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TPUSA's 'Cuteservatives' answer the important questions about dating while conservative [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2023-08-26  

Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk’s organization for right-wing youth, understands something important about reaching young people: “that politics is always downstream from culture, and if we can reach people where they’re at culturally—that’s how we influence our nation.” One of their big ways to do that is through the creation of their own organizational influencer, Alex Clark, and her “cuteservatives” project. Hoo boy. The good news for progressives is that while organizing by reaching people where they’re at culturally is a powerful strategy and therefore a potentially scary one when the right adopts it, I don’t think this particular effort is going to win over a lot of young women who were on the fence politically speaking.

You may remember Clark from coverage of her calling hormonal birth control “poison,” or telling the crowd at TPUSA’s Young Women's Leadership Summit that “The Top 4 Lies of Modern Feminism” are birth control, abortion, fertility care, and day care. But she’s so much more than that! Interspersed with her coverage of abortion bans and miracle adoptions, she writes listicles like “the cutest swimsuits for cuteservatives this summer” and “the ultimate cuteservative Christmas gift guide.” (I am not linking, but you can find them if you want.) She is really determined to make “cuteservative” happen.

Recently, Clark sat down for a cuteservative roundtable discussion with high school and college students. Media Matters’ Madeline Peltz was all over it in a real act of public service as the group discussed important issues, like whether being conservative makes you popular with boys.

That video can be found here:

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According to Clark, if she goes to a bar and announces she is conservative, men “flock” to her. One of the college-aged participants said that her experience was, “They just see you as a rare gem. That’s the way that I feel about it. They’re like oh, you want to be a tradwife? Perfect.”

But other answers were more mixed. High school boys are more interested in hunting and fishing, and possibly see the conservative high school student on the panel as intimidating. (This is not an intimidating child, for the record.) A participant from California said that her politics become more of a selling point when she leaves her state.

“If women, as a whole, withheld sex before marriage, would we be better as a society?” Clark asked the participants, who unanimously answered yes. Clark then went on to ask, “Do you think we control a lot more than we think with our ability to give or withhold sex as women?” An interesting question for a group of unmarried young women, but apparently being cuteservative means being transactional or manipulative about sex. That sounds like such a healthy way to live.

The high school student responded effusively, saying that people on the left want women in careers and also “want us to be on OnlyFans, want us to be in unstable relationships to break down the family structure.” Man, I don’t know; having a career, an unstable relationship, and being on OnlyFans sounds like a lot of work. These young women, though, repeatedly tripped over themselves to talk about how important and fascinating they think motherhood is, eager to show how the cuteservative-to-tradwife pipeline works.

Led by Clark, who noted that she had not chosen to go to college, the young women—including the one who is in medical school—also talked about how useless their education was. Continuing their eager sucking up to Clark and TPUSA, they gushed about how much more they learn from TPUSA events than from school, although unlike Clark, they are attending or plan to attend college. The high school student justified her decision by saying she wants to “change it from the inside out, this system of control that the left has established.”

The medical student insisted, “I didn’t learn any U.S. history other than for one month in fifth grade. Out of elementary, middle school, and the little bit of high school I attended, even in college it’s not required—nothing, nothing whatsoever—so it’s been difficult trying to learn that myself.” Hmm … honey, maybe U.S. history was taught during the part of high school that you did not attend—which was apparently most of high school. Or you could have taken a college-level U.S. history class even though no one was requiring you to do so. Just a thought. One of the college students, a politics major, said she had not learned from college. Instead, “I learned from YouTube. I learned from my own merit.”

Watching this roundtable is watching a group of mostly earnest young women—the politics major who learned from YouTube seems more to be aiming for a career as the next Alex Clark—trying to position themselves how Clark and TPUSA want them to. It’s kind of cringe. They’re so programmed.

But the goals here are what’s important. Clark and TPUSA want to make “cuteservative” happen because they think it will lure young women to their movement, which will then benefit the young men in the movement through the provision of tradwives. Of course professional right-wing influencers like Clark remain very visible well past the expiration date they’re touting for women in general, but the masses are supposed to ignore that and absorb the “be cute, then be a wife” message.

Clark has made a career of alternating between posting thirst traps and railing against hormonal birth control, and she’s obviously doing very well for herself. (Based on her Instagram, I’d estimate that her swimsuit budget alone outstrips the budgets of some towns.) That’s what the far right requires of young women these days: Be “cute”—not too sexy—and sexually unavailable, at least until the point where you transition to tradwife and are perpetually sexually available to your husband, the unquestioned head of your home. (Or so goes the mythology.) Be outspokenly right-wing to an extreme on issues specifically involving women and their role—or lack thereof—in our society and culture, but always recognize that your eventual goal is to step out of public life and into the home. And, of course, if the message doesn’t land with most young women, it’s feminism’s fault.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/26/2189101/-TPUSA-s-Cuteservatives-answer-the-important-questions-about-dating-while-conservative

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