Left, right, center: Regardless of partisan identity, the common wisdom is that some qualities and aspirations unite us all. We all want to be healthy and prosperous. We all want to be loved. And, in theory, we all prefer beauty over ugliness. That last proposition, however, has been seriously challenged in the era of Donald Trump.
The reality TV host has always embraced an aesthetic that is as hideous as it is expensive, from gold-plated everything to his vile haircut to his ill-fitted suits. It's only grown worse in the decade since he first ran for president, as both the leader and followers compete to inject as much unsightliness as possible into the American field of vision. Eye-bleeding internet memes have given way to uncanny AI-generated images of Trump or Elon Musk dressed as ubermensch. It's always with a grotesque shiny overdone quality, the visual equivalent of a burned steak covered in ketchup (a favorite Trump meal).
MAGA men range from T-shirt guys to expensive suit dudes, but regardless of where they fall on the spectrum, it's vital to look bad. T-shirt guys, now joined by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, favor a gold chain over a wrinkled shirt. The suit guys prefer the Jordan Peterson practice of clashing patterns and a poor fit. What holds it together is looking so terrible as to be, as Gareth Watkins described in the New Socialist, "a small act of cruelty" towards anyone who gazes upon the man.
Then there is the "Mar-a-Lago face," created by a combination of aggressive plastic surgery, fake tan, and make-up spackled on so thick that it would crack — if the fillers hadn't already paralyzed their faces. As Inae Oh noted in Mother Jones, most people who get plastic surgery seek subtlety, but Mar-a-Lago face is "ridiculously blunt." As one plastic surgeon told her, it's "[o]ver the top, overdone, ridiculous." The effect is to turn real human faces — mostly women, but some men — so fake-looking it's uncanny, as if an AI image generator had replaced a person with an exaggerated version of themselves.
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I was going to post exactly this! Besides pining over the Trump reject, the fact that she considers these to be “glow-ups” is telling. It turns out being a racist s--- on the inside makes you look equally as appealing on the outside
— Tiffany⸆⸉ 🌐 (@tiffanyclay.dev) September 22, 2024 at 2:34 PM
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is an especially painful-to-see example. She even recorded a video of herself getting extensive dental cosmetics, lest anyone mistake her blazing white teeth for the real thing.
Kristi Noem has two looks--sad housewife and Real Housewife--but only one blazer.
— mamaspinkytoe.bsky.social (@mamaspinkytoe.bsky.social) November 25, 2024 at 6:13 PM
But let's not leave out former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, whose filler abuse helped get him the nod for Attorney General from Trump, before he became one of few nominees so annoying even Senate Republicans had to nix him.
Matt Gaetz’s first order of business as AG? prosecuting those damn bees that stung him before his RNC speech!
— Jake Christie (@jakechristie.bsky.social) November 13, 2024 at 4:24 PM
It would be unwise to believe that it's just that all these people lack self-awareness, especially as many of them looked just fine before they started kissing up to Trump. I agree with Barnard professor Anne Higonnet, who told Mother Jones it's "a sign of physical submission to Donald Trump." After all, the look requires doing everything wrong, in a way so thorough that self-abasement seems a big part of the point.
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But why is this so appealing to the right? First, there is no doubt that a frightful visage captures attention, and in this political environment, attention matters more than anything. Looking like a normal human being is boring, but being a grotesque version of yourself is a guaranteed way to get people looking. Call it the "car crash" principle of aesthetics. As a bonus, the weirdness "triggers" the liberals, which is the goal above all others in Trumpland. But there's also an ideological project, however unwitting, in the uncanniness. Fascism, especially the 21st-century version practiced by the MAGA movement, is at war with reality. The hyperreality of the MAGA aesthetic is about power. Unable to create good or beautiful things, they express dominance by turning everything ugly. Journalist Kat Tenbarge argued Sunday on Bluesky that "looking 'better' is often not the point" of extreme plastic surgery. Instead, "It’s about looking different, looking strange, because it causes people to pay more attention."
A lot of people have said that the women in particular looked better before the surgery. I’ve done a fair bit of reporting on modern plastic surgery culture and looking “better” is often not the point. It’s about looking different, looking strange, because it causes people to pay more attention
— Kat Tenbarge (@kattenbarge.bsky.social) March 23, 2025 at 7:37 PM
It is also, crucially, about gender. Despite insisting that gender is both inborn and immutable, the right's behavior reveals a fear that men and women aren't as different as their ideology holds. So there's pressure to perform gender in hyperbolic ways, to the point where they look like cartoon versions of "man" and "woman," instead of regular people. It would be campy if it weren't so humorless. There's a lot of vitriol aimed at drag queens from Republicans, and no wonder. Drag queens also embrace outlandish gender performance, but it's to subvert rigid gender roles instead of reinforcing them. That, plus your typical drag queen knows how to make five pounds of make-up look cool instead of gross, but they won't share their secrets with the ladies of the GOP.
Despite the gendered exaggeration, the aesthetic impact is anti-sex.
The explosion of ugly AI art on right-wing social media accounts is more of the same. As the hosts of "In Bed With The Right" explained on a recent podcast, MAGA loves to use AI to generate images of their heroes like Trump and Musk dressed as over-the-top masculine stereotypes: Roman gladiators, cowboys, oiled-up and armored-up comic book superheroes. It's very Village People, but without the sense of fun, much less eroticism. As with the Mar-a-Lago face, despite the gendered exaggeration, the aesthetic impact is anti-sex. It's too plastic and strange to square with the fleshy realities of human sex. And that is no doubt the point. Sexuality is too human and vulnerable. Fascists want to project an image of invulnerability. It's telling that, when he was last on Joe Rogan's podcast, Musk and Rogan fantasized about replacing human sex partners with robots designed to look like cartoon characters.
Musk's slide into MAGA has manifested in this increasing enthusiasm for the hideous. Tesla cars, whatever else their flaws, used to be designed to look attractive, a vehicle a normal person might wish to drive. The Tesla Model S, first released in 2012, isn't special, but few people would be embarrassed to be seen driving it.
The Cybertruck, which came out after Musk had slid into right-wing troll territory, is so ugly that, even two years after its release, most people can't see one without making fun of it.
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Musk has also MAGAified his personal style. He was never a movie star, but he passed for a normal person back when he was having public meetings with President Barack Obama.
Now he dresses as if he looks in his closet, asks what would most repulse women, and throws that on to speak in public. His chainsaw accessory got the most attention at his Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) appearance, but the whole outfit was terrible, from the long coat to the chains to the odd square, flat sunglasses.
He's a Cybertruck in human form, and that is almost certainly the point. As Watkins writes of the similar sartorial shift to awful seen in Zuckerberg, it signals Musk feels "liberated to ignore what does and doesn’t look good, choosing instead to display that he is wealthy and powerful enough to look terrible if he wants." Musk was especially incoherent during that appearance, but I think that's what he meant when he said, "I am become meme." He's dehumanized himself, becoming a garish caricature of fascist longing instead.
Ultimately, this is why ugliness is so central to the MAGA aesthetic. So much of fascism is about shunning those human qualities traditionally thought of as good, but are viewed as getting in the way of power. This is the aesthetic version of Musk's declaration that the "fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy." Being deliberately ugly, for MAGA, is an act of contempt. It's polluting other people's field of vision just to make their day worse, in a petty display of dominance.
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