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Salon
Salon
Politics
Amanda Marcotte

GOP Losers of 2023: Lauren Boebert

This is the third in a five-day series. Read part one and part two. 

Being a lady MAGA celebrity is harder than it looks. A woman who sets out to find fame and fortune by pandering to the worst men in America will soon discover that misogynists hold contradictory expectations that are impossible to square. You're expected to extol chastity and "purity," but you're also expected to gratify the male gaze. Worse, you're performing for men who have no taste for subtlety in their sexual displays so you're stuck in the Fox News vision of femininity, which has spread into social media and now even into Congress: blown-out hair, short skirts, massive push-up bras (or breast implants), all surrounding the pouty lips of a woman tsking about how only bad girls need abortions. If people can't tell whether she's headed to church or a porn shoot, the MAGA gal knows she's nailed the look.  

For a brief moment in time, it did seem Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., knew how to walk that tightrope between serving a cheesecake aesthetic and preaching about how easy it is to give up birth control. Right up until she went for the junk grab on her date in full view of her fellow audience members at a showing of "Beetlejuice: The Musical" in September. The fellow in question, a Colorado bar owner, returned the favor by jiggling her boobs in a way that made clear what was going on, even in the grainy security video footage. 

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