David Cronenberg For The Girlies

Summary

Detailed Summary of "The Review of Mess" Episode: David Cronenberg For The Girlies

Release Date: May 5, 2025

Hosts:

• Jessica DeFino – Writer of The Review of Beauty
• Emily Kirkpatrick – Creator of I <3 Mess

---

1. Introduction and Event Updates

The episode opens with Jessica and Emily welcoming listeners back to The Review of Mess. They reflect on their previous guest, Josh Gondelman, praising his humor and sharing personal anecdotes about laughing with him.

Notable Quote:
"He reminded me of so many weird things from my youth in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was very nice." – Emily Kirkpatrick [00:44]

The hosts also discuss their upcoming live podcast event, seeking participation and sponsorship from listeners' connections, such as Domino's franchises or beef tallow brands.

Notable Quote:
"We're really piling it all into this one event. It's our everything party." – Jessica DeFino [02:26]

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2. Coachella Fashion Trends: The Rise of Steampunk

Transitioning to the main content, Jessica and Emily delve into the fashion trends observed at Coachella, particularly highlighting a surprising surge in steampunk aesthetics.

Notable Quote:
"The biggest takeaway for me is, like, it was very steampunk." – Emily Kirkpatrick [03:56]

Steampunk Elements Discussed:

• Travis Scott's Attire:
  Emily points out Travis Scott's unique blend of post-apocalyptic athletic gear, likening his look to a "zombie quarterback."

  "It really seems like, like zombie quarterback, I guess." – Emily Kirkpatrick [05:48]

• Prada Spring 2025 Sunglasses:
  The hosts admire the innovative design of Prada's sunglasses that integrate goggles into headscarves, reflecting a retrofuturistic vibe reminiscent of the 1960s.

  "They’re goggles built into a headscarf... kind of like the 1960s retro futuristic." – Emily Kirkpatrick [06:27]

• Julia Fox's Look:
  Julia Fox's ensemble combines a monk's cowl with nude corset tops and shiny tights, embodying a mix of gothic and steampunk influences.

  "It's sort of like a weird leather shrug... looks like leg braces from the 1920s." – Emily Kirkpatrick [12:13]

• Belts and Diapers Trend:
  Celebrities like Alix Earle and members of Blackpink adopt a trend combining belts to mimic diaper-like appearances, blending fashion with a nod to past styles.

  "It's like chastity belt, but extremely secure chastity belt." – Emily Kirkpatrick [13:27]

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3. Time 100 and the Beauty Industry Influence

Jessica and Emily analyze Time Magazine's 2025 Time 100 list, noting a significant increase in influential figures tied to beauty brands.

Notable Quote:
"More than 10% of the list has a beauty brand or is prominently affiliated with a beauty brand." – Jessica DeFino [21:46]

Key Points:

• Celebrities with Beauty Partnerships:
  Figures like Serena Williams, Scarlett Johansson, and Elon Musk are highlighted for their associations with beauty brands, reflecting the industry's growing influence across various sectors.

• Trend Analysis:
  The hosts observe a 100% increase from previous years, suggesting that beauty has become a central element in the cultural landscape, transcending traditional boundaries.

  "Beauty is more publicly taking up like big space in culture today." – Jessica DeFino [21:46]

• Critique of Celebrity-driven Beauty Initiatives:
  Emily expresses skepticism about celebrities leveraging their fame to launch beauty products, questioning the necessity and authenticity of such ventures.

  "Why am I giving her my money?... You have all the money, you have all the resources." – Emily Kirkpatrick [24:26]

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4. Celebrity Excess and Recession Indicators

The discussion shifts to the opulent lifestyles of celebrities, particularly criticizing the excessive number of bathrooms in celebrity homes as a sign of disconnect from reality.

Notable Quote:
"Have you ever had that? Like, you have five bedrooms and you have 20 bathrooms." – Emily Kirkpatrick [24:55]

Additional Rants:

• Overconsumption and Luxury Failures:
  Emily vents about billionaires' lack of taste and the absurdity of luxury items like Lauren Sanchez's Balenciaga coffee mug clutch, deeming them unnecessary frivolities.

  "The creative director of that brand... Demna is parodying you as the fashion consumer." – Emily Kirkpatrick [107:08]

• Anti-Christian Bias Task Force:
  The hosts briefly touch upon societal shifts, mentioning the re-emergence of groups like the Anti-Christian Bias Task Force, reflecting ongoing cultural and political tensions.

  "I look forward to seeing how probably the K Pop Stans will take care of it for us." – Emily Kirkpatrick [35:12]

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5. Mess of the Month: Lauren Sanchez's Balenciaga Clutch

Each month, the hosts highlight fashion missteps they've observed in pop culture. This episode's "Mess of the Month" is Lauren Sanchez's Balenciaga coffee mug clutch—a $6,000 accessory parodying everyday items.

Notable Quote:
"It looks exactly like a to-go coffee cup, but it's made out of leather." – Emily Kirkpatrick [99:53]

Analysis:

• Absurdity of High-Priced Replicas:
  The hosts mock the impracticality and vanity of such high-priced fashion pieces that mimic mundane objects.

  "It's stupid on many, on many levels." – Emily Kirkpatrick [101:15]

• Critique of Luxury Brand Direction:
  They discuss the creative intentions behind such designs, suggesting that while designers aim to parody fashion elitism, consumers' participation undermines the satire.

  "You are selling back to you... That's the joke." – Emily Kirkpatrick [105:48]

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6. Interview with Emilia Blickfeld: The Ugly Stepsister

The episode features an in-depth interview with Emilia Blickfeld, writer and director of the new film The Ugly Stepsister. Emilia discusses her inspiration, thematic focus, and the film’s exploration of beauty and body horror.

Notable Quotes:

• "It's a grim gothic fairy tale body horror... about the stepsister and her journey." – Emilia Blickfeld [70:03]

• "Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is in the eye of the culture of the beholder." – Emilia Blickfeld [86:48]

Key Discussions:

• Concept of "Beauty Horror":
  Emilia introduces "beauty horror" as a genre intertwining aesthetic beauty with bodily horror, emphasizing the destructive nature of societal beauty standards.

  "It's a continuum... What is beauty? It's an eye of the culture of the beholder." – Emilia Blickfeld [74:34]

• Critique of Traditional Fairy Tales:
  She critiques how classic stories like Cinderella have historically linked physical appearance with moral virtue, a trope she aims to subvert in her film.

  "Disney made it real into the standard idea... if you're ugly, you're mean." – Emilia Blickfeld [77:50]

• Personal Connection:
  Emilia shares her personal struggles with societal beauty pressures, highlighting the film as a reflection of longstanding cultural issues.

  "We were conditioned to think our value is in our looks... it's a catch-22." – Emilia Blickfeld [82:34]

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7. Personal Tales: Jessica's Eyebrow Bleaching

In a vulnerable segment, Jessica recounts her own "mess of the month" involving eyebrow bleaching—a response to her struggle with trichotillomania (hair-pulling disorder).

Notable Quote:
"I just felt less exposed in a weird way... I have to illustrate how stupid I am." – Jessica DeFino [39:03]

Story Highlights:

• Attempting a Solution:
  Jessica bleaches her remaining eyebrow hairs to create a uniform look, believing it would mitigate the distress caused by uneven brows.

  "I thought it was really funny to wear a shirt that says butter face to a beauty industry event." – Jessica DeFino [39:10]

• Outcome and Reflection:
  While initially feeling liberating, Jessica grapples with the unsustainability and self-contradiction of her actions, highlighting the ongoing challenges of self-image.

  "I feel like I'll never stop apologizing for it my whole life." – Jessica DeFino [41:03]

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8. Closing Remarks

The episode concludes with Jessica and Emily reflecting on their discussions, emphasizing the complex interplay between beauty standards, personal agency, and societal expectations.

Notable Quote:
"It's about owning your own hotness... It's the same as a continuation of regular vaginal shaming." – Jessica DeFino [48:40]

They encourage listeners to engage with their content and participate in future events, signifying the ongoing mission to critique and analyze the intricacies of pop culture's "messes."

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Conclusion

This episode of The Review of Mess offers a comprehensive critique of contemporary beauty standards, celebrity culture, and the enduring impact of societal expectations on individual agency. Through fashion analysis, societal observations, and personal narratives, Jessica DeFino and Emily Kirkpatrick provide a multifaceted exploration of the "messes" permeating modern pop culture.

