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It's been a long time. Shouldn't have left you without a dope. Me. Step two, step two, step two. Hello? Hello, it's Brooke Devard and you're listening to the Naked Beauty Podcast. Hi, beauties. It feels so good to be back on this microphone talking to you all. It's been a long time. I have missed this so much. I hope everyone has been well. So much has happened since we've last spoken. Most notably, I've had a baby. Baby girl Jade is here. She's healthy, she's happy. She is the joy of my life. The newborn phase is just the second time around. When you know what's coming, when you know what the cries mean, you know how to soothe. It just feels so much more comfortable and it's. It's truly a joy. I'm never going to get this time back. And I'm soaking up every single second. And on the podcast front, big news. Naked Beauty was nominated for an I Heart Podcast award. The award show is in March during South by Southwest. The category, best beauty or fashion podcast. They lumped those two together, but we'll take it. We're up against some big names. There's nothing you can do, really, to help our chances. There is a committee of, I believe it's 350 podcast professionals, industry professionals, executives in the space that vote on the winners. And honestly, it really is just an honor to be nominated. I was nominated back in 2020 and to be recognized again. 2025. Especially with how much podcasting has changed and grown. It's really just exciting. There's a red carpet. You guys know I love to do a beauty look, a beauty moment, so it should be fun. I am just excited about 2025 in general. This is going to be a great year for Naked Beauty. I'm so excited about all of the new things I'll be doing on the show. And I think the reason why I'm so excited and energized about the work is because I've had this time off. I gave myself the ultimate gift, which was to take a real maternity leave. Like to really take a break. Now as a breastfeeding mother with a newborn, calling it a break is a bit rich, right? Because breastfeeding is a full time job. Even if you are not breastfeeding, bottle feeding, whatever you are doing, sustaining the life of a newborn is a full time job. So it's certainly not a break from work, but for me, it was a break from thinking about the podcast and being on social media, which leads us to to today's episode because I learned so much in my time away from social media that I was like, I need to just remember this feeling, capture it, write down my learnings and come back to the Naked Beauty podcast community and share some of my learnings. Because these are gifts that we can give ourselves for free and they're impactful. So let's get into my findings to set the stage. I have been on social media consistently, consistently for the past 11 or 12 years. Consistently, probably every single day. I've worked as a social media manager in fashion and entertainment. I've always worked in digital strategy and as many of you know, I spent the last nearly five years working at Instagram. So my job required me to be chronically online, to know everything happening in the creator space, to understand how the algorithm worked, to stay on top of every single product feature. And as a product marketer, I also had to be on reels, expanding, experiencing reels, making reels like it truly was my job to spend time online. And you don't even have to work on the product side to feel this way. If you're a marketer, it oftentimes seems like it is your job to stay abreast of trends. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're a creator, if you do anything that involves reaching the people through the Internet, sometimes it feels like it is your job to be online. And aside from my jobs or using social media as a way to connect with my community, I also love being online. I have always been someone that has enjoyed the Internet. I've enjoyed discourse. I love seeing what people are talking about, getting into the comment section, seeing what my favorite creator is doing. I have enjoyed my time online. It has been additive to my life. But as soon as I found out I was pregnant, I knew I wanted to take a true maternity leave. One with no work, which means no deliverables and really no reason to be online. For the first time in over a decade, I decided I would be completely offline for two months. So here are the six things that I learned in my time off of social media. Number one, and perhaps the most impactful to me as someone that enjoys great art and enjoys great content is that I had more free time for meaningful content. The endless scroll of TikTok. Sure they're funny, but like, I can't recall a great TikTok that I saw that moved me, that meant something to me. Short form content gives you this dopamine hit, but it doesn't last. And that short term dopamine hit is Nothing compared to what you receive from a soul fulfilling level. When you get engaged with deep stories, like when you can really get into a movie, really get into a series, really get into a book. Remember reading books? I took a look at my screen time. You can open your