This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
A weird bit of culture that might be CW adjacent: The mainly but not completely female Asians/Whites/browns trying to be white passoids are not doing ok. (I assume some non-whites are also suffering here; but they are not as obvious.)
Part of it is conservative centered, mar a lago face and such, but a lot of it seems to cover the whole right to center left range of the political spectrum (I don't know any true Not Blue leftists with cosmetic surgery, maybe it's too bourgeois for them) but it's hitting the conservativ-ish women from age 21-40 demo like the spanish flu. Not a single female trump voter I know hasn't had a major cosmetic procedure; the type where you are laid up for at least a week, and a majority of the normie democrats are right there with them.
What the fuck is going on there? At least you could make an attempt at having the previous weird looking to me beauty standard through exercise; the current one seems to be "I want to look like a starving Ethiopian on a natgeo cover but with big fat punched in the face lips and cheek bones that have been displaced 2 parallels higher on my face than nature provided".
Does anyone actually like this?
Whoa, lots of downvotes on this one.
Anyways, I don't know about the state of affairs in America, but then again every stupid social contagion is globalized nowadays. Here in Germany, there certainly are increasingly many women who follow the trend of getting surgery done on them. Or maybe there's just an unfortunate epidemic of involuntary rubberboat-lips.
It's disgusting, but then again it serves to clearly mark women who have no mental immune system.
I have elected to be the sin eater for this forum as someone who finds current vulgar populist movement aesthetically hideous, which makes me a witch for this site. I like it though, you gotta interact with people who disagree with you to see if they have a point. In this case, they really don't.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Major cosmetic surgery? I don't know any young republican women who have had major surgery. Botox maybe. (I personally haven't done that either, but i'm also a senior millenial so edged out of your bracket). I think the effect you are seeing is that for the last 15 years people were told that filler was temporary and it dissolved and goes away so they got it done over and over. It turns out that actually it migrates and doubles in size. Over time this makes faces puffier and puffier. So you are seeing early Kardashian hangover that was supposed to be subtle. Not major surgery. The majority of conservative and rich women don't try to look like trophy wives and arent' trophy wives, so using Mar A Logo as your basis for what women look like is weird. Where do you live?
More options
Context Copy link
I don't. It is increasingly absurdist levels of unaesthetic.
But I suspect it's just an extreme form of in-group availability signaling. By getting these surgeries, you signal to males in your in-group that you are available to them sexually. Males in your in-group start to associate those signals with sexual availability and eroticize them, consciously or subconsciously. Traits or choices that aren't inherently attractive become attractive because they signal sexual availability.
A lot of women's aesthetic choices make sense in that context. All female sexual attractiveness in the moment is a combination of how physically attractive she is and how sexually available she seems to be. Men are drawn to women that are hot, first and foremost, but also to women they think will sleep with them.
The phenomenon of Mar-A-Lago face isn't telling us that the women in TrumpWorld are or aren't hot or how they value naturalness, it's telling us that they are broadly speaking sluts.
Personally, Mrs. FiveHour ironically bought a set of Juicy Couture sweats on Poshmark, and I think they're the hottest thing on her, because I associate a Juicy Couture tracksuit in my brain with the "hot" girls from high school. There's nothing inherently sexy about the Juicy Couture tracksuit, it's shapeless and lumpy, I find it sexy because I associate it with girls that advertised themselves as sexually available in the hallways.
Mar-a-Lago face is a signal to men in such circles, whether it's literally within conservative Mar-a-Lago circles or it's just rich people more generally, that you put out. And even if a woman isn't actually interested in sleeping around, the possibility drives male attention.
I'm not sure how much males have to do with it. I jumped back into single life last year as a guy in his 50s. What I discovered -- because I've never been on the kind of social media where this has been happening for two decades -- via online dating is just how contagious fashion/beauty/lifestyle trends are across women from their 30s-50s. A majority of women (I'm looking at middle-class professional women in a small U.S. urban and very liberal coastal area) present as having the same hobbies -- pickleball, hiking, standup paddle boarding -- all of which were created through social media or chosen for their social media photogenic-ness; they all have pictures at the same 5 photogenic local locations; all of their bios re-use the same phrases ("looking for a partner in crime for life's adventures"). They all love coffee on arainy Sunday morning and want someone with whom to dance in the kitchen. So many of them have nose rings and sleeve tattoos, like an absurd amount of 50 year old women, and unnaturally colored hair. And I highly doubt men have anything to do with any of this (most men certainly aren't suggesting nose rings and sleeve tattoos and hoping that their woman becomes obsessed with a dumb sport like pickleball). These are female feedback meme loops fed by social media, with a lot of older women following mom influencers who are trying to keep up with younger generations.
And sadly, they don't mean hiking 15-25 mi/day for 4-7 days. They mean a 2-5 mile stroll in nature followed by consuming 5000 calories.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think you copied-and-pasted the wrong link.
Ok that's bizarre, I got the link off of Bing of the sexiest JC girl on page 1, and it was to an arabic language shopping website, and now the link ended up on an article I've never seen before. Weird.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
At least one of us is in a bubble then. Not counting teeth-whitening, I don’t know a single female Trump voter who’s had any sort of obvious cosmetic work done.
More options
Context Copy link
As far as I understand it this sort of look is a result of runaway intra-female competition. Sure, it starts off with seeing who can become the most attractive to men but after a few years of insular debate and no male input you get this bizarre caricature of what a hot woman looks like.