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. I write the newsletter the Review of Beauty.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And I'm Emily Kirkpatrick. I write I Heart Mess. Welcome.

[Jessica Defino]

Welcome.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

We're here again.

[Jessica Defino]

Shout out to our last guest, Josh Gondelman. If you haven't listened, that's an episode for paid subscribers. If you haven't listened yet, I would highly recommend.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It was so fun.

[Jessica Defino]

So funny.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

He's so funny. He reminded me of so many weird things from my youth in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was very nice.

[Jessica Defino]

As soon as I, like, got out of the office after recording, my boyfriend was like, who are you laughing with so much? Who's making me laugh?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Like, that's so funny.

[Jessica Defino]

I was like, oh, it's Josh Gondelman. Sorry.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And he was like, oh, okay. He is funny. Fair enough.

[Jessica Defino]

He actually had seen Josh at a comedy show like, a couple weeks ago and was like, oh. I, like, literally just saw him. Okay.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. That's awesome.

[Jessica Defino]

He is actually very funny. I forgive you for laughing at another man. Just kidding. He's not that he's not as toxic as I'm making him sound. It was all in good fun.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

No, Josh was great. That was a great episode.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. I guess the other thing we should mention is that we are still in the midst of planning our live POD.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Event coming up soon. So if you want to be involved somehow, if you own a Domino's franchise, for example, you'd like to give us some pizza or you have a beverage we might like to enjoy there. Yeah. Please let us know you represent a beef tallow brand.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, yeah, we gotta get that tallow.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Our inboxes are open. Yeah. Reach out. Also, I realized we've almost been doing this for a year.

[Jessica Defino]

Have we really?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. I looked it up today because I was like, is this one year? No, next month is one year. But isn't that crazy?

[Jessica Defino]

That is wild.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Time flies.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. I would have said, like, maybe a little over six months, but I would.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Have said, like, five years.

[Jessica Defino]

It still feels so fun.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I've never not been doing. This is how I feel. I've never not been talking to you about silly things.

[Jessica Defino]

Incredible. So this could, like, double as our one year anniversary party.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Oh, that's true.

[Jessica Defino]

My relaunch party, live pod.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

We're really piling it all into this one event. It's our everything party. Might as well just call it my birthday party as well. This plan's. I mean, July. That's Right.

[Jessica Defino]

Wait, because that was your, like, first, like, live mess event.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Oh, yeah. It was my birthday party, basically. Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

And I got to participate in the cake portion.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

Okay.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's an everything party.

[Jessica Defino]

Love this. Should we get into it?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. I'm going to start today's episode talking about everyone's favorite Coachella.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, yeah, I did. I'm glad. I'm glad you're giving a Coachella report because I, like, barely paid attention this year.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I think the world barely paid attention this year. Coachella, to me, seems to be. I mean, it's always seemed like, kind of on the decline from really, its. Its highest heights, which, I don't know, maybe 2016. Highest heights. 2017.

[Jessica Defino]

That feels right.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

We kind of hit ultimate Coachella celebrity content. I always think about Rihanna and that Gucci crystallized bodysuit, if you remember that. That, to me, was kind of peak. I don't know what year that was. That might have been later, but that, to me is always kind of Coachella at its height of insanity. Yeah. I don't know. This year felt like it wasn't very buzzy. It wasn't very high profile. The fashions were all pretty similar and sub. But I was thinking. I don't know, I was looking at all the fashions to do kind of a little roundup, and it felt very. The biggest takeaway for me is, like, it was very steampunk.

[Jessica Defino]

That's so fascinating to me and not what I would have expected. What are, like, the elements of steampunk that are showing up here?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's interesting. It's very Burning man to me. And I was wondering, is, like, Coachella the new kind of Burning Man? Cause I feel like Burning man has similar fall off in recent years. I mean, obviously, due to the extreme flooding.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And making it obvious that it isn't really much of a lux camping environment as it may have been presented as for celebrities to jet in and jet out. And so I feel like that kind of took a hit, which is maybe the best for Burning man, because now it can kind of return to its roots as, like, hippie crusty, you know, desert dwellers.

[Jessica Defino]

Right. Well, I feel like, be like, inaccessibility and sort of, like, apocalyptic vibes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

Are appropriate for Burning Man.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Totally. And so that's why I was kind of surprised to see how steampunky Coachella was, because it doesn't have the same kind of apocalyptic survivalist energy that a Burning man might. But, I mean, it's certainly apropos for the times that we're living in that feel very apocalyptic, I think. And seeing that channeled into festival fashion is, like, very strange. It looked very Mad Max to me. It looked very Waterworld to me, which is, of course, just Mad Max on the ocean.

[Jessica Defino]

I can see that.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. There's a lot of. I think brown leather and straps is kind of my two big steampunk takeaways. I have a. I have a handful of examples for you guys. For one, Travis Scott was wearing a custom chrome hearts, what I would describe as football padding, kind of like shoulder padding, which I'm always. Travis Scott is always walking this weird line of doing, like, post apocalyptic, like, athletic protective gear. That really seems to be, like, his niche for performance costume is kind of like. Yeah, like zombie quarterback, I guess.

[Jessica Defino]

I kind of love that.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's super. It's very interesting. It's also like, he's always. It seems like for him, a concert is somehow like, preparing for battle. Like he's going into war of some sort, is how I would describe his dress. So, yeah, he. It looked to me like, you know, I don't know if people know this. I don't know if they've ever been shooting with a rifle, but there is, like, a pad that you wear on your shoulder that's like, kind of to catch the recoil of the rifle. And they're often like these leather. Padded. One shoulder.

[Jessica Defino]

Okay. Yes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Things that you strapped your. But it looked exactly like that. He paired this with a leather jort and a Nike sweatband and then a singular elbow pad.

[Jessica Defino]

Whoa.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

So again, that kind of like. Yeah, I don't know. Deteriorating sports gear thing is very interesting to me. And also, I just like, I love the drag of hyper masculinity. Like, that is kind of one of my favorite niches of fashion is like, how do I perform? Like, virility as a man in, like, in a high fashion way. And it always kind of boils down to, like, leather padding. Sportswear.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And I just think that's such an interesting kind of reductive idea of, like, malehood. That. That is very interesting. Another one that I noticed at the festival was there's this very specific pair of Prada Spring 2025 sunglasses that are actually, like, kind of everywhere. They're everywhere. And they're goggles built into a headscarf, if that makes sense to people. So like a headscarf you would tie over your hair, but then goggles are installed into them. I don't know. So it's kind of a double. You're getting two Accessories for the price of one. Well, the price of a million, really. It's Prada. But Teyana Taylor and Lori Harvey both wore pairs to the neon carnival party part of Coachella. And then jt, formerly of the City Girls, she's a rapper, for those who don't know, also modeled a pair. And I don't know, it's just a very. It reminded me of kind of like the 1960s retro. Retrofuturism, like this idea of what the future might look like, but so firmly couched in, like, a 60s sensibility. Yeah, a 60s sensibility. A 60s lens, which I think is super interesting. It also. It reminded me of something Barbarello would wear, like.

[Jessica Defino]

Ooh, yes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Which I think is kind of describes a lot of the fashion that I saw at Coachella was kind of Barbarello as, like, super sexy, skin tight, but, like, vaguely. Yeah. Space age futurism, but told through, like, a retro hippie aesthetic. And. Yeah, and there's also something about the goggles in particular that feel so, like, ppe adjacent, which in, like, in a post Covid world is very interesting that you're making this kind of, like, glam protective gear.

[Jessica Defino]

Right.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And I feel like we're gonna start to see more of that also as well as people kind of. I don't know. We're still not over Covid, but you know what I mean? As the culture moves on from it and starts to put in its rearview mirror, I think we're gonna see a ste versions of.

[Jessica Defino]

I wonder if we'll get like. Like, this is the sunglasses scarf combo. I wonder if we'll ever get like, a sunglasses sun visor combo. Like, remember when a couple years ago people were wearing those, like, very futuristic looking, like, face shields?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Bro, you are describing V. Stiviano, who is one of my number one. She looms large in my brain.

[Jessica Defino]

Really?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes. Do you know her?

[Jessica Defino]

No.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

She was. How do I begin to explain V. Stiviano? To the uninitiated, she was Donald Sterling's mistress. Do you remember Donald Sterling?

