The media spinning narratives against a Republican presidential administration, particularly one led by Donald Trump, is nothing new.

But the recent controversial article in Vanity Fair did more than just operate the typical ploy to paint a picture of chaos and rancor among the Trump cabinet. The article’s photographer, Christopher Anderson, visually attacked the physical appearance of most of Trump’s cabinet, particularly that of press secretary Karoline Leavitt. It was a subtle attack that only the most highly trained high school “mean girls” could really master.

Leavitt, who is undeniably beautiful and, like most women in positions of power in D.C., has had cosmetic work done on her face, is photographed in an extremely close-up position, displaying every wrinkle, makeup smudge, and most notoriously, signs of her lip injections. Those who are laughing about it would never wish to have a similar photograph taken of them and then posted all over social media.

Anderson is a man and admittedly photographed other members of the Trump administration in a similar fashion. But it is difficult to deny that the publication knew exactly what it was doing with Leavitt’s photo in particular, which is plastered all over X at the time of this writing. The media – liberal media included – still feeds on the idea that women should maintain a perfect appearance at every angle and stage of life, while the standards for men are more forgiving in that regard. Anderson undoubtedly knew what he would ignite with that particular photo, and the comments from disgusted liberals have not disappointed the aims of Vanity Fair’s journalism.

Women in the public eye often get cosmetic surgeries and Botox, wearing more makeup on a daily basis than a lay person would for their own wedding. This phenomenon is not confined to conservative females.

Yet according to an infamous Salon article, the aesthetics of conservative women are nothing short of “ridiculous,” and comparative only to drag queens, except that “your typical drag queen knows how to make five pounds of make-up look cool instead of gross.” Indeed, one liberal professor called conservative women who follow the social media-influenced fashion trends of the day “a sign of physical submission to Donald Trump.” Another individual quoted in the Salon article describes the faces of Trump-supporting women as ones which appear as “if an AI image generator had replaced a person with an exaggerated version of themselves.”

Such comments, however, forget that no one piles on the fillers and makeup more than Hollywood’s wokest at every red carpet event. Indeed, our public allergy to aging gracefully is more of a bipartisan issue than we realize.

Yet, the physical appearance of conservative women is repeatedly scrutinized in a gossipy, high school, “mean girl” fashion in the pages of high-profile magazines. Meanwhile, individuals such as President Joe Biden’s Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre get photographed for Vanity Fair in a far more flattering way.

Perhaps we must just accept that conservative women will never get a fair shake in the media. But overt displays of bias like that in Vanity Fair make it more obvious to the public that their journalistic endeavors are anything but that. It seems they are merely the jealous screechings of woke harridans who peaked in high school.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image credit: Flickr-DonkeyHotey, CC BY-SA 2.0