‘Mar-a-Lago Face’ Is Just ‘Housewives Face’

Let me offer you a brief glimpse into this starving artist’s little life: This morning I was sitting on my couch, sipping my tepid coffee, scrolling through the news while The Real Housewives of Potomac played on the television in the background. I dug this grave for myself. I watched so much reality television that I became literate and fluent in the universal language of reality television, and now someone pays me to interpret it and write it down for the masses. But I digress.

This morning was unspectacular and just like any other. As the botox-ed and filler-ed faces of Potomac, Maryland, yapped about something or other, I scrolled past a headline from The Hollywood Reporter that caught my attention: “Plastic Surgery Trend: Will ‘Mar-a-Lago Face’ Take Over D.C.?” The picture accompanying it was a collage of familiar conservative faces: Lara Trump, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Laura Loomer. Faces that had “over an unspecified period, morphed from conventionally human to makeup-caked, angular cheekbones, full-lipped, Fellini-esque exaggerations of the dolled-up Fox News anchorwoman look.” I read that statement, and I thought, “Wow. This person has never seen a single episode of The Real Housewives.”

“Fox News anchorwoman face” or “Mar-a-Lago face” is just “Housewives face,” you guys. They did it first. Pick a city, any city, and you will find a sea of Lara Trump lookalikes, but especially Orange County. Last week, when the third—yes, third—reunion episode of season 18 was my morning coffee background noise, my boyfriend looked at the screen and then looked at me and then looked at the screen again and then looked back at me, and said, “All of these women have the same face.”

“Yes,” I responded.

“It’s uncanny,” he said.

“I know,” I responded.

As go the Housewives, so goes the country. That’s just how it works—I don’t make the rules; I just report them. I can’t explain why conservative-leaning middle-aged women often gravitate toward a look where their skin appears pulled taut and their features exaggerated. Maybe it’s about trying to defy aging—though honestly, these procedures don’t seem to make anyone look younger. Young women don’t look like this.

“Housewives face” reaching D.C., though, calls for one thing and one thing only: a Real Housewives of D.C. reboot. Not with the likes of Kimberly Guilfoyle and her weird little friends, of course, because that would probably melt every television on the eastern seaboard alone, but it’s worth revisiting the original cast. You think Kristi Noem is weird? Try Michaele Salahi, who was married to Tareq Salahi in 2009 when they gatecrashed a White House state dinner. This was all captured by Bravo, thus tanking the show before it could ever get off the ground.

It even made it onto SNL!

Now she’s married to Neal Schon, and she galavants about the globe with him and Journey because Journey is still touring, apparently! And don’t worry—she’s had compulsory cosmetic procedures.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Neal & Michaele Schon (@nealandmichaeleschon)

Is any of this information worthwhile? Not really. Is it the canary in the coal mine of the downfall of society? Probably. All I’m saying is, credit where it’s due.