Inside a conservative confab for young women, where feminism is a lie
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GRAPEVINE, Tex. - The throngs of teen and 20-something women flowed into the ballroom of the Gaylord Texan hotel on Friday night in a blur of shimmer and pink. There were sequins. There were bell-bottoms. There were sequin bell-bottoms. Most opted for some form of heel - often platformed, sometimes bedazzled. Others sported go-go or cowboy boots. (Kari Lake's daughter wore a rose gold pair of the latter.) A disco ball as wide as a bathtub hung above them, giving them a silvery twinkle as they settled in to neat rows hundreds of chairs long. "September" by Earth, Wind & Fire blasted through the sound system.
They were ready for their trip back to the 1970s - or to a certain anti-feminist version of the era, anyway.
"That decade fundamentally changed the narrative surrounding women, what our role should be, what our lives should look like," said Alex Clark, the evening's unofficial emcee for the Young Women's Leadership Summit, an annual event thrown by Turning Point USA, a sort of MAGA youth group. "All these years later, I'm not sure that was very good advice. Are you?"
Clark, who hosts a pop culture podcast for Turning Point, dressed for her opening-night speech in a sequined shift dress. The summit's branding stretched across the screen behind her, all groovy lines and fat serif fonts in mustard, mauve and sienna. It was inspired, at least in part, by "Mrs. America," the 2020 miniseries about the failed fight to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (with an implicit solidarity with Phyllis Schlafly, not Gloria Steinem).
"In the '70s, women were given all sorts of lies," she continued. "They just told us, 'Well, you can be a man.' And I guess we've kind of accomplished that. But are we happier?"
The attendees couldn't speak from experience, having been born in the '90s and 2000s. But Clark, who just turned 30, was very sure the answer was no. "What I'm here to tell you is, if you were to just go back to biblical roots in what God had designed for women to do, we will be happier," she told them.
What does it mean to be young, female and conservative in America, 2023?
At the leadership summit, there were answers. It means posing for selfies in a mirror made to look like a magazine cover with a headline that reads, "Birth control is so last year." It means having it all - but having kids and a husband before trying to get the rest. It means buying tampons and beauty products and other items from companies that market themselves as pro-Christian or anti-"woke." It means embracing a particular kind of American nostalgia, one where women's liberation means being free from the complexities of modern gender politics.
Perhaps most of all, it means seeing transgender women as a grave threat to womanhood.
"They ruin opportunities for women," said Heaven Angel Martinez, a student at the University of Texas at San Antonio, who described the topic of being transgender as "absolutely" her top political issue.
"If you start mixing genders and we can't identify what a woman is, a lot of other things become kind of blurry," said Caroline Tepper, a student at the University of Michigan at Dearborn.
"This is a fight against cultural evils - against the erasure of women," said Georgia Chapa, a student at Texas A&M University.
Chapa had been to a number of Turning Point events. In her experience, the co-ed ones are (informally) more oriented to partying and finding a "dudeservative" to marry, she said, while the women's summit is more of a "feminine escape." It's women supporting women - specifically, women supporting women in their choice to reject liberal gender politics.
"It's nice to be here, where you agree with everybody on the conservative issues," said Sarah Miller, a student at Boise State University who was attending the summit for the first time. "I walk around here and I have my filter off. We all agree on the core themes. You can make jokes. It's a really nice sense of community."
"They're really good at empowering women in the right way," said Cheyanna Walker, a 20-something attendee from Tennessee. "You don't have to be a feminist to be empowered. You can be feminine, and that's empowering. Society puts so much pressure on us to be and do all of these things, but really, just being ourselves is really good, because that's what we're created for."
In the exhibition hall, the young women were greeted with products that were created for feminine non-feminists. Like Garnuu, a brand that proudly declares that feminine products are for "Girls Only. Period." Or Hope Beauty, which sells "biblically inspired cosmetics." Or the Right Stuff, a dating app for women who want filter out any men who might be - as Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk put it during a session on dating advice - "feminized versions of metrosexual culture." Or Turning Point's official merchandise, which includes a sweatshirt proclaiming, in the style of the Chanel No. 5 logo, that, "No 1 cares about your pronouns."
