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Can They Not SEE Themselves? Honestly, It's a Little Embarrassing [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-02
I don’t indulge in attacks on aspects of personal appearance that cannot be changed. It’s why I cringed during an Oversight Committee hearing when Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who usually (IMHO) can do no wrong, indulged in adding “bad built butch body” to her “bleach blonde” quip about Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Greene lobbed the first snotty remark of the exchange, referencing Rep. Crockett’s eyelashes, to wit, “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”
Crockett snapped back and her alliterative retort broke the internet - but I think criticizing Rep. Greene’s body was bad form. There’s very little someone can do to change how their skeleton is arranged. Mine is constructed so that I look every bulky inch the descendent of “sturdy peasant stock” that I am. No amount of diet or exercise will alter my broad shoulders, chunky thighs, or powerful hands. I yam, as Popeye so astutely observed, what I yam - and it’s hurtful to be criticized for aspects of myself that are completely out of my control.
Now, if I were to swan into a room clad in some dreadful concatenation of garments that made me look like the lovechild of Boudicea and a Mari Lwyd, well, I suppose I’d deserve the snarky comments that were coming.
A Mari Lwyd! By Mickwidder, Wikimedia
Clothes, you can change. Rep. Crockett can take off her eyelashes. MJT can stop coloring her hair. Those are sartorial choices. Others may not like them, but they are not immutable.
I also think that affect, to a certain extent - the way you hold yourself, the way you react to others - is also at least partially under your control. Your hips and shoulders and facial features are not so changeable (unless you are Lara Trump, Kristi Noem, Kimberly Guilfoyle, or any number of other over-surgeried Republican women). The basic set of your body, the heft and bulk of it, and the height, how able you are, and how old - these are not under your control. I may be a Pollyanna, but to me, that means that those things are not fair game.
So to the extent that there’s not much “president” Trump can do about his weight at this juncture, I’d like to eschew comment. There is, however, a lot he can do about other aspects of his presentation, and I feel no compunctions about wading in.
After all, Trump and his cabinet and his hangers-on and advisors and various minions are THE FACE OF AMERICA right now. To people all across the globe, they represent us. And if they look like GD buffoons, that’s embarrassing! And it’s a cause for others to take us less seriously.
Leave aside for a moment the delusional, authoritarian, fascist-friendly, Hitler-adjacent, white nationalist, Christianist, economically incoherent, rage-driven, nonsensical, and overtly cruel nonsense spewing out of Trump and his cronies. They also LOOK bizarre. Many of them look off putting and strange, hyper-sexualized, or like they are performing patriotism. I mean, I suppose there’s not much that Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller can do to not look like he’s actively channeling a member of the SS, but there are others who don’t have any excuse to not look like serious people doing serious work.
This may be naive, or old-fashioned, but I think it matters what our politicians look like on the world stage.
Go to other countries and observe their lawmakers. You will see a group of normal looking adults, within the range of “averagely attractive,” wearing sensible politician clothing and attempting to, at the very least… blend. They look studious. They look like they are there to do a job. They try, I assume, to avoid being eye-catching in ways that would detract from citizens taking them seriously. Even authoritarian-leaning loons like Nigel Farage and Marine Le Pen wear suits that fit and colors that flatter and appear, on the surface, to have their sartorial shit together, and some situational awareness.
Not so many in our current crop of administration hucksters and clowns.
Again, do none of them see what they look like?
Okay, yes, there are some normies in the gang. Russ Vought, Director of the OMB. Brooke Rollins, the Ag Secretary. Even Secretary of Commerce Howard “Heartless” Lutnick, heaven help us, looks… a little showy and slick, but mostly normal.
But boy oh BOY are there some oddly presenting people working for Donald Trump. There is a peculiarly performative, “I can hear the carousel music from here” vibe to many of Trump’s cabinet members and leaders in his government.
My contention is that this administration includes a more-than-usually-significant fraction of this type of individual. I believe that there is some quirk in Trump’s make-up (no pun intended) that compels him not only to style himself as preposterously as he does, but to hire underlings who are also a tad ludicrous, or at the very least, on the risibly eccentric end of the spectrum.
