CHILD'S PLAY

Bryon Noem’s ‘Bimbo’ Passion Is the Ultimate Political Blow-Up

This $25,000 “looning” scandal is making MAGA look like a birthday party.

opinion

Even when I was editing Cosmopolitan—where the editorial brief reliably circled back to orgasms and pay rises in roughly equal measure—I don’t recall encountering anything quite as, well, bespoke as Bryon Noem’s particular tastes in crossdressing, complete with absurdist fake boobs and athleisure leggings. There’s something almost boyishly literal about it, as though confronted by the aggressively engineered silhouettes of MAGA femininity—breasts hoisted, sculpted, cantilevered into improbable topography—he’s opted to recreate the effect using party supplies. Because that’s the detail you can’t quite shake: balloons. The cheerful detritus of children’s birthdays and clown acts, twisted here into something else entirely. Inflated, tied, positioned as nipples. A homemade anatomy. A very private workaround. In a world of ever-escalating enhancement, the filters, fillers, surgical bravado and sameness, there’s something perversely innocent about an adult retreating into the games of their childhood. Who didn’t in their youth stuff a balloon up their shirt?

Politics as theatre. Celebrity as currency. Wellness as religion. And power as the only real language in the room. Subscribe to PRIMAL SCREAM with Joanna Coles on Substack for more.