Of course, TV news shows have always put a premium on appearance, more so for women than for men. And it’s hardly a revelation that some networks place more pressure on women than do others: C-SPAN has no makeup room at all, just a collection of powder compacts that guests can use if they are so inclined. At MSNBC, Rachel Maddow is known to prefer minimal makeup, while other anchors want more, and the artists oblige with a range of choices, from neutral tones to berry hues. Bloomberg TV tends toward the corporate aesthetic; CNN favors a professional style that makes women and men look crisp, as if they have been ironed. As for Fox, suffice it to say that there is a YouTube montage devoted to leg shots of Fox anchors, who are often outfitted in body-hugging dresses of vibrant red and turquoise, their eyes enhanced by not only liner and shadow but also false lashes. A Fox regular once commented to me that she gets more calls from network management about her hair, clothes, and makeup than about what she says. “I just think of it as a uniform,” she said of her getup.

But here’s the newer development: It’s not just anchors who are pressured to look good while talking, it’s relatively ordinary women, too. For a contingent of female bloggers, ideologues, advocates, pundits, and writers, a Fox gig brings with it an unexpected dilemma. There you are, a renowned expert on nuclear proliferation/immigration policy/­the Middle East, obliged to regard yourself in the mirror and ask: Will I really go on national television looking like a cross between Captain Jack Sparrow and a waitress from Hooters?

Not that you have much of a choice. “I see that you like a natural look,” a Fox makeup artist said to me, then proceeded to paint a red line slightly outside the edge of my lips, and fill it in with ample gloss. A stylist curled my hair and teased it; when she asked if I wore it flipped up or under, I said under. She flipped it up, venturing that “up is cuter.” Other artists told me that if network executives don’t like what they see on a guest, the phone rings promptly. (Fox did not respond to requests for comment.)

Fox no doubt has several reasons for pursuing the look one guest described as “Fox glam.” The advent of high-­definition TV screens is probably one of them: saturated colors (including, conveniently, red) work well in HD. And then there’s the management. Gabriel Sherman, a journalist working on a book about Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes, notes makeup’s unique role in Ailes’s creation myth, which dates to a fateful encounter with Richard Nixon. When Nixon lost to John F. Kennedy, in 1960, many said that his fate had been sealed by bad makeup during a televised debate. Before an appearance on The Mike Douglas Show seven years later, Nixon groused about having to stoop so low as to go on television; Ailes, the executive producer for the show, persuaded him to embrace the medium, and the makeup. Nixon hired him to work on his next presidential campaign, and won.