Inside Trump's Cosmetics Cabinet
Monday's inauguration crowd was a Who's Who of beauty culture.
President Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration speech painted a bleak picture for the future of America, and indeed the world. He vowed to eliminate government-backed diversity programs, expand domestic fossil fuel production, and carry out mass deportations; he signed executive orders mandating federal recognition of only “two immutable sexes: male and female” and withdrawing the United States from both the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization (among other predictable horrors).
Sitting beside him were some of the most powerful people in Western beauty culture.
Introducing Trump’s Cosmetics Cabinet:
President Donald Trump: Former owner of the Miss Universe beauty pageant; founder of Trump Fragrances, currently sold out of four signature scents (Trump for Women, Trump for Men, Victory for Women, and Victory for men)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr: Trump’s nominee for U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, a role in which he would oversee the Food & Drug Administration, which regulates the cosmetics industry; husband of Cheryl Hines, founder of beauty brand Hines+Young (which just announced it will stop sales if RFK Jr. is confirmed)
Jeff Bezos: Founder and CEO of Amazon, the number one online beauty retailer in the U.S.
Mark Zuckerberg: Founder and CEO of Facebook, formerly a “Hot or Not” site for rating women’s looks; owner of Instagram, whose photo-editing technology and algorithms helped to mold “Instagram Face,” redefine modern beauty standards, and degrade users’ body image and mental health
Shou Zi Chew: CEO of TikTok (beauty and personal care products are the number one driver of sales on TikTok Shop)
Bernard Arnault: CEO of LVMH, which owns Sephora (“the world’s most powerful beauty retailer”) as well as Benefit Cosmetics, Fenty Beauty, Make Up For Ever and a number of high-end designer fashion brands with their own cosmetics lines (Dior, Celine, Givenchy)
Delphine Arnault: Director of LVMH (see above)1
Does it matter that the President has a personal history of promoting beauty standards? That the executives surrounding him have a financial interest in that promotion? I think so.
We saw how a new standard of beauty — and all its attendant harms — emerged in reaction to and as reinforcement of far-right politics during Trump’s first presidency. See: the skincare-as-self-care spectacle of 2016.
Post-Election, Beware 'Self-Care'
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence,” Audre Lorde wrote in her 1988 essay collection, A Burst of Light. “It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Last year, Vox reporter Rebecca Jennings asked what I thought “2025’s version of the skincare boom” might be, and I predicted a stronger focus on traditional femininity and masculinity. This has been building for a while, of course: Barbiecore, dollcore, Stepford Face. The girlhood aesthetic, and the dismissal of its origins and outcomes in the name of “letting girls have fun.” Looksmaxxing, Marvelization, mewing. The rebranding of cosmetic procedures as power tools for alpha males. These trends gained momentum over the election cycle because they mirrored the values (and fears) of a nation that went on to vote Trump into office. Now that he’s there — and signing government mandates to police gender — it stands to reason that the pressure to adopt traditionally “feminine” and “masculine” aesthetics, whether in approval of Trump’s policies or for protection from them, will only increase.
This is how beauty culture works. Appearance ideals are born out of systems of oppression — they’re the physical manifestations of those systems — and as such, make for very effective political propaganda. Consider the way the fascist movement shaped beauty standards in Nazi Germany: The regime used ideals of physical “perfection” — blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin, symmetrical features — to reinforce its eugenics-driven racial hierarchy. It sought to “purify” the German population by encouraging the reproduction of those who embodied Aryan ideals and persecuting those who did not, including Jewish people, Romani people, disabled people, and others deemed “undesirable.” Beauty standards “constituted the core of a racial theory that relied on outward appearance to determine who was good, bad, healthy or sick; who was allowed to reproduce and who was not; who was permitted to live and who was not,” Moshtari Hilal writes in Ugliness. Nazi propaganda frequently featured imagery of fit, youthful citizens, and women in particular were expected to embody traditional femininity while avoiding overt cosmetic use (a way to prove their biological superiority, and a concerning parallel to the current Western focus on skincare rather than makeup, “natural”-looking procedures, and the new “undetectable era” of plastic surgery).
Much has been written about how the tech titans in Trump’s inner circle are “enabling right-wing political censorship” on social media. Bloomberg recently released an investigation into how the podcasters sitting beside the President at his inauguration — Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Logan Paul — are “mobilizing America’s men to lean right.” I think it’d be a mistake to ignore how Trump’s right-hand executives may use similar techniques to reach women2 via the promotion of oppressive beauty standards — standards that will be seeded throughout society via Instagram and TikTok algorithms, and made possible by products sold on Amazon and Sephora, the safety of which will be regulated (or not regulated) by RFK’s FDA.
If you want to know what’s next in beauty, you can skip Into The Gloss. Keep your eye on Trump and his Cosmetics Cabinet instead.
Honorable mentions go to Jake Paul (who doesn’t have much influence in the beauty industry but is the founder of Walmart-exclusive personal care brand W) and Elon Musk (who has considerable wealth and influence but whose involvement in the beauty industry is limited to the 2022 launch of a fragrance called Burnt Hair)
For all the progress it’s made marketing to men and gender-nonconforming folks, women still make up the majority of the beauty industry’s customers.
I cancelled a minor cosmetic procedure this week to stay home and rest, which I needed because I am living with cancer. Your writing definitely influenced this decision. I don't think Trump or his cosmetic cabinet will have much patience for folks with serious illnesses (except to make money off of us) since we tend to not look too pretty and clearly have a weak genetic make-up. I'm glad I took time for authentic self-care instead of giving more money, time, and anxious energy to the oppressive beauty regime. Thank you for your writing.
Ugh so so brilliant as always. Was nodding furiously throughout the whole thing.