[Jessica Defino]

Mr. Sterling?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Mr. Sterling. You're a silly rabbit.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Does he call you that? No. So she was. For those who don't know, I guess. What does he own the Clippers? The Lakers, Something? Surely the Clippers. Surely not like the Lakers. I don't know. He owns some basketball team or a large portion of some basketball team. He's a very old racist man, and he basically. He got caught saying racist things. I don't remember if it was a hot mic situation or a recording.

[Jessica Defino]

I Cannot remember.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Anyway, he was using slurs as an old rich white man does. And so for some reason, Barbara Walters maybe interviewed his mistress around all this controversy time, this woman named V. Stiviano. And she's just a trip, man, she's so wild. But so during this time, so she gave this crazy interview where she says like, I'm his everything, basically, I'm his silly rabbit, I'm his confidant, I'm his best friend. And then Barbara says, like, does he call you a silly rabbit? And she says no. So she made that up. But so she was getting paparazzi'd at the time and she claimed that she didn't want any paparazzi attention. And so. But she would, she would not want this attention in the most attention grabbing way possible, which is she would wear these full face visors that were reflective and iridescent and so you couldn't actually see her face. But obviously there was only one person doing that, so you knew exactly who it was. Anyway, that visor to me is always firmly linked to Vistaviano in my mind.

[Jessica Defino]

That's so funny.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

She's one of my favorite.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, I feel like we could see a comeback.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Oh yeah. I mean, I think we're already kind of seeing a 2.0 with that bill Belichick interview. I don't know if you saw that this weekend on CBS Sunday Morning, but I forget his girlfriend's name. But his like 25 year old girlfriend interrupting the interview and saying what's on and off the record and whatnot. Very funny, but very vistiviano to me. Very V coded.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes, yes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Elsewhere at Coachella, beyond the face visors, we also saw Julia Fox, of course, naturally, with her whole butt out in a thong in the desert, which is her natural habitat, I feel. But she was also wearing a monk's cowl on a. It was that, but done in leather. So it was sort of like a weird leather shrug. Monk's cowl, interesting. Worn over a nude corset top. And then a nude thong with a very shiny pair of like dancers tights worn atop them. And then a sort of like a bicycle short chap. So chaps that are that end above the knee.

[Jessica Defino]

This sounds like a lot. I haven't not seen the look, but it sounds like a lot.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

A lot was. A lot was happening with Julia. She was also wearing sunglasses that were sort of like shield visor. Okay, Sunglasses and Yeah, yeah, it's. People should look it up if you haven't seen it. It's a lot of look. It's very difficult to explain. The chaps to me also look like the leg braces from the 1920s that they used to put on kids with polio. There's a very similar. Like, the same lace up the sides. I don't know. The brace part around the leg.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes. You did a fantastic job describing.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Thank you. Thank you so much. And seeing it, it's a lot of look to try to. To articulate. So that was another kind of steampunk, futuristic element to me. And there's something a little fifth element even, I would say, maybe to the corset and the nude chaps. And then another micro trend that I noticed throughout the festival was Alix Earle, Jenny from Blackpink, Tyla. And I never know how to say this woman's name. Bea. Badooby. Beabadooby Be Badooby, the singer. They all wore kind of like belted diapers and not just like, one belt. Like, I think Tyla only wore one belt because she was wearing vintage Dolce and Gabbana. But the rest of them were like, just belts stacked on belts that were all kind of compiling together to make a Pampers.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. Or like those older, like, sanitary pad devices from, like. Are you there, God? It's me.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Totally. Or it's chastity belt. It's very chastity belt, but, like, extremely secure chastity belt. Like, one lock will not do, you know? And. Yeah, I don't know. I just thought it was interesting because it's. I don't know. Since starting the newsletter and kind of tracking trends, I'm always very interested when, like, trends merge. Like, when you kind of see the natural. It feels like watching evolution happen or something, you know, where you're like, these two distinct organisms have now, like, bred and, like, created a whole new species of trend. And so for me, this is in 2023. I used to talk a lot about Bel to Geddon, which is just like, Julia Fox kept making outfits totally out of belts.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, my gosh.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Remember that? And who else did it? Kim Kardashian did it. At one point. It became kind of a thing where you were just making, like, mini skirts out of belts or, like, dresses out of belts. And we're just using belts a lot for everything except actually, like, holding things up and this. I don't know. And there's something. It feels something similar here. But then we are also getting the adult baby element and it. I don't know, it feels very like DIY Zana Bain, if people know that designer, she does leather Leather work for a lot of pop stars. But yeah, so that was another kind of steampunk weird element. And then of course, we have T. Pain, who showed up in full steampunk costume. I don't know how to. Oh, full head to toe, he's wearing. It's kind of a Mad Hatter situation. He has a leather top hat on that has golden goggles affixed to it. He has, like, watch chains going nowhere. You see what I'm saying? And it is all, again, kind of like brown leather.

[Jessica Defino]

It's desert tones.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, it's desert tones, but it's like, way too hot for a desert environment. And yeah, I don't know. He was kind of peak literal steampunk to me. It also looks a lot like Wild Wild west, like the Will Smith movie. Mm. And yeah, very interesting choice to dress up like Will Smith in 1999, in 2025. But I'm. I'm intrigued by it nonetheless.

[Jessica Defino]

That's so funny. Yeah. The only, like, Coachella coverage I really paid attention to this year was from Biz Sherbert's newsletter, American Style. She did a couple of Coachella boots.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

On the ground reports.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes, yes. Which was good. But the one thing that really stuck out to me was she reported that women were wearing, like, orange stickers on them that said hot. And they were like, from rolls of stickers like that go on, like hot food at the grocery store. Like the bag of rotisserie chicken. So it's just like this orange, like, caution sticker that just says hot, which I think is a very fascinating evolution of, like, female body as food stuffs.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Totally. And just as like, consumable product.

[Jessica Defino]

Completely.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. And also, I don't know. And there's something about it that reminds me of kind of like the early aughts slogan tee in a way. You know, like, I think maybe we.

[Jessica Defino]

I think we did talk about this earlier. My homeboy stuff.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

And the kits and teas.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Or maybe you talked about on the podcast with Josh where it was like the. Oh, no, it was with Alyssa. The too hot to work T shirts and stuff when you were on the podcast with Alyssa. Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

Right.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It reminds me of those in a lot of ways, but kind of like a DIY version and also like the self branding of it. It is very interesting to me. But it's also funny that you say that because I have been getting served these ads on Instagram for exactly this type of sticker.

[Jessica Defino]

Really?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. My Instagram is a super interesting place because Instagram does not understand me or like, know what I want to look at because I'm not a big Instagram user. And even when I do, like, now I've been watching reels because I deleted my own TikTok accidentally and got into the reel cycle. But it's like, I don't like anything because I don't want anyone to be able to see what I'm liking.

[Jessica Defino]

I know I'm the same way. I'm terrified.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And so it's, like, utterly baffled by, like, what it's supposed to be showing me, or, like, how to put me into an algorithmic fold. And so one of the things it does show me constantly is some business that just mass produces weird stickers like that. Actually, let me look up. I took a screenshot of one. Let me see if I can.

[Jessica Defino]

That's so funny.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Find you one quickly of the type of stickers they think that I.

[Jessica Defino]

Maybe we should get some made for merch for the big party.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes. One just says lithium batteries forbidden for transport aboard aircraft and vessels. Fair enough.

[Jessica Defino]

Okay.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

I feel like I remember you mentioning something like this.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

This one is just a yellow sticker that in black says used, which I think is really funny. This is a neon orange sticker that says animal and heat. And this is a yellow circular sticker that just says shrimp in, like, the most regular font.

[Jessica Defino]

That's so funny.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. I get these all the time. And so I do definitely get the appeal of putting a hot sticker on yourself, because I've been tempted to buy these multiple times. Just I have no use for them. I'm just like. But maybe, like, maybe I'm gonna find the perfect situation for a shrimp sticker. I don't know.

[Jessica Defino]

You will.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's super tempting. It's super tempting.

[Jessica Defino]

I have to manifest it.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I do have to manifest it, and it'll all come. Come to reality.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, that's funny. I think my first item of business today is, like, as far from Coachella as you could get, maybe. Which is the TIME 100 list of the hundred most influential.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Hear what you're saying?

[Jessica Defino]

2025.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. Coachella is the least influential people of 2025. I would say so. Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

So Time put out their list for this year, and what really struck me was the amount of influential people on the list, from politics to Hollywood to sports, that have beauty brands or prominent partnerships or face of contracts with beauty brands. I'm scrolling through this list, and it's just they keep coming. They keep coming. And I'm like, this feels bizarre.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Are they naming them all in the no.