"There ain't nothing wrong with being a trad wife," right-wing commentator Benny Johnson assured the attendees, using a term that refers to women who embrace a return to the traditional roles of homemaker and child-rearer.
Johnson's wife, Kate, led a lecture on post-pregnancy beauty standards - namely, that having them is good - in a session titled "Hot Mom Summer." In another room, Hope Beauty's founder demonstrated how to apply lip liner - but never too much. ("We're not into the drag queen makeup here!" she said to laughter.) Later, a panel of Christian chiropractic doctors and conservative health influencers presented a crash course in homeopathy in a session called "Anti-Woke Wellness." (The advice: Ditch your hormonal birth control, planned hospital births and perfumed household products, if you can.)
The young women absorbing this wisdom were not necessarily zealots. Chloé Levesque, a college student from Anaheim, Calif., felt as if some of the "trad" emphasis on the right was too extreme. "Some women are saying, like, 'It's a sin for me to go out,'" Levesque said, but that wasn't her. She connected more to the remarks from Allie Beth Stuckey, a conservative Christian influencer and podcast host who told attendees that being neither a "trad wife and mom" nor a "successful business owner" would nurture their self-worth. ("Your highest calling," Stuckey said, "is to glorify God.")
"Here, the message is, 'Be feminine, not feminist,'" said Reyn Jensen, a high-schooler who was in from Los Angeles with her mom, Rae Lynn.
Reyn goes to an all-girls Catholic school, Rae Lynn said, but the environment is "all about 'girl power'": preparing for college and careers, "not so much, 'Be a wife, be a mom, raise a good Catholic family.'" Here at the women's summit, Reyn said she was learning a different order of operations for having it all: "Instead of having your career, then being a mother and a wife, at the top, it's mother and wife, then career." (Certain careers might be implausible. "You're going to have to choose which one matters more," Kirk told a medical student who asked him whether her dream of becoming a surgeon was compatible with finding a husband. "There are a lot of successful 35-year-old orthopedic surgeons that have cats and not kids, and they're very miserable.")
Like a lot of women here, Reyn was worried about transgender women. Reyn is a competitive swimmer, and she was concerned about what it would mean to compete against athletes who are transgender women. "I don't support that whatsoever," she said, "knowing that can happen to me in any race." The idea that transgender women are ruining school sports has been a popular narrative on the right - especially for those keen to make the anti-trans cause relatable to young women. "The real patriarchy," Kirk, the Turning Point founder, told attendees, is "men wearing woman face and playing female sports."
No wonder Riley Gaines was a star here. The recent University of Kentucky graduate made headlines in early 2022 when she tied for fifth place in the 200 freestyle final at the NCAA championships with Lia Thomas, a trans woman who swam on the University of Pennsylvania's women's swim team. Gaines spoke out against sharing the podium with Thomas, and the right-wing media heralded Gaines as a hero.
"Oh my gosh, it's the swimmer!" one high-schooler shrieked when Gaines entered the exhibition hall on Sunday afternoon. Gaines posed for a group photo with roughly a dozen fans on Sunday afternoon.
"Save women's sports!" they shouted in unison as the camera flashed.
One thing that being young, female and conservative in 2023 doesn't require is being preoccupied with former president Donald Trump. Trump had been indicted shortly before the conference began, but, save for passing references from a few speakers - Kirk, daughter-in-law Lara Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) - the former president's legal and political dramas seemed irrelevant to the culture war these young women were gearing up to fight. The ballroom roared with approval, for example, when Greene called for President Biden to be impeached - but it was mention of her federal bill to criminalize gender-affirming care for transgender youth that earned Greene a standing ovation.
Near the end of her remarks, Greene turned her attention to the Pride flag that the Gaylord Texan had hung on a flagpole in front of the complex, right next to the American flag. The flag - with colors representing the LGBTQ+ community, as well as people of color - had been a source of irritation to the Turning Point hosts. ("I tried my best to take down the flag, everybody. I failed, okay?" Kirk had said on opening night.) Now, Greene wondered aloud about why the symbol had endured through the weekend, saying: "I'm surprised one of y'all hasn't tried to shimmy up the flagpole yet!"
One attendee shouted back, saying she'd already tried. Another suggested that Greene help her take it down. "Don't threaten me with a good time!" Greene replied.
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