A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - How Conservatism Infiltrated Pop Culture

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Quiet luxury. Clean girl. Old money. Trad living. Kylie Jenner’s pivot from Black culture vulture to glass skin pilates princess. College youth dressed like polyester Shein replicas of Reagan-era prepsters. Something’s happened, and I’m uncomfortable. Listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Work smarter, not harder, with Factor meals ready in two minutes at https://www.factormeals.com/fruity50off.   Start managing your money better and cancel unwanted expenses at https://www.rocketmoney.com/fruity.  SUBSCRIBE TO KAT'S NEWSLETTER! SUBSCRIBE TO TAYLOR'S NEWSLETTER! Listen to Taylor's podcast, Power User. Follow me on Instagram. Follow A Bit Fruity on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everyone wanted to look like Kylie. Kylie wanted to look like a black woman. And now Kylie doesn't even want to look like Kylie. I feel like I look like a fraternity brother on his way to like the fraternity brunch. But like everyone's closeted and they're all like having sex behind the scenes. They're all cheating on their girlfriends with each other. The little sweater wrapped around my neck. An image of a MAGA youth has emerged in the months leading up to and following the 2024 election.

And it isn't young dorks wearing sweat and grease-stained polos, looking like they just left their mom's basement for the first time in three weeks to pick up some teaky torches from Party City and chant, Jews will not replace us. No, they look like a cheap copy of Reagan-era 80s Republicans. Instead of polo, they're wearing sheen. They're frat bros pairing suits with maga hats. They're clean girls with little black dresses and good blowouts and,

long skincare routines, their old money with a vape. It's a drastic change from what felt cool 10 years ago. This aesthetic phenomenon came to a head last week when New York Magazine released its new issue with a photo on the cover from a pre-inoguration party for influencers who helped Donald Trump get elected. The photo features many men and a few women, all white, looking straight out of an 80s country club, until you squint and notice the high noon. and the TikTok napkins. In today's episode, I want to explore this theatrical shift in conservative aesthetics. What feels new and what feels to me a little bit Hitler youth adjacent?

With a specific focus on what's drawing young women into what they'd call not Republicanism, but the MAGA movement. And today to do that are two of my best friends. If you listen to this podcast, you are very familiar with them. And I am so happy we could all be in the same Zoom at the same. time, Taylor Lorenz and Kat Tenbarge, welcome to both of you. Thanks for having us. Yeah, you're so excited to be here.

The group chat has made it onto the pod. I have announced in previous podcasts that Taylor, who used to work at the New York Times and the Washington Post and a number of traditional publications, is now on her own as a freelance journalist. And Kat, who was previously at NBC News, is also finally on her own. Congratulations. Oh my gosh, thank you so much. It has been a crazy day, but what better way to top it off than with this podcast? We can say whatever we want now. Yay.

Oh, yes. Both Katz and Taylor's newsletters will be linked in the description of this episode. They are both doing some of the best reporting on and about the internet, so please go subscribe. And if you would like to support this show, we are over on Patreon, where Kat and I are, recently finished a four-part six-hour-long exploration, excavation, investigation of By-Sister, the homophobic vitamin-gummy debacle that transformed YouTube and social media as we know it. That's on Patreon. That will also be in the description. We could have gone for six more hours. And in the future, we might. So that's true.

As is tradition on this podcast, I usually start any episode with, a really specific event, thing that happens online, thing that happens in person. And then we kind of extract from that broader conclusions about shifts that are happening in the world. And where I want to start today is this New York Magazine cover, which really made waves on the internet. New York Mag is really good at like a very powerful striking graphic because they also had like the famous Nepo Babies cover. So I'm like they're really good at creating like a little zeitgeisty magazine cover. The Cruel Kids Table.

I was so over. It's just crazy how splashy this was. I was at Sundance Film Festival in Utah this past weekend. And at one point, like my friends and I were sitting around a hot tub being like, so did you see the Cruel Kids table? It's like nobody in the year 2025 talks about magazine covers this way. And it was such a big deal. Do one of you want to visually just describe this kind of?

cover for people who are only listening to the audio version of this? Well, the first thing I have to say about this cover, like, there's always a point on a picture where your eye is, like, drawn to this part of the image. Like, that's good photography, is, like, having a part of the image that you are immediately drawn toward. And for me, it's the woman in the bottom left who is wearing this very, like, no offense if it's not sheen, but, like, I looked at this and I was like, I think that dresses from, like, sheen or a different retailer like it.

or it's like inspired by those trends. And, you know, she's very beautiful. The fact that it's this really elaborate, extravagant party and the clothes are so inspired by like sheen trends just really stood out to be immediately. Yeah. I mean, the picture itself is like it's taken from above because this was a two-story party that was a downstairs and then this balcony. So it looks like the picture was taken from above.

It's this aerial shot almost of this. this super crowded party where you just see a bunch of white faces kind of crowded together. There were black people there. They were not in this picture. And like Kat said, your eye gravitates towards this group of five young people in the corner kind of all looking together. Like all the people in the photo are looking together off screen at something probably on the big projector screen that they had up there.

And so you have a couple guys, one in a tuxedo, one in a suit, one in this really corny American flag hat. And then two girls sort of crowded behind the main girl, the star of the show, this S-21-year-old SMU sorority president who like Kat mentioned is like, first of all, some sort of spray tan or something going on. And yeah, some kind of like polyester dress. That's the thing that jumped out to me too. It's like the kind of sheen off of the polyester is so distinctly inexpensive.