[Jessica Defino]

And so I clicked on a lot of the little blurbs that tell you why this person has made the list. And I think only one of them, Bobbi Brown, because she is known for her makeup line, even mentions a beauty brand. So these people are just like all influential in different ways. They're not like being called influential because of their beauty brands. It's just if they happen to have them. So we have Serena Williams, Blake Lively, Misha Prada, Scarlett Johansson, Kristen Bell. I'm keeping on the list. Even though her skincare brand closed last.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Year, we'll include it.

[Jessica Defino]

Bobby Brown, Donald Trump, who has Trump fragrances.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I'm counting. We all know. Yes.

[Jessica Defino]

I'm even counting Elon Musk because he had a fragrance a couple of years ago who's a singer in blackpink. She's like a YSL global beauty ambassador. Like, has a pretty prominent partnership with them. So I think it's worth mentioning for sure. And then Brianna Stewart and Nafisa Collier, who are in, in the basketball space, they're founders of this basketball women's basketball league called Unrivaled. And they have like a major partnership with Sephora. So Sephora works with them and all of their athletes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Interesting.

[Jessica Defino]

And then Simone Biles, who has like a pretty high profile partnership with K18 Hair in addition to all of her other, like, face of like, she did SK2 a while ago. But K18 is like a two year prolonged sort of ambassadorship.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Huh. Does Sephora have a lot of relationships like that with celebrities or.

[Jessica Defino]

No, but I think this is part of the giant move into women's sports that we're seeing happen in the cause.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I was just thinking, I was like, I can't think of another celebrity who has like a Sephora deal like that or even another kind of. I don't know what to call it, like an industry or a kind of.

[Jessica Defino]

A one of a kind partnership. It feels like.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, it's very interesting.

[Jessica Defino]

So, yeah, totaling all of that. This is. How many People is this? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5? This is 11 people out of a hundred people. So it's like more than 10% of the list has a beauty brand or is like very prominently affiliated with a beauty brand. Which feels like significant to me.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

So I looked back at some recent years. I went through 2024 and 2023. So 2024, there were five people associated with beauty brands in some sort of like, tangential way. And in 2023 there were four. So from last year to this year, that's a 100 increase in beauty related projects from what Time considers to be the most influential people in the world, which I just think is worth noting. I don't know what it necessarily means, but I do think it's fascinating. And I think it's just like an indicator that beauty is more publicly taking up like big space in culture today, whether it's music or sports or politics or even like the beauty industry proper. It feels like, okay, the beauty industry is now a space where influential people exercise that influence, even if they're not, you know, have not been particularly interested in or associated with beauty before. So.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Well, I think beauty has also just become like. I mean, fashion is also quite this way where it's like, it's just a. It's a good business for famous people is kind of like it's been indoctrinated as like, this is kind of one of the routes that you can take to like make money from your fan base. You know, it was like launch a fragrance, launch a makeup line, launch a skincare line. Completely the same way. It's like, you know, celebrities have weird fashion line, like one off completely fashion lines or even just mer. I would say they're more merch than real fashion lines, but I don't know. And there's something similar to me like that. It's like this has been taught by like the talent agencies or something. It's like this is one of the routes you can go down to kind of like make money off your fans. Yeah. And kind of cut out the middleman. Because for so long it was just like, I'm the face of this brand, I'm the face of that brand. And now you're seeing the dtc.

[Jessica Defino]

Now you can, you can. Why take a piece of the pie when you can't say.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Right, yeah, very interesting.

[Jessica Defino]

I don't know what it means yet, but I think it's a significant jump. And I think it's.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Well, I think one of the things. I mean, I'm going to add it to my list of recession indicators.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Okay. Because I feel like it's crazy how much money all of these famous people need and that they feel the need to diversify in this way and to wealth hoard in this way when they have real careers that already pay them tons of money.

[Jessica Defino]

So much money.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. To exist and to live their lives and they can live it perfectly happily without taking your money from you. Which is. I went on a long rant about this in my newsletter about Meghan Markle, but why am I paying a 60 millionaire? Why am I giving her my money?

[Jessica Defino]

For flower sprinkles?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, for flower sprinkles and jam. Like, that just doesn't add up to me. Like, get a real job. I don't know, like, why your job just shouldn't be dependent on my finances. And I just don't understand this mentality.

[Jessica Defino]

No, I, I couldn't agree more.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

You could have any job on the planet. You could do anything you want. You have all the money, you have all the resources, you have all the connections. Why does it always have to depend on me purchasing something from you? I don't get it. You live in a house with like 15 bathrooms. That's too many bathrooms.

[Jessica Defino]

That's way too many bathrooms.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Can I just say this is a total side note, but one of my biggest pet peeves about celebrity homes and mega mansions is there's always too many bathrooms. Nobody needs that many bathrooms. And the bathrooms in proportion to the number of bedrooms is psychotic to me. You have five bedrooms and you have 20 bathrooms. What are you doing? What's happening in your home? You don't need that.

[Jessica Defino]

You don't. Although I will say, if I had the resources, this will never be a reality in my life, but if I had the resources and I was like living with a big family of people, I. I would want there to be a separate bathroom for each person. Of course I would happily live in a house that had 15 bathrooms if there were 15 people.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Of course. Of course. We are saying the same thing. Of course. If you have 15 people in your family, they can eat and you're a crazy multi millionaire. They can each have their own bathroom as they would each have their own bedroom.

[Jessica Defino]

True.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

But when your bathrooms start to dwarf the number of bedrooms you have, I don't understand the pooping and peeing that you're doing in your home and why it necessitates that something's wrong. Yes. And you have too much real estate. This is awesome. Sorry, I'm really going off on a tangent now, but my mother has made me watch so many, like House Hunter, like all these, like, rich people reality shows about real estate. And my biggest complaint is they create these huge cavernous spaces that they have no idea what to do with. So you create a living room that is too large and then you have like five couches that you are too large in your living room because you're just trying to fill space. Like just have outdoor space.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Have normal sized rooms that do feel normally proportioned within. They can still be large, but they don't have to be, like, super bowl stadium large. Have a yard. Have a yard.

[Jessica Defino]

Have a yard. Oh, my God. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Okay, I'm sorry. Back to my recession indicators that are not real recession indicators. They're mostly just jokes, but I do feel like they're stirring up something. Um, my primary one is Kylie Jenner wore a latex dress to Coachella, and that is just the most weird, dated throwback to the. The 2008 recession that I've ever heard. Like, yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

Also, like, one of the more, I think, inappropriate places to wear. Could you imagine being at a Coachella festival in Lake.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

No, no, no.

[Jessica Defino]

I'm like, my body feels horrible just thinking about it.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes. I physically recoil at that idea. And the sweating that would be taking place under the sun in Indio. But also, I was thinking the same thing, though, with Julia Fox's sheer tights. I was like, I literally can't imagine a worse place to wear a nylon shiny tight like that. Just the sweating, the chafing. It would just be a holy hell, no, it's not.

[Jessica Defino]

Right.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

So she is our strongest soldier on that front. But, yeah, Kylie threw an event for her alcoholic seltzer brand, Sprinter, which is a drink that I have literally never seen anyone drink in my entire life.

[Jessica Defino]

I've never even heard the name Sprinter.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Really? Okay, fantastic.

[Jessica Defino]

I, like, knew she had a brand, but I didn't, like, could not have pulled that name from the recesses.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Sprinter, as in the sprinter vans that her family takes everywhere to a van. You know what I mean?

[Jessica Defino]

Okay.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

When you go to party, you obviously take a sprinter van and you drink your Sprinters in the sprinter van. Yeah. Yeah. I would love. If any readers out there have ever had it or know anyone who thinks that this, like, this is their favorite drink, I would love to hear from you because literally, I've never seen it. Like, at least I will savor 818. Like, I see 818 in bars sometimes. I don't see anyone ordering it, but I see the bottle in a bar. Right. I've never seen Sprinter any. I haven't seen it in a store. I haven't seen it in a bar.

[Jessica Defino]

Maybe Sprinter wants to sponsor our event.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Oh, my God. I take it all back. You know what? Sprinter is my favorite drink. I would love to drink it every day, and I would love to get the word out there that that's the name of your brand that nobody knows about. Anyway, she threw an event at Coachella for Sprinter, and she wore this Light yellow latex mini dress with a scoop neck. And it is just literally, it's exactly the dress every woman in her family wore from 2012 to 2016.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Like, you could not, not find a picture of Khloe, Kourtney, and Kim in this dress. And I don't know, there's something very ominous to me about. About that family baby powdering their way back into that garment. It seems like a bad news.

