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Kristi Noem has been busy. The homeland security secretary kicked off the year with a large immigration operation in Minneapolis that directly led to the killing of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. In the days since, Noem has been on a press tour, diligently putting her MAGA spin on the truth. For example, she has called Good a “domestic terrorist,” and even encouraged us all to buy ICE and Border Patrol agents lunch, as a thank-you for protecting our communities.
Noem doesn’t just talk the talk of the Trump regime. With her long hair, overfilled lips, and very, very white teeth, she looks the part. The Daily Beast appropriately referred to her as “ICE Barbie.” Like many MAGA women, Noem didn’t always look like this—here she is, for example, running to be the governor of South Dakota, wearing an orange button-down and sporting a general bone structure that looks much closer to that of a regular person. Much has been written about the transformation of Noem’s face, and her overall makeover—this woman loves a sheath dress—presumably done to better fall in line with MAGA-approved aesthetics. Less attention has been given to one holdover of her past life as a state politician: her hoop earrings. So let me be the one to say: Kristi Noem, please retire the hoops. Leave them for us, the people.
As far as the problems with Noem go, I recognize I’m lodging a petty complaint (this is a woman who treats a visit to a prison packed floor to ceiling with deportees as a photo-op). But I’m a Latina who’s had my ears pierced since I was just a few months old. Getting my first pair of gold hoops was a rite of passage—when I look back at pictures, it’s clear that as a child I hardly ever left the house without them and the matching gold bracelet engraved with my name. So this is personal. Today, hoops are a staple in my jewelry rotation. Whenever I see another woman rocking a pair of hoops, I like to think we’d get along, on a fundamental level. There are always exceptions to the rule.
Noem wore a thicker pair than I’ve ever seen on her before to a recent press conference. This pair was so prominent I couldn’t look away—and it sent me on a search. She also donned hoops for her recent interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, which took place just after ICE killed Good. While Tapper pressed her about why she didn’t wait for an investigation before calling Good a terrorist, she claimed to have only spoken facts and the truth, as the hoops dangled from her ears. She’s worn them to tour the newly created at the time “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in the Everglades. During a testimony given at a House Homeland Security Committee meeting where she was confronted over the deportation of a veteran, she had on her signature pair: a simple hoop with a pearl dangling from the very bottom. (For that visit to El Salvador’s CECOT prison, she chose a more understated nonhoop earring … at least, I guess.) I could keep going. It’s unclear where she picked up this fashion habit, though she’s been wearing them as far back as her House of Representatives portrait in 2011 (large, silver, peeking out from beneath the layers of a shaggy lob). Perhaps being college-aged in the ’90s, the heyday of the hoop earring trend, was enough to make her a convert.
I, like Noem, wear hoops basically every day, rotating through all variations: small dainty ones that hug the ear; big ones that grace my chin; gold hoops, silver hoops, thick hoops, thin hoops. Hoops have a long, storied tradition around the world and across cultures. In the United States, they have always been especially popular among Black and Latina women, who are the same groups of people who have been ostracized for wearing them—often told wearing hoops in work settings is “unprofessional.” (Some MAGA supporters have trained this criticism on Noem as well, calling her earrings unclassy and not “age-appropriate,” though her overall look has earned her boss’s stamp of approval, possibly because she’s also a white lady who shares his enthusiasm for bringing terror upon people who do not look like them.)
There is no such thing as “aging out” of hoops. Try telling that to Jennifer Lopez—Noem’s contemporary, and a talented businesswoman. I wear mine to work every week. Several of my colleagues wear hoops to the office, as well. To me, the problem with Noem’s choice is that wearing hoops can be a source of pride, a small connection to all the other women in our neighborhoods, America, and the world who wear hoops, too. And Noem shouldn’t be proud of herself. We don’t have to look far for an example of hoops as a source of confidence—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore her signature combination of red lips and hoops to her Congress swearing-in ceremony, writing on X, “Next time someone tells Bronx girls to take off their hoops, they can just say they’re dressing like a Congresswoman.”
Most days, I like my hoops just because of how they look—the way they dangle and shine through my hair—and because they make me feel more like myself. But then there are those other days. Days when stepping out of my apartment and into the world feels heavy because my family, who immigrated here and became U.S. citizens decades ago, tells me they’re carrying their passports around on long drives “just in case,” and warn me against my habit of roaming the city without ID. On those days, putting on my hoops feels like a minor-but-important consolation, and a reminder to myself that I come from a culture with beautiful, complicated people and traditions I cherish—people and traditions that no one will ever be able to stamp out and eradicate, try as they might. These are the small everyday dignities we have left.
The one and only thing Noem and I have in common: We know that once you’ve found a pair of hoops that frame your face perfectly, they are hard to put down. Her most-worn pair, as far as I can tell, is the one with a pearl. And that pearl accent is one of her only fashion choices that she’s provided an explanation for. “In order for a pearl to be made, the oyster has to go through something uncomfortable, hard,” she once wrote on her Instagram, next to a picture of herself in those pearl hoops. “If we endure, God can use that challenge to make something beautiful out of it.” In some cultures, pearls are thought to resemble tears, which I find to be a more apt bit of symbolism.
Perhaps Noem, like me, sees her hoops as a way to wield power. What they say about men who own monster trucks may also apply in this case—I imagine Noem might wear them to feel bigger, stronger, and more confident in her ambitions. Even as someone with immense power, she is still a woman—a woman surrounded by an administration of men on a mission to push women out of the arena. But no earring—indeed, no particular fashion choice at all—will protect her from the misogyny of her chosen workplace. So Kristi, I have a request: Next time you’re visiting a detention center or making absurd excuses for the actions of ICE agents, don’t hide behind your hoops. Leave them at home. Let us see you for who you really are.
