Virginia Weaver, Senior Staff Writer

Microwaved Beef is a column by Virginia Weaver that reflects on flashpoints from the last few years in the culture wars. The rapid pace of contemporary discourse makes it easy to forget critical moments that have defined our social and academic lives for the last few years. Microwaved Beef brings those moments back into the spotlight. 

America’s right wing has gone all-in on raunchy fashion. Conservative modesty is out. Populism is in.  

The decades-long war on the Right between raunch and traditionalism was a battle for the nature of American conservatism. Ultimately, as Kat Rosenfield recently wrote, “The Raunchy Right Has Triumphed.”  

The Right has its own term for the rise of populist raunch: Make American Hot Again. Although the Make America Hot Again movement might face difficulties competing with Make America Healthy Again for the MAHA acronym, it’s making waves nonetheless. Like any right-wing movement in America that means business, Make America Hot Again has its own signature hat.  

Evie Magazine’s ambiguous position 

Last summer, in the waning months of the Right’s internal culture war, Evie Magazine represented an uneasy hybridization of populist raunch and conservative traditionalism. Evie’s debut in the culture wars’ spotlight came during the intense and now almost forgotten right-wing flashpoint of “sundress discourse,” or #SundressGate. 

Evie Magazine describes itself as pushing back against other women’s magazines’ politically progressive groupthink. According to Evie’s website, other women’s magazines have been “encourag[ing] women to engage in destructive behavior in the name of self-love and empowerment.” To counter this perceived trend, Evie explains, its mission is “helping women celebrate their femininity in all areas of their lives.”  

If Evie’s focus on restoring femininity sounds like stodgy conservatism, this illusion is belied by the magazine’s output, which features—for instance—Ivy Lipton’s piece, “Mastering Cowgirl: How to Ride Your Husband Into Delirium.” Like much of the current right wing, Evie positions itself somewhere between conservativism and Cosmopolitan.  

#SundressGate 

Evie came to the attention of a broad swath of the public in the summer of 2024 with the release of its notorious Evie Bra Sundress. The 100% rayon dress requires handwashing “with a mild detergent,” and costs around $130.  

Image courtesy of Evie Magazine on X. 

By most sartorial standards among the conservatively religious, Evie’s sundress is immodest. It sits above the knee, has no sleeves, and perhaps most importantly, its neckline is risqué by many faiths’ codes of modesty. The dress’s release provoked fiery conflict between the right wing’s raunchy and trad camps. The ongoing cultural flashpoint quickly became known as “sundress discourse,” and, more starkly, as #SundressGate.  

Evie capitalized on its soaring publicity. It published an article by Carmen Schober that seeks to define what a sundress is and isn’t, advertises the Evie Bra Sundress, and—most importantly—explains why men find sundresses so alluring. Evie’s founder, Brittany Martinez, fanned the flames by posting a photo of the dress on X with the caption, “Hard at work solving the population crisis with this groundbreaking fertility tech.”  

Red Scare, an influential podcast on the Right (previously an influential podcast on the Left), recorded an episode discussing #SundressGate, titled “Summer Dress Sadness.” The episode’s other topics include the European Union elections and controversies swirling around Hunter Biden as the former president’s son faced prison time. During #SundressGate, it seemed reasonable that a popular, right-wing podcast would discuss a sundress alongside world politics. Sundress discourse was Evie’s first big moment: the magazine had struck the right chord at the right moment. 

#SundressGate was succeeded mere months later by “Raw Milkmaid Dress discourse.” In hindsight, the sundress discourse seemed moderate. But something had changed between the dresses’ moments. 

Unpasteurized peasant style 

Image courtesy of the Raw Milkmaid Dress’s webpage. 

In December 2024, Evie released its next discourse-stirring garment: the Raw Milkmaid Dress, still available for $189 at the time of writing. The Evie Bra Sundress seems to have gone out of stock just before its successor dropped, likely in November. 

Unlike Evie’s sundress, the Raw Milkmaid Dress is primarily made of cotton. Per the item description on the Raw Milkmaid Dress’s webpage, the garment’s design was “inspired by the hardworking dairymaids of 18th-century Europe.”  

Brooke LaMantia, writing at The Cut, describes the Raw Milkmaid Dress’s fiery reception among conservatives. According to one commenter LaMantia quotes, “[It’s] hard not to compare this to the attire worn by prostitutes in the 17th century.”  

The Raw Milkmaid Dress’s design is far less modest, by conservative standards, than the sundress that preceded it. Its accompanying discourse, though heated, was briefer than #SundressGate, nor did Raw Milkmaid Dress discourse match sundress discourse in magnitude.  

Perhaps the Raw Milkmaid Dress felt too much like overt trolling to sustain interest. The garment’s name references the growing raw milk trend and—less directly—the dress’s neckline. Its provocations are overt and thus uninteresting as a topic to debate. 

More likely, the Raw Milkmaid Dress’s post-election release made it less contentious than its forebear had been a mere two seasons ago. The infamous dresses dropped only a few months apart, but their releases straddled the momentous end of a war for the American Right. Evie’s blend of traditionalism and populist raunch had already won the right wing’s internal culture war.  

The Raw Milkmaid had nothing left to conquer.