[Jessica Defino]

It brings up a bad feeling for me in particular, because this was around the time of the.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Takes you back to the apps on.

[Jessica Defino]

The Kardashian Jenner apps. And we had to do, like, outfit roundups and, like, find, you know, get my look comps at every price level for the latex dresses.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Totally.

[Jessica Defino]

And, yeah, that was a. That was a rough time for me.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Totally. It takes me back to being. I was a fashion assistant at the time this was happening, and I was working with stylists, and latex was like a new. This sounds so crazy to say, but latex was like a new material. Like, it was actually very hard to find latex garments and accessories. And I remember that. I can't remember this woman's name. I'm sure she still is, like, the lady who does this, but there's this woman in Greenpoint who made everything. Like, everything. Beyonce wore those latex, everything. Kim wore those latex. This lady was making it out of her studio in Greenpoint.

[Jessica Defino]

Interesting.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. And we used to have to go to her to get all these latex gloves or latex skirts or bodysuits and stuff, and she was the only one doing it. And I always think how crazy it is that it's just like the most ubiquitous. You know, it's just so normal now. You can find that anywhere. You can get that forever 21. Nobody cares. Oh, no. Interesting. Interesting. Anyway, I just assumed, for one, I assumed that Kim had locked all these dresses away in the. In the archives. I don't know if people know that, but she has a big storage unit where she archives all her. Everything she's ever worn, as though it's all going to go into a museum one day, which it probably will.

[Jessica Defino]

It probably will.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I've always thought. Well, and there's two things I've always wondered about the Kardashians. Like, one, why don't they buy their own mall and put all their own stores in the mall, and then it's just a Kardashian super mall of all.

[Jessica Defino]

Their brands inside of your head for free?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I know. I need to make them pay me.

[Jessica Defino]

For this stuff a consulting fee, because that is a genius idea.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I never understood because they were opening up. I started thinking about when I worked at People because they were opening up all these brick and mortars for the first time. And I was like, why not just fill a whole mall with all your stupid brick and mortars of all your stupid brands and like, have it be a one stop shop for all things Kardashian? And that was back then. Right now there literally is. They have more than enough ranch. You could have a cafeteria in there with all the stuff they make too. That serves the protein popcorn. Yeah, have a sprinter in the protein popcorn. You're all set to get back to shopping the skims, you know. Anyway, that was one of the ideas. The other idea that I always had is like a Kardashian museum that they self funded. You know what I mean? Like, they just buy a building and they turn into the Museum of Kardashian. Because I was thinking about that during all the, like the ice cream museum and stuff. Like all these, like, fake Instagram museums. I'm like, the queens of Instagram don't have their own museum to put all their weird junk in so that we can look at it in person.

[Jessica Defino]

That might be the better idea because then people would go ironically. Like, people aren't gonna go to the mall and buy ironically, but they will go to the gift shop and get some like little tchotchkes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Totally. And the Kardashians specifically, Kim, I write about this a lot, but she's obsessed with kind of like reifying her own fame through her own iconography and like, using her own references and stuff. And so I think, like, having this weird fake legitimacy of a museum would go a long way towards doing that because, you know, she, like, she's obviously obsessed with collecting the objects of dead famous women.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And so there's something similar to that where she's like creating her own mystique around herself or these covetable objects that one day will be like, purchased and worn by some other upstart, you know, fame hungry young, young gal with a sex tape of her own. I don't know, but I don't know.

[Jessica Defino]

Maybe her archives will become more relevant sooner than she thought and she'll be glad she doesn't have them in a museum because, yeah, maybe she's going to break out these latex dresses again.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Very true. But yeah, I just think it's a weird thing to have generally. And then it's also weird because it's specifically referencing a time period of Their fame. That is so Kanye creative directed. Like, that is Kanye's kind of, like, thrust behind this fashion era and moving into this look. So it is kind of a weird time to be referencing it and to be reminding people of their connection to him at all. Cause I would think they would be trying to actively move away from it. And also, I've always. I write about this a lot as well. Not that they listen to me, but, you know, I think a big part of the Kardashians fame and how they built it up out of nothing has to do with fashion and consistently being forward moving in their fashion and, like, inventing new trends and exposing their bodies in new ways and, like, creating outrage and shock. And when you kind of stop doing that, you stop giving people a reason to be engaged with you in that way. That is kind of like the foundation of your fame. And also, like you. You risk looking like all of the Instagram clones that you spawned.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Which I think is a very dangerous thing for the Kardashians type of fame is to kind of be sucked back into the crowd, if that makes any sense.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, it makes so much sense.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And then another little recession indicator for me is that satanic panic is back.

[Jessica Defino]

Is it really?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It really is. And it's so funny to me. I don't know, people. Satanic panic will just never not be hilarious to me. I don't know. I thought it was hilarious as a child. I think it's hilarious now. The fact that we just keep doing it and that we've been doing it since, I don't know, like, the Salem witch trials. And we just, like, can't get over it. And of course it's like. Right, because it's just, like, easier to blame the boogeyman. Right. Than to blame, like, anything that's actually going on with the problems that we're facing.

[Jessica Defino]

Completely.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And of course, we're also. Our country is currently being run by Christofascists. So that surely has something to do. And we have, of course, the anti Christian Bias Task Force, which is bravely.

[Jessica Defino]

Do we really?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

We absolutely do. And I know that for certain because my sister works for the government and she showed me the email. Wow. About. Yes, about the Anti Christian Bias Task Force. And that it's now her duty to report people to them, or if she feels herself that she's being discriminated against for loving Jesus, that also you can report to them. It is real and it does exist. And it's fucking crazy.

[Jessica Defino]

Think of any this in the age of the department of efficiency.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, my God.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I am looking forward, though, to the way that people find ways to jam up the anti Christian task force. Because, you know, people love. They just find ingenious ways, I feel like, to spam those email addresses and those phone numbers and fill it with, like, so much funny stuff. So I look forward to seeing how probably the K Pop Stans will take care of it for us. I assume they're our only hope. Our only hope. Yeah. Our only saviors. But, yeah, I don't know. I just think there's something. I just love when America decides to be a Puritans again. And, like, they look at the same old stuff, like, the same visuals that we've been looking at for a hundred years, and they decide, like, now it's Satan and it's bad and it's. Yeah, you know, rock and roll was us before that. True. This time it's Lady Gaga's Coachella performance that's really sending them into, like, an evangelical spiral. And I'm like, yeah, Lady Gaga's actually been doing this for 20 years. 20 years now, and nothing about it has changed. It's the same, like, demonic, you know, costumes and sight gags.

[Jessica Defino]

Okay. Now that I'm thinking about it, my, like, very weird, conservative aunt. I remember her being, like, very upset a couple years ago when Sam Smith did that performance with, like, devil ears or something, or devil tail on.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. That might have laid the groundwork, to be honest.

[Jessica Defino]

The groundwork for today's savior.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes. I forgot when Sam Smith did that. I don't know what this song is called. It's like that one really upset Christians. Yeah, that one was very demonic for people. And I. And again, I thought at the time I was like this, like, did you all. Did y'all miss Madonna or family were.

[Jessica Defino]

Were distraught.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

But it's just crazy to me that we. We receive the same imagery, the same tactics time and time again. And, like, and each time they're so. They're horrifying anew. Again, Madonna exists. Like, yeah, she did a lot of this and a lot more, like, extreme than a lot of this. And. Yeah. I don't know. How many times do we have to get upset at the sickly, the cyclicity. I don't know if that's even a word. I feel like I just made that up.

[Jessica Defino]

I hope it is, because it's.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Or I said it wrong. Thank you so much.

[Jessica Defino]

Cyclicity is a beautiful name for a.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Baby girl, but, yeah, I don't know, there's just something preposterous about to me, and I always wonder is, like, are our memories that short? Like, at what point do we get to move on from these conversations? Like, at what point have we kind of exhausted them?

[Jessica Defino]

I think they are. And I think that's, like, part of brain rot, too. And just like, the nature of living online and the speed of the trend cycle and how the trend cycle affects our capacity to remember. Every year it feels like we're reacting to the same old things, but for the first time in a fresh, new, horrible way.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's just so boring.

