Ambient Eugenics

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Review of Mess — "Ambient Eugenics"

Hosts: Jessica DeFino and Emily Kirkpatrick
Date: August 29, 2025
Main Topic: A critical exploration of the undercurrents of eugenics in beauty and pop culture, centering on recent celebrity controversies, marketing tactics, and fashion/beauty industry trends.

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Episode Overview

Jessica and Emily dive into the idea of "ambient eugenics"—the often-unspoken but pervasive valorization of genetic “superiority” within pop culture, beauty marketing, and celebrity discourse. They dissect the controversial Sydney Sweeney x American Eagle campaign, rage-bait marketing trends, the complicated intersection of beauty sponsorships in the WNBA, Kim Kardashian's Face Shaper, and the latest pop culture messes. The tone is critical, sharp, and irreverent, with frequent asides and cultural history.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Updates & Community Projects (00:15–03:22)

• Jessica announces the debut of her newsletter, Flesh World, and teases the launch of the Lowbrow Book Club.
• The book club event (Sep 10, NYC) will include live readings of “unhinged” beauty/fashion essays; attendees receive gift bags with handmade face oils and exclusive merch.

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2. Skims Skull Shapewear & Kardashian Marketing (03:32–17:41)

• Kim Kardashian’s Skims “Face Shaper” seen as a medical-looking but ultimately useless garment (“a corset for the face that does literally nothing”—Emily, 04:23).
• Discussion of Kardashians’ medicalization of beauty and refusal to acknowledge true cosmetic interventions.
  • “It’s Kim selling her medical interventions back to us in the form of overpriced spandex.” —Emily, 05:03
  • The “beauty as labor/work” narrative vs. quick-fix cosmetic procedures (07:00–08:24).
• Critique of missed marketing opportunities: Kim not wearing the mask in public to generate controversy, and failing to cast Anthony Hopkins (“Anthony Hopkins... why is he not the face of the campaign?” —Emily, 09:32).
• Jessica relays her relief at Kim’s marketing missteps: “As a beauty culture critic who thinks this is, like, a horrible thing for us... I’m glad she’s not a great marketer.” (13:48)
• Parallel between Skims Face Shaper and Persian nose job culture—wearing bandages as a status marker.

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3. Beauty, Glamour, and the Grotesque: Old Hollywood Parallels (16:46–17:41)

• Emily references Sunset Boulevard’s portrayal of beauty rituals as a harbinger of today's normalization of “body horror” in beauty.
• Jessica notes: “The grotesque kind of always becomes glamorous over time.”

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4. New Celebrity Beauty Products: Alicia Keys and the Magic "Like Skin" Concealer (17:41–25:16)

• Alicia Keys' new concealer branded as “it’s like skin” triggers a discussion on transparency, beauty labor, and feminist contradictions.
• Jessica recounts her failed attempt to discuss Keys’ anti-makeup era in a 2021 Allure interview, revealing how celebrity PR blocks any scrutiny or narrative evolution.
• Critique of publications’ tolerance for PR stonewalling: “Why are we interviewing this person at all if they refuse to cooperate?” —Emily, 24:17

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5. Anna Delvey and Bunnygate: The Monetized Micro-Scandal (25:48–38:31)

• Emily narrates the viral “Bunnygate” scandal: abandoned bunnies in a Delvey photoshoot, Delvey’s defensive legal threats, and eventual merch sales.
• “She’s living up to the scammer origin story because she has... figured out how to monetize this whole Bunnygate thing to her advantage.” —Emily, 26:37
• Delvey’s symbolic “Bungazi” T-shirts: only 20% of proceeds (to an unnamed nonprofit), and a Change.org petition to outlaw pet abandonment (which is already illegal). The episode lampoons this as performative, ineffective activism.
• Notable: “She then sent her a string of hieroglyphics.” —Jessica, 28:43

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6. Beauty Sponsorship and Feminine Optimization in the WNBA (39:03–48:56)

• Jessica lists a surge in beauty sponsors for the WNBA, including Maybelline, Fenty, Glossier, and… Vagisil.
• Hosts discuss the double-edged sword: necessary funding vs. reinforcement of “feminine duty” even in athletic excellence.
  • “No woman, no matter her achievements, is exempt from her feminine duty to perform beauty.” —Jessica
• Critique of the gender binary: Why don't men’s teams get beauty sponsors? “Why aren’t they working with the Knicks?”
• Beauty as compensatory femininity for women excelling in “masculine” spaces.

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7. Stretch Armstrong: Fashion’s Grotesque, Unwearable Maximalism (49:23–56:51)

• Emily introduces the “Stretch Armstrong” fashion trend: exaggerated proportions, unwearable pieces (giant jeans, elongated shoes, etc.).
• She frames this as both a restriction and assertion of (female) physical space in an Ozempic-shrinking era: “Fashion is maximizing our bodies while we’re told everywhere else to minimize ourselves.”
• Jessica comments on the irony: “Some of the giant garments are on very tiny and getting tinier bodies... responding to both things at once.”

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8. “Ambient Eugenics:” The Sydney Sweeney x American Eagle Controversy (56:51–90:12)

• Full deconstruction of the ad’s wordplay on “genes/genetics,” its allusion to the infamous Calvin Klein/Brooke Shields campaign, and the not-so-subtle evocation of white supremacist aesthetics.
  • “Anytime we’re talking about a blonde-haired, blue-eyed person’s genes, we’ve already strayed too far.” —Emily, 58:09
• Explicit references to recent right-wing appropriation of Sweeney’s image as “good genes.”
• Context: climate of mainstream eugenic rhetoric (Trump’s “low IQ” jabs, anti-immigrant statements, Gaza genocide).
• Marketing opportunism: “American Eagle looked at our current political climate and they thought we could absolutely get away with a white supremacist dog whistle.” —Emily, 63:54
• Jessica links mainstream beauty standards (blonde hair, blue eyes, small noses, “facial harmonization,” undetectable surgery) to deep roots of eugenics.
• “Sunday Riley Good Genes” and Gwyneth Paltrow’s “Goop Genes”—everyday reminders of the ideology.
  • “The joke [in the ad] only works because of the ambient eugenics that are already in the air.” —Jessica, 72:44–73:54
• Rage-bait works: American Eagle’s sales bump, and similar trends (Skims Face Shaper, Matt Rife/ELF).
• Marketing’s “labor-saving device”: Brands exploit outrage rather than invest creative effort (“The labor that the rage bait gimmick is saving is the labor of making a good campaign.” —Jessica, 85:47).
• The Kardashians, Goop, and Gwyneth Paltrow as case studies in profitable controversy.
• Final call: Channel outrage about explicit eugenics ads into confronting the deeper, subtler structures of beauty and race in everyday culture (“Channel it toward the less noticeable ways eugenics and white supremacy shape our day to day lives.” —Jessica, 74:09).

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9. Mess of the Month Segment (90:18–98:27)

• Emily’s Mess: “The Summer I Turned Pretty”—addictive, rage-baiting “teen romance slop” about beauty and sexual awakening (“Hotness ruins lives.” —Jessica, 92:25).
• Jessica’s Mess: Botched restoration of a Virgin Mary statue in Seville. The Macarena received a “modern glow-up” with longer lashes and a smoky gaze (“Not even our religious icons are safe from beauty as a moral imperative.” —Jessica, 97:53).
• Both messes underscore how beauty, spectacle, and standards invade every level of culture.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Kardashian’s Face Shaper: “It is a corset for the face that does literally nothing.” —Emily (04:23)
• On Beauty Labor: “She has leaned into this idea of beauty labor being work.” —Jessica (06:52)
• On Rage-Bait Marketing: “The labor that the rage bait gimmick is saving is the labor of making a good campaign.” —Jessica (85:47)
• On American Eagle Ad: “Anytime we’re talking about a blonde-haired, blue-eyed person’s genes, we’ve already strayed too far.” —Emily (58:09)
• On Sweeney’s Ambivalence: “She’s using the vagary to her advantage.” —Emily (67:10)
• On the Overlap of Eugenics and Beauty: “Eugenics really is kind of the basis of beauty culture and the beauty industry.” —Jessica (69:52)
• On Everyday Eugenics: “Sunday Riley Good Genes, Goop Genes—these are everyday reminders of the ideology.” —Jessica (72:44)
• On Fashion Maximalism: “Fashion is maximizing our bodies while we’re told everywhere else to minimize ourselves.” —Emily (55:41)
• On Bunnygate: “She then sent her a string of hieroglyphics.” —Jessica (28:43)
• On Madonna Restoration: “Not even our religious icons are safe from beauty as a moral imperative.” —Jessica (97:53)

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Important Timestamps

• 03:32 – Skims Face Shaper & beauty labor
• 17:41 – Alicia Keys skincare and “It’s Like Skin”
• 25:48 – Bunnygate breakdown (Anna Delvey)
• 39:03 – WNBA beauty sponsorships and gender binary
• 49:23 – “Stretch Armstrong” fashion trend
• 56:51 – “Ambient Eugenics” and American Eagle/Sydney Sweeney ad
• 90:18 – Mess of the Month: The Summer I Turned Pretty, Macarena makeover

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Conclusion

This episode dissects the deep, everyday integration of eugenics thinking in pop culture—from the overt dog whistles in beauty advertising to the performative activism of celebrity scammers, and the subtle but persistent valorization of white, Western beauty ideals. Through humor, cultural criticism, and sharp personal anecdotes, Jessica and Emily connect the dots between reality TV, beauty marketing, sports, history, and everyday life. Their call to listeners: scrutinize not just the loud controversies, but the ordinary, “ambient” ways beauty standards reproduce oppressive ideologies.

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For more: Visit jessicadefino.substack.com

(All ads, generic intros/outros, and non-content banter have been excluded.)

Transcript

[Jessica Defino]

Hello and welcome to the Review of Mess, a podcast dedicated to discussing the highs and lows of pop culture every month. I'm Jessica Defino and I write the newsletter Flesh World.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Woo. I'm Emily Kirkpatrick. I write I heart Mess, which is on all platforms on the Internet, I guess. Flesh World. I'm so excited for Flesh World.

[Jessica Defino]

I'm so excited for Flesh World. It's been such a long time coming and we have to celebrate. Flesh World is not the only exciting new thing happening in our world right now. We're also about to launch officially the Lowbrow Book Club. And we're having a party if you're in New York.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, yeah. And by the time this comes out, I guess Flesh World will be officially debuted. So check out Jess newsletter and check out the beautiful logo and imagery that goes along with that. And then, yeah, Lowbrow Book Club will also be officially launched. We'll have debuted the book that we're going to be talking about next month, which I finished reading and it's great, isn't it? So good. It's so good. And I'm really excited to hear what other people have to say about it and get really dig into it. Yeah. And then we're throwing a party on September 10, and I hope to see you there. It's really just. The whole party is genuinely just an excuse for me to read Karl Lagerfeld's diary aloud.

[Jessica Defino]

I know the readings are gonna be fun.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I have warped this event to my purposes and my ends.

[Jessica Defino]

I love it. I can't wait to hear you read.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Thank you.

[Jessica Defino]

I can't wait to read my own Unhinged beauty piece.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I know. I can't wait to hear everyone's. Yeah. So everyone. I guess we didn't even say this. We're gonna have some very special guests and each guest is going to be reading kind of their favorite, most unhinged fashion or beauty essay or blog post from whenever. Whenever they feel struck them. This is a blog post from Harper's Bazaar that I personally have been obsessed with since it came out. And it's.