And I don't say that as a dig. I'm wearing like a $4 tank top right now that came in a pack of three. But it is funny considering the context of, I think, what all of these people are trying to achieve aesthetically. I mean, look, I wore so many hideous forever 21 dresses in college. So this is definitely not shaming some college girl for wearing fast fashion. But I think what is sort of interesting about it is you have all of these young people sort of cost playing wealth and cosplaying a specific sort of wealth,

especially just the venue that they chose. It was this like old school downtown DC venue with like, you know, two stories, beautiful giant crystal chandeliers, red velvet walls, like dark leather booths. Like it was meant to look like something from another era. But then you have this like garish kind of fashion on top of it where it's like it's the sheean dress,

but it's also like the, the kind of the rental suit with the MAGA hat. And like it's just, it looks so there's something uncanny about it. I feel like it's very difficult to separate from influencer fashion culture. Like, it's such a mirror image of what has become popular online. It's just like the fact that it is within this setting of like, we love Donald Trump. Like, we love authoritarianism and traditionalism specifically. Like we love traditional American values, but so much of the aesthetic is inspired by just what's simply like trendy online. Which is really the opposite of sort of traditional, quote unquote, conservative fashion. I mean, especially in the 80s, which these people love to sort of

mimic the aesthetics of 80s Republicans. But that is a time when the preppy handbook was trending, right? And it was everyone's Bible. And it was this book that they all read, which quite literally describes like how to dress, what to wear. And it was very much about like conservatism and modesty and, you know, wearing your mother's hand me down Brooks brothers gown and shopping at Ralph Lauren and things like that. It was not about fashion. It was actually anti-trend. And that is not what we're seeing from this new generation of MAGA. As part of the story for New York Magazine, there was a photo shoot that went along with it. The outline which I have shared with Taylor and Kat

includes some of these photos. Actually, do one of you want to describe the photos? Yeah, the one with like the girl with a cigarette in her hand and stuff. It's a vape. Oh, it's a vape. Oh, my God. Even better. Well, I will say there wasn't a photo shoot.

The photographer was kind of roaming around the party. It's kind of like in the moment party photos. You can tell how sloppy drunk all of these 20 year olds are. This poor girl, like she's got a, she's got a baseball hat on. She's got her phone up. She got her tongue out. she's holding a giant glass of white wine while her dress is slipping down. It also looks like some sort of she-in situation.

And she's holding a vape. And then another one you've got, you know, this blonde girl with her hair and a ponytail kind of like leaning over this table where clearly, you know, they were selling like bottle service tables and stuff. You see this like sloppy drunk guy with a wet, soaking wet button down. And this girl's leaning over and she's got this like lace boostier, however you say it. And like it's puckering and about to. snap. Like, it just looks so poorly made. But all of the photos are like very, very high contrast.

There's a kind of like mocking nature to it. What was so interesting to me was the range of very varied reactions that people had to these photos and this cover where a lot of online conservatives were like, we're, you know, basically celebrated these photos and the whole story. And they were like, we're the cool kids. Like, look how much fun these rich, young, beautiful people are having, they saw it as sort of a moment of celebration, whereas a lot of other people, including myself, saw especially the style of photography, which is so high contrast. And clearly the photos that they selected, especially including, like, I'm looking at this guy with, like, vodka dripping down his shirt. Like, it looks, like, so silly. I think this was

well-encapsulated in this tweet that went pretty viral where one person wrote, the roaring 20s are back in all caps, which like, I think we're just confusing eras here because I didn't get 20s for many of this. But Taylor, you were there. Yes. Which, by the way, I was like watching your Instagram story that night. And without any explanation, you just started posting photos of like Bryce Hall against like a Donald Trump backdrop. And I was like, Taylor, what do you do? Like, you're always doing shit. It's with Riley Games. I know. I guess what I want to ask you is, are the roaring 20s? back. I love someone quote tweeted that and was like, do you guys know what happened at the end of the Roaring 20s? Does anyone remember that? It's like how they like, I feel like didn't finish the

Great Gatsby. Like I think a lot of these people, they are like taking the wrong lessons away. Yeah, it was a bizarre scene. I mean, I was there to write this feature for Rolling Stone, which I wrote about. And obviously because I cover these people, I mean, many of these people are people that I've covered for years. Bryce actually came up to me and we were talking. about the Swayhouse. Because he was also with Mark Moran, Moran. I don't know how he says. I'm from F. Boy Island. If you guys know that guy, he's like a finance influencer. But there's just so many people at this party that I was like, oh yeah, I haven't seen you in a minute. Like, I didn't realize you're fascists now. You know, like I covered your content house in 2018 or

something. And here you are. But it was again, these like young people trying to sort of cosplay a different era. And everyone was so drunk. Another piece of content that went really viral from this party was a picture that was tweeted by one of the other girls on a cover, not the 21-year-old girl from SMU, even though she is in this photo. But it's another one of these girls, blonde, white, young, beautiful. It's her and three other girls over there. It's four girls standing in this photo. And she writes, this is the new right.

And I just saw this. And I was like, these are four young white women. They are thin. And I tweeted this and people got really mad at me. I was like, I'm looking at like a Hitler youth camp photo. And it's kind of the essence of what I want to talk about in this episode. So much of the aesthetic around what is cool in like the MAGA youth movement now and what's, not only is it cosplay as like old money that a lot of these people don't come from. But it's also like this emphasis on, yes, on Eurocentric beauty standards, but like on sameness.

when I saw this photo where she was like, this is the new right. I literally, I thought I was going crazy. I started looking at these photos from Hitler Youth Camps, which I put in the outline. They would have these ones where they taught all the girls gymnastics so they could perform routines for the Nazis. And it's just like thin white women after thin white woman after thin white woman, like dancing in their little ballet slippers, ballet, which is like ballet corps is also a thing that's now in.

