From the Confederacy to the White House: How Southern beauty traditions went MAGA

In this episode of Code Switch, hosts B.A. Parker and Jean Demby explore the deep historical roots of Southern beauty traditions and their evolution into the aesthetic ideals of the MAGA movement. Drawing on author Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd's research in her book *Southern Beauty, Race, Ritual and Memory in the Modern South*, the conversation traces how performative femininity—evident in sorority rush rituals, beauty pageants, and Confederate pageants—has long served as a mechanism for reinforcing white supremacy and regional identity. These pageantry traditions, dating back to the antebellum and post-Reconstruction South, used the crowning of a 'white Southern queen' to mythologize a nostalgic, idealized past. The episode reveals how these same rituals persist today in the hyper-feminine, racially exclusionary aesthetics of Trump-aligned politics, from Mar-a-Lago face to the performative masculinity of figures like Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth. The hosts and Boyd argue that this aesthetic is less about authenticity and more about conformity to a curated, nostalgic vision of America—one that glorifies a white, gender-conforming ideal and positions itself in opposition to modernity, diversity, and progress. The discussion also unpacks how these beauty standards are not just about appearance but about power, class, and social stratification. Sorority rush, for example, functions as a feminine form of social capital, where women police each other’s conformity to elite norms in order to gain access to male-dominated power structures. Similarly, the MAGA aesthetic—characterized by extreme makeup, cosmetic surgery, and hyper-masculine grooming—serves as a performative loyalty signal to the Trump brand. The episode concludes by reframing nostalgia not as a simple longing for the past, but as a tool of anxiety in the present, used to justify exclusionary visions of national identity. Ultimately, the episode exposes how culture, memory, and beauty are weaponized to sustain racial and gender hierarchies under the guise of tradition.