The Dangerous Message Hiding in Karoline Leavitt's Face

"By now you've seen them: Karoline Leavitt's lips flecked with injection punctures and slathered in gloss too thin for the job, in one of Christopher Anderson's fascinatingly unflattering viral images captured for Vanity Fair's story on Trump 2.0. While the consensus on TikTok seems to be that the White House press secretary's injector hates her, the photograph is just the latest, most confronting example of MAGA world's increasingly compulsory, almost uncanny cosmetic interventions for women, the more obvious the better."

"Showing the work is the point. Aesthetics for women in politics have always been fraught, but once upon a time, conservative women commentators could get away with a commitment to a brassy Fox & Friends blond dye job and a crucifix. These days, going full MAGA seems to mean getting a new face too. It means injections. It means work, in every sense of the word."

"But first: What, exactly, is going on with 28-year-old Leavitt's lips? It's baffling even to experts like Kristy Hamilton, a board-certified plastic surgeon and social media chair of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. The puncture marks, she said, suggest that the photo was taken "almost immediately post-injection." But new filler usually causes more swelling, making the image "a little bit of a mystery," said Hamilton, who noted that even the use of more-opaque lipstick would have helped conceal the punctures."

MAGA-aligned women increasingly adopt conspicuous cosmetic interventions, particularly injectable lip and facial treatments, as a visible signifier of identity and commitment. The aesthetic emphasizes the most obvious markers of alteration, making 'showing the work' a performative point of pride. Historically conservative women relied on hair and religious symbols; contemporary figures prioritize a remade face through injections and other procedures. Photographs of procedures can be unsettling and sometimes defy typical clinical expectations. Experts note puncture marks and atypical swelling patterns, and question whether makeup choices could conceal immediate post-injection signs. The trend links appearance to political branding and gendered expectations.

Read at Slate Magazine