[Jessica Defino]

It is.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And we just have so many real problems and more interesting things to talk about. And I would love for us to just get a grip and move on. Even though I do like it, you know, as a person who I consider myself a little bit iconoclastic, it's like, I do like the transgressiveness. I like to feel that there's something that can shock and outrage, especially with nudity now taken away from me. You know, I do like the feeling that there are things that upset the public and that there are these, like, kind of triggers. I don't know. That's exciting to me. But yeah, it's also like, let's get some new ones. That feels very boring. And of course, the ultimate new one we need to get is all these fucking TERFs who think that, like, being transphobic is interesting is my biggest recession indicator to me, because, of course, speaking of short term memory, it is literally just homophobia all over again.

[Jessica Defino]

Right?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

We're doing the same thing with even less of the population, and it's so boring. And I just can't. It's just. It's such freak behavior. It's such freak behavior to care what other people are doing with their bodies and their genitalia.

[Jessica Defino]

It's looser behavior.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes. As Pedro Pascal said to J.K. rowling, it's deeply heinous loser behavior.

[Jessica Defino]

Okay, but I have to tell a little story related to this. Like, I think I'm gonna have to, like, actually write a post about this and issue an apology. But so I had. I had an event on Sunday night. It was a live podcast for the Pretty Hard Podcast. And it was a really fun night, but it was, like, videotaped, recorded, and it was about the beauty industry. And so I wore this T shirt that I got from Bathsheba that says butter face on it. I mean, you know what butter face is?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I'm aged millennial. Of course I know what a butter face is.

[Jessica Defino]

I thought it was really funny. I thought it was Funny to wear a shirt that says butter face to a beauty industry event. It was, like, a little chilly, so I throw a blazer on before I leave the house. The only letters that were visible the whole night were T, E, R, F. I literally wore a T shirt to this live event that's videotaped and is going to go out to the whole Internet that just says turf between my blazer lapels and I want to die.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

That is so awful and funny.

[Jessica Defino]

Someone pointed it out to me after the event.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Oh, my God.

[Jessica Defino]

And I just. The color drained from my face. I'm, like, still in shock. I still don't know what to do because it is so far from my values and everything that I talk and write about. And I'm just like, is this image of me going to, like, be.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, you're about to get clipped, and it's about to get spread across the Internet. I'm so dare you. You turn.

[Jessica Defino]

I just wanted to make fun of.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

My body and be sure you did you proud.

[Jessica Defino]

Trips. Oh, my God. It's, like, one of the most horrible things that's ever happened to me.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's so funny. You just reminded me that I also have a sweatshirt that I've thought about this similar because it's very stupid. True religion gave it to me, and it says whoa on the front, which is, like, so dumb. But it's one of the most comfortable sweatshirts I have, so sometimes I wear it. And once I was wearing it under a coat, and I realized that it just says ho. And I was like, okay, well, now I like it again. Now it's fun. It's a good sweatshirt, actually. Yes. It's the flip of your experience.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, no, this one was horrible. And I just feel like I'll never stop apologizing for it my whole life. Like, I'm horrified at the thought that there's going to be an image of me associated.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Well, you're getting out ahead of it.

[Jessica Defino]

I'm getting out ahead of it.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

So you are gonna have to scrub the Internet, though.

[Jessica Defino]

I'm gonna have to issue a statement through this other podcast. I'm gonna write about it. I'm like, nobody can think that I meant to do this. This is just an example of how stupid I am. I'm truly an idiot.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

You're gonna have to hire a PR firm to have this image scrubbed from the Internet of you so that no one can ever find it again.

[Jessica Defino]

No.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Like a real celebrity.

[Jessica Defino]

Okay. I think I have to start making fun of somebody else because I'm starting to get down on myself.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Fair enough.

[Jessica Defino]

And so I'd like to introduce the listening public to a new brand called Niches and Nooks.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Disgusting. Get out of here. I don't want it. So disgusting. Whatever it is, I don't want it. I don't want my niches or my nooks approached. Those are for me.

[Jessica Defino]

It's obviously, obviously an entry into the whole career market.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Sure.

[Jessica Defino]

It's Target exclusive. It's a new brand that wants to, quote, refresh, cleanse and care for your most overlooked nooks. And the products include wash your nooks, wipe your nooks, freshen your nooks, mind your business, and dry your nooks.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

My nooks are for me. What I'm doing with my nooks are none of your business. Get out of here.

[Jessica Defino]

And I.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's so cutesy.

[Jessica Defino]

It's so cutesy.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's so twee.

[Jessica Defino]

It's so twee. It's so like, it makes it like, gives me a full body shiver. And not because I have anything against nooks.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Sure.

[Jessica Defino]

You know, it's, it's not like an internalized misogyny thing where I'm like, oh, how, how could you mention a nook? It's, it's the opposite. But I think, I think what's like shocking me about this brand is the absurdity of some of the language that they're using and just like the total detachment from reality and their promotion of it. And it seems like a genuine detachment rather than like some sly, like, marketing manipulation stuff. Like, it's so out of touch with its own place in the culture. So first of all, in, like the press release, they, they say intimate care plays a vital role in a woman's hygiene routine. Yet it remains surrounded by shame. Society has conditioned us not to be vocal about it, and for a long time the industry has used language more suited to dishwashing than to caring for a woman's private parts. However, in this day and age, with TikTok views for intimate care content rising by 64% and 43% of Gen Z consumers feeling comfortable discussing it, we're on the cusp of a cultural shift. And like, no, I am like, I'm.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Stunned by every aspect of that.

[Jessica Defino]

None of that means that there's less shame around your quote unquote nooks today. Like, right? And products certainly don't lessen that shame. Like, this shift in behavior sort of means that, like, shame about how our nooks look and smell is so normalized as to seem natural.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Right. Also, didn't they just start off by saying that like, this is a necessity, like you have to.

[Jessica Defino]

They call it part of your hygiene routine.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Right. Isn't that kind of the one thing we learn from like the summer eve of it all is like, it's not part of our hygiene routine and it's like the vagina. I'm sorry, Our nooks and niches are like its own self cleaning thing with like gentle soap is enough.

[Jessica Defino]

Completely gentle soap and water is enough. So I mean, you could potentially make an argument for wash your nooks depending on the ingredients.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Sure.

[Jessica Defino]

But like none of the rest of this is hygiene or healthcare. It is specifically like shame based marketing telling you that your special little nooks shouldn't smell at all and you must buy an arsenal of four different products to use daily.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Right. It feels like just a continuum of the regular kind of like vaginal shaming and like the making it of like a disgusting thing that has to be. Yeah. Sanitized. I don't see the difference between this and every douche that came before it.

[Jessica Defino]

And like, if you're making the argument that people aren't ashamed anymore because they're talking about it more and they're buying more products, like, no, a lack of shame, like the behavior associated that would be.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

You'd see a decline not buying the products.

[Jessica Defino]

You would see a massive decline in sales. So it's just like completely absurd. There's also like the brand ambassador is the influencer, Serena Kerrigan.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Oh, interesting.

[Jessica Defino]

Who calls herself the confidence queen. And yeah, I. So I read an interview that she did with the newsletter, people, brands and things. And like the absurdity continues. So she says, I've always been opposed to any brand that suggests your vagina needs to be fixed or cleaned. That kind of messaging is outdated, misogynistic, and completely out of alignment with. With the SFK universe.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I agree, girl.

[Jessica Defino]

So when I first got the niches and nooks deck, I braced myself. But I was so pleasantly surprised. Not only did it avoid all of that harmful language, it completely flipped the script. The brand is smart, playful, inclusive, and actually celebrates the parts of ourselves we're taught to hide.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

No.

[Jessica Defino]

So like, again, like, none of that is real. None of it is real.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Right.

[Jessica Defino]

There's literally a product called wash your nooks.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Mm.

