Burnt Hair and Soft Power: How a “Not-Political” Women’s Brand Became a Political Force

Background

What looks like a glossy night of wellness panels, beauty tips, and entrepreneurship spotlights can also function as a political rally—without saying the quiet part out loud. That is the core dynamic on display at the first in-person event for Evie Magazine, a women’s lifestyle brand that positions itself as fashion-and-femininity-forward while drawing steady applause from far-right influencers and culture warriors online.

If you’ve never read Evie, think of the feel of a modern, shoppable lifestyle site: makeup lists, fertility explainers, relationship takes, and productivity advice. The editorial tone prizes concepts like “natural,” “feminine,” and “traditional” while surfacing contrarian arguments about hormonal birth control, gender ideology, and modern dating scripts. It’s not Breitbart in lipstick; it’s Pinterest with a point of view. And that point of view has become a reliable node in a broader rightward media ecosystem—one that insists it isn’t political even as it reframes the cultural agenda.

That insistence is strategic. Political scientists call it soft power: the ability to shape preferences through attraction and normalization rather than overt pressure. Joseph Nye coined the term to describe the cultural and diplomatic sway of nations. Today, lifestyle media deploys the same logic. A vibe—clean beauty, low-tox living, trad aesthetics—can carry a worldview. The algorithm does the rest.

The “weird-tech” twist is that this world is deeply entangled with meme-commerce and platform politics. The title wink—“Burnt Hair”—nods to a famous tech-world gag fragrance, a symbol of how jokey consumer goods and internet fandoms have become political shibboleths. When politics is a mood you wear, a scent can be a signal.

What happened

Evie held its first live event—an IRL extension of an online brand that thrives on social feeds. By all accounts, it looked like a thousand other creator economy summits: sponcon activations, photo booths, panelists with impeccable lighting, and a crowd that could double as a micro-influencer directory. It wasn’t pitched as a rally. It didn’t need to be.

Instead, the night leaned into a familiar palette of topics that map cleanly onto contemporary culture-war lines without naming them outright:

• Wellness and hormones: Sessions framed around “listening to your cycle,” the science of stress and fertility, and the case for doing things “naturally.” These are genuinely popular interests among women—but in the hands of ideologues they can double as arguments against mainstream contraception or sex education, rebranded as empowerment.
• Safety and girlhood: Talking points about “protecting girls” and “keeping women’s spaces safe” resonate widely. They also serve as euphemisms in broader battles over trans rights and school policies. No need to say “policy” if everyone knows the subtext.
• Entrepreneurship and freedom: Panels on building businesses, managing finances, and navigating “censorship” on big platforms fit neatly within a freedom-first narrative that casts legacy media and Big Tech as hostile to women with “unpopular” views.
• Relationships and dating: Advice framed as “real talk” about hypergamy, online dating burnout, and marriage timelines—territory that often overlaps with tradwife aesthetics and manosphere-adjacent scripts, delivered with a polished, friendly sheen.

The audience skewed young and hyper-online, the sorts of people who know the difference between an Amazon Storefront and an LTK page and who can edit a Reel in under a minute. Many were clearly there to meet each other as much as the speakers. Community is the product as much as content.

What stood out most was what wasn’t said. There were few if any overt partisan markers—no chants, no candidate shout-outs, no “own the libs.” Instead, the ideology arrived baked into the scaffolding:

• “We’re not political” as a refrain. This is an effective inoculation. It reframes critiques as attacks on ordinary women who just want to feel good and make choices for themselves. If critics push too hard, they look like bullies.
• “Just the science.” Framing contrarian claims (about birth control risks, puberty blockers, or school curricula) as neutral health literacy lends them legitimacy—even when the cited evidence is selective or contested.
• “Common sense.” Presenting complex policy questions as obvious truths. If you disagree, you must be ideologically captured or lacking courage.

Tech culture was a tangible subtext. The aesthetics of meme-ified products, the cross-pollination with right-leaning creators who built audiences on Twitter/X, and the presence of “parallel economy” sponsors in this space—all underscore how politics is being merchandised. Even when a novelty scent or joke product doesn’t physically appear, its spirit does: a wink to those who get the in-group joke and are ready to buy the bundle—supplements, sermons, and a subculture.

Why this format works

Three forces make events like this unusually potent.

1. The algorithm favors vibes over arguments

• Emotional resonance and lifestyle utility travel faster than white papers. If you help someone with their skin routine or cycle tracking, they’ll give you attention and trust. Once trust is established, worldview nudges face little resistance.

2. Plausible deniability is a shield and a sword

• By disavowing politics, organizers reduce scrutiny while casting critics as hysterical ideologues. Brand partners, too, face less reputational risk if the event looks like a self-care soirée rather than a campaign stop.

3. Commerce completes the circuit

• The creator economy monetizes belief through affiliates, courses, supplements, and subscriptions. Ideology becomes a basket of goods. Buy the serum, the probiotic, and the position paper—in that order. If a platform demonetizes a creator, the audience has IRL access and email capture from events to maintain the relationship.

