This is an article from the May 2025 Civitas Examiner (Volume 2, No. 2) and was written by one of our students, Glennis W. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue. To read more Civitas Examiner stories or to submit your own, click here.
In a system that punishes defiance and rewards compliance, conservative women in politics are too often forced to shrink themselves to be allowed in decision making rooms.
Foundation a few shades too dark, heavily overlined dark eyebrows, thick black eyeliner, and pale pink lips all create the “Republican makeup look” that trended on social media in February.
Months later, the new trend in Republican fashion became “Mar-a-Lago Face,” involving plastic surgery that makes women look hyper-feminine with high cheeks, plump lips and a lifted pixie nose. But, behind both of these heavily curated appearances lies something more telling: a need to conform.
For many women in conservative politics, the pressure to look a certain way mirrors the pressure to behave a certain way. Polished, agreeable, feminine.
To understand how women in politics got here, one must go back to the beginning.
It started with women’s suffrage where women gained the right to vote in 1920 through the Thirteenth Amendment. But four years before, in 1916, Jeannette Rankin became the first woman elected to Congress, representing Montana. Then, in 1933, Frances Perkins became the first woman to serve on the Cabinet, as the Secretary of Labor under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. From 1940 to 1973, Margaret Chase Smith, a Maine Republican, became the first woman to serve in both the House and the Senate.
While women like Rankin, Perkins, and Smith shattered barriers, they often had to do so on male terms by adopting the tone, attire, and demeanor of their male colleagues just to be taken seriously. In fact, women weren’t even allowed to wear pantsuits on the Senate floor until 1993, a rule that symbolized how rigid the expectations were around how a woman in power should look.
Fast forward to today, and the expectation remains: women can lead, but only if they follow unwritten rules. Instead of hiding femininity, they’re expected to perform a hyper-stylized version of it.
Every detail, from a woman’s voice to her wardrobe, becomes a test. Too loud? She’s emotional. Too assertive? She’s bossy. Too polished? She’s fake. The test isn’t about power, rather, about proving she deserves to be in the decision-making room.
This is exactly what makes trends like the “Republican makeup look,” and the so-called “Mar-a-Lago Face,” so revealing.
These beauty choices are actually political statements, intentional or not. The high cheekbones, heavily contoured features, and thin, pale lips serve as visual cues of belonging.
In conservative political spaces, this hyper-feminine look communicates loyalty to a certain image of womanhood — one in recent years that has echoed 1950s ideals: polished, feminine, and positioned behind male power.
While looking feminine is not a problem, the forced conformity, in both appearance and actions, to communicate one’s political view, is.
To solve this, one must shift their focus from appearance and conformity to substance and leadership. It’s about creating a political environment where women can thrive as their authentic selves, free from the pressure to meet unrealistic expectations. True progress in gender equality will come when women are judged for their ideas, their leadership, and their contributions, rather than their looks or how well they can do the Republican makeup look.
