t look ‘young’ as much as they look like blow up sex dolls, but the point is they don’t look like post menopausal women either,” she said. “It all suggests a deep hatred of what women might look like as they age.”Washington and Palm Beach plastic surgeons say the Mar-a-Lago look is spreading among their non-politician clientele. Will the aesthetic last? Will it take over the rest of America?Keagle, the LA-based plastic surgeon we spoke with, said she’s sure that the pendulum will swing back to natural-ish again. “I’m not sure if the Mar-a-Lago face will persist post-Trump, but who knows?” she said. “This look has been popular in many areas of the U.S. and exemplified in the long-lasting ‘Real Housewives’ franchises for a decade or more, even before the first Trump presidency.”By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. You are also agreeing to our
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