[Jessica Defino]

So if you're like, I'm over messaging that tells you to clean your vagina. Okay. You're selling the products and then I think it's just really interesting and the way that she's talking about this and the way the brand is talking about it because it just shows like how language and this idea of flipping the script has become the cornerstone of like so called rebellion in the beauty rather than interrogating the standards that underwrite these products. So it's like very similar to calling products that like reduce wrinkles pro aging instead of anti aging without changing the function of the product at all. It just restates the cultural norm in a nicer sounding way and it doesn't actually shift anything. And I mean even though I think that's like a bunch of like nonsense word salad what she said, I do think it points to something that we should be paying attention to which is this extreme focus on language rather than like action or outcome or purpose of product.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Also, as though that like isn't just marketing. Like, right. Like you've rebranded something that has a bad look in the past and we didn't like those words. We don't like the word douche. Right. So now they have a new word for it. But it's the same proxy. I also feel underlying concept in the interview everyone is is about to hear with the director of the Ugly Stepsister. I feel like we had a similar conversation about. Yeah. The language of beauty and actually highlighting like the words use around it.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And the power that they could have and how we think about also like wouldn't as. As the confidence queen when the ultimate in confidence just being. Having a stinky vagina.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And just like embracing and being just like a stinky person being like, yeah, that's my natural body odor.

[Jessica Defino]

So let it stink.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, let it stink. Deal with it, dude.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, I know. No, she literally says like, I'm excited to tell stories that like dismantle shame and invite you to take ownership over every part of yourself. And like I'm really disturbed by this language of ownership. Like I wouldn't call this taking ownership. Like it's commodifying yourself. So I guess in some way you are owning it. Cause you're turning yourself like into a product through product.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

But something about that really just hits me the wrong way. And then another one of their Instagram posts, a caption was repeat after us. Caring for your nooks is hot because of course the goal is, you know, hotness. So hot hot girls use vagina spray.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's about owning your own hotness. It's about owning if other. If the other gender is attracted to you. Obviously it's.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. The whole thing is just really disturbing and nonsensical.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And also very regressive in a recession kind of way. I have just been throwing around that word for everything. Everything is a recession indicator to me. Cause I think it's funny, but sometimes things I know I really are really true.

[Jessica Defino]

And that's like, I mean, kind of the crux of my Vogue business article from a couple of weeks ago was talking about, like, how will beauty be impacted by the recession in the future? And like, everything that I've seen and read about beauty culture and politics shows me that when things feel out of control, as with a recession, as with whatever's happening politically, yeah. We control the body. So this, I think, complete recession indicator because we're feeling just overwhelmed. And it's like, what can I do about it? I can make sure my vagina smells like fig leaves, which is one of the scents.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It also just struck me that it is interesting that control is also always about erasure. Like, it's always about disappearance. Like, you want less body, no odor. Yeah. No wrinkles, no zits.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. You could technically control your vagina by increasing the stinkage, you know.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Sure, sure. Yeah. I don't know. It's always interesting that it's just like about making you less minimizing and erasing.

[Jessica Defino]

Your less like a human and more like a product.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Right? Totally. Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. So that's my little rant about niches and nooks.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I love it. Oh, I hate it. But you know, I hate it. I hate it in. In other niches and nooks news, I don't know. And recession indicator. I guess I've just been very interested about like the hit that the luxury industry has taken this month from a tariffs and China and such. And I don't know, I don't have like super strong concrete thoughts on it, but I just think it's interesting how we're conceptualizing of luxury at this point in time. And like, what does that even mean? And as the curtains are being lifted on kind of the production of all this stuff, like, does it actually change our feelings towards it? I don't know. I guess to kind of backtrack on this story. In response to Trump's raising of the tariffs on China, China has kind of flooded the social media landscape with, well, essentially propaganda. I mean, propaganda that has like a ring of. Of truth to it, honestly, where they're. They're having these like, influencers show kind of the factories that are producing what they're saying that these factories are producing these luxury goods that then are then shipped to Italy and France for. For Finishing, okay, Finishing work is what they're calling it. And of course a lot of people clocked this kind of immediately as propaganda because they're showing Birkins, they're showing Hermes bags specifically. And that's just not factual. Hermes is actually produced in a factory in France. It is a French product, is not a Chinese product. So mostly what they're showing you are the production of very high end replicas, very good dupes, as we live in a dupe world now. And that's what a lot of that video content is actually showing you. And. And those influencers are encouraging Americans to kind of like skirt around the tariffs by purchasing these quote unquote luxury items directly from the factories where they say they're being produced. So you're kind of cutting out the markup of the luxury industry. And so they're trying to point out to Americans that really like, you know, the Chanel bag you buy for $15,000 is actually worth 10 and making us kind of doubt basically like the legitimacy of luxury and pricing and markup, which I think is all genuinely fair critique and should be part of the consciousness of consuming these goods to begin with. They're doing it in a disingenuous way to spiteful way, but it's not true at the base of it. So, yeah, what you're seeing is really the production of high quality replicas, which I think we already kind of have this interesting time of dupe cultures in this country, which dupes are so interesting to me because it's both like, obviously it undermines the original luxury product because you're getting this perfect copy that's a teeny tiny fraction of the price, but at the same time it's reaffirming the ultimate luxury good. Because it's like you want this item, it's a replica for the real.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, it's like adding to the allure of the original.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes. And of course, Jess and I, for listeners who don't know, Jess and I are in a book club currently reading Ways of Seeing. And it was giving me big ways of Seeing energy and big Walter Benjamin, which is the essay that the book is based off because they talk a lot about the importance in art of the original or the real deal and that we can make all these replicas of it, that that should cheapen the original. But also at the same time it reaffirms the preeminence of the. And the importance of the original and the value of the original that it would be replicated like this, that it would be proliferated like this, but that the real. There's the suggestion the real has some aura. That's Walter Benjamin's word, aura, not just my word. And again, and much like the art argument, they say that a lot of the value of this art has to do with history and kind of like being. I forget the exact word for it, but being able to trace the ownership basically of this object and the history of this object through time is part of what gives it its worth. And I think there's something similar in the luxury object is like, we look to the history of these brands, we look at the legacy of these brands, the other people who have owned them, the types of people who own them. And through that, the original has a value, or we assign a value to the original that cannot be assigned to the replicas, even if they are literally the exact leather, the exact construction made in the same factory as the other one.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, they lack the aura.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

They lack the aura of the original. And I don't know, I think there's something interesting about that. But also a lot of detractors of these videos pointed out that even if this is true, and I think there is a spiritual truth to this, like, I don't know that brands are. I don't know that these luxury brands are getting things made in China and then finishing them in Italy and France. But I feel. I feel spiritually that is the truth of what they're doing here. But people were saying that factories, that if that is true and factories are doing that, they would have all signed ironclad NDAs, that there's no way that they would be able to say this or show you footage of this. Like, they would immediately lose the contract if not get sued true into oblivion. And also, maybe I wasn't clear, but when I say finishing, I mean things like kind of applying the hardware or applying the logo of the brand to the object would be considered finishing work. And in that way that these European countries could say, like, made in France, made in Italy, because the last seams that were sewn were in that country. And I don't know, I just think it's interesting. And I was also thinking about this kind of weird, nebulous shifting energy of like, what is luxury? What is a luxury brand? When this is random. But when Joey King wore a $45 Old Navy dress to the premiere of a film, and I was like, okay, whatever. Like, it's a dress from Old Navy, you know, I don't know. Celebrities do that a lot as like a. Usually as an advertisement for behavior or whatever. But it's also, it's like, it's a good stunt to sell product, you know, because then people are like, I love that. I can afford that. I'm gonna buy this dress that Joey King wore on the red carpet.

[Jessica Defino]

Totally. I also thought that was interesting because the last kind of like mass market on the red carpet moment we had was Gap. And Old Navy is kind of like the lower priced version of Gap. They're owned by the same company. So it's interesting to sort of see this experiment roll out with like lower and lower priced brands.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes. And that's exactly what I was thinking about. Yeah, this is a whole different division of Old Navy called the Occasion by Old Navy. So they are kind of like marketing towards something more, I don't know, glam, more black tie, maybe more like a bridal party, even more evening wear, I suppose, in this vein. And yeah, I don't know, I thought it was similarly interesting. And Gap recently announced Gap Atelier, which is, is doing something similar where perhaps people recall, I think it was last summer, even at Con, Anne Hathaway wore this Gap off the shoulder, white button down, floor length dress. And I guess people really liked it and they were talking about it. And now Gap Atelier sells those dresses and other kind of similarly, they're marketing them as like slightly more upscale mid market, I guess, Gap products. And from what I've heard, boots on the ground, they're not very good or they're pretty. At least they're pretty indistinguishable from a regular Gap product at a price point that doesn't make a lot of sense.