Yeah, I tweeted, fascism is fascism. The new right simply wears fashion nova. people were not happy with me for that. But I think it's a valid take. I thought that was a good take and correct. Looking at these young women, it really transports me to my college experience where I worked in a student newsroom where we covered politics in Ohio. And I had a fellow student who I worked with who was beautiful white blonde woman. And this woman who I'm thinking of, after she graduated school, she went on to work for like Ron DeSantis and like in big Republican

offices. I think she also interned at the Heritage Foundation. And she like in college, she just integrated so seamlessly into our very diverse social circle. That was like very leftist, very liberal, lots of like people who did not later become conservative or were not conservative. And I feel like she was the minority. But when I look at pictures like this, I'm like, this group of people has desired and has now become sort of like the majority thing driving the culture. Because in college, when you would go to big parties, there was like a liberal culture at the time. And what I feel like MAGA youth have been trying to do and are arguably doing is they've taken that majority culture and they've now associated it with their political ideology much more

overtly, obviously, than I think a lot of, like, liberal college students even eight years ago did. Yeah, totally. I would like to take a quick break from the show to give a shout out to Rocket Money for sponsoring this podcast and making episodes like this possible. And for, you know, being a very useful app that might be especially useful to you as we head into the new year and you might be looking over your budgets. It's happened to all of us, right, where you sign up for something, whether it be a streaming service, a news subscription, and only fans, and then you eventually stop using it, but you forget to unsubscribe. So you keep getting charged for it quietly in the background for no reason. But the subscriptions that you're paying for every month don't need to be a mystery hidden in the folds of credit card bills. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitor.

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Head over to rocketmoney.com slash fruity. That's rocketmoney.com slash fruity. Now let's get back to the episode. So we've started at this event that was then the subject of this New York Magazine cover. And I want to broaden a little bit, and we've been kind of doing this anyway, but into the fetishization of trad culture. And we've all talked about trad wives, right? We all know Nara Smith and we all know like, you know, this sort of facade of traditional living that involves like, first of all, making like six to seven figures on your popular TikTok account while like baking bread for seven hours a day, even though you have an assistant. Tradwives, I feel like, have become sort of like a cultural punchline, but on a less absurd level than spending seven hours a day to like make homemade chewing gum for your children, it feels like on some level, like this whole youth movement is like a similar performance to what tradwives have been.

Well, I feel like this performance of conservatism is sort of, it's a lot of people that that just sort of want to hop on the bandwagon, I guess. Like, I mean, especially with these influencers, like, they're just. they're not, like you said, they're not old money people. Like they're not and we can get into like that aesthetic and stuff. Conservatism is conservatism. It always has the sort of the same aesthetic because it is a Eurocentric white thin. You kind of know what these people look like. There's Republican hair, Republican makeup. Like you know what I'm talking about when I say that. Everyone at Fox has it. So I think like these young people are sort of trying to cosplay into that. But I think it's also just like in the culture. Like we're moving towards a more conservative culture.

right now. And so you're seeing that play out aesthetically in the rise of a lot of these fashion trends. I wrote about like quiet luxury and the clean girl aesthetic or, you know, just some of these other, these like trends that are sort of associated with the whiteness of so many of these micro trends. Well, this kind of comes to a head at another tweet that I saw on my timeline. My entire thought process is guided by viral tweets that make me upset. But, but I, I, tweet came across my timeline that just made me roll my eyes so hard, but I didn't really think twice about it. Someone by the name of Miss White tweeted, casual parties at Lake Como with a video of what looks like a ballroom and a bunch of young people in their 20s. You know, the men are wearing

tuxedos with black bow ties. There are some women in like silky dresses who are like dancing. It's like there's like piano music in the background. And I was like, okay. hey, whatever, like I'm looking at a video of a country club or something. And then I learned that that was not the case. Take it away, Taylor. It's not the case. I wrote an article about this, but the people in this video pay 6,000 euros a year, which is almost $10,000, I think, to be part of an Instagram old money club where they all dress up together and they rent out these sort of different locations to cosplay as old money and shoot old money content. And I thought it was hilarious. Like, if there weren't fascist undertones to this, like I could appreciate the bit. Like, I love someone who hustles. I love, like, if you're not hurting anybody, I love, like, an extreme facade.

Like, paying $6,000, it's amazing. It's amazing. It's so funny because it doesn't need to cost that much. Like, everyone is like, you know, you can just, like, dress up like this and, like, hire a photographer for, like, way cheaper. they're totally being scammed. They're being scammed. And also just the website is hilarious. Like it is, it is this like Gen Z e-commerce and entrepreneur and an old money content creator. And, you know, so I wrote this feature actually for town and country almost two years ago when the old money trend started to kick off. And almost no one who participates in this trend is old. None of them actually are old quote unquote old money.

Anyone that's actually quote unquote old money does not have an Instagram. Like they are not posting on Instagram at all. Like, they're not on the internet. Let's be real. So it was just so funny because these are all like hustle bro type people. And when you look at the website, it's riddled with spelling ears, but it's selling this like aesthetic and this dream. And I thought it was interesting too that all the members highlighted on the website are men, but they have women in their pictures. I'm like, are these women like paying members or what? But, um, well, wait, but you haven't even said what the name of the club is. Oh, yeah. The club, which again, by the way, does has no physical location. They just like rent out ballrooms to shoot Instagram content in is called the Tuxedo Society, which is also the most

corny name ever. It's like, well, also, people don't call it a tuxedo. They call it, whatever they call it. What do rich people call it? They call it a fucking, um, a dinner jacket, right? What? Um, hold on. They call it. I just want to cover it. Oh, like a, oh, no, I'm thinking of smoking shoes. Or do they call it a smoking jacket or is that not a thing? No, no, no, a dinner jacket. A dinner jacket. A dinner jacket? No, a dinner jacket. No, they call it a dinner jacket. It's just the name Tuxedo Society tickled me so much. And like the front banner on the website, which by the way, since you reported on this Taylor,

they've made the website private, which I thought was funny. Womp, wompwomp. In that point. My impact journalism, I'm shutting, I'm shutting the membership down of the Tuxedo Society. You guys, it's over. But thankfully we have screenshots. And the banner says over like a stock photo. of like some guys outside of some country club.