[Jessica Defino]

I remember reading it when it came out.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Oh, man. I genuinely. I feel jealousy over other people's writings very, very rarely. And I've never felt more jealous of a piece of WR. Karl Lagerfeld's Diary because it's brilliant highbrow satire and it's completely real. There's nothing funny about it. And it's the funniest piece of writing I've ever read.

[Jessica Defino]

It's incredible.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's What I aspire. It's what I aspire to do in my own work.

[Jessica Defino]

So, yeah, we'll be doing those readings, we'll be celebrating, and I'm just gonna throw it out here as a little teaser. There will be gift bags.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Oh, yeah, I totally forgot about the gift bags.

[Jessica Defino]

Little known fact, I don't talk about it very much, but years ago, in between my stint at the Kardashian apps and pre newsletter, I, you know, I tried to start a skincare company. I made my own face oils, and they were actually very good face oils. I believe I still make them for my brother and sisters. They, like, demand. They demand that I make them small batches of these oils because they are so good. But, you know, I saw the light. I was like, no, consumerism is not for me. I'm not gonna be making more products.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

You're not gonna be a girl boss.

[Jessica Defino]

But, you know, some. Some. Some face oil, some freshly made face oils, handmade by me, more hand mixed by me, will be in these gift bags as a little throwback.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I'm very excited. There's also gonna be some incredible merch that we've been working on, some incredible T shirts and such, and, yeah, I really can't wait. I think it's gonna be so much fun.

[Jessica Defino]

Me too. Maybe we should. Maybe we should have reached out to skims to see if we could get, you know, lowbrow book club embroidered on one of these face shapers.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Wow, that would be gorgeous. I would love some custom skull shapewear. Which brings me to my first topic of today, the skim skull shapewear. Very exciting. I personally feel that it is a birthday gift to me as it launched the day after my birthday.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes. Yeah. To both of us. Really?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

That's true.

[Jessica Defino]

It is mine as well.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It is to both of us. Yeah. This is a birthday gift for both of us directly from Kim Kardashian. She is selling skim sculpt face wraps. You've surely all seen them by now. They look like an ace bandage has been wrapped around your head. It's very old timey toothache core.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes. I would say it's like post op without the op. Post op. It's a corset for the face.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It is a corset for the face that does literally nothing. It has no benefits. It changes nothing. They suggest you sleep in them. It just seems to me, it seems morning shed inspired.

[Jessica Defino]

It's very morning shed adjacent.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

But, yeah, it literally does nothing. And, yeah, it feels, you know, it's in the vein of the Conversation we were having, I think last month about Kylie being the ultimate feminist and letting us know exactly her breast augmentation details from the breast augmentation she got a decade ago in that, as I said then, it's Kim selling her medical interventions back to us in the form of overpriced spandex. You know, it is a facelift, but one that doesn't actually do anything. You know, it's. It's the concept of a facelift being sold to you. And I don't know, I just think it's funny to me because I do think she's not totally wrong in this, in this vein of marketing. You know what I mean? Like, there is something. If she actually went into medical grade garments and medical grade accessories, I do think she's onto something there. Like, that does kind of fit within the, in the realm of skims and within the realms of the Kardashians. Right. And yet she is just, again, it's the concept, it's the facsimile of a medical garment without actually providing any of the aid of it. And I just think, why not? I guess why not is because it would require her to actually be forthcoming about her own real medical interventions and like, why one would use such.

[Jessica Defino]

Which feels like it's on the way. Like, honestly, I do feel, I don't know, it must be maybe not soon.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I don't know. I don't. I genuinely don't know. Cause when now is the time, you know what I mean? Like, I agree. Like, it seems like it's forthcoming because it's forthcoming with all of her mom, her sisters are all doing, you know, like, they're all starting to like slowly lift the veil again, in my opinion, radically too late for it to be relevant or interesting or like to save the brand that is their family. But like, what, what is the hesitancy? Like, what is she waiting for? Like a documentary? Like a tell all book? Like, I genuinely don't know.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

What would be the strategy there? Because to me, why not use it to sell. Why not use it to sell your own products the same way you've always done, you know?

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, this is a good point. I, I really don't know. I think maybe some of the hesitancy is like she has really leaned into this idea of work, like beauty labor being work. And I would say that's like kind of a fairly new position that she's taken. Like maybe 2022, I would say she leaned in. Or 2021, she leaned into this. Like, this is work when she like, launched Skin by Kim, it was all like, these are the lasers I use. This is the time. I know. This is the time that I commit. Like, I wake up every day and I do X, Y and Z to my skin. And she really denied any sort of cosmetic work because she was like, I think she has this idea in her head that that's not work. And the way that she gets her self worth is through work or the perception of labor. You know, a quick fix. Yeah. I mean, it's like Protestant prosperity gospel, you know, American dream stuff. Like, you have to work hard. And I think that's like the locus of her self worth is work. And she wants people to think that she's like, putting in this time.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Totally. It reminds just even you saying, like around 20, 21, I'm thinking about how she would post the workout clips and she'd put the timestamp on it and it would be like 5am and she's like sprinting on a treadmill or something. And. Right. It is like this idea of like, look at the work I'm putting into my body. Like, look at the labor it takes to create this physique. Even though this physique has also been additionally altered.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

You know, allegedly.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. I think she probably just still has some personal shit to work through. Regarding.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Well, regarding a lot of things. Yeah, no joke.

[Jessica Defino]

But, yeah, the.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Her.

[Jessica Defino]

Her worth as a. As a person, as a figure, as an icon, if it's. If everyone knows it's, you know, a construct that she didn't do by sheer force of will.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. I think that's a very interesting framework to look at it through. And then also, I just wanted to note about the skull shapewear is. I just don't understand why she continues to be so bad at marketing.

[Jessica Defino]

She really is.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I guess it's kind of my primary. There's just all the ideas are like, right there. You know what I mean? Like, all of the brilliant concepts to sell such a stupid thing are to me always maybe, you know, I don't know. They always just seem like so right on the surface. And she misses them every time. You know, even launching this product, then having Anthony Hopkins react to it as like wearing a joke of it, you know, and saying like, oh, it's a Hannibal Lecter thing. Like, why is he not the face of the campaign for it?

[Jessica Defino]

Right.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

You know, you love a star, you love all these celebrities and, you know, being stunt cast in Skim's campaign. Why is Anthony Hopkinson on the face of it? That's Funny.

[Jessica Defino]

That really would have been something. And I do think that this, like, the use of Anthony Hopkins was, like, pretty interesting. Well, first of all, I couldn't confirm on the Internet that he was, like, hired.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I don't think he was. I don't think he was.

[Jessica Defino]

But I'm like, how could he get it so quickly?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, that's true. Maybe.

[Jessica Defino]

And, like, also, the caption was like, thanks, IMs.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I know that was in the caption.

[Jessica Defino]

I feel like this was a gift. But, yeah, why not be in the face of the campaign? Because, honestly, I really do think that the Anthony Hopkins thing is effective. Like, at the very least, she reposted it. But I think what's interesting here is just, like, the bold face embrace of the fact that beauty is horror and that the work that we're doing on our bodies is sort of like. Is a body horror movie is like, David Cronenberg, cosmetic industry. And I think by acknowledging that, like, Head on, it takes, like, the sting out of any criticism that is like, oh, this is so dystopian. It's like, no, we know. And that's the point.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Right? Like, I don't. Like, there's a camp to it that she never quite realizes how to embrace. And I'm like, why not? Like, when you embrace the camp element of what you do, it's like, it makes you seem savvier and more like, oh, I'm in on the joke. Like, I'm giving you a little cheeky wink, you know, and she just will never. I don't know, she can never quite figure out how to land it correctly, and it's always very confusing to me.

[Jessica Defino]

I don't think she's in on the joke, though. Like, I just.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

But surely you can hire someone. My thing with them is always like, you're a billionaire. You can't hire one person with a good sense of humor.

[Jessica Defino]

Well, as someone who has been micromanaged to hell by the Kardashian sisters.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Well, you would know. Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

I don't. I don't really have great faith in their ability to, like, hire great people and then allow them to do their jobs.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. Well, me, as someone who's witnessed them from afar for most of my career, I don't really either, but I just. It's always baffling to me, it's the same, you know, I think this with all billionaire celebrities, but it's like, you know, Taylor Swift style. I'm like, you could hire the best people in the world. You could do a really gorgeous rebrand. But you don't want to? No, it's the same with them. Yeah, I get that. And then also, I mean, readers of my newsletter know I've been complaining about. I don't understand why Kim isn't the model. I don't understand why Kim isn't the face of this brand either. And why she didn't. Why she didn't rage bait us by wearing this out in public as though it was normal before the release of the face sculptor. Because I think that would have been really controversial. I think she would have got a lot of headlines like, oh, Kim just left. Like, she could have left. Who's that doctor she's always photographed leaving?

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. Left a surgeon's office.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes. Wearing it and people. And it would have been this whole thing like, oh, my God, she finally cops the plastic surgery, blah, blah, blah, you're a genius. She would have gone viral. It would have been everywhere. She could have the memes that would have been created out of this. Like, it's just free pr. And I don't get it. Except that she doesn't want to look bad. And I think that's proved by the fact that she did the following maybe a week or two weeks after I said that. She did follow my advice, and she did finally wear this face sculptor. But she did it. She did it in the most glam, stupid way possible. She took all these photos on her private jet on her way to South Korea with. With Chloe and her friend Lala Anthony. And they're all wearing them, and Kim is wearing, like, a bold red lip and a big fur coat and sunglasses inside the airplane with this face trainer thing. And I'm just like, you've once again kind of like, missed the point of what would make a photograph like this fun. And also, what is the point of having staged paparazzi photo shoots if not for something like, you know what I mean? Like, she would look, you know, not perfect, but she would certainly be in control of the images that came out from the paparazzi version of this. And I don't know, it just doesn't hit as hard when she's posting these selfies of her in it in, like, an ugly fur coat and a red lip. I don't know. It's not quite the same.

