Gwen Snyder is uncivil in Elk: "That aesthetic repetition ac..."

A bit of both but it has a lot in common with Mar-a-Lago Face in that it was about appealing to the very specific sexual appetites of an authoritarian patriarch (Roger Ailes, in this case)

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:c72k2u7sgesg5oisiw2uduh4/post/3ltubostpec2p

And "sexual appetites" isn't really an adequate descriptor of the motivations here. It's not just about sex, it's about power and the use of sex and sexual preference as a means to signal absolute patriarchal dominance.

The Fox News femme aesthetic was very much about what Roger Ailes personally found sexually attractive, and we know from the lawsuits that he would privately sexually humiliate these women (sex, yes, but also a show of patriarchal dominance).

The humiliation acts themselves occurred in private, but it wasn't exactly a secret that servicing or at least sexually flattering Ailes was an expectation for the job. The repetition of his sexual preference across the casting stable reinforced that show of dominance.

That aesthetic repetition according to Ailes' desire demonstrated Ailes' power and dominance to anyone who understood what it represented. Which was probably pretty much everyone at the network.

July 13, 2025 at 5:40:00 PM

This is what Mar-a-Lago Face does, too. It serves a much bigger political project that extends well beyond Trump's personal preferences, but it is also a way he very publicly demonstrates dominance: everyone, even other men's wives, are expected to confirm to his specific desired aesthetic.

It isn't sexual fetish, it is really only passingly about sex itself. It is about the authoritarian forcing others to cater to his sexual desire in a public-facing way as a broad, obvious show of patriarchal dominance.