settings and see your screen time and scream, all of our screen time is too high. Even when I deleted my social media apps, I still was like, what? What am I even looking at my phone for? But certainly with the social apps on them, my screen time was really high. Now I'm going to give you a very conservative number. An hour a day. Most of us are way over an hour a day, but let's just say you're spending an hour a day on social media. That is seven hours a week that you were spending consuming kind of low grade content, if we're going to be honest, on the Internet, with an extra seven hours a week, you could definitely read a book, you could definitely watch several movies. You could definitely finish two entire extremely well written series with really great character depth. You could certainly go visit two museums with an extra seven hours a week. And most of us are so busy and so crazed, we feel like we don't have time. In fact, we do have time, but so much of our time is stolen from just kind of mindlessly scrolling. A question on college essays when kids are applying to colleges and writing in their admissions essay is, have you ever been moved by a piece of art? Which one and why? And I think about that question for myself in the past year, the past two years, what is the last piece of art? That really moved me? Why did it move me? And then I began to really confront the fact that I have not been exposing myself to art, to great literature, to even again, just going to a museum, seeing great film. I love movies. I love movies. But I was neglecting my love of watching indie films because it felt like, okay, when do I have time to sit down and watch a movie? Of course I had the time. But you sort of forget about the content that you mean to consume, that you want to intentionally consume when so much of your day is lost online. I think at a fundamental level we all have this need for entertainment and we sort of fill that void, that longing with this low nutritional value content that's really easily accessible on your phone, right? I can just open TikTok and immediately I'm served videos that kind of like scratch the itch. I'm like, oh, okay, I'm getting some dopamine. This is entertaining. Time is passing, but it's not comparable to watching a great film. Right? So one of the things that I did in my time off was I made a list of directors I loved where I wanted to watch more of their films. Pedro Moldovar Spanish DIRECTOR I've always loved his work. I spent time actually watching more of his films. I watched some Spike Lee movies that I had never seen before. I realized I had never seen the original she Gotta have It and just that character of Nola Darling. And the storytelling was so rich. I watched all of the Golden Globe and Oscar nominated films. I also watched documentaries about creative geniuses at work and the creative process. I watched documentaries about fashion designers like Raf Simmons when he was appointed to Dior. There's a great documentary called Dior. And I. I also watched an incredible documentary about Galliano. And then after watching that documentary about Galliano, I went and revisited all of his work with Pat McGrath at Dior and watched all of the shows that he did. And it really reminded me of even when I was in high school and when I was in middle school, even, like, figuring out what you're interested in, tapping into those passions. Not just sitting passively and waiting for the algorithm to serve you up something interesting, but intentionally going, figuring out what's interesting to you and then going deep, like going into that rabbit hole. Number two, mental clarity without outside noise. When I first deleted the apps off of my phone, I would just reflexively open my phone and open Instagram. I would go to open threads, I would go to open TikTok. Like, I would. It just was a muscle memory thing. And I realized that you are sort of bombarded with everyone's takes and everyone's like, giving their own context and spin and whatever's happening in the world and everyone's talking at you. There's a lot of talking and there's a lot of noise. And sometimes it's hard to know, like, well, what do I think? What do I feel? You're taking in so much information from other people and that kind of quiets your own internal monologue, really heavy ticks. TOK users will agree with me on this. And this is actually scary when I say it out loud, but you will have trending sounds like trending audio stuck in your head in a loop. Like the. The internal dialogue of your head. Like your brain is just repeating some mindless audio that you've heard because you've watched a million TikToks with that specific sound. And if you really think about that, like, that's crazy. The analogy that I gave, the feeling of not having all of this outside chatter was decluttering a room. So if you have been in a room in a space where there's something crammed into every single desk drawer, every single corner is stacked with books, and everything is just everywhere, and then you suddenly go in and you declutter everything, and it just suddenly becomes this very clean, minimal space with