Karoline Leavitt's Natural Hair Color May Not Be What We Thought

As press secretary, Karoline Leavitt has become a secondary face of Donald Trump's administration. Even as Leavitt has experimented with outfits that totally missed the mark and made makeup mistakes that were hard to ignore, her beach blond hair has been her familiar signature. But it turns out her recognizable color is probably not natural. If her sometimes visible roots are any indication, Leavitt's actual hair color may be much darker, closer to a toffee color.

In photos posted to Leavitt's Instagram page, glimpses of her with a substantially darker blond color hair can be seen emerging beneath the bright near platinum hue she's best known for. It's a warm, friendly hue, but Leavitt has nonetheless been seemingly committed to her bottle blond color for more than a decade, according to a throwback snap she shared to Instagram. "2015: I was an eager 18-year-old student attending every political event possible & listening to every speaker," she captioned the photo, which depicts Leavitt seated at a table and rocking the light-colored hair. 

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt is hardly the only high-profile blond in MAGA's inner circle. In fact, blond hair has become a staple of the Republican Party, rocked by everyone from Ivanka Trump to Lara Trump to Kellyanne Conway—leaving brunettes like first lady Melania Trump as the rare exceptions to the rule. Such is the symbolic alignment of blond hair and America's political right that Leavitt even shared a selfie of herself in a salon chair, sporting freshly dyed locks, and wearing a t-shirt that read, "Make America Blonde Again."

Paired with loose curls and a voluminous blowout, blond hair has become known colloquially as "Republican hair." The high-maintenance color requires frequent touch-ups, meaning it's expensive to be blonde. As a result, the color inevitably becomes a status signal, indicating a person has both the time and finances needed for upkeep, which might help to explain its popularity. Fortunately, this style is a lot more flattering than the Republican vest trend that we wish would end.