\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>he year is 2018 and Pete Hegseth has just come back from his summer holidays. Hegseth, who is still just a Fox News host, not a defense secretary keen on ordering possible war crimes<\/a>, has grown a nice little beard during his time off. He is hoping his bosses at Fox might let him keep the facial hair, even if it\u2019s just the moustache. He seems to think it makes him look quite dapper. Alas, some of his viewers disagree<\/a>.<\/p>\n A woman called Patti writes in to Fox & Friends urging him to get that \u201cfur\u201d off his face. A viewer called Mary bemoans the fact that \u201call American cute\u201d Pete now looks \u201cawful\u201d. People on the internet joke that he looks like a duck hunter. And then a final humiliation: Hegseth\u2019s co-hosts cackle as his vacation beard is lopped off by a barber live on daytime TV. \u201cA man without a beard is like a lion without a mane,\u201d a Fox fan called Michael commiserates. \u201cThat\u2019s how I feel!\u201d Hegseth wails.<\/p>\n Speaking in my capacity as an armchair psychologist, I believe this demeaning de-maning may have left an indelible mark on poor Petey\u2019s soul \u2013 and explains his obsession with other men\u2019s facial hair. Since he can\u2019t have a beard himself, he seems determined to ensure that no one under him gets a chance to either. The defense secretary, who now sports cheeks as bare as a baby\u2019s buttocks, is on a mission to root out every stray follicle in the US military.<\/p>\n \u201cNo more beards, long hair, superficial individual expression\u201d, the secretary of the newly renamed \u201cDepartment of War\u201d declared in a speech to military commanders at Quantico, Virginia, in September. \u201cWe\u2019re going to cut our hair, shave our beards and adhere to standards \u2026 No more beardos.\u201d And it\u2019s not just beardos Hegseth wants to ban. Our brave warrior also told military commanders it was \u201ctiring<\/a>\u201d having to look at \u201cfat troops\u201d.<\/p>\n Did Hegseth\u2019s men whip out their razors and lop their locks stat? Apparently not. According to a recent CNN report<\/a>, the Pentagon chief had a bit of a meltdown after boarding a navy ship and noticing multiple sailors with beards. Per CNN: \u201cHegseth left the ship wondering if the Pentagon rank-and-file paid attention to his beard policy and other policy changes he has made to the workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n Don\u2019t worry Pete. Your underlings may not value your facial hair fixation, but I\u2019m sure big boss Donald Trump appreciates where you\u2019re coming from. Trump, as we all know, has a very particular aesthetic he wants everyone in his orbit to adhere to. Over the years we\u2019ve seen the rise of Mar-a-Lago face, as Maga elites plump their lips with filler, zap their wrinkles, and manipulate their faces into eerily identical meat-masks that signal allegiance to their dear leader. Can\u2019t have any of that \u201csuperficial individual expression\u201d if you want to get ahead in Trumpland: you\u2019ve got to look the part. Kind of like a cult.<\/p>\n Trump seems fairly relaxed about beards (although he has urged his son<\/a> Donald Jr to get rid of his) but he does get worked up about skin. He once referred to himself as a \u201cskin man<\/a>\u201d and reportedly rejected Nikki Haley for the role of secretary of state because he didn\u2019t like her complexion. According to a 2022 book, The Divider, by journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, Trump told then-chief of staff John Kelly the reason Haley was a no-go \u201cwas the blotch marks on her cheeks\u201d. Trump added<\/a>: \u201cShe\u2019s got that complexion problem. It doesn\u2019t look good.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump is also famously particular about clothes. There have been claims the president wants his female staff \u201cto dress like women\u201d (whatever that means) and has specific tie preferences for the men. He\u2019s also sent his minions shoes to wear without asking their size. And they all seem too terrified about putting the wrong foot forward to shun the gifts: Marco Rubio<\/a> has been photographed clomping around in shoes that are far too big for him.<\/p>\n \u201cThe logical outcome of fascism is an aestheticisation of political life,\u201d Walter Benjamin wrote in his famous essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. You can argue over the F-word all you like but from the red-and-white Maga hats to the new White House ballroom to the identical Mar-a-Lago faces, Trump has turned politics into a highly branded spectacle. And unqualified deputies such as Hegseth, more at home in TV studios than situation rooms, are following in his footsteps. Hegseth may be too incompetent to end the Iran war, but nobody is going to stop his crusade against stubble.<\/p>\n Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The year is 2018 and Pete Hegseth has just come back from his summer holidays. Hegseth, who is still just a Fox News host, not a defense secretary keen on ordering possible war crimes, has grown a nice little beard during his time off. He is hoping his bosses at Fox might let him keep 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NEWS<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"The year is 2018 and Pete Hegseth has just come back from his summer holidays. Hegseth, who is still just a Fox News host, not a defense secretary keen on ordering possible war crimes, has grown a nice little beard during his time off. He is hoping his bosses at Fox might let him keep…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36231,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36229\/revisions\/36231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}