[Jessica Defino]

No, I will say from my, like, vantage point of a beauty culture critic who thinks this is, like, a horrible thing for us in our future and ideas of beauty. Like, I'm. I'm glad she's not a great marketer. It doesn't make sense. Me mad it makes me, you know, feel gratitude for all of the missed opportunities, for sure. To make this more of a thing. I think the other thing that this reminded me of, and I did an interview with the New York Times the day that this launched and not all my stuff made it to the article. So maybe I'll like post the longer interview somewhere. But it really makes me think of like Persian nose job culture where like getting a nose job is such a status symbol and like a display of welfare that people will often like bandage up their faces even if they haven't had surgery and walk around like that to look as if they have gotten the surgery paid for the surgery. Like the bandages themselves are kind of a status symbol. So this feels very much that.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

To me.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, that's very interesting. I was just gonna say that something random that I've been thinking about this this week is I. I was. I'm visiting my parents right now. So I've been watching television, which I never do, and we were watching a news segment about how it's the 75th anniversary of Sunset Boulevard, which is one of my favorite movies. And they were just talking about. So in Sunset Boulevard, it stars Gloria Swanson, who at the time, well, before this movie came out, she was once considered the most famous woman on planet Earth. She was a big star of silent films and like started to make the transition to talkies. But like her first talkie, like wildly flopped and then she kind of faded out of the public imagination. Which is amazing because that's exactly the story of her character, Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. Like that. She is one to one kind of playing her own experience of transitioning from silent film to talkies and also aging as an actress in Hollywood. And they were saying then Sunset Boulevard, the part was offered to a lot of actresses before her. And they wouldn't take it because they knew it would make them, like, they'd have to look ugly basically and they would have to look bad. And it would cast them in this kind of desperate, aging light. And a lot of the film shows Gloria Swanson kind of undergoing all these kind of extreme beauty treatments and procedures. And they were saying that that was the first time stuff like that was shown on film because that really was abnormal. Like people really didn't do anti aging stuff like that or were like that concerned with that type of beauty product. And I thought that was super interesting. And I don't know, it really made me think of Kim.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, I need to rewatch. I mean, I've seen Sunset Boulevard, but.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It'S a wonderful film. Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

With that in mind, I need to rewatch.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I know that cast in a new light for me. I thought that was very interesting.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. I mean, the grotesque kind of always becomes glamorous over time, so it is odd that, like, Kim is still so afraid to be seen like that when I think it's, like, very fairly normal now.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And I also think it would be a way for Kim. Kim has built so much of her career on shock nudity, which is not available to her anymore. And she also won't do anymore because of being a mother and transitioning into a new phase of her life. And she also just can't keep up with a Bianca Sensori, who's going to show her whole labia on a red carpet. So I do think moving from the realm of nudity into the realm of the grotesque could be, like, a really powerful way to reinvigorate that kind of shock factor that drives so much of her fame. And, Yeah, I don't. And especially considering, like, the fully controlled, glamorous front that the family's given us for the last decade, moving into kind of a. Embracing the gross body horror behind all of that, I think could be really powerful again.

[Jessica Defino]

You're a genius. You are a marketing genius.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Kardashians. Just pay me.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh. The only other thing I wanted to add about the Skims Face Shaper that I thought of when I saw it and I immediately thought of you was, like, the aesthetic is so Yeezy. Don't you think?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, totally. Totally. Very much Yeezy. Season one, which is very Margiela.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

You know, because that's where Kanye lifted all of his ideas from, was very much Margiela. And this one Marc Jacobs collection that I'm not going to be able to name the season offhand, but it's the one that Kendall walked in for the first time ever that was, like, as inspired by Magritte. It's very. That. It's extremely that. And it is funny to see how she's still kind of cycling around on those same easy concepts. You know, Balenciaga is also the thing she wears from Balenciaga. Those are easy. It's kind of. It's funny. Not funny. The lack of evolution.

[Jessica Defino]

Here's a star that has evolved quite a bit and perhaps not the best way.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Great.

[Jessica Defino]

I need to talk about the new Alicia Keys product from her brand, Keys Soul Care.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's just still crazy to me that she has products. And after. After all the headlines, after all the coverage I had to write as a young upstart at People magazine about her pushback against makeup and skincare and all of that. It is really amazing to me. I'm sorry.

[Jessica Defino]

I know. No, no, I feel the same way. So she's released a new concealer and tinted, like a. Like a tinted foundation sort of thing called it's like skin. The name of the product is it's like skin Perfect.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Nailed it.

[Jessica Defino]

And this name just, like, drives me crazy. Like, it, obviously it suggests that skin should look like skin, but also that your skin is not.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. It needs intervention to look like itself, as is.

[Jessica Defino]

Like. Like skin is the new skin. And then the product copy obviously, like, goes on to tell you exactly how your skin should look like skin, but not skin. So it's about the product. You know, quote, brightens and blurs. It's a spot concealer for targeted coverage. It provides light to medium coverage with a radiant finish. So this is all like, what, like, skin is as opposed to skin. And, like, I don't. I mean, it's not particularly new, of course. Like, this is the same no makeup makeup ethos. Yeah. Behind no Makeup makeup era, the five minute face, or like, the clean girl look. And I think it's part of this, like, you know, very long history of makeup that's meant to, like, one, disappear your flaws, so called flaws, and then two, disappear into you. So it looks as if it's nothing. And this kind of thing always makes me think of this great quote from the writer Susie Orbach, who wrote this book or wrote the forward to the book Aesthetic Rethinking Beauty Politics and Neoliberalism. And she says the making of modern femininity is marked by a concealment of the work of body making. The labor of making one's effort invisible is so integrated into the take up of femininity that we may be ignorant of the processes we engage in. We are encouraged to translate the work of doing so into the categories of fun and being healthy and looking after ourselves. And yeah, I mean, this, like, it's like skin product copy just plays right into that. Like, literally the first line of the product copy is, it's not makeup. It's owning your power. Oh, wait, no, no, no, no. It's. The line is own your power with this flexible spot concealer. So it's like, yeah, this is not about covering your acne. This is not about, like, covering your scars. This is about owning your power. And that's like just such classic concealment of the work of body making. And it's so depressing to me. Even though this is such a banal message at this point in the beauty industry, but just, like, because of who it's coming from. Like, she had. I think it was 2016. Alicia Keys wrote that big piece for Lenny Letter for Lena Dunham's newsletter at the time, Right?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

And it was just like, I'm not wearing makeup anymore. I tried to look up some quotes from it. She. She said, like, I don't want to cover up anymore. Not my face, not my mind, not my soul, blah, blah, blah. And just, like, came out really hard against the beauty industry and, like, rightfully categorized it as this sort of access of oppression for women. And then when she launched Keys Soul Care Skincare, she just, like, never grappled with that. Like, I think it's fine for people to change their minds. I think there's totally room for you to be, like, against the beauty industry and not wanting to cover up and still wanting to, like, wear a bright lipstick sometimes. Like, these things can exist.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

But she never.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

She never spoke about that period again.

[Jessica Defino]

As far as I know, grappled with how they coexist. For her. What's different? Um, and I'm like, I'm trying to remember. Did I ever talk on the pod about the time I interviewed her for the COVID of Allure about the launch of Key Soul Care?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

No, I don't think so.

[Jessica Defino]

It was a phone interview. This must have been, like, 20, 21 maybe. And she was launching Key Soul Care, and Allure asked if I would interview her. And I was so excited. And I had, like, prepared all these, like, thoughtful questions. Like, I was excited for the opportunity, so I didn't want to come out hard against her, but I did want that to be the crux of my piece. Like, how do you go from this, like, kind of culture shifting Lenny Letter and being this celebrity who is just, like, very publicly not wearing makeup on tv, on the red carpet. And then what was the evolution to deciding to launch Skincare?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I assume that's the question all readers would also have, you know, going into that story that they would want answered by the piece.

[Jessica Defino]

And so I get on the phone with her, and her publicist is also on the call. And I kind of, like, start laying out the story and the angle and the questions that I want to get into. And her publicist, like, stops me, and she was like, no, Alicia will not be talking about this. Like, let's move on to something else. And I was just kind of, like, stunned and stumbling over my words for, like, minutes, because I was like, I don't. What is the story if not that I don't care necessarily about your skincare products, but, like, it seems like there's something deeper here and I would like to talk about that. But it was just like, no, it was not allowed. She, like, refused or her publicist refused on her behalf to like, talk about it at all or give me any thoughtful answers on how she had made this big switch. And ever since then, I think I've been like, very critical of Key's Soul Care marketing.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

This is also the story of why all celebrity profiles are bad and the death of the magazine in a nutshell. Because my thing also coming up in this industry and having to do similar type of puff piece interviews where I got pushback from the public about asking, in my opinion, pretty, you know, relevant and benign questions of their clients is like, why is my, like, why is the media corporation behind me? Not pushing back equally was kind of my question, like, why are we interviewing this person at all if they refuse to cooperate with us and refuse to produce a story that's like, works for both sides and is like, I just don't get it, you know, and it's like, we can't just kiss ass all the time. Like, nobody wants to read that. That's not interesting.

[Jessica Defino]

No. And, you know, it's of course connected to the death of the magazine. Like, of course there's nothing good to read anymore. Everything I read is like a regurgitation of an Instagram caption or like a publicist approved message. And it's so boring.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Totally. And maybe it's just like my professional eye now, but I can see in pieces like, where the publicist pushback was. You know what I mean? Like, I can see where the writer was trying to walk up to the line and where they got rebuffed. You know, we'll talk about it in a second. But I mean, the Sydney Sweeney, Wall Street Journal profile. Like, I can. I love Ally Jones, but I can tell, like, where she tried to push back on her and where she got pushed back from the publicist, for sure.

[Jessica Defino]

Completely.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And that's so frustrating. I think probably for Ally and for the reader.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, completely. You want to talk about Anna Delvey?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I mean, I don't want to talk about Anna Delvey, but I am about to talk about Anna Delvey because I've just been really taken in by the Bunnygate scandal and it's such a convoluted tale that really is just needlessly silly. And mostly now I want to talk about. Because I Just think that Delvey, I mean, of course she's really living up to the scammer origin story because she has, in a classical scammer way, figured out how to monetize this whole Bunnygate thing to her advantage. But it just struck me. It's such a Trumpian. It's such a Trumpian attitude. It's such a Trumpian approach. And I just think that the, the rage baiting she's doing is, like, not charming. It's not insouciant. I don't know. I think it's like, pretty gross.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

But of course, like, there will be no repercussion because if you just refuse to apologize.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, like, what would even a repercussion be, right?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I don't know. I don't know. I genuinely don't know. It's just such a crazy, stupid situation. I just thought I would explain it to people. If anyone cares, please do. Basically, Bunnygate started a couple of weeks ago when Anna Delvey posted a behind the scenes shot from a photo shoot she was doing where she was posing with two bunnies on hot pink leashes. Okay, whatever. Nobody cared. A week later, a vegan influencer named Terry Chow posted that she had found two pet bunnies. Ultimately, she had gone looking for one that had been posted about in a local Facebook group about a lost rabbit in the area of Prospect park, and she ended up finding two and rescuing them. And she posted about the experience on social media and was basically just saying, like, you know, don't dump your pets. And also that, like, you know, bunnies that are pets can't survive in the wild, which I think is common sense, but maybe not. In the aftermath of this, we we discover that, per the New York Times, Christian Batty, the hairstylist for the photo shoot with Anna Delvey, had reached out to Chow beforehand to scout available bunnies for this photo shoot. And Chow shared these screenshots on her Instagram platform. According to the screenshots to screenshots then shared by Chow, Delvey immediately started berating her friend who was fostering the bunnies in her DMs, telling her that you have 30 minutes to remove your Instagram stories or her attorneys would be contacting her employers at Pratt about her ongoing harassment. She also claimed that Christian had confirmed to her that the rabbits are safe and offered photographic evidence, which I'm very curious what that photographic evidence was given what we now know, which is they were not safe. They were not safe. They were the bunnies that they found in Prospect Park. Anyway, Delvey accused this woman of harassment and libel. And most interesting of all to me, she then sent her a string of hieroglyphics.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh my gosh. I saw this. I thought people were being like, this is an unintelligible sentence, but it was like literal hieroglyphics.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's quite literally hieroglyphics, a string of them. But they're sent as like a text message in DM and so I don't know.

[Jessica Defino]

Wingdings 3, 5.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Exactly. I'm obsessed with it because I need someone to translate this because I am, I am just. I feel deep in my soul that there's like a veiled threat within those hieroglyphics. And she wrote them in hieroglyphics so it could not be like screenshotted and shared because it is very Wings Dings coded.

[Jessica Defino]

I cannot believe no one has translated yet.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, if I could, I would do it. I don't know how. Maybe that's a project for me this week.