The most exclusive club dedicated to the finest experiences in the most iconic places of all time, apply for membership. Like, what does that even mean? It really, it really tickled me. It's such gobbledygook. There's also so many grammatical errors. I'm like, this reminds me of like a mashup of two things. One, that fake airplane where you can, the fake private.

jet set where you can go, if you're like an influencer or you're an aspiring influencer, you can like go and take pictures and like the model of a fake private jet. And like people on Instagram, you can come to recognize the jet and like see it on influencers posts. It's like that concept mixed with Andrew Tate and like the Cobra Tate Academy whole schick. It's like making money off of this desire to project wealth, which is what so much of influencer culture has always been. And there was a post I saw in Blue Sky recently that was like the desire to hoard wealth and like hoarding wealth is inherently like conservative. It's inherently like going to take you down a path of fascism. And I was like, oh, well, it all makes so much sense. Like that influencer

culture has reached this very overtly conservative point. It's like, of course, even though influencers for a long time projected liberal politics to be popular and relevant, down like below that they were always operating out of conservative influence like impulses fundamentally influencers quote unquote content creators they're they're small business owners right and small business owners in america have always leaned and voted conservative because you do end up becoming quite conservative when you are a small business owner you want your taxes to be like you're sort of a lot of times you end up voting for these sorts of policies and i think like you said also just the the aspirational nature of it i think it's funny too that like

As new money, wealth became so much more common on the internet, especially throughout the 2010s, with these people like these drop shipping entrepreneurs and whatever, now we have people chasing this other sort of type of wealth that is inherently more exclusive, right? Like anybody can get the private jet photo. Now we want the, you know, Lake Como elite like da da da, da, da, you know, it's like it's sort of this like next level of wealth, which they actually will never be able to access because it is completely shut off from social media. The people in that world are inherently anti-social media. I mean, it's like why the richest people don't want themselves out there. It's like, you know,

there's the, they don't want the public scrutiny. Yeah, that's right. I mean, you know, just like in my life, I've met like some people who are extraordinarily wealthy. And the thing about them is like they all have private Instagrams with 200 followers. They aren't posting every little thing and ContraPoints made a video that talked about this really succinctly, which is basically just that people who grow up with immense amounts of wealth, like people who are taking private jets everywhere, people who are living the lives that these like TikTokers are pretending to live because it's on trend right now. They know not to advertise it because it'll make people jealous and you don't want to have jealousy towards you. It's the whole thing with the evil eye. They know

that like posting photos of their home puts them at a safety risk. It's also about exclusivity. and privacy. And it's very much about tightly controlling your group. I mean, these are people that also do not want random interlopers knowing who they are and trying to grift off them. Like, that's why all those nice clubs in New York City that are actually like old money, like doubles and stuff, right? Like, they don't allow photography. They want to remain anonymous. They want to kind of fly below the radar because it's about exclusivity. And the internet is inherently not about exclusivity. It's about like constructing an image for consumption. So it's sort of at at odds. Also, if you're raised in that sort of like waspy, like true quote unquote old money

culture or like old sort of European culture, it's also like there's this idea of like modesty and not putting yourself out there and attracting any attention. This is why this is so sort of against influencer culture to begin with because it's about like being private and and not centering. yourself publicly for consumption. The other example I put of this kind of like performative old money thing, which just, it really just tickles me was this like kind of low level right wing trying to be influencer person on Twitter. Her name is Madame, her name is Madame Tamu.

She tweeted two photos with the caption, DGEN's with an air of aristocracy. And the first one is like a mirror selfie where she's in an elevator. again looking with like a fashion Nova type black dress and like a faux fur shawl. And then the second one is at like a house party. It's like it looks like one of these like new build apartments or it's like they make everything look really modern but it's also very clearly like cheaply made and like the IKEA table. But like they're all wearing like ball gowns and like tuxedos.

My favorite detail here is there's an air fryer in the back. Somebody called out what did the one? whiteboard say? Yes, there's a whiteboard in the back, which in like, you know, messy handwriting says goals slash to do. And the first one, the first thing on that list is secure the bag. Right. Right. Nothing says old money. Something says old money like a whiteboard in your kitchen that says secure the bag. This literally is very reminiscent of my own actual apartment that I live in. First of all, this is like a, this kitchen is nicer than mine. Like, I'm not hating on it.

It's just so, like, I have a galley kitchen. Like, no, it's so like, it's so like newly gentrified like part of town where it's like, we just did a slap dash dot and everything is plastic vinyl. Like not real. There's not an ounce of real wood in that entire place. A hundred percent. I one time a picture of my dishwasher went viral on Reddit in the apartment that I currently live in. I know.

Ridiculous. But. One time. a picture of my dishwasher went viral on Reddit. People were dragging the build of my apartment. And it was really, I'm glad that I know all this information, but they were like, you cannot open your dishwasher right after the dish cycle is done because your cabinets are not made of wood.

They're made of, like, cheap wood scrap. And they were like, if steam gets on them too often, they will crumble. And I was like, oh, I live in a house of car. It's okay. Good to know. At least you're at a dishwasher in New York City. I feel like that's luxury. No, it's true. I should be in this photo. I'm like, do these people know what the word aristocracy means? Like, could they describe it? I don't think they could. No, but it's also like, I think it's so telling that this is what they aspire to, which is this repressive, horrible white supremacist fucked up culture, right? Like it's like that the things that they're aspiring to is this highly regressive class system. stem. Yeah, and I feel like that's kind of like the getting into the bigger picture of what we're talking about, which is like if you want to like put on like a nice dress or like a cheap version

of something that looks like a nice dress, like do it. Like I don't care. If you want to wear like a faux for a shawl, do it. I don't care. The point of this is not to be like like like honestly like some somewhere to give you a nice Instagram photo backdrop. I don't I don't care. I wouldn't care if the undertone of all of this, right, the cruel kids table, the tuxedos with vodka spilled on them, the sheen dresses that are supposed to look like 80s Republican dresses, kind of. It's like the backdrop of all of this is everyone like faking the aesthetic of like white supremacy and fascism, which is what they want. That's the only reason I'm making an episode. If people were, if people were dressing in a way that I found off putting, like that's, that's a

tweet for the group chat. Yeah. It's not about what they wear. And also, by the way, anybody can wear, anyone can dress like that. Not all people that dress like super like preppy 80s style, right, are like fascist or conservatives. I think it's just interesting to look at the resurgence of this specific sort of 80s style Republican aesthetic alongside the rise of all of these other aesthetics that really center whiteness coupled with the rise of conservative ideologies. And also by the way, the people that are like that are dressing in these ways and, these aesthetics are also espousing right-wing politics. So I just feel like it's important to talk about like all of it together. You know what I mean? Because individually, it's fine.

