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It's the tanning and the lack of body fat. The right-wing sexpot beauty regime is punishing
It's *very* important for hard-right female pundits to be pretty. Very.
huffpost.com/entry/ann-coul…
huffpost.com/entry/ann-coul…
I wrote about this briefly before:
When we discuss beauty standards #onhere we are often talking in terms of race or ethnicity or weight and don't go into detail about particular aesthetics. You don't have to be extraordinary to enjoy white or thin privilege so that's valid
I've never seen this movie and don't know who the character is but this out of character/in character comparison is my *favourite* image of what distinguishes "white woman" from "right-wing female celebrity" 
I actually don't know when this became the standard look. Earlier right-wing female crusaders like Schlafly, Beverly LaHaye, Anita Bryant didn't look like this. Does it coincide with the rise of Fox News?
Anyway, by the time Ann Coulter became famous, it was pretty well established.
Collage of women on Fox News.
Thin (often painfully so), almost always blonde, tanned. A Barbie aesthetic, minus Barbie's bluev eyeshadow. Makeup is pretty much always neutral and looks like it took less time than it probably actually did.
I can't really speak to the cultural resonance of blond hair (obviously it's a big deal in the US, less of one in Canada) but what strikes me, as a white woman who does not look like this, is a) uniformity and b) this look is both expensive and time consuming to maintain
Very few adult women have light blond hair, and those who do often have very light skin that burns easily. "Light yellow blonde & tanned skin" requires work for most people, and money. A lot of money.
[Body weight]
Likewise culturally "ideal" thinness, which since the 1980s has required an exercise regime to avoid soft or "wiggling" flesh (@SusanBordo wrote about this 30 years ago in Unbearable Weight)
Likewise culturally "ideal" thinness, which since the 1980s has required an exercise regime to avoid soft or "wiggling" flesh (@SusanBordo wrote about this 30 years ago in Unbearable Weight)
[Weight]
Naomi Wolf wrote in The Beauty Myth that "a culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience" and I think that observation was basically correct.
Naomi Wolf wrote in The Beauty Myth that "a culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience" and I think that observation was basically correct.
Conforming to this very narrow version of beauty is a demonstration of obedience, a necessity for women on the far right; think of FG's assertion that she's not really into the politics, she'd rather be cooking & cleaning for a man.
BS, but she has to say it.
BS, but she has to say it.
Source for "rather be cooking and cleaning": thecut.com/2018/11/faith-…
A newer link. There are WOC on Fox News now, but note the white women are using more or less the same template reelrundown.com/tv/Women-of-Fo…
Even the chuds at r/The_Donald notice something is up
No and that's the point 😉
Ivanka Trump, then and now
There are hard right-wing women who don't look like this, particularly older women, but notice how many of them are identified regularly as moms, or who foreground their motherhood in their punditry
Based mom, average hockey mom, "peak fertility age" counter (and gestator) of white babies
The makeup interests me. Partly this is just a feature of current trends, but I have a suspicion about why right-wing women in the public eye tend to wear the same kind of "natural but totally not natural" makeup.
First of all many straight men think they don't like makeup, and the straight male gaze is *essential* to these women on the right.
IME women on the left who like red lipstick or bold eyeliner (or colourful hair, which gators love to mock) tend to just...like it. Think of AOC
IME women on the left who like red lipstick or bold eyeliner (or colourful hair, which gators love to mock) tend to just...like it. Think of AOC
The other thing is that red lipstick, for example, is very visible as makeup (boo!) but also does not take a lot of time or effort to use.
Dita von Teese and retro "pinup" culture have kind of obscured this, but in the first half of the 20th century...
Dita von Teese and retro "pinup" culture have kind of obscured this, but in the first half of the 20th century...
Women didn't really wear that much makeup. A lot of the products at your average drugstore just didn't exist. I have pictures of my grandmothers in the 1940s and 1950s where they & their friends appear to be wearing bright red lipstick & no other makeup at all
Being willing to invest a ton of time, money & pain into your looks but hide the fact that you work hard at it is...well, this is a really classic description of feminine labour in a patriarchal society
Women are not given credit for the hard work of mothering, domestic labour, emotional caretaking etc. because it's just supposed to be "natural" to us. All of us. The indistinguishable feminine hivemind.
Blond is at least as hard to maintain as the pink or blue hair that SJW haters love to mock (probably harder!) but the point isn't to be natural, the point is to pretend to be natural
This is just me hypothesizing, btw. It would be interesting to lurk in RW chatrooms and see what these women's fans actually have to say about their looks. But to me the aesthetic of prominent right-wing women looks like a calculated statement of gender & social conformity.
Was thinking about this more today and recognized a link to this old post by @thelastpsych
thelastpsychiatrist.com/2006/12/if_thi…
thelastpsychiatrist.com/2006/12/if_thi…
It's about image as tribal affiliation.
Likewise, if Southern really believed this (Coulter & Goldy have said similar things) she could just...leave the public realm. It's pageantry.
Likewise, if Southern really believed this (Coulter & Goldy have said similar things) she could just...leave the public realm. It's pageantry.