A prevalent thesis about Trump is that he hires people who are “from Central Casting.” That is, he wants men and women in his employ who look like archetypes of 1950s and 1960s G-men and tough prosecutors and sexxxy secretaries.
But I don’t think that’s what he’s attracted to at all. I think he is attracted to Joker-style artifice in everyone in his orbit, from his wives, to his cabinet secretaries, to his preferred Fox news hosts. He isn’t always presented with such grotesques as options… for instance, CIA Director John Racliffe does, in fact, look like he’s straight out of Central Casting, with his Clark Kent hair and serious suits. But when someone with a startling fashion sense or a farcical personal style does show up, Trump is likely to say “you're hired!”
In support of this thesis, may I present (in no particular order) the current (and a few past) folks who are allegedly representing America with distinction on the international stage? Here goes.
The Vice President, JD Vance, cannot help his face or his eyes. He actually has pretty eyes! But hire a stylist, my man. Showing up in Greenland in a hilariously oversized green parka and shitty jeans was a flex, for sure. What it wasn’t was a sartorial choice that showed any kind of respect for the country he was visiting, preparatory to, apparently, helping his boss annex it.
And how about Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House? His 70s-tastic “Up With People” virgin choirboy hair is inexplicable, unless he’s trying to convey constipated 1950s Christian nationalist morality. In that case, he’s doing quite well, except… you’re a grown-up, dude! We know you have sex: you have kids! (Mike Pence had that unfortunate hair, too.)
When he’s at work, I can’t decide if Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (gawd save us) looks more like a used car salesman on the 4th of July, or a shitty small-market TV game show host from the 1980s. A decent-enough-looking guy, Hegseth just looks oilier and cheaper than he should, with his signature American flag pocket square and too much hair gel. I can smell it through the TV screen. A personal shopper at Nordstrom, and some adult styling products, would help. When he’s NOT at work??? Holy craptastic American flag-totin’ nationalist tattoo sporting SHITSHOW, Batman. I mean, would you look at that weirdo?
Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, walked into a prison in El Salvador dressed as cosplay Barbie, complete with a boombox-sized Rolex, plastic-y blowout and a full face of seductive make-up. Who goes on ICE ride alongs in shiny boots, a bullet-proof vest, and that same damned come-hither hair? Gun-slingin’ Kristi Noem, that’s who.
Speaking of push-up bras, how about Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary? She arrays herself in an eye-popping assortment of ‘fits that look like she woke up and shrink-wrapped herself into a first grader’s party frock. If she were to break from her normal ranting and lying and burst into a chorus of “On the Good Ship Lollipop” I don’t think I’d be surprised.
There’s Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, who doesn’t have to channel Cruella de Vil with that sinister choice of hairdo - but does.
Don Jr., former something-or-other and current First Son, isn’t in the public eye much these days, but when he is, he sports a skeevy, patchy neck beard and the latest in 1990s Enron scandal suiting. He’s not in the administration, but I couldn’t leave him out. He looks like he’s dressed up for Halloween, as Fredo.
We don’t have Paul Manafort to kick around any more, but he was a feature of the first Trump administration, in his assortment of novelty leather bomber jackets and tacky mobster suits.
There was also Roger Stone, vamping around in his summer-stock Dickens villain clobber, complete with astonishing hats and - was it a monocle? Or am I imagining that? I won’t mention the full backpiece of Richard Nixon, because Stone at least has the dignity (most of the time) to wear a shirt.
Steve Bannon! I almost forgot. He was Trump’s chief strategist for a hot minute. And he’s still a hot mess, with unshaved cheeks, layer after layer of stinky-looking dress shirts, and the aura of someone who takes the phrase “bathtub gin” literally.
Elon Musk is in a category all his own. The man probably owns a nice suit, but damned if he’ll wear one at the White House, or on the campaign trail, or… anywhere, for that matter. The too-small sport jacket, baseball cap, shades, and belly-shirt combo he favors is not just strange and extraordinary for someone who is theoretically working in leadership, but is flat out disrespectful to all Americans who thought they deserved to have actual adults in at the helm, not ratty, stoned, techbro gamers. Sartorial choices MEAN SOMETHING, Elon. FFS. You’re an embarrassment on the global stage.