And also, I mean, I wrote about this in my piece too, Matt. I don't know if you saw it. But like there was this fashion expert. I think they spoke to The Guardian talking about just like in certain economic times and under certain economic conditions or when we're seeing certain political movements. We do see aesthetic trends rise around those political movements. And so much of fashion is tied with politics and the political sort of ideology of the moment. And so I think it's just interesting to unpack. Something that I keep coming back to when I look at like these young conservatives now that like we're in Trump's second term and they have this air of like, we won. Like we got what we wanted. It's like when you look at what a lot of them seem to have clearly

wanted. It's that they wanted to have the direction and flow of popular culture reinforce a system of power that was beneficial to them. So like with these influencer types, if you go back 10 years ago, they were engaging with popular culture and succeeding at it, but popular culture at the time valued more diversity. It valued more liberal politics. It valued inclusivity and social justice and things that like didn't truly benefit the members of this group that we're seeing now. And so their aim and their goal was to dominate popular culture and then turn it conservative so that it would benefit them at the expense of all of those other people who previously had this hold on the culture. And so I think it's also disturbing that so many

people who are just kind of like blindly consuming like this conservative content sphere are not like thinking it through that direction because it leaves people more vulnerable to falling into the same thought patterns like people who just consume a lot of popular culture uncritically now are getting way, way, way, way more conservative messaging them before and it's like soft power in terms of how shaping how America thinks and how America ultimately like votes and chooses to enforce power. And also, like you said, it is all of these sort of coded messages. And I think we're seeing it also come out with beauty standards that have regressed back. It's like thin is in again.

Like, you know, it is this very like Eurocentric beauty, white. I mean, like, I mean, Raquel de Bono, who co-hosted the influencer party, she leads this whole movement called Make America Hot again, which is just about really just pushing Eurocentric beauty standards and eliminating, you know, quote unquote fatis and people like that. Like they also just all want. to say slurs. They really just want to say slurs. I can't explain how many slurs I heard at that party. Like they just want to say it. Like you said, Kat, they've wanted to feel centered in culture.

And they're too young to remember when they were centered in culture. Like, you know, they didn't live through the 80s or the 90s when they were centered in culture. And so they've never, they feel like they haven't had their moment. And they want to regress the culture back to focus around them. And that's why they feel like they want to go back and you see this like, I think resurgence even of, of like the early aughts culture in terms of like that male, that sort of chauvinistic male culture where it's like let's call women slurs, let's, you know, bring back the R word, all these things were normalized in 2005. Like you said it's soft power and it's kind of this messaging that then it's very easy to sort of amass an audience around. I think that's like a theme with all of this

kind of romanticizing the past is that the people who are doing the romanticizing, right? The women in these photos, the women who were at that party and then on the New York magazine cover, they didn't live through the time that they are romanticizing. It's like the whole Make America Great Again thing. It's like we don't want to go back to the 1950s. Most of the people voting, by the way, were not adults in the 1950s. They were not women in the 1950s. All these trad wife influencers, they were never around when women didn't have another option, right? Absolutely. And that's, I mean, that's the trad wives. And it's also just like these college students who are like, I want to be at an elegant party in Lake Como, effortless in my dress, and we're wearing,

I don't know, Brooks Brothers, I don't even know what these people are trying to wear. But it's like you're romanticizing a time from when like you couldn't own a credit card. Another thing that bothers me so much about this is it's like it's reactionary toward a status quo that never truly existed. Because it's like when you look at white Eurocentric beauty ideals and standards, those have always, always been what is the dominant force in culture. There has never been a true time when, like, these people did not have the power that they crave. Their biggest issue is that, like, marginalized people started to make very small inroads toward progress. And so they felt the need to, like, crush it and be 10 times harder. Um, because it's like this whole idea that, like,

thin people were discriminated against. Like, everyone, it's ridiculous. It's, like, actually. like fat people have never been treated with dignity and respect in the past like many decades of America. In American culture, like we've never had a time where obesity was truly glorified. It's like it's a lie to like create this like reactionary fervor. Yeah, it's the whole thing of like there was a brief moment like six months ago where conservative men figured out who Sidney Sweeney was. And then they were and then they were like, wokeness has. died under the heel of Sydney Sweeney's beauty. And it was like, it was like, okay, you could just think she's hot.

Like, you don't have to be insane about it. I also think, and like they do this repeatedly, when there is a white woman who is really dominant in the culture, Taylor Swift being the perfect example, conservatives try to claim that woman, whether she wants them to or not. And like, because Taylor Swift, for example, has publicly been like, I'm a Democrat, I vote for Democrats, I endorse them. Conservatives then make like deep fakes of her supporting Trump. Because when, when a white woman is culturally powerful, conservatives want to take her power

and rebrand it as like conservatism's power. You mentioned the clean girl aesthetic. And I know especially for young women listening to this podcast, just the term clean girl aesthetic probably like raises the hairs on your neck. The clean girl aesthetic is a sort of fashion trend that really, came to dominate TikTok over the last couple years. It's hallmarks are, you know, like beige suits, thin white women wearing gold jewelry, big sunglasses, minimal makeup, just like a little like cream blush and like laminated eyebrows.

It's very effortless. It's very white. And a couple years ago, and Kat, you sent me this essay, so thank you. Steffie Sow wrote for her substack, an essay titled, white women want their power back. And it basically talked about how when she was coming of age in the mid-2010s, it was cool and every white woman was basically trying to look black with cornrows, with BBLs, with lip filler, with fray tans that just like bordered on the edge of blackface.

