Summary of The Right’s Crusade to “Make America Hot Again”

Overview of The Political Scene from The New Yorker

This episode features Tyler Foggatt interviewing New Yorker staff writer Jennifer Wilson about her feature on the conservative movement’s attempt to rebrand itself as sexy, glamorous, and sexually liberated. Using lingerie, music festivals, Victoria’s Secret, Sydney Sweeney, and conservative lifestyle media as case studies, the conversation explores how the right has tried to claim “hotness” as part of its identity—and why sex appeal remains a fluid, contested cultural marker rather than a permanent political asset.

Main Themes

The right’s attempt to “take sexy back”

• Wilson argues that parts of the conservative movement are increasingly presenting themselves as the side that embraces beauty, desire, and femininity without shame.
• This includes:
  • Sydney Sweeney being treated as a MAGA-adjacent sex icon
  • Conservative women’s magazines and brands offering sex advice and lingerie marketing
  • A broader culture of “Make America Hot Again” messaging

Sexiness as a political and cultural battleground

• The episode emphasizes that lingerie and beauty standards are never just about fashion—they often reflect larger social anxieties and political shifts.
• Wilson frames lingerie as a useful lens for understanding:
  • MeToo-era backlash
  • Changing attitudes toward modesty and sexuality
  • How corporations respond to moral and political pressure

The right’s shift from purity culture to “married sex” culture

• The conservative movement once emphasized abstinence, purity, and modesty.
• Now, some on the right are rebranding around the idea that sex is not forbidden, just reserved for marriage—and should be enthusiastic, frequent, and “hot.”
• This has produced a strange fusion of evangelical morality and erotic branding.

Key Reporting and Examples

Sydney Sweeney and conservative sex iconography

• Wilson’s reporting began with the way conservative commentators latched onto Sydney Sweeney’s image as evidence that “woke is dead.”
• The right’s fascination with Sweeney is less about her explicit politics and more about projecting its ideals onto her body and image.
• Her appearance at Stagecoach and involvement with lingerie branding made her a symbol of this cultural shift.

Stagecoach as “Trumpchella”

• Wilson describes Stagecoach, the country music festival in Indio, California, as a kind of conservative counterpart to Coachella.
• The festival featured overtly patriotic, politically coded, and sexually suggestive branding.
• Her reporting there highlighted how conservative culture can blend Americana, sexuality, and spectacle.

Victoria’s Secret’s pivot

• Victoria’s Secret is used as a major case study in how sex appeal has been rebranded after MeToo.
• The company moved away from its old “Angels” model and tried to align itself with more inclusive messaging through the VS Collective.
• Under new leadership, the brand also signaled a pushback against what it saw as MeToo-era overcorrection, suggesting a swing back toward traditional sex appeal.

Evie magazine and conservative femininity

• Wilson profiles Evie, a conservative women’s magazine marketed as a right-wing version of Cosmopolitan.
• Its content mixes:
  • Fashion and beauty coverage
  • Wellness and anti-woke lifestyle advice
  • Anti-birth control and anti-vaccine views
  • A strong appeal to traditional femininity and male-gaze aesthetics
• The magazine reflects a broader conservative subculture that wants to look modern while rejecting liberal feminism.

Lingerie, labor, and politics abroad

• Wilson’s trip to La Perla in Italy shows that lingerie is political everywhere, not just in the U.S.
• In Bologna, workers organized to protect the brand and their jobs, linking lingerie to labor politics and union history.
• This contrasted with the American version, where lingerie is often tied to branding wars and culture-war rhetoric.

Historical Context

Lingerie has long shifted political meaning

• The episode traces how undergarments have moved across political symbolism over time:
  • Bras once symbolized liberation
  • Feminists later burned bras as a protest symbol
  • Push-up bras and seductive lingerie became progressive-coded in some eras
• In Wilson’s view, what counts as “sexy” is always in flux and often reflects broader cultural reactions and backlash cycles.

MeToo changed the conversation

• The MeToo movement pushed companies to reconsider how they portrayed women and sexuality.
• Some brands toned down overt sexiness, worried about backlash or appearing exploitative.
• Wilson argues that this created an opening for the right to claim the language of sex appeal as its own.

Main Takeaways

• The right has not truly monopolized “sexy”; it has simply become more aggressive in marketing a specific version of it.
• That version is often nostalgic, uniform, and tied to a 1950s-style gender ideal.
• Sex appeal remains subjective and culturally unstable, which makes it available to multiple political camps.
• The episode suggests that the deeper issue is not which side “owns” hotness, but how badly American culture struggles to talk about sex at all.
• Wilson’s broader point: sexiness is often used as a proxy for anxieties about gender, race, labor, politics, and power.

Notable Insight

“The right does not have a monopoly on sexy… what is sexy is so particular to each and every one of us.”

This gets at the episode’s core argument: “hotness” is not inherently conservative or liberal—it becomes politically meaningful only when people try to assign it cultural ownership.

Closing Thought

The episode ends with a reminder that both the left and right struggle to navigate sex, desire, and beauty in public life. What the conservative movement is doing now is not inventing sex appeal, but trying to package it as proof of moral, cultural, and political victory.