The deeper context: Women, wellness, and the new right

The past five years reshaped the information diet for young women. Post-Roe legal uncertainty pushed more attention toward fertility awareness and period-tracking apps; the wellness boom valorized “low-tox” living and cycle-syncing; and algorithmic feeds collapsed celebrity, medicine, and politics into the same swipe. Progressive movements that once held the lifestyle high ground (think millennial-era feminist media) fractured under business pressures, platform changes, and internal culture wars.

Into that vacuum stepped a new cohort of conservative-adjacent brands—some explicit, some coy—offering an identity: competent, stylish, biologically grounded, and unafraid of the word “traditional.” The promise is not authoritarianism; it’s assurances. Life is simpler if the rules are older and the claims are “natural.” For audiences exhausted by online chaos, that can be deeply attractive.

There are genuine insights in this space. Many women do want better conversations about side effects of hormonal contraception, about how work schedules ignore pregnancy realities, and about the loneliness of dating apps. But when these concerns are braided with policy agendas—curbs on reproductive rights, rolling back LGBTQ protections, and constraining sex education—the result is political change that feels like consumer choice.

Key takeaways

• The strongest message is the pretense of no message. Disclaiming politics is the strategy. It lowers defenses, widens the funnel, and reframes critics as enemies of normalcy.
• Meme-commerce has political gravity. Novelty products, influencer merch, and inside jokes build in-group identity. What looks silly in isolation adds up to cultural cohesion.
• Wellness is a gateway. Hormone and fertility content can be sincere and useful, but it is also leveraged to mainstream reactionary frames about women’s roles and healthcare access.
• IRL is a moat. Live events deepen loyalty, collect first-party data, and build a commerce engine that’s harder for platforms to disrupt.
• Brand safety is the battlefield. As right-coded lifestyle media cleans up its aesthetic, advertisers face trickier due-diligence calls—and progressive critics face fewer obvious pressure points.

What to watch next

• Scale and franchising: Expect more regional pop-ups, college tours, and themed retreats. The format is modular: wellness mornings, entrepreneurship afternoons, values-forward keynotes.
• Crossovers with tech platforms: With social distribution consolidating around a few giants, creators will intensify their presence on X, YouTube, and newsletter stacks—augmented by IRL activations to hedge against algorithm shocks.
• Parallel-economy sponsors: Payment processors, marketplaces, supplement brands, and “anti-woke” startups see these audiences as fertile ground. Watch for deeper integration—exclusive product drops, co-branded supplements, and community memberships.
• Regulatory friction: Supplement and health-claims enforcement (FTC, FDA) could collide with hormone and fertility rhetoric; privacy concerns around period-tracking and health data will remain hot; state-level fights over education and transgender policy will keep providing subtext for “protect girls” messaging.
• Counter-programming: Progressive or nonpartisan women’s media may try to reclaim lifestyle ground with their own IRL circuits, emphasizing evidence-based wellness and robust reproductive healthcare literacy.

How to read events like this without getting spun

• Separate topics from frames. “Hormone health” can be valuable; “hormones prove modern feminism is a scam” is an ideological frame. Don’t reject the former because you dislike the latter. Don’t accept the latter because the former helped you.
• Check the evidence chain. When a panelist cites “studies,” look for source transparency, consensus views, and whether claims are cherry-picked or generalized beyond the data.
• Follow the money. Who sponsors the session? What’s for sale at the back of the room? Commerce isn’t disqualifying—but it’s clarifying.
• Listen for euphemisms. “Protecting girls,” “keeping spaces safe,” and “parental rights” often signal specific policy positions. Map the vibe to the vote.
• Watch the pipeline. IRL attendee rosters often include micro-creators who will carry these talking points back to local communities and niche feeds with higher trust ratios than national media.

The weird-tech undertone

The tech world’s fingerprints are everywhere: in the memetic humor that turns a novelty fragrance into a status flag; in the creator stacks that collapse media, storefronts, and payment rails into one dashboard; in the platform politics that make “free speech” as much a brand as a legal concept. The right learned from DTC startups that a good unboxing can sell anything—including a worldview. In 2026, politics smells like packaging.

FAQ

• Is Evie Magazine “far-right”?
  Labels are blunt instruments. The brand presents itself as lifestyle-first and “nonpolitical,” but its content and influencer orbit align it with contemporary right-wing culture-war positions. That soft alignment is the story.

• Why call this soft power?
  Because the persuasion is ambient. The draw is beauty, wellness, and community; the ideology arrives embedded, normalized, and deniable. Attraction precedes argument.

• What does tech have to do with it?
  Distribution (algorithms), monetization (influencer commerce), and culture (meme products) all come from the tech stack. The platforms and the products make the politics portable.

• What’s the harm if it’s “just wellness”?
  Wellness can be great. But when selective science and euphemisms drive real-world policy preferences—on contraception access, LGBTQ rights, or education—the stakes move beyond skincare.

• How should readers evaluate claims from events like this?
  Look for transparent sourcing, expert consensus, and clear distinctions between personal anecdotes and population-level guidance. Be especially cautious with supplement and health claims packaged as empowerment.

Source & original reading

https://www.wired.com/story/burnt-hair-and-soft-power-a-night-out-with-evie-magazine/