[Jessica Defino]

We need to get like people from the zodiac killer documentaries to like get on.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

We need to get the QAnon folks in on this. I feel like they could really make something out of it. Anyway, I'm obsessed with the hieroglyphics and what she's hiding in there and these like legal threats that are completely unfounded because it's not harassment or liable. Like it turns out all of this was completely accurate. So the hairstylist who I feel like it's also important to note that Christian, this hairstylist, is 19 years old. Oh yeah. So he. Apparently he's since deleted all of his social media accounts. He is no longer on the Internet. But before he did that, he wrote a post that was also re shared by Delvey that read, I need to be completely honest. I lied to you, Anna and the rest of the team about the rabbits. The truth is I did abandon them in the park. It was wrong, cruel and inexcusable and I take full responsibility for my actions. At 19, with no experience caring for animals, no pet friendly housing and no knowledge of available resources, I felt overwhelmed and made the worst possible choice. I'm relieved to hear that the rabbits are now safe, but I deeply regret the harm I caused. I also want to be clear that Anna and Jasper. Jasper's the photographer of the shoot.

[Jessica Defino]

Okay.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Had no knowledge of my actions until this afternoon. And I ask that any mention of them be removed from the situation. And I'm just wondering why is a 19 year old hairstylist being put in this situation to Begin with.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, I like. I mean, it's a horrible thing to do to abandon these bunnies, but I also feel like a sense of empathy for this young, overwhelmed stylist.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And maybe we shouldn't use animals in photo shoots as props, especially when we don't have wranglers on set. We don't have professional. Like, where would the bunny's owner. The bunny, if these are professional working animals, their owner, their handler would be on set handling them completely. What did no one think that it was weird all day that they had just been like, rented out these free bunnies to like, do with as they please and no one was there watching or monitoring them? It's like pretty standard practice. And I mean, I know, I know Anna knows that because she's been on photo shoots before. I know Jasper the photographer knows that because he's been on photo shoots before. It's just a very confusing situation to me. And it seems like they're all trying to get away with something. Anyway, in the aftermath of all this, you know, Delvey wrote her own post about how it's, you know, Christian's fault and she had no idea they did this. And she only met him briefly once at a fashion week years ago, and that he apparently obtained the bunnies via Facebook marketplace. And she added that she's appalled by what transpired, but made clear that she is the talent in the situation and so she is not to blame. And while she is not to blame in the aftermath, she has certainly capitalized off this entire situation in a kind of a crazy way. On. On August 17, she announced that she's selling merch featuring missing posters for the bunnies.

[Jessica Defino]

No.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. And what's most shocking about that to me is only 20% of the proceeds are going to a nonprofit. And she refused to specifically name the nonprofit. And I don't know why. Stop. She said 20% of the purchase price will be donated to a non profit that protects, educates and. Or advocates for the protection and care of animals. And. Or it sounds like. So you don't know. Yeah, it sounds like you didn't pick one yet and you don't know what exactly they do. So you're kind of hedging your bets about, oh, they do all this stuff for animals. They're really, really great nonprofit that you guys are definitely going to love. Once we actually donate the money to them, are we ever going to see the receipts of the donation of that money? Unclear. I would love if you could name a specific nonprofit. That would be a fantastic start. And why 20%? Why 20%? Why not a hundred percent? No, I think it's a very weird strategy.

[Jessica Defino]

That's so wild. And.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, I honestly think it gets worse. I think this caption gets worse. That's kind of the. That's the beginning of it. The rest of the caption reads, the scandal they couldn't stop talking about now on a shirt that demands what the law doesn't colon. Accountability for abandoned animals. And I'd just like to stop right there, because the law does, in fact, demand accountability. It very literally demands accountability for abandoned animals.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, my God.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Honestly, though, abandoning a pet is classified as animal abuse, which is a criminal offense. So the law quite literally does. Does require accountability.

[Jessica Defino]

There's something so sad about the parallel, though, of, like, this T shirt demands what the law doesn't. And just, like, how that kind of is the state of politics in America Totally. In 2025, since 2016. Really, it's just like, oh, put on a slogan T shirt.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Absolutely.

[Jessica Defino]

Put on your Dior, we should all be feminist T shirt. Because the law doesn't demand that women are equal. So your T shirt's like, oof.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes. But it also has some sort of, like, I don't. That is a hundred percent what it is. And it also has some sort of, like, pay for play like, undertones. Like, that's very trumpy to me. Like, oh, if you pay for this T shirt, maybe the laws will change to your advantage. Like, if you give me money, maybe we can. Maybe we can protect the animal. I'll look into it. You know, I'll look into a nonprofit that might be able to fix this for y'. All. I don't know. It's so wild to me. Anyway, this caption continues because it's still not done yet. She continues, provide the market and the demand that keeps the Benghazi pseudo story going.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, did she come up with punghazi herself?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I don't. I think so. I had never heard anyone on the Internet refer to this as Benghazi, but it's now politicized in a weird way because she named it that and also calling it a pseudo story, as though it isn't an. As though it isn't a genuinely concerning event. Like, it is like, whether. Cause she's. While she's doing this, she's trying to walk herself back out of it. As though, like, this does not involve me. So I get to make jokes about it. I get to make light about it, because I'm not the person who did it. But it's like, it's just because you're not the person who technically did it. You, you are still involved. And it's not a pseudo story. It's a real story. Like it is a real problem. And people do abandon their pets all the time. And that is a real problem. As I just said, it's a criminal offense. The law is active on the topic anyway, so the Benghazi pseudo story is still going perfect for anyone who's ever been wrongfully or rightfully accused, judged or misjudged, convicted or acquitted, or who aspires to be known for their well knownness. What is that not all so strange?

[Jessica Defino]

That's so strange.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Also, I don't, I can't, I can't draw the direct line. But I do know that Anna Delvey works very closely with Kelly Cattrone. And there's something about the Strat. Yes. And there's. Oh yeah, they, they've done a bunch of fashion shows together. She's always consulting. Kelly was very much in the mix of this scandal, like commenting, defending, you know, making Christian come forward. They released some text messages at one point where Kelly is in the group chat like telling Christian that he like needed to make a public statement and stuff. I think those were all, have all been since deleted. I don't know. I haven't seen the screenshots anywhere. But I saw them at the live at the time. It's all very strange. Anyway. And she concluded it all with stop abandoning domestic pets in parks. A great message. And then she said, and stop trying to pin it on me. And PS sign the change.org petition link in bio.

[Jessica Defino]

What is the problem solved for?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Do you know what that. I don't know. Let me just, let me take a little peek right now.

[Jessica Defino]

I need to know because it is as you said already illegal to abandon pets and park.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

So. Absolutely. Let's take a, let's take a peek. Change.org After Anna Delvey's bunny dumping make it illegal to abandon domestic pets.

[Jessica Defino]

What isn't it?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I mean, maybe not illegal, but is it criminal offense? Would you, can you use the word illegal for that?

[Jessica Defino]

I would.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Right? I would think so. It only has a thousand signatures, so that also it hasn't even met its goal.

[Jessica Defino]

I wonder how many people bought the T shirts though.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I'm also very curious how many people bought the T shirts. And I believe it's a limited run. So you really gotta get your, you gotta get your Bunnygate tees right right now.

[Jessica Defino]

Bungazi.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And then, you know, if that's not flagrant enough. She then followed it up. This week, she went to an event wearing a pair of lace bunny ears. So she really is capitalizing off the attention. And I don't know, the grift never ends, you know.

[Jessica Defino]

Well, I just googled is it illegal to abandon your pet in a park? And the AI overview is, yes, Abandoning a pet in a park is illegal and considered animal cruelty. So I don't know what to believe because I can't, obviously.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Well, Anna Delvey did that. Her change.org petition made that happen. I don't know if you know that.

[Jessica Defino]

Thank you, Anna Delvey.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Thank you, Anna. You've done it again. You've saved us all. It's really wild. So, yeah, that's Bunnygate.

[Jessica Defino]

Thank you for enlightening me. That was actually more entertaining than I thought it would be.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's a really wild ride. Yeah, the lore is deep on that one, and it's very difficult to parse, is what I kept thinking while kind of learning bits and pieces about. So I just wanted to lay it out for everyone. If anyone cares like I do about minor influencer drama that is bordering on illegality.

[Jessica Defino]

Thank you for your service.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Thank you.

[Jessica Defino]

What I'm going to lay out next is a very, very long list of WNBA beauty sponsorships.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Oh, yeah, I love it.

[Jessica Defino]

And this is not a new trend. It's been happening for at least a year, maybe a couple years, but. But really ramping up lately. So, yeah, the WNBA Women's Basketball association is kind of the recipient of a lot of beauty industry attention as of late. There are a ton of brands that are partnering with either the WNBA or certain teams or players for campaigns. It's, like, pretty inescapable at this point. Fashionista.com published like, a. A pretty comprehensive list of some of them. So here we have Lineage for the Phoenix Mercury, Nyx, NYX Makeup and the New York Liberty. Urban Decay and the Los Angeles Sparks. CoverGirl and Chicago Sky, WNBA and Maybelline. WNBA and Mielle Hair Orly in the Los Angeles Sparks. Fenty Beauty for the New York Liberty. Sephora for the Golden State Valkyries. Glossier for the wwa. Essie for the New York Liberty. And my personal favorite is Vadrasil and the New York Liberty.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Perfect, perfect synergy.

[Jessica Defino]

And I mean, this has been getting a lot of good attention. I think people are pretty excited about these campaigns, about the representation in the campaigns, the inclusivity.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I've been watching TV and I saw a big news story about how great this is. And, you know, on one hand, it Is great that, like, the WNBA is finally getting money.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Sponsorships, viewerships. Like, I do hear them on that front. There is something. I mean, they were showing photos of all the different kind of sponsors stuff, and there was something a little jarring to me about seeing the glossier ad in the stadium, and it just says, you look good. And I was like, does it matter if they look good while they're playing basketball? You know what I mean? I guess. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. It's obviously the most important thing going on on the court. My bad.

[Jessica Defino]

No, but reading this list on the Fashionista magazine made me think of a panel that I was part of, like, last year at this philosophy festival. And the panel that I was on was about was a debate about, like, self optimization. And I was kind of arguing against optimization on the basis that, like, what we call the self is often our appearance. And what we call optimization is often just, like, an unrealistic or oppressive ideal of perfection that's not, like, useful to the project of human flourishing. And then someone in the audience asked me, you know, what about athletes optimizing their bodies for sports? Like, what do you think about that? And I, like, didn't really have much of an answer. Like. Cause I'm not really a sports person. Person.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

But I ended up saying, like, that my concern was, you know, culturally, I think we're at a point where optimization for athletics is never enough. Like, the pressure to optimize never ends. And I think that's what we're kind of seeing here with all of these partnerships. And, I mean, of. I don't know, I think there is value in the message that, like, an interest in sports doesn't preclude an interest in cosmetics. Like, you don't have to be in, like, the tomboy bucket or the girly girl bucket. Like, there are people who have, like, varied interests. But I also think that what's happening right now, like, goes, like, far beyond that. And I. I don't know. I worried that the message that it sends is that, like, beauty should be an interest for all, and that, like, no woman, no matter her achievements, is exempt from her feminine duty to perform beauty.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

Wow. And this idea of just, like, the optimization never ends. I feel like the Serena Williams announcement that she's the face of Ro and now taking weight loss drugs is a really good example of it. Like, she even said in her announcement, like, her body is optimized through her diet. It is optimized through her exercise, and she just still couldn't lose the weight. So now she's optimizing through weight loss, drugs.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And that her husband is an investor.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, that her husband is investing in, of course. And I. Yeah, I just feel like these are kind of all part of the same political moment, too. I also think that this, like, beauty and sports partnership, these partnerships, like, can't be separated from politics and, like, what we're seeing, like, one, like, a renewed focus on the gender binary, on traditional gender roles, on, like, biological destiny and masculine and feminine traits. Like, you know, Trump announced on his first day of office, like, there are two genders, like men and women, and it can't be separated from, like, anti trans legislation, especially in sports, where there are, like, you know, transvestigations going on, like, from everywhere, from the Olympics to having, like, trans athletes banned from, like, middle school sports. Like, these are huge political topics. And I just think this, like, overt femininity of the beauty industry coming to.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Take over, it's a way to, like, reify their femininity. Yeah, yeah. That's very interesting because when I was watching the news segment, I was also kind of thinking about, like, one, like you said, like, what optimization means in sports. And, like, for men, it's like steroids.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

But for women, right. It feels like, oh, you have to, like, look beautiful and perfect, like, while you're performing at, like, the highest possible physical level.