I sort of feel like the same thing is happening with Clavicular. He looks like what dudes think women find attractive. Do women actually find him particularly attractive? I have no idea.
I wouldn't use clavicular as an example. He certainly doesn't look bizarre. There are better male examples.
So he decided he wanted to be Italian? Anglos are out. Everyone wants to be Catholic and Italian now
More options
Context Copy link
Jesus Christ.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think Clavicular is a very handsome dude, even from my perspective as a very straight (and not remotely as handsome) man. I have little doubt that most women would go for him, he's Henry Caville-lite, which is quite up there. That being said, I suppose that his antics turn away a large number of women, but you don't need to appeal to everyone to be overwhelmed by attention from the opposite sex.
I agree that he doesn't look as bad as the story of his looks does. (Unlike the typical lip-fillered, liposuctioned, spray-tanned stereotype of a heavily-plastic-surgeried woman, who does not look good IMHO).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I put it to the teen daughter, and the response was "Yeah, he's a baddie."
I have absolutely no idea what that means.
He's hot. Also, rap slang objectifying women has metastasized to the point where high school white girls are using it to describe men.
More options
Context Copy link
"Baddie" is zoomer slang for an attractive person.
More options
Context Copy link
Surely there's enough context here for you to sort it out.
I was honestly unsure whether she was saying he looks bad or looks hot.
I think the connotation is "hot but at least a little dangerous or unsavory." I don't think they'd call a nice hot guy a "baddie;" there has to be a little bit of a "bad boy" or "bad girl" threat behind or informing the hotness.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
She's saying he's hot.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not saying this isn't happening, but I don't think I've seen a single woman in real life who fits this description. It's entirely reserved for elite conservative women in media/media-adjacent positions. All the normie-lib women I know wouldn't be caught dead getting cosmetic surgery (not saying they wouldn't get it, but it's sufficiently stigmatized that it would have to be really subtle), while all the conservative women I know are midwestern housewife types who would find cosmetic surgery to be absurd vanity. Also, regardless of orientation, a lot of them are too fat for that kind of cosmetic surgery to be credible.
(For reference, I live in Maryland and my family is from the Midwest)
To me the look you are describing has extremely strong Aging Trophy Wife vibes. My gut says that this is probably the intersection of wealth and vanity. The artifice is the point - anyone can go to the gym and get fit, but not everyone can shell out a small fortune to have a doctor rearrange their face.
Are you counting Botox?
Botox doesn't result in any of the dramatic features so I doubt anyone includes it. It just makes your face smoother for a while until it doesn't.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Wow. I thought it was limited to the mar-a-lago types. Didn't realize it was affecting normal people. Do you live in a location at the intersection of performative beauty and polarization ? Miami, Orange County, Hamptons ?
TBF, I don't know any 21-40 yr old Trump voting women in person. I know MAGA men of all ages. I know MAGA women of advanced ages. But no young women.
Could be where you live.
I'm in a red enclave in blue SoCal that isn't orange county so yes, it's rough out here for an ugo.
The floor is HIGH, so even being a little below average looking requires some genetic fortune or work at the gym.
The people in question already were in the category, is the thing; now they are in the category but obviously enhanced.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No women I know have had cosmetic work done. Well, not major stuff, maybe some small procedures that wouldn't necessarily be more widely known, I don't really know.
I remember when tattoos, energy drinks, long hair on males, and cosmetic surgery were all regarded as a bit unseemly; now all of them are more or less socially acceptable. I suspect what you're seeing is much higher rates of approval of this stuff.
I see enough lip filler in the UK to fill a swimming pool. God, don't get me started on the jaundice-tier bronzing and fake tans.
Turkey teeth as well?
I was really struggling to figure out what possibly could be the context behind you replying to me with "turkey teeth?". Did you mean teeth done in Turkey (and not teeth on a literal turkey)? Yup, that's common enough, but I don't find overly white teeth repulsive. Hell, I've been accused of/admired for getting my teeth done there. Brits really can't deny the stereotype here, I just have decent teeth without taking especially good care of them.
Personally, I hate the Turkey teeth look almost as much as lip filler. People cutting about like they've a mouth full of bathroom tile.
I'm not saying I like them, but now that I think about it, the examples that Google turns up are rare. I think I've only seen one dude with perfect pearly whites with even edges in my entire time up there.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Since 2016 but really 2022-ish second campaign planning there was a noticeable shift by many MAGA-adjacent conservative women to a kind of Miami Latina inspired look with some Hooters Texas bimbo characteristics. Search ‘Kristi Noem before and after’ for the archetypal example.
The look is a combination between the ‘global Latina belt’ look common from Mexico to Lebanon to arguably in a way even corners of SEA, and which is therefore somewhat racially ambiguous and aspects of drag makeup that were reintroduced to the female population as a result of RPDR. It was probably first popularized in the West by the Kardashians in the very early 2010s, but took another decade to make its way to the conservative influencer circuit (as late as 2019, Fox News blondes still had a very different style).
You have answered my question for me I think; it's so disquieting to me because it signals "I have money that I didn't earn or earned on my back and that is admirable actually", representative of the disentanglement of the admiration of money as a proxy for virtue (pro athletes, inventors, captains of industry, great artists), moving towards a worship of money as a fetish object.
More options
Context Copy link
I think you're right. Fox News just had on some tanned Italian woman. Blondes are woke now.
TIL I live in the world’s wokest country. FML.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link