not very many things. You can think more clearly when you're in a space that's decluttered. And that's how I felt when I removed a lot of these outside voices. It was like, oh, my gosh, I've decluttered all of this outside influence, and suddenly I can think much more clearly. I feel sharper, I feel crisper. I feel. You know, in a lot of ways, I felt like my brain was lagging because of having all of these other influences, these outside influences. And suddenly it was like, okay, I can think more clearly. Things are quieter. Things are slower. What essentially happens is social media floods your mind with opinions, trends, and debates that you didn't necessarily ask for. There's a comedian that I followed for a while. He's very problematic, but if you. If you know him, you know he's problematic. His name is Lil Duvall. But one of the things that he always used to tweet, he would come on Twitter and he would say, what are y'all fake caring about today? And I always thought about that during my break because it's like these, like, arguments, these silly things, these, you know, topics that people go back and forth on. It's like no one even really cares. It's just, like, a way to pass the time. And then you suddenly have to take in these debates that you didn't even ask be part of just because you were on the platform without having this background noise. I felt so much more in tune with my own thoughts and my own values. I still kept my New York Times app, and guess what? I get the physical paper delivered to me, and it takes me. I get the paper on Sunday morning. It takes me the whole week to read through all of the sections. Because, yes, I take my time. Yes. I also have two kids now, so I don't have, like, hours to sit and read the paper, but I love going through the Sunday style section. I love reading the front page. I love reading Sunday Business. Like, I love reading the paper and then sitting with my own thoughts and seeing how I feel about something rather than someone reading an article and recontextualizing it for me. Right? Like, just taking in the information myself and deciding what I think, I think in a lot of ways, if I'm being honest with myself, I let social media dull my critical thinking skills. It's easier and it's lazier to depend on other people to tell you what the take should be. Okay, the third benefit that I experienced, not having social media. We can't really have this discussion without the obvious. Better sleep and better energy. Now, as a new mom, you know, like moms, especially if you've got, like, babies, sometimes you have an hour to nap because the baby's down. If you waste that hour scrolling on social media, you are so upset with yourself. You're like, I had an hour to nap and I wasted it. I already was running on sleep deficit. And I remembered very, very distinctly with my first baby that in those 3am hours breastfeeding, what did I do? I was on social media. And you kind of have to be right. It's like the middle of the night, it's dark. You have to do something silently. You're not just going to sit in the darkness and do nothing, right? I bought a nightlight, a little clip on Night Light for reading books at night, which is so helpful. I read several books. One of the books that I read, which is also a controversial book, but I loved it, Miranda July, All Fours, about a woman at midlife just confronting and rethinking everything she's been taught to believe about marriage, about sexuality, about her own desire, really thinking about perimenopause and like, what does menopause even mean? And why has no one talked to me about this? How do I feel about monogamy? I mean, I think it was a fascinating book and I love Miranda July as well. But I read that book again with my nightlight, and I really realized, like, I could read that book with a night light and then go back to sleep. And the breastfeeding session was done. Whereas when you were on a phone, the way it activates your brain like that light from your phone makes it so much harder to fall back asleep. And even if you don't have a child, sleep is so important for all of us. All of us have spent more time than we'd like to admit up at night on our phones, scrolling the Internet when you really should have just been asleep. Let me also just add in here magnesium powder at night will have you sleeping so soundly. It's a game changer. Just add magnesium powder into your mix. I like the one from Wooden Spoon Herbs. I will link to it here in the show notes, but that's my bonus Sleep tip. Okay, number four, less feelings of anxiety and also less comparison and compulsion to buy things by way of that comparison. Now I will never forget. I always ask people, when do you feel most beautiful? And one of the answers that always stands out to me is Julie Schott, founder of Starface. She said, I feel most beautiful on the days where I've barely looked at my phone. And I feel that so deeply. There is something about just constantly like checking in with social media that just makes you feel a little bit uneasy. And some of that is by design. A lot of content on social is predicated on this idea that you need