[Jessica Defino]

Right. Well, what you just said reminds me of a while ago. Issa Maya, the beauty brand, partnered with Nike on, like, a sneaker.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Right. Ismaya a brand truly tailor made to, like, trigger you?

[Jessica Defino]

For me, yes. And I think one of their marketing lines was like, because when you look good, you perform better.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

And I was like, really? I would love to see the dad, like, some stats. I would love to see the stats.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Then why are men not wearing lipstick? Like, make them look good.

[Jessica Defino]

Right, right. And it was like, you can look as good as you, like, feel on the court or something like that, or look as good as you play. And it was, like, very, you know, clearly aligning how you play and how you look as equal in matters of importance on the field. And I just think that's not a good message for anybody. I mean, we have tons of data that shows beauty standards are not good for us mentally, physically. Imagine, like, this is not healthy. This is not a healthy way to a healthy place to direct our energy for anyone. And I. Yeah, I don't know.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I was also just thinking about, you know, these positive stories about these beauty brands stepping into, like, sponsor the wnba, to me, also, like, obfuscates the real problem, which is that these girls aren't being paid enough. These women aren't being paid enough.

[Jessica Defino]

Exactly, exactly.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

You know, and these brands are having to step in, literally, to supplement their income to make this, like, livable and feasible for many of them to do this full time completely when they're not being played anything comparable to their male counterparts, you know, and also, like, where's Gatorade? You know what I mean? Like, where are the major sponsors of the men's sport? Like, why are they weirdly silent and missing in all of this? I don't know. It seems very odd. And even when you just were, like, listing all the brands who are, like, doing these collaborations, you literally said Nyx and Knicks. And I was like, why aren't they working with the Knicks? You know what I mean? Like, Nyx.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, my God. Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

That seems like perfect brand synergy to me. And they're not doing that at all. Like, why not? Why are you missing out on that opportunity if you're so committed to, like, you know.

[Jessica Defino]

Right. These very siloed things? And it's very much like reinforcing the gender binary. And. Yeah. I mean, I think. I think these people, these partnerships, what they show is, like, beauty being offered up as a kind of apologetic for skill, for athleticism, which is coded as masculine. It requires, like, you know, aggressive. It requires, like. Yeah. Aggression. It requires, like, discipline, like, these sort of, like, male coded traits. And then softening that through beauty as an apologetic, as a way to make up for, you know, a lack of perceived femininity in one area by going overboard on femininity in another. And, like, again, I don't want to, like, make this about any one person's interest in cosmetics or sports. Of course, you could be interested in both, but I just think it's kind of at this political moment as well. There's something more going on here that's.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. And it's just making me. I never had really thought about this before, but it's also making me think about, you know, like, kind of the focus. I mean, this obviously happens in men's sports as well, but the focus on the outfits entering and exiting the games. And there's something about that, too, that feels like a. Yeah. Like a softening or like a juxtaposition. Like, you need to see how glamorous and feminine these athletes can look off the court, you know, as a way to even out their strength and skill on the court.

[Jessica Defino]

Totally. Yeah. Making them more like Relatable, Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I'd never thought about before, but that's definitely something I don't know. That's interesting. I'll have to think more about it.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, same. Frankie de la Cretis has written some really incredible pieces on WNBA beauty partnerships in particular that I can link in the show. Notes that really, you know, says more about, like, the way that these organizations are set up and why players need to look for endorsements in order to like, make money, make a living. And also the effect these endorsements have on the culture and what maybe harmful messages are part of this. Like especially WNBA and Vagisil.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

The Vagisil I did not know about. And that is so wild. I just can't believe even in this day and age that Vagisil is still a company that exists. Like, every time I hear about Summer's Eve, I'm like, how in the world Are you still here?

[Jessica Defino]

No, well, that's actually the subject of my next Ask Ugly column at the Guardian.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Fantastic. Yeah, stay tuned. That was a plug. It was all planned. It was all pre planned.

[Jessica Defino]

That was an ad for me. Spawn con for me. But yeah, yeah, that's my little rant about beauty and sports.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, I think it's fascinating. And now I'm gonna tell you all about a very silly little trend. Tell me that I've been noticing as. Cause I just always have to tell you all about a silly little trend. I've been thinking about this one I've been calling Stretch Armstrong because I love the name. Thank you. I was just trying to think about because it's all very disparate looks, I would say. And I was trying to think of what the unifying theme is to them. And to me it's kind of really dramatically elongated proportions in a completely unwearable, unrealistic way, if that makes sense. It's things that really are only built for imagery or music video or just kind of like singular moments because they can't really. You couldn't really live your life in these pieces of clothing. And so I guess my like three primary examples are Amy Taylor from this band Emile and the Sniffers, which I'm obsessed with her. I talk about her fashion quite regularly in my newsletter because she is just really experimental and interesting, but like making good looking stuff, wearing good looking stuff in a very cool way. I previously talked about her because she wore a matching set that was made out of whoopee cushions.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, yes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Like a little bra top and a skirt. And I just thought that was like so cool. Anyway, this month she did a cover shoot for Vogue Portugal and in one of the images she was sitting on the roof of a home and she was wearing these two story pair of jeans that were made by fashion brand company who also like fashion brand company And I are in some like weird mental synergy. I feel like we are always in a weird lockstep. I don't know her, but I do feel like we're always kind of speaking the same language and maybe I should know her. Yeah, but she designed these two story pair of jeans for Amy to wear in the shoot. And they're just very striking, especially as a lot of what I've been talking about in the newsletter lately is Justin Bieber's pants and the inseam of his pants, which is like double the length of his actual leg. And he just wears them like totally pulled up around his ankles or like carrying them like a big ball gown skirt, which I think I've talked about in the past. Yeah, I think I've talked about his princess pants in the, in the past on this podcast. If not, I've certainly talked about it at length on YouTube and in my newsletter, so you can check that out. But yeah, so I've been thinking a lot about long pants in general and then these kind of being like the most extreme, hyperextended version of that. And then we got Chapel Roan's new music video for her song the Subway. And in that she has this like crazy long Rapunzel hair and it's like hanging out of apartment windows. It's like getting dragged down the street by a taxi via her hair. Just kind of like crazy extensions that are like unwearable and realistic in real life. And then also I'm obsessed with these Marc Jacobs shoes that they look exactly like doorstops. They're like, they're pumps, but they have like an extremely long, like maybe a foot long extended toe box that ends in kind of a flattened, a flattened square point. I've compared them to Mexican pointy shoes, which is like a cultural style of like a cowboy boot with an extremely long, like often curled up kind of toe, almost elfin. But Marc Jacobs put a couple of celebrities in these shoes for his Runway show. I think last month he had Julia Fox wearing a pair. Yeah, last month he had Julia Fox wearing a pair. He had SNL's ego wood ego Wudim wore a pair. And I was just like watching them walk up and down the stairs and them. It was like really difficult and crazy and dramatic and I just started thinking about, yeah, this, this Extension of the body and how, I don't know, it's making me. Obviously, I've talked at length about kind of all the body warping fashions we've seen this year. We started with, like, panets, and all of these trends are starting to make me see panier fashion in a totally different light. Because when I first started writing about that, specifically in my Build a Body essay, I was thinking about paniers very much in a historical context, tying them back to Dior's new look. And Dior's new look being a reference back to the Victorian period as a way of, like, basically telling women, like, get back in your cage. You know, like, lock it up. Like, World War II is over. You need to go back in the home. Men are back in power now. And so your fashion also has to be extremely restrictive and controlled because part of the problem with the new look was, like, you literally couldn't. If you drop something, you couldn't bend over and pick it up. It was like that level of kind of like, immobility. And so when this fashion first came on the scene, I was kind of thinking about it in that vein of, like, of course, with the return of Trump and like, the lack of women's rights, we're telling women, like, that the fruitful time is over. You know, like, get back in the home. Like, start cooking and cleaning again. Like, get back in your corsets and your pannier cages. But since then, I don't know, we've seen the trend kind of like morph and evolve in kind of this again, in kind of a grotesque way where first we get these extreme geometric shapes. You know, I think about Ariana Grande in that Louis Vuitton kind of yoga ball shaped skirt, or Hannah Einbender, I think, at the SAG Awards in like a very much a lampshade skirt and these kind of just big, unwieldy shapes on the red carpet. And then from there we get something even, like, more grotesque, which is, to me, Sarah Paulson at the Oscars after parties in that Marc Jacob dress that's like. I call it tumorous. It's like bulbous protrusions coming off of her body. And now here again, we're again warping the shape of the body in this unnatural way. We're extending it into something, yes, unwearable, but also occupying space in a different way. And I don't know, I've started to think about all of these garments as man spreading. And it's like women taking up space in a world where they're being told to shrink down, especially Ozempic, all of that. We're being told to minimize ourselves. And here, all this fashion is kind of maximizing our bodies.

[Jessica Defino]

Right.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And I don't know, I think there's something interesting to that.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, I do think that there is something interesting there, especially when, I mean, some of the examples that you mentioned of these, like, giant garments are on, you know, very tiny and getting tinier bodies who are kind of responding to both things, the taking up space and the shrinking at the same time.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Right, right. And again, kind of like speaking to both, even with the Stretch Armstrong trend, it's like you are both imprisoned by the clothing, but also it's like, never been larger, you know, like, I'm thinking about the pants. Right. Like, she couldn't ever wear those, really. But also they're like they're covering an entire home.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I don't know. But you can't walk.

[Jessica Defino]

That's so interesting. Yeah, it's kind of like an inverse core set where it restricts your movement, but because it's making maximalism versus.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, I don't know. And there's some tension at play there that I think is very interesting. And I mean, I'm sure we'll see Continue to play out over the rest of the year.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, of course. Well, it's time for our big topic. We've gotten a lot of requests to talk about this one, and I know neither of us are particularly thrilled about it, but we're going to talk about it anyway. We're going to talk about Sydney Sweeney and her American Eagle ad.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

You know it. Emily, how do you feel the discourse never ends? I mean, I feel I understand why people want us to talk about. I do think it's worth talking about, but at the same time, I am always loath to talk about this topic because it just feels like it's feeding into exactly what American Eagle wants, which is attention. And my attention.

[Jessica Defino]

For us to talk about it. Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Right. And to be controversial, to inspire contravention, to get eyes back on the ad, which they have since deleted from all their social media accounts.

[Jessica Defino]

Really? Have they?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, yeah, they have.

[Jessica Defino]

Interesting. Okay, well, that's. That's something.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. So perhaps for those who.

