Let me tell you something. I have four kids. I do a grocery run every week and every week it costs more. So when the President of the United States gives a speech on the economy, I pay attention. I want to hear what he’s going to do about the price of eggs and milk and the gas I put in my minivan to get everybody to school.
And what does Donald Trump do? He stops mid-speech in Pennsylvania to talk about his press secretary’s lips.
Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsI am not making this up. The man stood at a podium, in front of actual human beings who showed up to hear about their livelihoods, and said Karoline Leavitt has “a beautiful face and those lips that don’t stop-op-op-op, like a little machine gun.” He said that. Out loud. With a microphone. While the economy is doing what it’s doing.
Now, I did my own research on this, because that’s what I do. Karoline Leavitt is 28 years old. She is the youngest White House press secretary in American history. She had a baby in early July and was back on cable news four days later. Four days. I’ve had four kids and I can tell you that at four days postpartum, I was still in a hospital gown trying to figure out how to shower. She was doing hits on television for a man who talks about her mouth like he’s rating a side dish at a buffet.
Vanity Fair just ran a profile on her. They called her “The Mouthpiece.” The close-up photo appears to show injection marks along her lips. Beauty editors looked at it and said the lip gloss she wore made the marks more obvious, not less. Plastic surgeons who haven’t treated her but looked at photos said her lips look enhanced. The Daily Beast couldn’t verify any of it. And here’s where I have a question for the manager: why is any of this our business? Why is the president of the United States creating the market for this conversation?
Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikimedia CommonsBecause he started it. He’s the one who paused an economic address to describe a 28-year-old woman’s lips as a “little machine gun.” He’s the one who has a documented habit of treating his female press secretaries like characters in his personal soap opera. He nicknamed Hope Hicks “Hopie.” He told Hicks to take a job rather than asking her, according to her own mother. He called Leavitt “smart, tough, and effective,” which is nice, but he also apparently can’t get through a speech about your wallet without rating her face.
And here’s the part that really gets me. Since Trump came back to the White House, plastic surgeons in Washington, D.C., say they’re seeing more clients asking for the “Mar-a-Lago face.” Overfilled cheeks. Full lips. Taut skin. A board-certified surgeon described it to HuffPost. The Daily Beast listed Matt Gaetz, Laura Loomer, and Kristi Noem among those people speculate have had work done. None of it is verified. But the trend is real enough that doctors are talking about it on the record.
So the president sets the aesthetic standard for his own orbit, comments publicly on his young staffer’s appearance, and then we’re all supposed to pretend this is normal governance. I’m supposed to trust that the person standing behind that podium delivering information to the American people is there because she’s the best person for the job, not because she fits a look. I’m supposed to trust a 92% staff turnover rate from his first term and a communications department where the longest-serving press secretary lasted less than two years.
cottonbro studio / PexelsI’m a mom. I notice things. And what I notice is a 79-year-old man who can’t get through a speech about my grocery bill without talking about a 28-year-old’s lips. If my husband did that at his office, HR would be involved. But in the White House, it’s a personality trait.
They think you’re too dumb to notice the difference. I noticed.