And since then, she writes, many of the remnants of this era have fallen out of vogue, super out of vogue. Everywhere you look, there is a new aesthetic. to aspire to. Clean girl, coastal grandmother, old money, beige mom, vanilla girl, frazzled frazzled 2000s English woman, hard-boiled egg girls. I'm not on TikTok. I don't know it. That all fixate on one thing. Whiteness. It's such a good piece. I think about this essay, Stephanie, if you're listening to this, I love you. It's so good. I think about it all the time. It's one of my primary bookmarks because I always want to come back to it.

It was so prescient because she picked up on this thing, which is that white women are becoming more conservative. And the culture at large is becoming more conservative. And I feel like Kim Kardashian, and this has been much discussed, but like she really exemplifies this. And the Kardashians in general, the way that they created an artificial body type that was reminiscent of black women's features and then artificially, did that body type so that they could conform to like a stick thin like glorifying white women whole shit and that extends into so many facets of like their personal lives and their public brand. But Kim Kardashian in her era where she was more overtly appropriating black women, she was like, I support Hillary Clinton. And then now that she's in her like thin Marilyn

Marilyn Monroe era, she's like, Melania on my Instagram story. Love the fashion. A lot of these women who do these conservative heel turns are like, it's about the fashion. Like Jessica Reed Krause is like, I love the drama and the polish intrigue of the White House. And I love the fashion. And also I support Trump. And if you don't unfollow me now. I mean, I think this just goes back to what we were saying earlier, which is that there has been an evolution. And when we had a more liberal culture, we did have a more sort of slightly more diverse beauty standard.

It was always very Eurocentric and white and cats at the same. Like, thin has never been out. Let's be real. Like, models have all generally looked the same. But it was just like, hey, maybe if you're slightly diverse, you can, you might appear as like the diversity hire in an ad campaign or something for Dove. But now we're seeing the complete backlash to that. And, you know, it's interesting. I was talking to a conservative influencer recently who was telling me that a bunch of brands are now trying to do these conservative influencer outreach campaigns. And now brands have realized that this is.

what's in. They have the culture. One brand, one women's beauty brand hosted a big roundtable event for all of these super, super right-wing women influencers. Wait, which brand? I might write. I'm trying to write about it. All right. All right. All right. Subscribe to userbag.com because I am going to write about some of this. But let me tell you something, they're not the only one. All of these brands are on board with it. Like all of these brands, their goal is to sell things. And they are thrilled that these unattainable beauty standards are back, by the way. This is like a lucrative aesthetic for them. It's a very unattainable aesthetic. And I think a lot of companies are eager to work with this new generation of influencers that is inherently very right way. You know what else would be profitable for the beauty

companies? If we reverted back to 2016 eyebrows when everyone looked like a drag queen, that's what I want to go back to? Like, what happened to wearing six pounds of makeup and like baking powder into every poor? Like, I miss it. Baking. Okay, but like the clean girl aesthetic does require a lot of like, I mean, that's the irony. It's like I feel like you have to buy more crap today than even in 2016 because now you have to do this whole skincare routine. Which I feel like we didn't used to do. No, that's so true. In 2020, this is so good for the makeup industry in particular because in 2020, makeup industry sales plummeted because people were like, I'm not going out for this brief period of time.

I'm not going to buy as much makeup. So then it became skincare. It became like, you don't wear makeup anymore. we'll sell you $700 of skincare. We can make it even more expensive because it's medically good for you. And now they're bringing back the makeup again. So now it's like 2016, you need to bake. But also you need to have this $700 skin care routine.

And also you need filler. And it's like conservatism is so good for the women's beauty industry. It is like so great for them that this has happened. I would like to take a quick break from the show to shout. out factor for making this episode possible listen if you are all about trad living if you watch narasmith wake up in the morning and spend six hours cooking a bowl of cereal from scratch and are like i'm going to do that this one might not be for you but if like me you find yourself on the opposite end of that spectrum where you love good food but rarely have time to prepare it yourself

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Now, let's get back to the show. I was looking at old photos of Kylie Jenner, you know, old, like whatever, eight-year-old photos of Kylie Jenner, and then recent photos of Kylie Jenner. I know you mentioned the Kardashians. It's really quite jarring. It's crazy that these are, I didn't. even recognize her in some of these photos, Matt. But I also remember exactly when these were posted.

And I remember for a lot of young white girls that this was like the pinnacle of cool. Oh, absolutely. Everyone wanted to look like Kylie. Kylie wanted to look like a black woman. And now Kylie doesn't even want to look like Kylie. Well, it's also so funny, like the men that they date and surround themselves with because they dated a lot of black men early on in their careers, who is Kylie Jenner with now, Timothy Shalame, like one of the whitest white guys ever.

They did like the scrawny white man is in for like all of us. The way that they cohesively move their lives as a group is terrifying. I used to think the Kardashians were so cool when I was like a teenager. Now I think the Kardashians are some of the most terrifying people on the planet. Like not only do they all dress the same, not only do they all do plastic surgery the same, but they also date men the same way. It's so weird. Like the fact that so many of them had children with black men and now a lot of them are dating

like the alt rock style guy like with Courtney and Travis Barker and then with Kylie and Timothy. It's just so weird to me and so like hyper surreal that you would be able to like change your whole reality around what is trendy. People are probably going to yell at me and they're going to be like really like we did not sign up for this podcast for you to talk about the Kardashians like every other podcast. And like, I feel you. But in putting together some resources for this episode, I did, I was just looking at these, you know, old photos of Kylie Jenner and new photos of Kylie Jenner where she dresses kind of, she's dressing like like an old money Lake Como princess now. It is pretty disturbing to think about

both the fashion choices and you could see, I don't know, I think it is kind of fair to look at their dating patterns and the men that they accumulate like handbags as signs of their political leanings. Well, I think that Kardashians are such good sort of like chameleons in terms of culture that looking at them is a good way to sort of get a pulse on like what is sort of mainstream trending culture. What is it trending towards? Just because they are so they will exploit any sort of cultural trend to death. They will ride that trend. They will feed into that.

they're so in line with whatever is working now currently on the internet. And so I think they're just a useful case study when you're looking at these broader aesthetic trends, political trends. And again, it's not surprising that a bunch of girls that grew up in Calabasas would become Republicans or being conservative. Like it's just that now they can be sort of who they were, right? which is a bunch of rich kids. I feel like the Kardashians kind of, like, they exemplify so much of this because I also feel like they were cosplaying old money before it was like cool to cosplay old money because going back to the beginning of the Kardashians, they obviously lived very different lifestyles.