[Jessica Defino]

Should we back up and.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. Explain it a little bit what's happening with this ad? Because actually, I was surprised when I posted about. On YouTube, I had one commenter who's like, I literally had no idea this was happening at all. I'm like, what a blessed life you must be to just be. I know, I was like, how do I log off in the way. Exactly the way that you've logged off. Because I would love to. My brain needs to unplug from such conversations.

[Jessica Defino]

That's the level of offline I would like to be.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, I aspire to. So this all started because there's American Eagle released a campaign starring Sydney Sweeney. And the title of the campaign is Sydney Sweeney has Great Genesis. Which is if you're confused about what kind of genes, that's kind of the crux of the whole. Yeah, it's both, it turns out, and. Yeah. So right from the jump, I always think like anytime we're talking about a blonde haired, blue eyed person's genes, we've already strayed too far. Like we're already unnecessarily putting ourselves in a difficult situation. But it goes on. There was an ad, a video ad that was released in which Sydney Sweeney, the camera is kind of lasciviously panning up her body classic, which is she's clad in a full Canadian tuxedo. And then she, in a voiceover says genes are passed down. Genes, as in genetics, are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My genes are blue. And I mean, my first problem as just an English major is that's not even good wordplay. It's not even very clever. It doesn't seem worth the trouble to me.

[Jessica Defino]

No, it's very poorly written ad. I think like even this like, line that's like your genes determine your personality and even your eye color. Like, what do you mean even eye color?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Of course, first of all, swap those words. Like you could have just said hair color, eye color and even your personality. That to me even already is better copy than what I'm currently working with.

[Jessica Defino]

Exactly. And then I also think the other funny thing to insert here is that like, of course Sydney Sweeney is a natural brunette. So her genetics have not given her the blonde hair that's starring in this ad. But sort of beside the point.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, well, it's actually like not beside the point. It is kind of very much at the core at that point. What's also very troubling to me about this campaign that I think people aren't talking enough about because of the eugenics aspect of it all is that this whole ad is supposedly, according to all the press, supposed to be an homage to brooke shields infamous 1980s. Nothing becomes between me and my Calvin's campaign, which I think is so confusing because as a casual observer, you tell me what do you think the homage is.

[Jessica Defino]

I think there is a Calvin Klein campaign with Brooke Shields where she talks about genetics and genes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Okay. I've never seen it. To me, I hope that is the case.

[Jessica Defino]

I saw a clip of it, like the day this came out. Maybe I can find it right now on my phone.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. Because I'm not familiar with it. And to me, the most, the most famous. I say infamous because it's really nasty. It's a really nasty thing to evoke.

[Jessica Defino]

Right.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

This particular book, Shields. I mean, even if there is a campaign where she directly talks about genetics, I assume it's still from this 1980s period of when she was modeling for Calvin Klein, which she was 15 years old. Yeah, I just think it's a. I just think it's an unpleasant pop culture moment to invoke. And I don't get why you would want to invoke this moment that Brooke Shields herself has said was like really traumatizing and that she didn't really, even, again, she was 15 years old and she didn't really kind of fully understand the ramifications or she was like too naive to really get the double entendres of everything she was doing and saying in these campaigns. And of course, she was cast in these campaigns off the back of starring in Blue Lagoon at 14 years old, which was a movie marketed, based off her quote, unquote, sexual awakening as a child, which she says is not even obviously real. It's market.

[Jessica Defino]

Right. You know, so this, the campaign that it's riffing on is also from 1980 Calvin Klein Jean campaign and it was shot by Richard Avedon. And in it she says, quote, the secret of life lies hidden in the genetic code. Genes are fundamental in determining the characteristics of an individual. Which brings us to Calvin and the survival of the fittest. So it's about like the fit of the genes. And in the commercial she's like writhing around on the ground trying to button these like very tight jeans and they're like skin tight fit. So it is about, you know, okay, survival of the fittest.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

So there is. Okay, so that explains why everyone was saying it. Homage, because I was very confused about that. But at the same time, we are still invoking a very controversial campaign that a child starred in.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, I don't particularly think that's better.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, I don't know that that's what we want to be referencing and invoking anyway. Obviously all of this is rage bait. All of this was. Yeah, very. People, there's a lot of debate about whether American Eagle Was like intentionally doing this or not, which I think is crazy. Like, obviously it's intentional. Like, do you, do you know the number of people who have to like check off on everything along the way, like the number of eyes and like corporate executives who have to approve stuff like this, like it's not slipping through the cracks, you know, is very much part of the strategy and the plan. I don't think any of it's accidental. And yeah, to me, I mean, I wrote this in my newsletter. I just think, to me, I think American Eagle, like cynically looked at our current political climate and they thought we could absolutely get away with a white supremacist dog whistle. Like a little tongue in cheek eugenics jokey joke. And then there's enough plausible deniability in the way that we've worded and done all of this that we can keep playing to both sides and not have to apologize for it. That's my opinion on. I didn't read this until preparing for today, but in the lead up to the release of this ad, the company's chief marketing officer told publications that the ad included clever, even provocative language. That's a quote and was quote, definitely going to push buttons. So I think that's pretty obvious. They were extremely aware of the tenor of what they were about to release.

[Jessica Defino]

I feel like I agree with you. It's a silly question, like, were they aware? Anyone who sees the ad is like, oh, okay, jeans, jeans. And in this like current moment and with Sydney Sweeney in particular, like, there's really no doubt of like who that is appealing to and what it's saying. Like, I don't know, I'm kind of conflicted because I don't want to like necessarily make this all about Sydney Sweeney in general, but I think it's more of like, zoom out. And what does it mean to contextualize this image of a blonde haired, blue eyed woman who's thin with big boobs as a representation of good genetics and what this type of body and this genetic code represents in America today. And this has been kind of happening to and around Sydney Sweeney for a while. Richard Henania. Is that how you say his name? I'm not sure, Richard. He's like a right wing commentator, white nationalist guy who tweeted a picture of Sydney Sweeney's boobs after her SNL appearance with the caption wokeness is dead. And this was in March 2024. And she has become this sort of symbol of a return to a certain type of beauty standard, a certain type of femininity for a certain type of man. And that has very much been in the zeitgeist. Before this commercial, there had been like a right wing commentator, her name's Amy Hamm, who responded to images of Sydney Sweeney from SNL being like, the woke mob has been pressuring us to pretend everyone is beautiful, but this is what's really beautiful. So Sydney Sweeney, whether she has courted this or not, has been a sort of symbol of a return to whiteness and blondness and blue eyedness as beauty and as goodness for a while now.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Also, they were doing this, I mean, to a lesser extent, but they were doing this with Taylor Swift in the past.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes, exactly.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Before she came out as, I mean.

[Jessica Defino]

Liberal, I guess, completely. And Sydney Sweeney might be more palatable to this type of person because apparently she is registered as a Republican in Florida, you know, allegedly. And there was that whole, like, controversy a while back of having like this MAGA themed party for her mom's 60th.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Birthday party and her father wearing a blue Lives Matter Punisher T shirt and the photos that she posted. And so, you know, it's like she isn't hiding them.

[Jessica Defino]

So like a figure, she has been embraced by other people. I don't know why I still feel like, hesitant to be like, she wants this or she's courted this or she's.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Playing well, I guess she's never explicitly said one way or another. I mean, she's using it to her advantage. She's using the vagary to her advantage for sure. The same way Taylor Swift used to use the vagary toward Band. You know, you get to maintain this base of like, maybe more conservative listeners while also appealing to a group of more liberal listeners. You get to have it both ways.

[Jessica Defino]

And I think it's just important to point out, like, the political climate that this ad was born into. Like, those things aren't coincidental at all. And yeah, I find myself getting worked up at the people who are like, the people on the left are making too big of a deal about it. It's wordplay. It's a pun, like, you can't handle anything. Because I feel like eugenics discourse is like very mainstream in the current political climate.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

A little bit. Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. Some examples. You know, Trump regularly refers to people he doesn't like as, quote, low iq individuals. He has said he thinks immigrants have murder, quote, in their genes. He has said, quote, we've got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. And I think most, most glaring, like, we're in the midst of a genocide in Gaza. The like etymology of that is the Greek word genos, meaning race or tribe, and the Latin suffix side meaning killing. So genes, it's big. It's a huge.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Kind of central to everything going on right now.

[Jessica Defino]

Central to everything going on right now. And American Eagle, I think, was completely aware of the kind of climate they were putting that language out into. Like, I don't think that's really up for debate.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And also, I think, like you said, I think they also kind of know that the Republicans are very good at spinning this type of stuff. Like, any type of outrage this ad would receive, the Republicans would spin as like, oh, look at these woke liberals, like, radically overreacting to just like a sexy girl being sexy on tv. And so like, any real kind of like eugenics contained within this ad would get minimized by being like, you should be ashamed for being, like, dramatic. You know, you should be ashamed of yourself for being so crazy and like reading all this stuff and everything. But like I said in. In my newsletter and stuff, it's like, it's not normal to watch a denim commercial and have like, Nazi alarm bells go off in your brain. You know what I mean? Like, I don't watch anything that. That provokes that response in me. And even, like, going into watching the campaign, I had read all these reactions and, like, seen people talking about. I'm like, they've got to be. I was like, there's no way a denim commercial could be that infl. You know what I mean? I was like, people have got to be like, blowing this up to something. And I watched it. I was like, oh, literally. No, they literally are kind of downplaying what's actually happening here. And it's just kind of. It's amazing to me.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, I think something else that. I don't know this. The controversy around it made me think was just like, eugenics really is kind of the basis of. Of beauty culture and the beauty industry. Like, the idea that some traits which are genetically determined are or more good or more desirable or more moral than.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Other traits, and that those are often white traits.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes, exactly. And that's what makes them desirable and profitable. And that's what, like this under. This is the underlying structure of the entire beauty industry. And like, so some examples of just like blondness being like a very coveted hair color, especially, like, quote, unquote, natural blonde. Like, that's what we're always asking for, make it look as natural as possible. Right. Traits like, you know, wide eyes, double eyelids, lifted brows, blue eyes. We Talked a couple months ago on the pod about that $12,000 surgery that's like trending now to change your eye color and that exclusively is to lighten the eyes. That is eugenics. Like that's a hundred percent a eugenics standard. Things like skin bleaching and brightening. Skin bleaching is still an $8 billion industry globally. Globally, I know that we're like somewhat shielded from it in the US still, but like, globally that is a huge, huge industry. And that's white supremacy. That sure is like, that's eugenics. Things like straight hair or having like, you know, straight hair and then you curl it to have the right kind of curl. Because a certain type of curl that's too unruly or too frizzy is seen as undesirable. Small noses, a huge one. Facial harmonization. I won't get into it again because we've talked about it on the pod so much and I've written so much about this like facial harmony trend. But that can be directly traced back to like skull measuring and this pseudoscience that measured the skulls of different races and determined that like black people were closer to animals and white people were closer to like Greek statues and the basis of, of genocide. The basis of a lot of just like horrible shit in our history. That's where like facial harmonization comes from. Even this, the undetectable era that we're in of plastic surgery that is appealing because it's undetectable, because it's meant to look as if it's biologically what you look like rather than cosmetic work done. And like eugenics underlies all of this and I think ways that are much more subtle than what we're seeing in the American Eagle ad. So I personally would love to see more commotion for all of the small, everyday ways that these, this ethos, this ideology infiltrates our daily lives and, and props up beauty culture. I mean, even things like, you know, I don't know if it's a huge product anymore, but Sunday Riley good genes. Do you remember that? Absolutely.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It had people in a stranglehold.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes. Everyone wanted Sunday Riley good jeans. Gwyneth Paltrow, you know, talk about blonde haired, blue eyed, capitalizing on genetics. Gwyneth Paltrow, like, long before the Sydney Sweeney controversy put out a line called Goop Jeans, it was beauty product and it was goop G E N E s capitalizing on her quote unquote, good genes as like a white blonde, blue eyed wasp. Yeah. And yeah, it's just, it's so prominent it's so everywhere. And this is again, why the campaign worked. I think, like, the joke only works because of the ambient eugenics that are already in the air that suggest her conventional attractiveness. Blonde, blue eyed, thin, big boobs are good genes. Like, that is the only reason the joke works is because this is already the basis of beauty culture and the basis of a lot that's happening. So, yeah, I guess my hope for this would be like, everyone who has been outraged about this ad could channel some of that outrage towards.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

