Pro-Carly Fiorina Ad Hits Back Against Comments About Her Face

The super PAC backing Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina is out with a new ad responding to Donald Trump's pejorative comments about her appearance.

The ad, paid for by the Carly for America Committee, features a series of faces of women and girls. In the background, Fiorina is heard saying, "Ladies, look at this face, and look at all of your faces -- the face of leadership."

That remark, which Fiorina made on Friday to the Federation of Republican Women in Arizona, plays off recent comments by Trump, one of Fiorina's rivals for the GOP presidential nomination. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Trump remarked on the appearance of the only female candidate in the Republican field.

"Look at that face!" the reality TV host said. "Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!"

Trump later brushed aside criticism of his comments, claiming he was speaking about Fiorina's "persona" rather than her physical appearance.

Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, faced a receptive audience and loud expressions of support during her speech Friday.

"Ladies, look at this face," she said. "This is the face of a 61-year-old woman. I am proud of every year and every wrinkle."

Female candidates have long had to deal with extra scrutiny of their appearance. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, for example, has faced countless articles about her hairstyle and choice of clothing throughout her years as a public figure.

Former Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.), who explored a presidential run in 1987, recently recalled how she had to put up with constant questions about her looks.

"One of the problems I think that women have is that we don't look presidential," Schroeder said. "If one more person said to me, 'I like everything about you but you don't look presidential,' I was going to scream. Because clearly there had been no presidents that had looked like me."