to do something, buy something, change something to level up, to be better social. Social is often telling you how to improve, upgrade or do things right. I remember it was like right before I was like going into the hospital, like to give birth. I was getting all of these reels served to me about compression devices to wear immediately after birth to make sure that your uterus can shrink back to its normal size. I was already starting to get videos about how to burp your baby correctly. It was like, you're burping your baby wrong. Burp your baby this way. Because I love interior design. I get a lot of design things sent to me, but it's like, these are the six things that are making your house look outdated. Or, you know, we made the mistake of doing our kitchen this way when it really should be this way. Or this is how you should upgrade your paint. You should do a semi matte finish and it's just basically designed to make you feel like you have to go out and spend money to fix something. Or even if it's not about spending money, the way that you're doing something already is incorrect, it's wrong. And you need to watch to the end of this video to learn how to correct it. And when you're seeing videos like, you know, do this one thing to generate 10,000 more leads for your business, or this one thing was causing me to not grow on social media. But once I started doing this one thing, it changed my business. It's like, okay, one, if it was that easy, it wouldn't be as simple as finding it in a 30 second video, right? But two, hearing all of these ideas about how you can improve, how you can level up, how you can be better, what you need to buy, what you need to do, how you need to be to be your best self. It's like it gives you this kind of like low level anxiety. And I'm not even talking about comparing yourself to other people and their accomplishments. Because I think celebrating accomplishments on social media is beautiful. I love to see people killing it and sharing all of their accomplishments. I'm talking about everything around you. It's kind of just like subconsciously in the background that is telling you that in order to get to your next level, you need to do something differently. And it's buying this, watching this, signing up for this course. And that is not healthy. Instead, you can just live in the moment and trust your own instincts. And those instincts become so much stronger and clearer without that outside noise. Number five, going outside. Remember outside. Remember going for walks. Now, a lot of us are already really good at going for walks, but, like, vitamin D is real. Like, vitamin D makes you feel so much better. Oftentimes I've been like, I don't have time to do a long walk because I've got too much going on. When in reality I do have time, but I'm not spending that time wisely. I found that, let's say it was 2:00 and I didn't have anything to do. I actually would say, okay, let me put the baby in a carrier, go out for a nice long walk, feel the outside air. What am I going to do at home? I mean, I could sit, I could read my paper, I could read a book. I'm not going to watch a movie in the middle of the day. Let me go outside. There's something about the binary between daytime and nighttime that just feels more real when you are off of your phone all the time, right? Like, I think that your phone is like this all you can eat buffet that you can visit at any time. So 2:00 is the same as 9:00. Like, you can open your phone, but during the day. Like, you should actually take advantage of daylight hours. And I found that time moved so much more slowly because of this. Like, I could really feel a day. So because I eliminated all of those constant notifications and scrolling, I found myself having quiet moments that were actually restorative and time felt slower. I was able to be more present with myself and with my family, which was really my impetus for doing this in the first place. I was like, this is such a precious time in my life that I have a beautiful newborn baby, my son, who's like, I feel like he's getting older every day. Mavi. He's four and a half. I can't believe it. But I was like, I really want to be present with my family. I don't want to be thinking about anyone Else, I don't want to be distracted by anything else. I want to really feel this time. And there is something about this experience that allowed me to feel time in ways that I hadn't felt before. And I think some of it was just simply being outside more during the day made me feel time in a way that I hadn't been feeling when I spent more time inside and looking at screens. Okay. And my sixth and final side effect of deleting my social media apps is a really interesting one. So I am a creative person and I think I've channeled a lot of my creativity into making things. I enjoy making reels, making blogs, doing voiceover, you know, posting something funny and thought provoking on threads. Like, I do have that desire to create. And that desire to create can come out in other ways. A lot of times it's in like fashion and dressing and putting myself together. But like postpartum, you're