Right-Wing Beauty Trends

Beauty standards have always been a way to take power away from women, women of color especially. So it's little surprise that rightwing ideas have begun to enter the beauty space at a heightened rate. The big problem is that these trends don't always appear as right-wing on the surface and without the ability to look deeper more and more women are falling into these beliefs.

A great example of this is the concept of Divine Feminine. This idea takes “feminine” attributes and tells women they will be their most beautiful and most powerful when they lean into these attributes. This affects not only how women present but also how they act. The ideology defines the Divine Feminine as empathetic, intuitive, and passive.

They are never encouraged to lean into their Divine Masculine, they are never encouraged to be leaders, to take charge, or to act instead of just letting life happen. In short, The Divine Feminine is a tool to subjugate women into meek, helpless, lesser beings.

The Divine Feminine is obvious upon even a quick search to be right-wing, but there are other trends that require a deeper understanding. The facial calculator. This idea has been around for centuries, often referred to as the golden ratio, of the perfect face based on math. How many would argue that math is infallible, and it can be if we remove the mathematicians from the equation?

To decide on the measurements for the “perfect” face human judgments had to be made. A standard had to be decided on. Like most standards we have regarding beauty, it was based on European features. Unfortunately, this was not updated to fit with global beauty, so Ai models and TikTok filters still use the same old standard.

Often these trends can take over so much that to get to the root is almost impossible. The clean girl is seemingly everywhere but she isn't for everyone. Under the unblemished, slick, and white facade of the clean girl is a culture of bullying, classism, and ingroups. To be a clean girl you need to look perfect (without makeup), so you need to spend thousands of dollars on skincare. If it doesn't work you need to spend more.

Under the clean girl rule, anyone who doesn't fit into their neat little aesthetic is automatically dirty. This makes an outcast of anyone who cannot afford the skincare they promote and anyone who isn't well enough or time-rich enough to spend their time on skin care. It also outcasts those who don't want to follow their aesthetic. Believing a whole group are lesser is the epitome of right-wing ideologies.