You're like, if you're shocked by this, just imagine.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes, just like channel it toward the less noticeable ways eugenics and white supremacy shape our day to day lives and channel that like, outrage and the energy you're putting into making tiktoks about Sydney Sweeney into like political action.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes. And just like a broader framework.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes, totally. So that's kind of my takeaway.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I also love the phrase you just said ambient eugenics, I think is really powerful, a powerful visual of like, what's happening in society. It's kind of amazing. And yeah, also I would just like to add, you should believe that this is intentional by American Eagle also, because I believe I talked about on the podcast before, but their behavior around Kendrick Lamar in the super bowl where they just straight up fabricated a story and then had De Moi publish it as though it was the truth, even though we already knew that it was a lie. Like, if you had any interest in Kendrick Lamar's pants at all, you knew it was fictional. I guess just to briefly tell people about that. Kendrick Lamar wore jeans, iconically wore flared jeans during his super bowl performance. Immediately. I mean, I think maybe even during the performance, we get confirmation from his stylist, Taylor McNeil, that they're Celine. And not only that, we got like a good little story about it where it's actually the jeans were meant for Timothee Chalamet, which is Taylor's other client, and Kendrick saw them on the rack and wanted to wear them. So he took them and he wore them for this performance. And then maybe three or four days later, Deuxmoi posts an ad sponsored by American Eagle that's formatted like one of their blind item submission. Like one of the email form blind item submissions. But it's very clearly from the American Eagle PR team claiming that these jeans are American Eagle jeans that Kendrick found in his fiance's closet and then wanted to wear. And I just find that that is. You are moving. So weird as a marketing company to make up a story like that. Like, I genuinely don't understand. And if you're gonna lie like that, like, lie better, do it faster, do it sooner, before we get the confirmation from a stylist that you're lying. Like, why. I just. I genuinely don't get. So, of course, when this came out, I was like, yeah, par for the course. Sounds about right. From your marketing team that you all thought this was a great idea that was, you know, gonna be a huge success.

[Jessica Defino]

That's so funny. I totally forgot about that.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. And then, so, yeah, and a lot of people, again, are making this more about, I don't know, Sydney and the brand, or like you said, about the ambient eugenics and about, like, I don't know, like, boycotting her, punishing her. And I'd just like to point out that, you know, I think that the outfits that her stylist puts her in are her punishment. I think that is her cross to bear and the curse that she will have to live with of her life. And I also think that Trump and the proud boys calling you sexy is its own type of special hell. I mean, maybe not for her as a registered Republican, but I think that's its own nightmare, its own nightmare scenario to have to live with.

[Jessica Defino]

It'd be my nightmare.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And then, of course, we also. She was in some renewed controversy just last week, this week, for a quote she gave in the Wall Street Journal about her. Her soap that she released recently in collaboration with a brand called Dr. Squatch. The title of the soap was Sydney's Bathwater Bliss. And it is a bar of soap that is supposedly allegedly made out of Sydney's real bath water. But I will say the more I looked into this, the less I'm certain that there's. It has anything to do with her at all, because she's the face of the brand. She did a whole ad promoting it. Whatever. It's a limited edition run of 5,000 bars of soap. But according to the site, I was looking at the frequently asked questions, and they say the soap is made with a small sanitized sample of bathwater. Is that. Is that bathwater? Like, once you sanitize the bathwater, is that not just water?

[Jessica Defino]

Debatable.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. I don't know. I don't. I think that's kind of like an existential, philosophical question. But to me, I don't know. I would call that water. And also, I'll just say I've been. I've been making this point far and wide and. And no one knows who I'm talking about, so they're not as offended as I am. But I don't like this campaign because I think that she's ripping Belle Delphine's whole shtick.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes. You've talked about Belle Delphine on the POD before. I know.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I think Belle Delphine is. She's very. A controversial figure, but I also think she's kind of fascinating if you consume her from a performance art perspective and less as kind of, I don't know, a sexual entertainer. I'm not sure how to qualify what it is that she does specifically. I mean, Obviously, she's an OnlyFans creator, but it goes. So Belle Delphine is so far beyond simply an only Fans creator. Anyway, for those who don't know, Belle Delphine sold her bath water in 2019 to her fans, and she made quite a lot of money doing it. And her Instagram account actually got deleted because of it. And in 2024, she tweeted that after she sold all this bathwater that PayPal actually froze her account for violating its terms of service and withheld over $90,000 in proceeds from these sales from her for nearly five years. And they only released the money to her after this tweet and after several media outlets, like, reached out to them for comment, you know, on this tweet. And I. I just don't like that Sydney's stealing Belle's whole. Whole thing without even, like, a little wink, a little nod to her predecessor, a little credit where credit's due, because it is kind of a. It's a brilliant concept as an OnlyFans creator, I think. And after Belle Delphine did this, there's another OnlyFans girl who's, I believe. I don't know if she's still the number one female Twitch streamer in the world, but she was at one point, Amaranth. Amaranth started selling her farts. She jarred up her farts and she sold them to her fans. And there's something. I don't know. I think there's something very. Again, from a performance art perspective, there's something really fascinating about that.

[Jessica Defino]

There really is.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Anyway, circling back to Sidney, who's less interesting to me than both of those. Both of those women did. She refused to talk. I guess the American Eagle ad maybe came out after the walls. I think that's what Ali said after the Wall Street Journal interview. But she did respond to the controversy around the Dr. Squatch bathwater bliss soap. And she told Ali it was mainly the girls making comments about it, which I thought was really interesting. They all loved the idea of Jacob Ellerty's Bathwater. And. And I just think this comparison doesn't hold up under any sort of scrutiny.

[Jessica Defino]

No, no, of course not.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I mean, for one, the Jacob Ellerd bathwire thing was not a product he was involved with in any capacity. Right.

[Jessica Defino]

That was like a meme.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It was based off a meme off of a very popular movie at that time, Saltburn. And it didn't actually contain any bathwater. Yeah, not. Not even sanitized bathwater. So I just doesn't really stand to me. I don't know.

[Jessica Defino]

No. And not to, you know, paint her into any particular corner, but that is a very right wing coded response.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

That's what I thought.

[Jessica Defino]

That was a classic response from, like, Republican women. It makes me think of that conversation we had with the. I'm blanking on her name, but the Mother Jones reporter who wrote that story on Mar a Lago face in a. I believe. Yeah. And she said that when she was, like, reaching out to some of these, you know, politicians, these female politicians on the right to interview for this story, their response was like, are you interviewing the men who get cosmetic treatments too? Because this is misogynist. And it's like, very convenient for the right to blame misogyny for everything. Like, they benefit from the, The. The feminism of the left in order to get off the hook for. I don't know. I don't know anything. So, yeah, that, that's interesting to me. The other little connection with the bathwater soap. I'm like, trying to find it. I was just scrolling my phone, but I can't find it. But I read some article that was like, is. Is there any of Sydney Sweeney's DNA in the bathwater soap? And it was like a scientific, like, debunking of whether if she had actually taken the bath and her bath water was in the soap. Could you extract any Sydney Sweeney DNA from the soap? So scary. And so like, you know, matches with this eugenics trend of her neck soap. Totally. And somehow, like, yeah, people are interested in her genes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes. For some reason you just gave me like Gattaca vibes or something.

[Jessica Defino]

You know what I mean? Yes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Trying to extract her perfect Aryan DNA to like.

[Jessica Defino]

I know, I need to find this article and I'll put it in the show notes. I cannot remember where the head. I read it, but yeah, the end result was like, no, no, there's none of Sydney Sweeney's DNA in this soap.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Bummer. What are you even paying for then?

[Jessica Defino]

I know, but. And then I think the other thing to note about this, which I don't think we've said, is that it really worked for American Eagle. Their stock skyrocketed temporarily. Temporarily. Okay.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I just. I would just. I have seen this talking point in normalcy, and it's like, absolutely, it did go up. Although I think anytime you kind of do anything that makes national news in this way. Right. You're going to see some kind of bump. But I just. I would encourage people to zoom out, because if you zoom out on their stock, you will see not only are they still radically down one year over year, but over the last five years, they're extremely down from a high in 2021. And I think that also helps explain kind of this new pivot in their marketing tactics, is they're feeling some. Some crunch. And then also it's like. I don't know. Especially when you juxtapose, like, this kind of cynical tactic, and then you see Gap do something like the cat's eye choreography and get the exact same results, but in an enormously positive way. You're like, oh, maybe you could just not be shitty.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Maybe you could just make good ads and people will respond, you know, nicely to your brand.

[Jessica Defino]

This idea of just making good ads really brings me to what I wanted to say about just, like, the rise of rage bait advertising in general. And we have talked about this on the POD before, so I won't go into it too much, but remember we were talking about Jennifer Aniston's, like, no gimmicks hair campaign. We talked a little bit about just, like, the nature of the gimmick and.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

My obsession with her wetness. She has to be wet in all of her promotional material.

[Jessica Defino]

Um, but, yeah, I have been thinking lately, between the Sydney Sweeney, American Eagle ad, Elf Cosmetics partnering with Matt Rife, who had made a domestic violence joke.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And was, like, kind of, by the way, defended the Sydney Sweeney ad this week.

[Jessica Defino]

Really?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And I was like, you are literally the last person anyone needs defending the Matt Rife. Like, get out of this conversation. Yeah, I just saw. I saw the headline on page six today. I did not click. So. Whoa.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, that and even the Skims face Shaper, which I would say, like, all of the content that I saw written about it was not like, oh, this is an exciting new product. It was like, this won't work. This is bullshit. This is insane. This is bad for humanity. And. And yet it sold out within, you know, a day or whatever it was. So I've been thinking about this idea of, like, rage bait as a gimmick. And like, according to C.N. nye's theory of the gimmick, the aesthetic of the gimmick, it's an aesthetic of capitalism and it's a labor saving device. And so the labor that the rage bait gimmick is saving is the labor of making a good campaign.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Totally.