not dressing to go anywhere, you're not doing makeup. You don't have like creative outlets. So I found myself still having this like, creativity and this desire to create, not just to consume. And do you know how that came out for me? It's like the most unexpected side effects of this whole thing. It came out for me in the kitchen. I found myself cooking more than I had ever cooked before, Baking new things, going and looking up recipes, buying actual, like, cookbooks and trying things from cookbooks, just experimenting. I mean, I would spend the day thinking about, okay, what am I going to make for dinner tonight? What's going to be the dessert tonight? I never even really went out of my way to make dessert, but I found myself wanting to channel my creative energy into something and that just somehow manifested into cooking. I discovered so many new recipes. I had so much fun in the kitchen. And again, this is like during nap times. Like, I didn't necessarily always have a lot of time to cook, but it felt really good to create something that I could experience and feel. And sure, it wasn't like a reel that may reach, you know, tens of thousands of people and make them laugh or teach them something new, but it was something that my family could enjoy and that just like felt so real to me. So for creators that are listening to this, if you take this on and you take some time away from social media, it'll be really interesting to see where that creativity goes. Because I found that when you are not posting, when you are not actively creating things, that desire is still there. And who know and who knows and who knows where it will manifest for you. I also started doing flower arrangements. Like, I found myself still wanting to create things even though I wasn't online. So that was a really beautiful upside of this whole experience. I hope it was helpful to hear these six takeaways about how this time away from social media Completely, completely transformed me. Honestly, it was incredibly restorative and I will be doing this again. I will have to be very selective about the times when I take this time off, but I have found it to be so rejuvenating and I'm so curious for listeners. If you try this, if you like, take a social media break, please DM me, let me know how it goes. For me, I had to go cold turkey. I had to delete the apps. Just trying to limit. And no, now I'm back on the apps with time limits, which honestly works for me. We're in a happy medium now. But I can't end without acknowledging the good of social media and what social media can be used for, because it's not all bad right now. I originally planned to stay offline through the end of January, but why didn't I? The fires in LA happened. A completely harrowing experience, frightening beyond words. So many people lost absolutely everything. We had to evacuate. And I remember looking at our home, all of our belongings, and thinking, this might not be here when we come back. Thankfully, we were able to return safely, but so many people did not have that experience. So many people lost absolutely everything. It was a devastating experience. And during those days of the fire, my phone was nonstop. People I hadn't spoken to in years, basically everyone I had ever met was reaching out, texting, calling, asking me, are you okay? Are you safe? Is your family safe? And if you weren't in la, I think it was hard to even know which areas were affected. So I think people were just like, okay, I know Brooke lives somewhere in la. Let me reach out. So I had people checking in from all over the world. You know, Umut's family in Turkey, everyone's concerned. It was overwhelming. And I asked myself, how do I let everyone know at scale that we're safe? And one of the only ways to do that is really social media, right? So I redownloaded Instagram and I posted. I said, thank you for your concern or safe. But then once I was back online, it became about more than just just updating people, it was about helping, connecting people to resources, sharing where to donate supplies, amplifying GoFundMes. There's a listener of the Naked Beauty community shout out to Austin. Incredible spirit. Incredible Woman. It's been great just chatting with her, but, you know, talking to people that had gone through this and understanding what I could do to help community care is so real and it's so needed. And that's when social media is, is really at its best, when it brings us together to take care of each other. And then shortly after. Do you know when I downloaded TikTok again? The end of January. I'm sure you all remember the TikTok ban, the dramatic announcement that TikTok was going away forever. And I thought, okay, in these final moments, like the Titanic going down, let me redownload the app and have one last Kiki. TikTok has been a staple in my social media diet since 2020. The joy, the antics, the takes, it's honestly enriched my life. Is it a time waster? Yes. But has it also brought me a lot of laughter? Absolutely. So I redownloaded it and surprise, it didn't get banned. But you know what I did get to experience. And this is the other thing. