Will “Mar-a-Lago Face” Take Over D.C.?
A viral meme from earlier this year showing before and after shots of several women in Donald Trump’s immediate orbit — RNC chair Lara Trump, Don Jr. squeeze Kimberly Guilfoyle, conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and South Dakota governor and confessed dog killer Kristi Noem — pointed to an undeniable trend. Their faces had all, over an unspecified period, morphed from conventionally human to makeup-caked, angular cheekboned, full-lipped, Fellini-esque exaggerations of the dolled-up Fox News anchorwoman look. And it’s not just the women: Few of us can remember the content of former Florida Rep. (and former prospective attorney general) Matt Gaetz’s RNC speech last summer, so fixated were we on the new elfin arc of his eyebrows. (And the less said about George Santos and his Botox habit, the better.)
As with everything Trump, the look represents a brash departure from well-established D.C. norms. Could Trump’s return to the White House trigger a nationwide surge of Mar-a-Lago face in defiance of the 2024 vogue for deflation and discretion? After all, the White House has a proud history of trendsetting, from “Jackie style” to Michelle Obama’s championing of designer Jason Wu, to Trump’s knee-length ties.
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Matt Gaetz at the RNC in July.
Washington style trends may be more conservative than in L.A. and New York, but the city’s politicos and media personalities are just as prone to seek cosmetic assistance. “Everybody gets some tweaking,’’ said dermatologist Tina Alster, who counts Nancy Pelosi and Wolf Blitzer among her patients and is among D.C.’s most renowned aesthetic doctors. “Kamala has been maintaining for a long time, Biden’s Botox is sometimes overdone, Trump has a ruddy complexion that needs some tending to,” assesses Alster. (THR has not confirmed any of these public servants’ cosmetic regimens.)
If indeed the Trump restoration does spark a plastic surgery bonanza, don’t expect Capitol Hill to admit it. Alster treats her patient visits like CIA exfiltrations. She has a back door and secret staircase to shuttle politicos and media bigwigs discreetly. “I try to book those with Secret Service early before other people arrive, or late, after they leave, and I take great pains to make sure I separate the appointment of Democrats and Republicans by at least an hour.’’ And, she says, standard before and after pictures are often forbidden: “Some of the Republican operatives have been adamant that I don’t take any photos of them and insist on putting their charts under alias names.”
This story appeared in the Nov. 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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