A New York Magazine piece on Thursday accused female Fox News hosts and Donald Trump supporters of engaging in racist dog whistling by having blonde hair.
"Attributes associated with whiteness — light skin, narrow noses — have dominated American beauty ideals as long as there's been such a thing," argued NY Mag fashion writer Amy Larocca.
"Fox News and Donald Trump have given blonde hair a new chapter," she wrote. "Now, blonde is the color of the right, for whom whiteness has become a hallmark."
She argued that liberal icons like Michelle Obama and Rachel Maddow fail to live up to traditional ideals of beauty.
"But #MAGA, Fox News America is a place where all the classic signifiers of privilege and wealth work on overdrive."
Blonde hair, Larocca argued, was "a dog whistle of whiteness, an unspoken declaration of values, a wink-wink to the power of racial privilege and to the 1980s vibe that pervades a movement led by a man who still believes in the guilt of the Central Park Five."
"Panicked reports about dangerous immigrants and the president with Hussein for a middle name were presented by white women wearing snug dresses, with pert noses, bronze skin, blonde hair," she continued.
Larocca argued that because only 2 percent of women are naturally blonde, "being blonde is a choice."
"The Fox blonde is, in the end, conspicuously unnatural," Larocca wrote. "She is less blonde as sexy and more blonde as safe: This blonde is a matronly blonde, a suburban soccer mom who makes sure everyone buckles up in the backseat of the minivan."
Amusingly, the author also noted that one famous Democratic politician also dyes her hair blonde: Hillary Clinton.
"For as long as Hillary Clinton was a public figure, Hillary Clinton was a blonde. She worked her hair — dishwater brown and frizzy, according to pre-politics photos — into every version of mainstream acceptable," Larocca admitted.
The New York Magazine piece came the same day that Newsweek denounced Trump's female relatives as sexually submissive for wearing high heels, and a week after the New York Times scrutinized White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders' choice of outfits.