And like looking at the family history of the Kardashians, it's like, yeah, now they're some of the wealthiest women on the planet. But even that is not really true because like we know like Kylie, pretends to be a billionaire. Like she may be a billionaire now, but when she did the Forbes billionaire cover, it was like, actually not sure. She was not a billionaire. So it's like they're the original, I have more money than I really have. I'm projecting the standard of what is cool. I also think it's interesting how the MAGA movement has adopted a different aesthetic. Like, I mean, the MAGA movement from back, I was looking before this episode of my photo roll back

from 2016 when I was on the campaign trail with Trump and those rallies. And it was a lot of poor people basically wearing like really wild outfits and like super like glitzy. Everyone had like blinged out like maga sort of things. It just looked very, very tacky. And Trump himself has this like sort of gold like, you know, corny like Vegas style kind of aesthetic to himself that then his supporters mimic. and they were making a lot out of the MAGA American flags. I know you posted about that crazy woman that shows up to the Grammys, but like, Joy Villa.

Joy Villa. But that aesthetic of like using the MAGA flag itself, this like cheap polyester flag to like make your shirts and things. And just the, you know, like they were so tacky back then. And I don't think that the MAGA aesthetic had sort of like, you know,

it was seen as outside of the traditional Republican aesthetic, you know, that somebody like, Romney or George Bush, you know, embodied, which is that old school conservative Reagan sort of style aesthetic. But now as I feel like the Maga movement has become more mainstream Republican, and as they've become more kind of like they just took over the party, basically, they have adopted the aesthetics, the traditional aesthetics of the traditional Republican Party, where now you have people in their cashmere cable nets and their nice blazers and they're like, there's just a lot

of them that are starting to dress like everyone at this cruel kids party, right? Like they're dressing they're dressing like traditional Republicans. They look like traditional Republicans. We've touched on a lot of things. But I do want to mention before we move on from like the Kardashian of it all is that while looking black as a white person was cool. Like they did it and then they moved on. And like I think it's important that like to note that the people who benefited the most

from that kind of brief shift in beauty standards to like the big butt and the big lips. Like, black people did not ultimately benefit from that. You know, I think like a lot of black people and black culture were exploited by that for people like the Kardashians to get rich of, rich off of. The argument at the time, because obviously as this era was ongoing, people, especially black people were calling it out for what it was, which was appropriation. And at the time, the refrain was always like, it's not appropriation. it's cultural appreciation, actually.

And now we know definitively that that was not true, because we now have this, like, current political moment that is, and the people who did this, some of them, who are now openly, more overtly conservative. It's like, of course you didn't appreciate black culture. You now are like, I hate DEI, I hate critical race theory. Like, clearly that was never the case. And throughout history, white people have exploited black people and black culture for their own financial gain only in like an abusive dynamic. So I feel like at this point now that we're in

like the conservative influencer era, it's like so now fully all of that was a lie. Like all of your defense is about I am progressive. Yeah, because like they got their BBLs removed. They've deflated their lips. Like they're done with that whole look and they can easily move on because again it was only ever an aesthetic for them. So you know, the Kardashians, obviously, can afford to buy into whatever's trendy. They can get surgeries. They can deflate the surgeries. They can buy the nicest version of whatever clothing is in at the time. They can afford to cosplay as black. They can afford to revert back to old whiteness. But the average person cannot. And the young conservatives who are, like we said, you know, cosplaying as these like old money

children can't. And neither can like normal people. Taylor, in your piece that you wrote about the What was it, the Tuxedo? Tuxedo Society. The Tuxedo Society, which I'm going to link in the episode description. But you wrote, at a time when economic mobility is increasingly out of reach for young people, cosplaying wealth has become more and more popular. Yeah, I feel like just that's what so much of these aesthetics and this whole, I mean, the whole Make America Great Again movement is about.

It's like sort of yearning for this lifestyle that doesn't exist anymore. Like this old money world, it doesn't really exist in America anymore. Like, yeah, you have some like a sort of ever-decreasing amount of like rich waspy families, but most people have to hustle. There is no stability in the world. And so much of like, like it just doesn't exist. Like old money doesn't exist. Like those people, by the way, are increasingly bankrupt. Like they are. Old money like lost a lot of their money in 2008, especially like if not sooner. Most of those people like their third grandson lost all the wealth. already, like on his weird e-commerce brand. Like, everyone else has to, like, have four different jobs. Like, it is just increasingly hard. And same thing with, you know, the trad wife stuff. Like, all of these, all of these aesthetics, like what they're selling is this time that is linked in people's minds to stability or to a lifestyle of leisure and stability. It's like, dress like a housewife, right? Like, let's go back to the 50s. Women didn't have to work. You had a man to work for you. It's like, okay, so then you're dependent on his job. You're

dependent on someone's labor. You just don't have direct control of it. But it's like yearning and sort of trying to aesthetically adopt and embody these like leisure lives and this, this lives that just doesn't exist in our economy because we live in a late capitalist healthcape. Everyone has to grind. Everyone has to work. Everyone has to hustle. And I, I feel like people, they yearn for a time when that didn't exist. And the reality is that time is gone. We have been robbed by billionaires. We wealth disparities at record high. Like that world is not coming back anytime soon and certainly not by moving further to the right. So I just think it's interesting like at this time of such economic precarity when these people will never have like they can

