It has been said that when you get plastic surgery, you do not look older or younger, but a secret third thing: weird. For MAGA women with cosmetically altered faces, it is a secret fourth thing, too: a sign that you are part of the club. "Mar-a-Lago face," named for President Donald Trump's Palm Beach, Florida, residence and exclusive members-only club, is a caricature of femininity and all but a requirement for women climbing the ranks in MAGA world.
It is 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 taut, almost painfully tight-looking skin. Cheek filler to restore lost volume in the cheekbones rounds out the face. A golden tan is a must, but that is true even for men in Trump world, as are blown-out, beachy waves. Lash extensions and veneers are always a plus. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made a promotional video to advertise the clinic where she got her veneers a few years back.
Then, it is on to heavily contoured makeup that almost feels drag-adjacent, or at least Kardashian-adjacent. Some have likened Mar-a-Lago face to gender-affirming surgery and drag performances because it is so exaggerated in its femininity. "Here is the gender-affirming care the right can celebrate," Mother Jones quipped last year.
The Cost of Looking Expensive
The look does not come cheap. Plastic surgeons say the whole makeover could run you upward of $90,000, with the cost inching up to $200,000 to $300,000 if you go for a top plastic surgeon or are serious about the upkeep. It is not about looking young, but looking expensive.
The fact that it is so cost-prohibitive to look this way may be part of why it is so in demand. In an era when celebrities are increasingly transparent about their plastic surgeries, perhaps the appeal of Mar-a-Lago face is not so much "look how young I look," but "look how expensive I look." As author Shanna Miles wrote on Threads after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt's clearly visible lip injections in Vanity Fair went viral, "lip filler is a class marker. It doesn't have to look good. It's about looking 'done.'"
Other women in Trump's inner circle suspected of undergoing some of the treatments associated with Mar-a-Lago face include the aforementioned Noem, Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law, Kimberly Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador to Greece and Donald Trump Jr.'s ex-fiancee, and Laura Loomer, conspiracy theorist and Trump confidante.
Sign of Success and Fitting In
Ruth 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."
The cast members of "Members Only: Palm Beach," a polarizing Netflix reality show, have also clearly "invested" in their faces. For the mostly post-50 socialites on the show, which Newsweek has called a "love letter to Donald Trump," getting into the president's "winter White House" is the ultimate status symbol. "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," one cast member, Romina Ustayev, says at one point. "You feel like, oh my God, you made it."
Plastic surgeons, who generally are not fans of the look, also say it is about fitting in. "It's absolutely about feeling like you fit in, but to be fair, all geographic areas have their associated 'look,'" said Jennifer Newman Keagle, a board-certified plastic surgeon in Los Angeles. Keagle practices in a hipster neighborhood of northeast Los Angeles where women are getting similar procedures, such as Botox, fillers and fat transfers, but with a much lighter hand. The goal is natural, "me but better," Keagle said. On the west side of LA and in Trump-favoring Orange County, the birthplace of the "Real Housewives" series, a more obvious, "done" look is favored.
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." The Mar-a-Lago set seems to lean into and almost celebrate the overdone look, Keagle said.
The Spread and Future of the Look
Since Trump's second term began, plastic surgeons in Washington say they are wrestling with their conservative clients' requests for a more "noticeable" look. "Noticeable" and "more done" are the key words; no one is actually going to their injector and saying, "Give me the Mar-a-Lago face special." Anita Kulkarni, a plastic surgeon who practices in D.C.'s West End neighborhood, told The Guardian recently that she sometimes has to tell filler-happy clients to cool it. "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 are 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."
Signaling Loyalty and Submission
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 "Under the Knife: Cosmetic Surgery, Boundary Work, and the Pursuit of the Natural Fake." Kwan thinks what is happening instead is that the women are communicating their political allegiance to Trump via his favorite aesthetic: "Hot." "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 is such a sexed-up look, with bee-stung lips and exaggerated, Kardashian-esque contoured makeup, it is 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 "Feminism, Fascism & the Future."
Is There a Reward?
It is a sad but effective strategy. When Trump deems a woman unattractive, he tends to dismiss her outright, regardless of her resume. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley was reportedly rejected for the role of U.S. secretary of state because of "blotch marks on her cheeks." Trump has been caught on tape saying he is a "skin man." He also reportedly said that Haley, a woman of color, has "got that complexion problem."
As Essig explained, the "highly produced 'mask of femininity' helps prop up the very fragile and also highly produced masculinity of the movement's leaders," who also are not averse to going under the knife to make themselves look more masculine. Many noticed that former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) appeared to have gotten some ill-timed Botox before his appearance at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Just last year, Politico reported that D.C. plastic surgeons have noticed an uptick in politicians wanting jaw and chin implants. Interestingly, it is the same face-chiseling surgeries sought out by incels looking to make themselves more dateable. "Gaetz's chin has been enhanced giving him a 'Chad' profile seen as the necessary profile of any successful man," Essig said. This kind of surgery-attained "sexual dimorphism," with men looking hyper masculine and women looking hyper-feminine, is strongly rewarded by Trump. Gaetz was on his way to becoming attorney general before a House Ethics Committee investigation into sexual misconduct allegations sank his hopes.
Ageism and the Future
The aesthetic suggests a "deep hatred of what women might look like as they age," say experts. It should go without saying that this whole phenomenon is ageist. "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 and the body 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, said she is 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 has been exemplified in the long-lasting 'Real Housewives' franchises for a decade or more, even before the first Trump presidency."
