White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt may have made a rookie cosmetic mistake before posing for Vanity Fair alongside members of Donald Trump’s administration. To accompany the December 2025 deep-dive into the people supporting the president through his second term, the outlet published extreme close-up shots of the MAGA overlords — and Leavitt’s photo, in particular, has gone viral.
Leavitt has been accused of sporting Mar-a-Lago face throughout her time at the podium, and while she has never confirmed the rumors, she seemed to have arrived at the Vanity Fair shoot right after getting a fresh round of lip filler. The close-up shot revealed injection marks across her lips in a wholly unflattering manner. Her lips also looked slightly inflamed, which wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for the popular cosmetic procedure.
Leavitt’s photo has triggered a lot of noise, the loudest coming from her chorus of detractors. The comment section on the Vanity Fair Instagram page is full of Leavitt’s critics celebrating her unflattering photo. One of many people to notice Leavitt’s apparent filler points wrote, “Genius. The injection marks really sing in this one!” Others were baffled by how bad they thought Leavitt looked, considering she was only 28 years old when the photo was taken, with one person writing, “28 in dog years.”
Of course, there were also several people claiming that Vanity Fair purposefully set up Leavitt and her colleagues with unflattering shots as a way to protest Trump’s administration. “Vanity Fair said …it would be an honor,” commented another user. With that said, the photographer behind these pictures, Christopher Anderson, has also entered the conversation, and he’s said that the narrative is inaccurate.
Vanity Fair’s photographer defends Leavitt’s portrait
Rumors of Karoline Leavitt’s lip filler usage have skyrocketed thanks to Vanity Fair. However, Christopher Anderson, the artist who photographed Leavitt and others in the Trump administration, has denied that the final outcome was some sort of gotcha. Instead, he insisted that the images for Vanity Fair are typical of his style, which seems to transform portraiture into landscape art through unpolished close-ups.
“Very close-up portraiture has been a fixture in a lot of my work over the years. Particularly, political portraits that I’ve done over the years,” Anderson shared with The Independent about his aesthetic. “I like the idea of penetrating the theater of politics. I know there’s a lot to be made with, ‘Oh, he intentionally is trying to make people look bad’ and that kind of thing — that’s not the case.” One of Anderson’s most famous photographs, one of the singer Rosalía, confirms that he’s focused on close-up shots in his past work; you can see it below.
Whatever Anderson’s intention, it’s clear the internet has formed their own narrative about the photos, and they don’t bode well for Leavitt, who has yet to weigh in on the photo or her plastic surgery rumors. She has, however, attacked Vanity Fair for what she felt was a “hit piece” on Trump and his administration.
While appearing on Fox News, Leavitt supported Trump’s Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, who felt the publication had been disingenuous with their intent for the article. “I would just echo my boss, Susie Wiles,” Leavitt said, “in that this was, unfortunately, another attempt at fake news by a reporter who was acting disingenuously and really did take the chief’s word out of context.” Unfortunately for Leavitt, it’s hard to take that pure, untouched photo of her out of context.