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know what you're missing out on. And I think about Onijah Robinson, the American woman in Pakistan. Insert audio here. I'm not talking unless y'all giving me land and 2,000 or more every week. You hear me? Yeah, I'm getting my Pakistani pack. Not only were there the videos of this woman, this new, undoubtedly New York woman in Pakistan just flew over there and like took over the country and became a main character in a week. There were the remixes, there were the people in Pakistan giving the behind the scenes takes about what was happening. Did I get sucked into all of this? I absolutely did and I have no regrets. Do I greet my friends with Shabana? Yes, I do. You know, it's like these are the things that there's just. You can't, you can't explain it. Now. Everyone who's not on social media listening to this, they're like, who's Onijah? Who's this woman in Pakistan? Like, what are you talking about? This did not hit the mainstream news, but these are the little things and micro moments that happen that are just like kind of fun and culturally interesting. TikTok and Instagram are both back in my life and I'm approaching them very differently now. I've gotten really clear on my intention and for me it really comes down to community building. How do I help people, Whether it's sharing skincare advice, fun things to do in la, or just being a resource. But I also realize that it's important for me to model what it looks like to be a working mom with a family. I think about now being a mother of two and having a baby and getting back into work, like, it's hard. It's a lot. And I want to show some of that struggle. I want to show how I've been able to figure it out. I want to have that representation for people. A lot of content about motherhood is really negative. The newborn phase I've seen online, like, people call it the trenches. I mean, literally, like the trenches of war. It's hard, absolutely. But it can also be beautiful. I wouldn't describe it as the trenches. So how can I use my platform to show the beautiful, fun side of it as well? Showing up as your full self, not losing yourself in motherhood, is a topic I'm really interested in and something I want to have more representation around, both for myself and for other moms. So this break was truly restorative. It gave me clarity on how I want to engage with social media and more importantly, how much space I want it to take up in my life. It reminded me of what actually restores me and what I actually enjoy. Like, what does fun look like for me if I have a day to myself, how do I want to spend it? How do I keep my priorities clear and moving forward? That's the energy I'm bringing with me when I sign onto these apps. Thank you all so much for listening. I hope this episode gave you new perspective on the way that you choose to engage or not engage with social media. This was really fun for me to record. I'm so excited to be back to interviewing people. I'll be doing more solo episodes. I'm introducing an Ask Brooke column where you can ask me questions. If you have a question you want to ask me and I'll answer it on the show, please email naked beauty podcastmail.com and make the subject line Ask Brooke. You can ask me any beauty question, wellness question, self care question. Oh, I At the top of the show, I shared the very exciting news that the podcast was nominated for best beauty Podcast. But I didn't share the exciting news about the Naked Beauty fragrance. Naked Beauty is now in Credo nationwide. Credo has three stores in New York, Williamsburg, Upper East Side, SoHo. They're in Texas, they're in D.C. they're in Chicago, they're in Seattle, they're in San Francisco. They've got three stores here in la. There are stores in Boston as well, but you can now go into any credo store and smell Naked Beauty and experience Naked Beauty. And I haven't made this public yet but but by the time the episode, this episode comes out, I think it will be public. Or maybe this is going to be an exclusive. But Naked Beauty is also going to be at Anthropologie. So that's that's pretty big. That's pretty big. I have so many memories of walking into anthropology and just seeing it as this mystical, magical place. So the fact that my fragrance is going to be there is incredible. And if you don't want to go into store and you're just trusting my taste and you hear the notes, you hear about the neroli, the green tea and you think this is a fragrance that I would really love, order it. I'll put the link to order it here in the show notes. Everyone who is wearing Naked Beauty every day, tagging me, telling me how it has improved their day to day. It honestly makes me so, so happy. It is truly a privilege and an honor to be part of people's self care routines, their beauty routine, part of what makes them feel good. So had to give that shout out to Naked Beauty. Thank you guys so much for listening and supporting me. I am so excited to be back. Subscribe to the podcast if you're not subscribed. 2025 is going to be Naked Beauty's best year yet. I'm just going to claim that now. All right, we'll talk next.