Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance’s (R-Ohio) public profile has changed tremendously since his now-running mate former President Donald Trump first ran for president in 2016. Vance, then a venture capitalist and author of the successful memoir Hillbilly Elegy, was a harsh critic of Trump and used to openly describe him as an “idiot,” wondering whether he might be “America’s Hitler” in a Facebook conversation with a friend.
As Vance radicalized over the course of a successful Ohio Senate campaign, he reconciled with Trump while becoming a fixture of MAGA politics.
“I allowed myself to focus so much on the stylistic element of Trump that I completely ignored the way in which he substantively was offering something very different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration,” Vance told the New York Times’ Ross Douthat in June this year.
Along the way, his personal style also shifted, going from the baby-faced blogger of yore to a sitting senator. Vance grew a a beard, got sharper haircuts, and settled into a professional suit and tie.
Some people think he hasn’t stopped there though, and are speculating that he’s also wearing eyeliner.
On TikTok, the theories have been swirling since Trump announced the pick.
“This is unserious political commentary but I can’t stop thinking about it,” @mamasissiesays said in one video posted on June 19. “Is JD Vance wearing eyeliner?”
The TikToker, who goes by Casey, compared stylized photos of Vance with his official Senate portrait, as well as how he looked on TV appearances.
“No eyeliner to see here … that’s very much a man not wearing eyeliner,” Casey said about his Senate portrait, but then contrasted it with a TV appearance. “Obviously something’s going on here,” she commented, “along with some contour, I’d love to know his shade.”
“That is a bold line just a few millimeters over and he’ll have a proper cat-eye on his hands,” she added, zooming in on one shot of Vance’s eye.
“We’re fine with men who wear makeup,” she specified. “What we’re not fine with is hypocrites who make … harmful policies against men who wear makeup.”
She also claimed to have found Vance’s shade, a “deep taupe-gray matte” glide-on eye pencil called “Urban Decay Desperation.”
It's a fitting color for a man who chucked his liberal values to latch on to a candidate decrying crime-riddled American metropolises.
Casey wasn’t the only TikToker who noticed the eyeliner. @skyeleight55, who goes by Skye Dawn on the platform, reacted to Casey’s video with a screenshot of Vance she said she’d taken because she’d had the exact same thought
“You cannot tell me he’s not sitting there … [with] foundation, eye liner, and filler,” Skye Dawn said.
Another TikToker offered the full JD Vance makeup tutorial for his national debut at the Republican National Convention.
In the post, they draw on a really “tight” eyeliner, both above and “under your eye like you are a 14-year-old girl in 2006," that, along with mascara "makes our eyes look sunken and like we're worried for America."
The Trump-Vance campaign didn’t answer questions about whether they were employing a makeup artist for Vance. Multiple people who worked for Vance in the Senate also didn’t answer questions about his makeup regime. Plenty of politicians wear makeup today on the campaign trail and under the glare of stage and television lights.
Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon blamed his loss in 1960 against John F. Kennedy at least partially on the fact that he refused to wear makeup during their televised debate. Polling before the TV faceoff had Nixon sx points up, but his haggard appearance apparently turned some voters off.
Kriss Blevens, who’s done campaign makeup for dozens of presidential candidates over the years, also didn’t respond to questions about whether Vance was sporting eyeliner.
But this wouldn't be the first aesthetic secret of a politician outed by TikTok.
Online theories about the footwear of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) did him no favors in a brutal Republican primary campaign against Trump. TikTokers speculated that DeSantis was wearing a wedge shoe to increase his height, something he denied but which led to numerous awkward questions about the boots, and even an attack from Trump, who accused him of wearing high heels.
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