My favorite skincare recommendation isn’t retinol, sunscreen, or glycolic acid. It’s Aqua Tofana, the poison used by wives in Italy to become widows in the 1600s. Back then, wives in Palermo and Rome had little recourse in abusive marriages, so a group of enterprising women bottled arsenic in anti-aging “cosmetic bottles” to avoid suspicion. Authorities apparently couldn’t fathom a makeup vial as the murder weapon that would go on, by some accounts, to liberate over 600 women from abusive marriages. Aqua Tofana, quite literally, helped fix a political problem: the lack of women’s rights in the 1600s.
While we are worlds away from the 1600s, not much has changed in how beauty—or, rather, the pursuit of it—is perceived. It’s still something viewed as uniquely feminine and therefore a sign of character weakness if you actively participate in beauty standards. But, if you naturally fall within the norms? Or silently pursue it surgically? You’ll reap the rewards of a sort of Halo Effect. In 2020, for instance, Demi Moore was excoriated for walking the Fendi runway with a “botched facelift.” One year later, when she quietly “corrected” the work, she was nominated for an Oscar (ironically, the role was a horror movie about punishing beauty standards). Beauty is dismissed as non-serious and non-political, yet it deeply impacts how humans are treated.
Politics, in its most basic sense, is the activity of group decision-making and the exercise of power. Historically, women haven’t had much in the way of rights; their power lay in their beauty, which, conveniently, was ephemeral. Even if you fit America’s “beauty standard”—meaning white, young, and thin—and you want to opt out of beauty tomorrow, you cannot escape its evaluation. In 2015, a study found that those considered conventionally attractive earned more than their “ugly” counterparts, and in 2019, The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a study finding that beauty—particularly the enforcement of narrow beauty standards—reinforces gender hierarchies and serves as a powerful tool for keeping women “in line.”
The report found that beauty can impact your work prospects, but it also can be used as a tool for control. For example, the more a woman “moved up” in the workforce, the “more put together” she was expected to be. A woman considered “insufficiently groomed” was less likely to be hired than her male counterparts.
The study found a correlation between “traditional” values—like ranking men above women—and upholding prescriptive beauty norms. In other words, the more you fall in line with the patriarchy, the more you police other people to do the same.
While the study did not find the pursuit of beauty standards like youth or thinness problematic on their own, the combination with conservative values made it dangerous.
This is where things start to get weird: because while beauty has always been political, it’s found a powerful collaborator in social media in radicalizing women towards more conservative values. If we consider that 2015 study again, is it any surprise, then, that there are groups of women fighting for the loss of their own rights? For the propagation of “household voting”—meaning one household, one vote? In a New York Times profile on the movement, Corbin Clarke, an assistant pastor and proponent of the movement, said that “women aren’t made for battle… they were made for love. They were made for beauty.”
This isn’t the first time women—and how they present—have been used to restrict rights. It’s pretty much par for the course for any fascist government. In Nazi doctrine, women lived by the motto “Kinder, Küche, Kirche,” or children, kitchen, church.” Politics and academia were off limits to women, with their main role being to embody “natural” femininity (as defined by Aryan standards). If anyone deviated from these strict roles, punishment and penalties would come into play.
While America isn’t quite there yet, we are watching in real time as the Trump administration strips people of their rights based on how they present themselves. This ranges from banning drag shows and policing bathroom use based on how you look, to the Supreme Court’s sinister ruling allowing ICE agents to profile people while concealing their own faces and identity. How you look, and what is considered “beautiful” in America, dictates how many rights you have. For a “free” country, there is certainly a lot of policing based on appearances.
Look no further than the Epstein files to understand how deeply beauty standards reach the highest rungs of power. Men abusing girls, requesting physical features like items off a menu. And that’s before we get to the actual beauty brands embroiled in those files. Peter Thomas Roth, a wildly successful dermatologist-founded brand currently having a full resurgence on TikTok Shop, not only maintained his relationship with Epstein, but an email from Epstein himself claimed Roth visited his home to “teach the girls about skin creams.” Roth was hardly alone. Ronald Lauder, the man currently lobbying Trump to invade Greenland, was also in business with the pedophile financier. Estée Lauder owns The Ordinary, MAC, and dozens of global brands. Kevin Warsh, the new Federal Reserve Chair—the position that regulates banks and manages the nation’s monetary policy—is married to the daughter of Ronald Lauder.
The truth is that participation in beauty can fund the very people trying to take away your rights. But that’s not a reason to opt out. It’s a reason to pay attention and say something.
As the owner of a skincare brand, Dieux Skin, I’m watching in real time how our refusal to discuss politics in beauty and wellness openly affects America’s most unifying belief: wealth. Tariffs have decimated margins, AI is disrupting the workforce, and a president who seems hellbent on hurting Americans and those he deems enemies abroad has made instability the baseline. If morality isn’t your entry point, then consider this: war is bad for all business, save weapons and defense companies, which the Trump family invested in before the war in Iran. Watching the Big 7’s leaders—Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, Tesla—grovel at Trump’s feet for preferential treatment is nauseating. That’s why it’s all the more baffling when people tell me to “stay in my lane” whenever I point out that beauty and politics are inseparable. Beauty is business, and all business is political, particularly when we speak to aesthetics.
Whether it’s tradwife Nara Smith’s husband Lucky Blue resharing MAGA posts that reinforce the “traditional family”, or Mar-a-Lago face, an increasingly popular aesthetic trend where Trump supporters seek extreme plastic surgery to reinforce their sex at birth, appearance has always been a political tool. For some people, it has been a question of survival. Sociologist and cultural critic Tressie McMillan Cottom has written extensively on how Black women’s bodies are read, policed, and punished in public spaces. Ask anyone who has ever had to calculate whether they “pass” (racially or by gender) before walking into a room. Beauty isn’t frivolous for these people. It’s armor. It’s a risk assessment. And it becomes nearly impossible to build protections for women, Black women, and trans people when society insists that beauty, and how we present ourselves, has nothing to do with politics.
So, how do we turn beauty into a tool for empowerment rather than subjugation? Well, for one, protect marginalized people. Protect trans women. Protect people who are disabled or look different from the norm. Elect people who have been fighting for and shouting for their rights from the rooftops. Recognize that beauty has rarely been used as a tool to help women; it’s been more “effective” at giving women marginal power in a violent system.
While I begrudge no one for getting cosmetic work to more easily move through a brutal and punishing society, I won’t say it’s empowering. We trade youth and beauty in exchange for humanity. But if we can make beauty a non-taboo subject and empower everyone to shirk narrow standards and accept people as they are, well, we’ll be on a better path to equality. If we don’t? Well, don’t be surprised if women bring Aqua Tofana back. Because beauty is politics. Full stop.
