Reflections | Trump insiders’ ‘Mar-a-Lago faces’ echo Chinese elites’ unhealthy efforts to please a king
King Ling of Chu’s preference for his officials to be thin-waisted saw them practically starve themselves in efforts to win royal approval
The “Mar-a-Lago face” has become the newest unofficial badge of power in Washington.
The look typically features inflated lips, immobile brows and sharply sculpted contours. The hyper-polished, over-tightened, filler-heavy aesthetic leaves its bearers with a permanent glower.
British newspaper The Guardian hilariously observes that the “bee-sting puffy lips, frozen brows and taut necks have been compared to Real Housewives stars, sleep paralysis demons and – ironically, considering the Republican Party’s anti-LGBTQ+ culture war – drag queens (minus the campy fun)”.
Plastic surgeons say many of Trump’s insiders who go for the Mar-a-Lago aesthetic – named for Trump’s private club in southern Florida – are not chasing refinement, but want to broadcast artifice.