The GOP’s aesthetics are just as ugly as their actions

Maya Sunderraj, Assistant Opinions Editor 

While everyone was counting down the clock to losing their food assistance benefits, President of the United States Donald Trump hosted a lavish, massive “Great Gatsby” themed party at his private residence at Mar-a-Lago. 

I’ve never considered myself a style puritan. I’ve never held strong opinions on fashion and cosmetic surgery. But the aesthetics of the Republican party and its allies are executed poorly for particularly unethical, power-hungry purposes … and it pisses me off.

The hedonism these people exhibit while the world falls apart is abhorrent. I don’t usually enjoy poking fun at people’s stylistic choices, but elements of the GOP’s aesthetics are sinister — they apply gold sheens over their rotten, immoral words and actions. 

The gap in the intended aesthetics — such as strength, fertility, fortune, exclusivity, pride, traditionalism and being made-to-last — and the future the GOP is creating for the rest of the world — made up of economic recession for all, discrimination, violence and the loss of personal freedoms — does not add up. 

These people can pour millions into an image, but without any guiding ideology beyond wealth and power, every attempt to reflect their ambitions is overtly obvious and gluttonous. 

Because of this, I discovered a distaste for those who tactlessly wear opera gloves for a meager press op — I’m looking at you, Casey DeSantis. 

Now, out of anger, I’m stuck bearing a hoity-toityness for others’ fashion choices because the people in power are malintentioned and so irritatingly tasteless. No matter how useless, when I see members of the GOP attempting to assert their influence through methods such as fashion and cosmetic surgery, I’m going to critique them. 

This critique isn’t limited by gender, either.

In what looks like an attempt to create a poignant, intimidating and more open stare, former Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz’s eyebrows seem to have been permanently frozen in a trigonomically-satisfying look of surprise, perhaps at the fact that gay people can still legally marry.

On Instagram, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s mocha eyebrows are so densely filled in that she is effectively sharing her border-control policy through facial symbolism. Noem’s love for injectables is clear to everyone. Her puffed-up, migrated filler epitomizes the recently coined “Mar–a-Lago face.”

This spite of mine is justified — look at what’s happening in Washington, D.C. 

While I don’t particularly care about renovating the White House, I still wonder what the symbolism says when people who show such disrespect for the Constitution and democracy at large happily tear down the physical manifestation of said institutions.

The overwhelming supernova of glamour and gold laid against the backdrop of a cringe-worthy, newly gilded Oval Office is a striking combination.

Simultaneously, they are promoting a regime defined by aggressive and stubborn international relations, a disregard for the legitimacy of lower governments and other branches, mass deportation practices and a general dislike of foreign individuals and corporations.

In the background of this mess, Trump’s portrait hangs, its shadowed background and post-stroke-esque glare ominous as it overlooks these tactless shifts from democracy to autocracy in the United States. 

The lack of care and strategy in the execution of their aesthetics is intriguing to me — with all of the wealth and resplendence that the GOP holds, the party still does not seem to fully understand what they are styling or hold any personal sentiment beyond sociopolitical ambition.

Injecting plastic into your face and slapping gold onto every surface does not tell people you are a community that cares about curation or finding meaning within art. Instead, it reveals that the GOP are not elephants, but dragons — actors who wish to hoard wealth, welfare and well-being for themselves and those they deem worthy: the wealthy and white. 

I am not knocking on their style for no reason — the GOP is using imagery in such a sinister manner that I feel it must be talked about, analyzed and understood alongside their actual policies and goals. While there must be more focus on their actions than looks, these flimsy choices reveal how dark, greedy and egotistical the goals of the GOP are. 

Aesthetically, Republican politicians are making an attempt to hearken their supporters to a fantastical era of power, peace and perfection — built on a foundation of white supremacy and nationalism. This cheaply-constructed veneer of refinement, class and courtesy is especially unfathomable when spoken in context with what the rest of the world is going through at the moment.