Somewhere in the wilderness, in a top-secret location, there is an underground lab where normal women go in and Fox News hosts come out. Their hair gets dyed an approved shade of blond before getting snipped (long-ish) and styled (wavy-ish) in exactly the same way. They are fitted from one big Stepford Wives wardrobe, then heavily made up. All over the US, rightwing women emulate this look, creating an army of conservative clones.

Obviously, I am being hyperbolic: Republican women don’t look exactly the same. The occasional brunette is tolerated, even celebrated. (Melania Trump has done wonders for diversity.) Nevertheless, the fact that many conservatives – men and women – seem to look and dress eerily alike, almost as if they are in a weird cult, is hard to ignore. It was a big topic of discussion as far back as 2019, when Bombshell (a movie about the sexual harassment scandal that brought down the former Fox News chief executive Roger Ailes) came out, prompting widespread analysis of the Fox News “look”.

Donald Trump’s sartorial influence hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. There was a lot of chatter in May when a rotating cast of male Republicans at Trump’s criminal trial turned up wearing outfits identical to the president’s. One Republican strategist wrote: “It’s giving groomsmen vibes.”

There was also much recent discussion about the fact that an alarming number of men and women in Trump’s orbit seem to have succumbed to a cosmetic phenomenon dubbed Mar-a-Lago face. (Think: fillers and aggressive fake tan.) Now, it seems we are having yet another conversation about conservative-chic thanks to a TikTok trend mocking “conservative girl” makeup.

So what sort of cosmetics does TikTok reckon you should use if you want to cosplay as someone desperate to deport people and roll back your own reproductive rights? Well, according to the conservative girl makeup experts, you should be applying a foundation that doesn’t match your skin tone, thick eyeliner and clumpy mascara. “We really want our makeup to cling to any dry spots,” the originator of the trend jokes. “It’s giving drained, it’s giving dusty.”

Unfortunately, I know very little about makeup, but I do know that whenever I put on mascara it tends to get clumpy. And lately, whenever I look in the mirror, normally after hours of doomscrolling, I tend to think: “It’s giving drained.” Does this mean I am subconsciously a conservative girl? Should I embrace the aesthetic and go blond? I have heard blondes have more fun. And in Trump’s US, they are also less likely to get deported.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

• 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.