And of course, the Tangerine Tantrum himself. Sitting atop this sad, weird, tatterdemalion heap of barely-if-at-all-qualified grifters, bullies, and crooks, is Donald Trump, of Queens NY. Trump is the blazing standard-bearer for his administration’s predilection for oddball personal presentation.
Start not with his avoirdupois - as noted, things we cannot change are off the table for commentary. Were Trump to groom himself normally and to dress well, he could look substantial and well-heeled: slightly portly, but comfortably well-off - even elegant. But he doesn’t dress well. He dresses execrably. He dresses like a god damned circus clown - a cheap, gaudy, hucka-hucka-beep-beep! clown.
Take his signature Brioni suit. I couldn’t find any model of Brioni suit that was advertised to come “pre-greased,” but that’s how the flappy, billowing tents that Trump wears should be billed. They all look… GREASY. How does he even manage that every day?
The chintzy looking business shirt comes next. Trump can afford nice dress shirts. Instead, he chooses to wear cheap-looking things that seem shoddy and low-rent. He accents them with that signature scarlet tie, clamped around his neck as tightly as Frankenstein’s bolts, dangling down to gently caress and emphasize his family jewels.
Before he dons (on purpose!) this shitty shirt, weird-ass tie, and pre-greased suit, the man has spackled himself in burnt orange stage make-up, being extra careful to leave a startled-raccoon rim of puffy white around each eye. He has swirled and twirled his scraggly pouf of straw-yellow “hair” into a jutting ledge of comb-over that nicely accentuates the slightly forward pout of his lower lip.
Again: this is ON PURPOSE.
As is Hegseth’s irritating pocket square, which you know he sports just to “pwn the libs.”
As is Noem’s disorienting mix of “on the pole” and “on patrol” pieces when she’s showing off for the cameras.
As is Mike Johnson’s weirdly performative hair - and Leavitt’s skin-tight ensembles atop oddly-fitting bras - and Linda McMahon’s comedy Golden Girl get-ups - and Kelly Loeffler’s Rapunzel locks - and Marco Rubio’s bouffant helmet hair and cowboy boots - and on and on.
It’s baffling. It’s off putting. It’s not nearly as important as [gestures broadly at everything] but it sure is in the mix.
People are everywhere the same. And sadly, even the most earnest, professional, and mature of us possess an inner tween, ready to pounce and cackle and hurl insults. Our inner tween hisses, “nerd!” at people, just because they’re smart and a little geeky. Our inner tween thinks, “what a loser!” when someone presents oddly, or isn’t clean, or has an outdated fashion sense. Our inner tween titters rudely when they see a world leader in a Bozo the Clown suit and blaze orange pancake makeup.
And our inner tween also dismisses people for reasons that seem shallow, or superficial - but are nevertheless real (and avoidable). Like when someone doesn’t dress like an adult when they’re in the White House. When someone performs hyper-sexualized femininity in inappropriate situations. When someone can’t seem to be bothered to take a shower. When someone looks like they stopped evolving during church camp in 1993. When someone slathers themselves with orange paint and calcifies their ‘do in hairspray.
Jasmine Crockett’s inner tween called MJT a “bleached blonde etc.etc.”
My inner tween wrote this story (with the caveat that I did not punch down and insult immutable physical characteristics).
On the global stage, what in the world must Keir Starmer’s, and Emmanuel Macron’s, and Olaf Scholz’s, and Mette Frederiksen’s inner tweens be thinking when they see these buffoons?
I shudder to think. But it cannot be good.
Am I saying that the Nazi-curious crap, and the mad rush of Executive Orders, and the slash and burn HR tactics from DOGE, and all the rest of it, would be acceptable if these freaks looked like normal politicians?
I AM NOT. What I am saying is, sheesh. Do these people even look at themselves? They look like a bunch of buffoons. And it ain’t helping.
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If you enjoyed this, you might like my Substack. I mostly write about the climate crisis there, though. climaterevolutionnow.substack.com if you’re interested. :-)
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