A few weeks ago, a South Carolina woman wearing stilettos and raw-edged jeans got into an expletive-laced shouting match with a man in the aisle of a beauty store. This fracas went viral on multiple social media platforms, which would be totally unremarkable — just another day of verbal aggression, social unrest and cosmetic consumption on the internet.
But the incident made it to People magazine because the woman is Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina. She and her constituent, who asked her about when she’d be holding her next town hall, recorded the encounter and posted it.
Mace — who has hundreds of thousands of followers on X, Instagram and TikTok (where she goes by the handle @basedmace) — is easily clocked as just the kind of Republican woman who is ascendant in the Trump administration. The women’s hair is in Utah curls, long waves with straight ends, popularized by Mormon momfluencers. Their makeup is heavy; the content creator and comedian Suzanne Lambert called it “Republican makeup,” which she explained to me is “matte and flat”: thick eyebrows and lashes, dark eyeliner on the top and bottom lids, a bold lip, lots of bronzer. “Inappropriate unless you’re on a pageant stage. And in that case, I would still do it differently,” she said. Their clothes, whether casual or corporate, are form-fitting and often accessorized with giant crosses. They are always thin and almost always white.
To each her own. But it is also undeniable that this hyperfeminine and overtly Christian look offers a stark contrast to the often blunt and even brutal language they employ. Another glaring example of this is the horrifying video of Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, at CECOT, the tropical gulag in El Salvador where the Trump administration has sent migrants. She stood there before a group of shirtless prisoners and declared, “If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face,” while wearing a $50,000 Rolex.
Public shows of aggressiveness are something Noem and Mace have in common. (Let’s not forget the media moment around Noem’s dog killing.) This isn’t the first time Mace has posted confrontations that escalate into slurs and name-calling. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, isn’t quite as aggressive on her socials, but her attacks on the media happen so frequently that Fox News put together an Instagram sizzle reel of her most “iconic comebacks” from the Trump administration’s first 100 days.
Leavitt prefers another common influencer strategy: appearing on the channels of other social media stars with large followings to spread her message. She recently collaborated with the running influencer Kate Mackz. Unlike other political figures who have appeared on Mackz’s channel, Leavitt did not go for a run alongside Mackz, but Leavitt did show off a Tesla and a meme that she printed out and tacked to her corkboard. It depicts someone presenting a disembodied brain to a man who says, “No thanks. I won’t be needing that. I believe everything the legacy media shows.”
Noem, Mace and Leavitt did not invent either the aesthetic or the tactics they employ. Their look is an extreme and specific version of a million other interchangeable influencers. As my newsroom colleague Sandra Garcia noted, “Lifestyle influencers exist in an ecosystem that prizes homogeneity,” because social media algorithms reward it. These algorithms also reward rage baiting, or the deliberate posting of negative content in order to create more engagement and more clicks.
Influencing has become a form of female power that is acceptable within conservative communities because it does not threaten the status quo, where women are ultimately subordinate and ornamental. (It makes a twisted kind of sense that, despite dominating the market, female influencers are paid less per collaboration than male influencers are.)
While there are liberal female politicians who go viral on social media, like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett, they don’t have a shared style of speaking or visual presentation. What makes this group of MAGA politicians powerful is that they are so immediately recognizable by outsiders as part of the conservative team. There’s no single look that immediately identifies a woman as a liberal in the same way, said Anna Akbari, a sociologist who has written at length about the sociology of style. “I really think it’s the leveling up of this symbolic system that is setting them apart,” she said. It allows their message to go farther on social media because there’s already a set of visual cues that many viewers recognize before a single word comes out of their mouths.
I am not happy to live in a country where our elected officials curse at their constituents, film the exchanges and get rewarded with the negative attention they seem to so desperately desire. Buoyed by her social media virality and national platform, Mace is considering a run for governor of South Carolina next year. We should want more from our politicians than an insatiable appetite for needless conflict.
But ask any influencer: The algorithms are always changing. Mace and Noem have been criticized by fellow Republicans. Josiah Sullivan, a sophomore at Clemson University writing for The Post and Courier, based in Charleston, S.C., admonished Mace for choosing “clout chasing over constituent service.” Mackz has faced a major backlash for her softball interview with Leavitt. (Some typical critical comments on the Instagram post: “10,000 steps back for women thanks a ton” and “I’m confused … isn’t this a running influencer page??? Not a fascism influencer page?? How disappointing.”)
The criticism has also come from other prominent voices in the conservative media universe. Megyn Kelly called out Noem for “cosplaying” an ICE agent while wearing “25 pounds of hair, only to be outdone by her 30 pounds of makeup and false eyelashes” on a police raid. Kelly added, “Pro tip — as somebody whose brother is a cop: They don’t want you there, even if, you know, you’re an attractive lady.”
That’s how we know this kind of power isn’t enduring or a deeper source of political influence. America could swipe away from it at any time.
End Notes
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Spring dining: It’s finally warm here in New York, and my kids requested this recipe for cold noodles with a peanut oil, sesame oil, soy sauce and rice vinegar dressing. I doubled the dressing and marinated chicken thighs in it for a delightful meal everyone ate.
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Terminal brain worms: If you read this newsletter, you’re probably sick of hearing about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but I think he’s reached new depths of late. He said on News Nation that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine contains “a lot of aborted fetus debris.” This is completely misleading. Kennedy is also encouraging parents to “do their own research” about vaccines and is searching for new measles treatments instead of fully endorsing and encouraging people to get vaccinated.
“This is akin to saying, ‘Go ahead and eat whatever you want, don’t exercise, smoke like a chimney — we’re going to invest all of our resources in heart transplants,’” said Dr. Jonathan Temte, a former chairman of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee.
Anything that dissuades people from vaccinating their children in the middle of a measles outbreak that shows no signs of stopping is unconscionable.
Feel free to drop me a line about anything here.
Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The Times, covering family, religion, education, culture and the way we live now.
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