Salon on Noem's "Mar-a-Lago Face," an attempt to mimic Trump's cartoonish ideas of what is "hot" in a woman

[Miles Archer]

https://www.salon.com/2026/03/06/mar-a-lago-face-couldnt-save-kristi-noem/

Donald Trump went into his second term, according to widespread reporting, with what sources called a “no scalps” policy. No matter how incompetent, politically disastrous or just plain annoying a prominent appointee became, the president would not be firing anyone. The intent was to avoid giving his political opponents the satisfaction, or to make it appear that he had ever experienced an emotion as distasteful as regret. But Trump finally cracked on Thursday and fired one of the most famous members of his Cabinet, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

For the administration’s critics, Noem’s dismissal will be especially pleasing. Since she was confirmed by the Senate in January 2025, the former secretary, even by the low standards set by a Cabinet filled with toadies, has excelled in debasing herself to please her boss. To meet the eye-popping deportation numbers set as goals by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, she turned the Department of Homeland Security into a disaster zone that was as inept as it was lawless.

Noem transformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to function as an authoritarian secret police, but without the sleek, efficient evil a Hollywood rendering would bestow on the SS. Federal immigration agents were instead slipping on ice or shooting unarmed protesters, all while whining about how persecuted they were. She herself became a public joke because of her over-the-top portrayal of a corrupt apparatchik, complete with her vicious dog-shooting story, ridiculous flattery of Trump and demands for ever-fancier private jets to share with her partner in repression — and adultery, if credible reports are to be believed — Corey Lewandowski.

But if there was one symbol that resonated the most for Noem’s grasps for power, it was her face. The 54-year-old appears to have undergone such extensive plastic surgery in an attempt to mimic Trump’s cartoonish ideas of what is “hot” in a woman that she is both hard to look at and impossible to match to photos of her younger, normal-looking self. Many women in the president’s orbit have adopted what has become known as “Mar-a-Lago face,” a look that includes heavy fillers, cosmetic procedures and caked-on makeup to be visibly appealing to a man who apparently avoids wearing his glasses in public. When a Vanity Fair profile of Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, was published in December, it became notorious for, among other revelations, a photograph of press secretary Karoline Leavitt that appeared to show extensive injection spots for lip filler. (The president, unbothered by the appearance, keeps openly lusting over Leavitt’s “machine gun lips” that “don’t stop.”) But no one has gotten more attention for her dramatic visual transformation than Noem.

[MiHale]

1. And now every time she sees herself in a mirror...

She has a reminder of what a loser she is.

[johnnyfins]

2. She's a ghoul

[C_U_L8R]

3. Despite her personality

She didn’t always look like a freak.
But now she has the face of malformed silly putty.
A frightening ghoul visage to match her vacant pitiful soul.

[Miles Archer]

4. Exactly

It's like looking at photos of a younger Ivanka Trump with sort of a pug nose and an average, homely visage.

Plastic surgery didn't make her "pretty." Doing that annoying hair-flip all the time doesn't make her "pretty."

She'a TRUMP. Her ACTIONS have revealed her CHARACTER, as they did with Noem, and NEITHER of them are "hot" or "pretty" or "beautiful," whether that actually matters in the big picture or not.

[Hey Joe]

5. She is hideous on the outside

But what is really glaring is how disgustingly
grotesque she is on the inside .
That is an ugly that cannot be surgically corrected. She has a life sentence to live with that.