[Jessica Defino]

Absolutely. This is just a really easy shortcut for brands to get a lot of buzz. They don't have to put out a great product, they don't have to put out a great campaign. They don't have to generate word of mouth buzz or whatever. The gimmick is that it's saving them the labor of doing anything sort of useful. And the other really interesting thing about this theory of the gimmick as applies to rage bait is that, like, part of the gimmick is that recognition of the gimmick makes the consumer see themselves as above it, as smarter than it, and that they know better. They're in on the joke. And once someone knows better, they feel the sense of, like, superiority and permission to indulge in the gimmick.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Okay, and can I just. You're like, sparking so many ideas in my. Because to me, this also all circles back to the Kardashians and, like, the foundation of how their fame works and is built because they are saving themselves labor because they actually don't do any labor to make themselves famous. And it is all rage bait. And then you say, well, like, oh, well, I know what they're doing. I understand how the rage bait works. Like, oh, they're so shallow. They're so empty. And then you go home and you watch their reality show and they still get ratings and they still get fame and money.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. And you buy the Kylie lip kit and you buy the sneaker because you're like, oh, my God, this is so ridiculous.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's so stupid. It's so crazy. Yeah, but it's just so crazy that. That to me is like, it's like every marketing executive has been watching the format of how their fame operates. And then they're like, oh, we can do that as brands ourselves, because they are just brands. Right.

[Jessica Defino]

The other thing it really reminds me of is Gwyneth Paltrow. I just read Gwyneth Paltrow's biography by Amy Odell. I interviewed her. Oh, my God, it's so good.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Amy Odell's so good. She is my. My icon.

[Jessica Defino]

And we were talking in the interview about how, like, GOOP became so successful and really, like, set the stage for kind of like this Maha movement to take over and has been so influential in the beauty and wellness space in ways that, like, maybe people don't even recognize. While all the coverage of Goop was negative, like, I have never read an article in the mainstream media that was like, oh, GOOP has a great idea about what to do with your vagina. It's all been like, this is bad. Don't do it. Gwyneth Paltrow is an idiot. Don't listen to any of this. And yet it's become such an influential brand and really set the stage for a ton of beauty trends that are super normal now. And I think it's because of this, like, rage bait, as gimmick as giving customer permission to know better and therefore engage ironically or engage like, I'm just gonna see what this is about. I know it won't work, but it's gonna make me feel good to make, like, a $100 purchase or whatever the case may be. Like, oh, I've just got to try and see this for myself, or I'm going to make a funny piece of content out of this. Like, this.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

This smells like my vagina candle. Like, this is. It's at the core of all of this, for sure.

[Jessica Defino]

Completely. So I think. I think that is having a particularly big moment right now. Oh, and what. What really made me think of that was I had read a couple of pieces about the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ad on Substack, and in multiple pieces, the writers who were writing about it were like, and I bought the jeans. I'm on the wait list for the jeans. And, like, it was, like, largely criticism, but they were like, but you know what? I do like those jeans. So it's like, yeah, this is how it works. You are, you know, enticed by. By the. The raginess of it, by the sort of outrage. And then the brand is in your mind, and you're seeing the jeans more and more, and you're like, I hate this ad. But, like, I actually want to try those jeans. I don't know.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

But also this idea that, like. Well, because I understand the real depths of, like, what's actually going on here and how it's operating, it's okay if I, like, consume it, because I'm consuming it in an ironic way where it's like, you know. Yeah, yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

And I mean, I do this in other ways. I'm sure, too. I think, like, this sort of. In the book, Cyan Nye calls it the illusions without owners. Like, they're everywhere. I think I've mentioned this before, but her big example is Astrology. So many of us don't really believe in astrology, and we're the ones keeping astrology.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

But we're reading.

[Jessica Defino]

It's the number one piece of content on the cut every day because you're clicking on your horoscope and reading it regardless of whether you believe in it.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's ironic.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, exactly.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Let us have a little treat.

[Jessica Defino]

That's where I land on Sydney Sweeney.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yep. Yeah, I'm with you.

[Jessica Defino]

Mess of the month time.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

This mess of the. Here's a hard pivot for you for my mess of the month. My mess of the month is the summer I Turn pretty.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, my God. Tell me. Tell me.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I am being held captive by this show against my will. I have, like, a sick part of my brain. I don't. Jenny Han really gets under my skin in a way where I just have to consume all of her media, and I don't know. I am addicted to, like, teen romance slop, and I. It's a very. It's a part of myself I'm very frustrated with because I hate it, but I can't stop watching it. And the Summer I Turn Pretty is maybe the worst. It's maybe the worst thing I've ever watched in my life.

[Jessica Defino]

I've not seen it. I've seen a ton of tweets about it.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I'm addicted to it. It's just a nightmare. It's a nightmare, and I can't stop watching it. And thank God this is the final season, and I will finally be free. That's all. It's just insane. For those who, I guess, somehow don't know the plot of this insane show, I mean, the title of it alone is, like, perfect rage bait for you, Jess.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, my God. Yes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Because literally, it is about a summer where she got hot, and then now these two brothers that she's been friends with her entire life suddenly realize that she's, like, a woman who's, like, sexy. And then they are, like, battling for her love for the next three seasons.

[Jessica Defino]

Many such cases.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Many such cases. And she's just kind of, like, hopping back and forth from these brothers, I would say, in a way that's gonna absolutely destroy this family.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

In a way that there's, like, no coming back from. It's really wild. Yeah. Basically, she dates the older brother, the hotter brother first, and then they break up because he forgets to buy her a corsage for prom when his mother is dying of cancer. And she never forgives.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, my God.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And we're now season three. It's Four years later and she still has not forgiven him for that. She said it's way worse than his brother cheating on her is him like. And Jenny Hannah sits posted a meme that says it's not about the corsage, but, like, it's not not about the corsage.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, my God. You know, hotness ruins lives. I think that's where it all happens.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Hotness devastates. So, yeah. And then she immediately. She got mad at the corsage and then so she started dating his brother Jeremiah, who. You know what? TikTok has figured out that I watched the show and I hate it. But I'm also thankful because at least it's showing me that other viewers of the show also want Jeremiah to die. They would like this other. He is so cringy in the most painful of way. I do believe he literally is a TikTok star. Like, that's where he came from. Because. And if not, he should be, because he is so hype house coded.

[Jessica Defino]

Really?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes. And he does these little choreographed dances on the show sometimes, and you're like, of course. That's exactly.

[Jessica Defino]

Is he the one with the curly hair?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes, he's the one with the curly hair. The straight hair boy is obviously the hotter lead one.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes. Okay.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

The older one's Conrad, the younger one's Jeremiah, and Conrad is very young. Matt Damon coded, like a floofy, swooshy hair, brooding. And also, what I enjoy about Joy is such a strong word for what I'm doing here. But what I enjoy about Conrad is he's very much an actor in the vein of Robert Pattinson in Twilight, where it's like, you can tell that he's actually, like, a very good actor. Like, when he has to do the emotional heavy lifting in a scene, you're like, wow. Like, you actually really pulled that off. And you can carry it. But you can tell he hates everything he's doing so much the rest of the time. And he's just, like, so annoyed that he's, like, trapped in this, like, teen heartthrob program. You know, it's very Robert Pattinson in Twilight. And I do love. I do love to witness that. Anyway, so now. Oh, I forgot to mention that the main character's name, the girl who got hot, her name is Belly.

[Jessica Defino]

I have seen this. I've been confused by this.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Her full name is Isabella and she is now an adult woman who still is going by Belly.

[Jessica Defino]

And it's very Twilight coded.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's very Twilight. The whole thing is so Twilight coded. And anyway, now she and Jeremiah are engaged and they're planning their wedding.

[Jessica Defino]

Wow.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And they're gonna do a choreographed dance. It's just. This show is a mess.

[Jessica Defino]

I hate it. I hate it already. And I've never seen it.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I hate it and I love it. And I can't stop watching the Tiktoks about it. And yeah, I don't recommend it to anyone and yet I recommend it to everyone because it's all I want to talk about because it's insane. It's patently insane.

[Jessica Defino]

Will not be watching. I'm going to try and save myself. I'm watching Love is Blind uk.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

See, this is what I think is crazy that you won't watch this because you love slop television. You love bad television. And I know. And this is some of the worst TV I've ever watched in my life. And it's addicting.

[Jessica Defino]

Well, it's because I have to rein myself in. I'm like, watching a lot of slop right now. And addiction, it's been bad for me.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I see.

[Jessica Defino]

This has been my summer of slop. This has been my summer of like.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

This is the summer you turn slop.

[Jessica Defino]

And dip in the summer I turned slop. Oh, my God. Yes. That's how I'm gonna refer to this summer from now on. It's not been the best for me. I'm sentient slop. I am, but sentient slop.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I feel that. That's how I feel. After every episode that I watch of the summer, I turn pretty.

[Jessica Defino]

Okay.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I am sentient slop.

[Jessica Defino]

Just like. Maybe I've changed my mind. Maybe I've changed my mind. You're convincing me.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

No, but please, you're watching Love is Blind uk you say?

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. Yeah, I am. It's not good.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I didn't know that was. I didn't know that was an opportunity.

[Jessica Defino]

It's Love is Blind UK Season 2, and we're only halfway through the season, so.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Wow.

[Jessica Defino]

New episodes Wednesday. Can you tell that I'm living for this? This is giving.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes. I mean, the summer I turned pretty. New episodes Wednesday. Me too. I'm right there with you. We're both tuning in to our programs.

[Jessica Defino]

Something to live for.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

We're simulcasting a couple days.

[Jessica Defino]

It gets better, Emily. It gets better. Oh, okay. My mess of the month is something. Actually, Emily sent me yesterday in a text message and I'm so grateful for it. My mess of the month is the statue of the Virgin Mary getting a glow up. So apparently there's like a 17th century wooden statue of the Virgin Mary in Seville, Spain. It's known as the Macarena and it, you know, is old. It was sent away to be restored and the restoration was botched, according to the New York Times. The Times said her glow up gave her longer lashes, a smokier look in her gaze and changes to her skin and nose. And the before and after pictures are gorgeous. Incredible. You do really have to see them. So the guys who did the restoration was this, this professor of restoration and his son, who was also a professor of restoration and the Times has this incredible detail that in 2013, the son presented a paper to a meeting of plastic surgeons in Barcelona about the similarities in procedures for both human and wooden patients. So this like, again, is like going back to our atomic. Our cultural automata fetish. But some of the the techniques that he. He cited for both human and wooden patients restoration are peels, reconstructive surgery, facial reconstructions, hair micrographs, pigmented lesions, skin luminosity and hydration. So I'm assuming they did all this and more to. To the Macarena, to our Virgin Mary. Um, and then when she arrived back at the church, like, people were, like, horrified. They, like, trimmed her eyelashes and tried to make it better, but she's still, like, pretty yassified and yeah, I think just like, not even our religious icons are safe from beauty as a moral imperative. You know, lashes always need to be longer, lips always need to be plumper.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Sure. She's the Virgin Mary for the modern age, you know? Yeah, she's speaking to a new public. For me, it kind of remind me, you remember that botched, like, Jesus painting restoration? It's very like, reverse that.

[Jessica Defino]

Reverse that.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, I think that's fun. I like when we just denigrate historical artifacts.

[Jessica Defino]

I know. I can't wait for everyone to see these pictures.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, we're gonna have to link them for sure because they're. Well, we might have to make it the lead image because it is pretty, pretty important to get your eyes on that gorgeous, gorgeous Macarena.

[Jessica Defino]

Well, that's it for us. Thanks for listening.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I think we've done enough.

[Jessica Defino]

We've done enough. We've got some slop to stream actually.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, I'm pretty busy. I got some things to watch. I need to know which brother she picks.

[Jessica Defino]

So we will see you guys if you're in New York on September 10, look out for our ticket page, which will go up soon. And maybe we'll see you at. On the lowbrow book club.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, we'd love to see you all on Zoom very, very soon.

[Jessica Defino]

Okay, Bye.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Bye, guys.