rent out a villa in Lake Como and dress up in their Timu dresses, but they're never going to have that stability that they crave. They're never going to ultimately be able to to live the old money lifestyle because it just doesn't, it doesn't exist. I think that's so like, central to this whole phenomenon, Taylor. And I feel like what we were initially talking about with like the clothes that the women were wearing in the New York mag cover and how it looks like it's she in. Of course, it might not be, but like it is the aesthetic of fast fashion because fast fashion is what most people choose to wear. And it like strikes me that, you know, a lot of the choices that these young conservatives are making are very relatable, even to people who are not

conservative whatsoever. I personally have bought and wear fast fashion. I don't think it's good. I just know that like if I want to dress up nice, I can't actually afford a $1,200 dress. I have to find some sort of dupe of like nice clothing because I personally can't afford it. So it's like I see why these people, these young people are choosing to basically like fantasize about a life that they will never lead because the resources just aren't there. but it's harmful not only to themselves the fact that they're choosing to live in this like fantasy world where being conservative will make them rich it won't but they're also living this fantasy very obviously and blatantly at the expense of other people so it's like while a lot of us are

going to have to make choices based on a lack of the ability to accumulate wealth it's like these people are choosing to be like I just want it better than you like I just want more power than the person next to me. So it's all very transparent. And it's like, I, I like, I don't not feel bad for them. Maybe there's like a tiny bit of pity because I'm like, you're never actually going to live the life you project. I feel like our whole culture is like, this whole culture is just like a dupe of old school conservatism. It's just like a cheap Trump made China made dupe of original conservatives, which was so problematic and honestly not worth duping to begin with. But now we're living in like the cheap knock off copy that somehow even worse.

Because it's just so silly. It's just so silly. And Kat, like you said that you don't feel badly for them. And like, I'm with you because a lot of these people just like voted against all of our rights. But I think it's important to note that like, I'm going to bring back this New York magazine cover and this beautiful 21 year old girl in her polyester dress. All of these people in this New York magazine cover have more in common with me and with the both of you. than they do with these people that they're trying to emulate and like the overlords that they're voting for. I always find a way in every episode of this podcast to blame billionaires for everything,

and I'm going to do it again. It's true. These people through fashion, through their voting, they over-identify with people, you know, like Elon Musk, like Donald Trump, people who have wealth that they will never see nor touch in their entire lives. These people have to work just like the rest of us. they're just dressing and dreaming about a world in which they don't. But like you said, Taylor, that world is gone. You know, I'm a fan of the statement that every single person, you know, like us,

like the people in this cover, has more in common with every person living on the streets than they do with any billionaire. And that will more than likely be the case for the rest of all of our lives. And it's like they're just faking it. And in the process of faking it, yes, they're like supporting billionaires by buying fast fashion and whatever. but they're also politically aligning themselves with a movement that, like you said, Taylor, will hurt them too. Like, you know, I know so many people see me on the internet and they're just like, oh, like the gay guy with the nails, which I actually don't have right now because like my nails are, my real nails are suffering underneath the fake ones. I had to take a break. But they like, they think that I'm yelling at them for like dressing up like heteronormatively or whatever.

And it's like that's not what I'm doing. I'm just, I'm trying to convey. I guess regardless of how you choose to accessorize yourself, which we all do, we all just have more in common with each other than we do with billionaires. And putting on like your men's warehouse rental tuxedo isn't going to change that. But it is sad how popular those have gotten. And I know because I wore one to my brother's wedding. I think I have like trauma because it reminds me so much of. Connecticut. And I and my like childhood and growing up around people, you know, I thought that like we had

moved past that era. And it's, it's scary to see some of this stuff come back. I think like Kat was saying so much of that culture of the early 2010s, that like liberal culture. It was like actually such a brief glimmer of like a potential more inclusive world. And now we've snapped right back. And I think you can see that visually in the rise of all of these aesthetics. I think. part of the issue is that influencers live, by definition, unstable lives, where it's like, how am I going to keep profiting? I'm not actually building like generational opportunities for myself. I'm just like cashing in on whatever the moment is. But with all these people, I'm like, you, you thought you picked the path that would give you what you really wanted, but you got tricked.

Like, you think you won. You guys are celebrating now. You're saying all the slurs you ever wanted to. But in the end, like, you were the one who fell for like a billionaire claiming that this is going to be good for you. It's not going to be good for you. And so, yeah. This part of influencer culture isn't fun anymore because now it's just like a fake veneer on an enormous amount of human suffering that is a direct result of their actions. I kind of want to join the Tuxedo. Tuxedo Society? The Tuxedo Society just so I get infiltrated.

give you a bonus episode for the Patreon. Please go undercover. I don't have my nails right now. I attended a Tuxedo Society event so you don't have to. I think the jig's going to be up at some point. You think so? Back to 2016 painted on eyebrows. God willing.

We need Generation Beta or whatever to come of age and then think that all this conservative shit's lame and go back to, you know, be like mega woke or something. God willing, the pendulum will swing and like colorful eye shone. I'll be back or something. And until then, I'll be wearing it anyway. It's actually resistance to dress like James Charles in 2016. It's actually good praxis. Taylor and Kat, where can people find you now that we're all freelancers and don't have health insurance? Subscribe to my YouTube channel and subscribe to usermag.com.com.com. That's usermag.com.

Well, as of today, I'm at spitfirenews.com. That's like my first time promoting it out loud. And you can also follow me on blue sky, on Instagram, on TikTok while it's still around. But please subscribe to my newsletter. It is free. And I'm very excited to write about all of these topics and more. It's actually $6,000 a month. My newsletter is actually just redirects to the Tuxedo Club homepage. That's the elite tier. That's where you get invited to the parties where we all dress up in our, you know, Zara. That's the Fashion Nova Party. Thank you so much for being here. What a silly, funny time we're all living in. But at least we can be honest about it, unlike the people at the Tuxedo Society.

I love you all. I hope that you are all doing whatever you need to do to keep your head screwed on straight because we all need to stick around for each other to see the other side of this, and we will. I love you, and until next time, stay free.