There’s a rule of thumb in Europe that whatever starts in the United States eventually crosses the Atlantic. But one booming trend has so far resisted the usual export: the Mar-a-Lago face.
Named after U.S. President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, the term, popularized in liberal media circles and among plastic surgeons, has become shorthand for an exaggerated, hyper-polished aesthetic associated with the MAGA world: frozen skin, puffy cheekbones, pulpy lips and long wavy hair. The ideal look sits somewhere between Real Housewives and beauty pageants. Among men, a sculpted jawline and cable-news polish are usually enough.
From former homeland security secretary Kristi Noem to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the Mar-a-Lago look has spread among figures in Trump’s orbit.
But while European right-wing elites have eagerly replicated much of the MAGA movement’s political playbook — from anti-migrant fearmongering to culture-war rhetoric — few have embraced the surgically enhanced beauty standards that have emerged in Washington since Trump took office. There are exceptions, but not enough to suggest the emergence of a distinctly European version of the Mar-a-Lago face.
“Everybody is attracted to beauty,” said Moustapha Hamdi, the head of the department of plastic surgery at the University Clinic of Brussels. “But I don’t think that our society is looking for this model of leadership.” In Europe, he added, beauty is still “not a requirement for power.”
Other political commentators echoed Hamdi’s view that European leaders — no matter how far right on the political spectrum— will remain immune to the appeal of unnatural beauty standards.
“I don’t believe this will ever come to Europe,” said Alexander Stoffel, a lecturer in international politics at the Queen Mary University of London who recently explored the body in far-right aesthetics.
“Aesthetics is more politized in the United States than it is in Europe,” he said, adding that Europeans tend to be more influenced by their country’s culture than by politics.
From Da Vinci to looksmaxxing
When asked whether Europeans might soon adopt American beauty standards, Hamdi, the Brussels-based surgeon, pointed out that it was, in fact, Europeans who codified modern beauty standards some 500 years ago, when the Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci developed idealized proportions and helped associate physical beauty with moral virtue — a sort of precursor to today’s booming “looksmaxxing” trend.
Yet the Mar-A-Lago face developed in a country with an already strong proclivity toward plastic surgery. Hamdi said the main reason Americans seem to have since developed a special taste for cosmetic surgery is rather mundane: access to capital.
According to a 2024 survey from the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, the U.S. had the largest share of surgeons worldwide as well as most non-surgical procedures recorded per year, with Brazil claiming the top spot for surgical operations.
European countries largely trailed behind, the same study found, though Italy and Germany still ranked fourth and fifth globally, recording 1,371 and 1,303 among surgical and non-surgical procedures per year, respectively. The same year, the figure for the U.S. was 6,165.
Still, Hamdi said there’s some truth to the common view that Americans and Europeans perceive — and pursue — beauty differently. Even before the Mar-A-Lago face became code for a certain type of political loyalty in Trumps’s Washington, Americans typically asked for “very sharp jaws and neck, extremely tight skin,” he said. Europeans, by contrast, generally aspire to look youthful without appearing as having “overdone it.”
Old-money elites versus nouveau rich
Still, if the MAGA makeover hasn’t fully caught on in the Old World, some European influencers have “come to embody this hyper-feminine aesthetic that we see among MAGA influencers,” said Eviane Leidig, the author of The Women of the Far-Right.
Leidig pointed to Eve Vlaardingerbroek, a Dutch far-right political activist known for supporting radical conspiracy theories, such as the “great replacement” which claims that political elites are deliberately replacing white populations with non-white immigrants.
“The difference between MAGA women in the U.S. and European female far-right influencers like Eve is that here there’s a strong preference for elevating your natural femininity,” said Leidig.
To Stoffel, one of the reasons the MAGA look hasn’t taken hold in Europe is that its old-money elite is snubbing flashy beauty enhancements.
“The MAGA coalition represents a version of a counter-elite that is more associated with finance, real estate, media and entertainment, which are different from other institutions that are more grounded in tradition and heritage,” he said.
Eyelids and microneedling
But things are changing in Europe too.
An abundance of content promoting anti-aging procedures — from injectables and serums to facials — is bulldozing its way into the lives of billions of social media users, fueling a “whatever-it-takes” mentality in the pursuit of beauty and perpetual youth.
In 2024, a study published in the Cureus Journal of Medical Science examining the influence of social media on body image and cosmetic surgery found that 70% of young women and 60% of young men reported dissatisfaction with their bodies, leading to a surge in cosmetic procedures. The sample included participants from several countries, including Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
“Nowadays we cannot talk about extremely localized standards of beauty,” Hamdi said, adding that some European patients have started to ask for the same tight skin once monopoly of his American clients. “The world has become a big village.”
Google Trends shows that searches for “eyelid surgery” and “microneedling” — a non-surgical treatment meant to boost collagen — skyrocketed in the first half of 2026 across most European countries.
The new pursuit of beauty, once mostly confined to celebrities and the uber-rich, has also changed people’s attitudes to cosmetic surgery.
“Before, if you had a surgery, people were like: ‘why?’ It’s like admitting that you’re ugly,” said Javier Carbonell Castañer, a policy officer at the European Policy Centre (EPC). But now, as people try to maximize their beauty, the stigma is long gone, he said. “This becomes just another thing you do to get ahead.”
Beauty in a market economy
European far-right leaders like Alice Weidel and Jordan Bardella may be far from getting their lips filled and their foreheads artificially frozen, but worsening economic conditions are already making the pursuit of flawless beauty increasingly central to modern life, analysts say.
“We are increasingly in a market[-based system], so looks matter more,” said Carbonell Castañer, adding that “now you need to be attractive for much longer before getting married, and even once you get married, you can get a divorce.”
That view would also explain why in the U.S., an ultra-capitalist economy, this kind of shift is even more pronounced. As Stoffel, the U.K.-based lecturer, put it, “there has been more market penetration in the body in the U.S.”
At the same time, experts say Europe isn’t immune to a MAGA makeover in the future, and that much will depend on whether his old-money cultural elite will remain in place.
“If we become an economy that’s much more reliant on media, entertainment, wellness and tourism, I think we will see a more rapid adoption of these beauty standards,” Stoffel said.
But to experts like Carbonell Castañer and Hamdi, the rise of the far right would have the most profound impact on the adoption.
“They will play a role if the far right takes over,” Hamdi said.
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