A group of chimpanzees in Zambia have been very busy putting grass in their ears and sticks up their bum for fashion purposes. Scientists studying the behaviour think that one influential chimp started the trend and, instead of the rest of the gang going, “mate, you look like an idiot”, they all just followed suit.
Clearly we haven’t evolved from apes that much because a similar phenomenon is at play with the billionaire and Make America Great Again (Maga) set, who are spending enormous sums of money acquiring identical plastic faces. The trend is so widespread that it’s even got a name: Mar-a-Lago face. Among women the look is characterised by huge lips that look as if they could suck up a small child whole, frozen facial expressions, and cheeks so bulbous you could hide a gerbil underneath them. Men also have the slick frozen faces, but instead of bigger lips they’re pairing them with bigger jaws. In recent years, surgeons have reported a large increase of male clients demanding stronger jawlines.
I wouldn’t normally be snarky about someone’s looks but let’s be clear: nobody is born with Mar-a-Lago face. These are not human faces, they are luxury meat-masks meant to signal wealth and in-group belonging. People such as Laura Loomer, Kristi Noem, and Matt Gaetz can afford excellent surgeons and subtle cosmetic work but, unless they’ve all had botched procedures, it seems they deliberately chose to look like AI-generated caricatures. One can only surmise that they live in such weird little bubbles, where everyone is addicted to filler, that this sort of conspicuous consumption of cosmetic surgery has become desirable.
Having the right look is certainly desirable to optics-obsessed Donald Trump, whose chief concern for his underlings appears to be how they perform on TV. In 2017, an Axios report claimed that Trump wanted his female staff to “dress like women” and demanded that his male employees have a “certain look.” Over the years it seems the “certain look” has only become more extreme.
An obsession with traditional gender norms also seems to factor into today’s exaggerated aesthetics. Earlier this year a New York-based dermatologist told Politico that fashion often shifts to more traditional gender expression in culturally conservative times. “It’s ironic … that they’re so against trans-ness and gender-affirming care for trans people,” the dermatologist said of Trump’s inner orbit. “Because, you know, they’re all doing their own gender-affirming care.” The Zambian bum-stick chimps seem positively sophisticated in comparison.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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