[Jessica Defino]

For the surprise me at all.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. And again, it's like, as always, you're talking about something that looks good on Anne Hathaway, a woman who wears things professionally, like, who looks good in things professionally and is styled right, versus like a regular customer who just puts it on and is like, okay, why, why don't I look like Anne Hathaway? I'm confused, but I don't know, I. That blurring kind of of like what is luxury is interesting to me, especially the way Gap Inc. Is doing it. Because of course we have previous examples of this, like, you know, Target doing its collaborations with high end designers in the past or even, I don't know, like we see usually every year at the Met Gala, you get Topshop RIP or H and M kind of doing these weird Met Gala ball gowns as an ad for themselves. And it's like that to me makes a little bit more sense because you're doing this kind of luxury one off just to include your name in the conversation. And it's kind of like, I don't know, people are like, whoa. H and M made a.

[Jessica Defino]

Can you believe it?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Fancy dress. Can you believe it? It's a, it's a weird news story, but these ones, I'm kind of like, what, what's the end goal? I, I don't know. And especially as we have like kind of the disappearance of the mid priced market, you know, where we don't have those dresses anymore that cost three to $500. You know, you have a $100 dress or you have an $800 dress and that market doesn't exist. It's interesting to me that Gap's trying to, seems to be trying to close the gap. That bridge. In a way. Yeah, the gap. The gap's trying to close the gap. But I don't know, I think all of it combined speaks to the interesting and precarious position that luxury is currently in. And I wonder kind of what the fallout will be or what the ramifications of this or if it won't change anything at all. And people just like they want their dupes and they don't care and that's. And if they can afford the luxury stuff, they'll ball out on it anyway.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, I'm interested to see where that will go too. I think like in the beauty dupe world what's shaking out is like people don't care if it's the dupe and in some cases the dupe becomes like more expensive than the original.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Totally. And I feel fashion is similar. I mean, look at the hubbub around the workin. You know, it's like people want the Birkin. They don't give a shit that they think it's funny. It's from Walmart. Right. It doesn't even matter anymore. And they know they're never gonna afford a real Birkin. So it's like, why even pretend to it? It's camp.

[Jessica Defino]

And it's almost like more of a status symbol. Almost to have a work in because you're like, yeah, but I'm not one of the rich assholes who could afford a Birkin.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes, it's a different type of signaling for sure, but while still being coated within the same luxury symboling, which is so interesting. But you also get the added bonus of like you're participating in this weird viral moment, which I guess is true of kind of all of dupe culture is like you're going after these Dupes. Because usually you see an influencer promoting it or, yeah, a TikTok ad for it and you think like, oh, I'm going to be a part of this, like, zeitgeist of the dupe moment. I don't know. I don't have any answers for it. I do think it's like an interesting phenomenon that we're watching happen. And I do kind of wonder within like a kering or an LVMH if they're concerned about this type of stuff at all also, while at the same time they're producing less like it items than ever before. Like, they don't even have IT bags to rely. That used to be like the bread and butter of the whole fashion industry. You make a good bag, the brand dines out for a decade on that good bag, you know, and they don't even really have that anymore. And now you have dupe culture on top of that where people are like, I don't. I want to pay fast fashion prices to have like a speedy bag or whatever, you know, and it looks exactly like a real speedy bag. I don't know. I wonder what their numbers are like.

[Jessica Defino]

I don't know. But I do know. I think beauty, they're like heavily investing in beauty to be these lower priced items that people will buy in bulk as the. As sort of like the it bag declines. It's more like an it lipstick.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

No, that's true. Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

You know, hundreds of thousands of people can buy versus, you know, 5,000. Yeah, I don't know.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Totally.

[Jessica Defino]

But speaking of dupes and speaking of Anne Hathaway. Anne Hathaway has allegedly duped her own face from 20 years ago.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I saw.

[Jessica Defino]

So, I mean, we don't have to linger on this too long because I don't know how interesting it is, but like, you know, Anne Hathaway went to the Ralph Lauren Fall 2025 Runway show the other week, and she was wearing this, like, really high and tight ponytail and her face looked very snatched. And of course, the rumors started immediately that she had gotten some sort of a facelift, which, like, I wouldn't be.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Surprised, but I thought that she was beautiful because she's unproblematic and minds her own business. Exactly. So why would she need work done?

[Jessica Defino]

And I think that's part of, like, why everyone is, like, the response to it has been overwhelmingly positive. Yeah, like, very positive public reaction.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I noticed that as well.

[Jessica Defino]

Go off, queen. Yeah, do your thing.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Looking gorgeous.

[Jessica Defino]

Get that facelift. You look amazing. Like, there is still that, like, this is how you age when you're unproblematic thing, but there's also sort of this acknowledgement that there's work involved, but because she's unproblematic, it's tasteful work. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't find the work itself particularly interesting, but I am interested in the response to it, and it sort of made me think of a story I was recently interviewed for Grazia, which I don't think is out yet, but it was about the 15 year anniversary of Heidi Montag's cosmetic work and the public reaction to that, which was, like, overwhelmingly negative.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

So, I mean, like, obviously I think there are many differences here. Like, Anne Hathaway is a beloved actress. Heidi was like the villain of reality tv.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Sure.

[Jessica Defino]

Anne isn't like, calling attention to this cosmetic work. She just stepped out and looks great. Heidi did a huge press tour about it.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Heidi also got a bunch at once, which I also think is like, that triggers people. You know, it's like, you're not. You just went in and got the whole works instead of, like, tastefully doing a little here and there, which is, like, demure, you know?

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, it's definitely like a class differential. Yeah. And then I think we can, like, debate whether Anne got work done. And with Heidi, it was like, very obvious, oh, you changed your whole face.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And she was proud of it also. Like, very proud of it. And very much like her own ship. She's like, I wanted to do this. I love the way I look every. You know, I wanted to do it all at once. And I think we don't like that.

[Jessica Defino]

I don't want to speak out of turn, but I do think she has sort of backtracked on that. Oh, really? I. I'll look it up and I'll put it in the show notes, but I believe she has, like, since been like, oh, yeah, that's, like, kind of sad she did that. I don't know.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Sure. Especially she was so young, you know, I mean, it's true that she very much could have wanted it and loved it in the moment and realized as she got older that she was kind of, you know, didn't really see herself for who she really was at the time.

[Jessica Defino]

Exactly. But, like, those differences aside, I think there are other factors in, like, the public response to sort of, like, overt cosmetic work. Um, and yeah, I just think it's like a really good example of esthetic inflation, which is like, the slow normalization of cosmetic procedures that were once considered extreme.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Especially over the last 15 years, for sure. Like, we've gotten very comfortable with seeing work. I mean, the Kardashians alone, like, we've gotten very comfortable with seeing work and watching faces and bodies change and just kind of having to silently be like, yeah, okay.

[Jessica Defino]

Well, I think there's so many things that happened in the past 15 years, which is like one, extremely rapid development of new cosmetic technologies.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

That too. Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

And then two, I think just like social media sort of flattening the space between celebrities and real people. Like, we see those real moments from celebrities every day, and then real people are becoming celebrities every day through their social media influence. So there's like sort of like this collapsing of like. I think the average person feels the pressure akin to a celebrity now to look as beautiful as possible.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Well, we're, we're like all public figures now in a way. And also. Right. I think people feel it's the same thing. I have this thought a lot about billionaires also, is like, there's this weird mentality that like, oh, I can't critique a billionaire because that could be me tomorrow.

[Jessica Defino]

I could be a billionaire tomorrow. Yeah, right.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And I think it's the same thing with celebrity now as well. It's like, well, I'm not. I. I would do that if I was a sl. I'm going to be a celebrity tomorrow. I'm going to go viral and be famous. And so I'm not going to critique them for their. Those choices because I do that too. With the money and the fame.

[Jessica Defino]

What I think is happening, like, I think more regular people are getting more extreme work done and therefore, like, empathize with celebrities who do it too and champion it, because it's not out of the question for them.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

For them to do it.

[Jessica Defino]

And so it's like, we don't want to create this, like, media environment where that's seen as something like bad or negative or even controversial in the slightest because it's not crazy to think that, like, the average, like, person sitting next to you at work could be getting like a half lower facelift tomorrow. You know, that kind of happens now, especially with like, buy now, pay later.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Totally. Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

So, yeah, I mean, I think Lindsay Lohan got like a pretty similar reaction to her.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. Christina Aguilera.

[Jessica Defino]

Christina Aguilera, yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Had like very visible kind of full body and face transformations. And yeah, I was also surprised by the way the public met both of those. It's just kind of like, wow, you've turned back time 20 years.

[Jessica Defino]

Amazing.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And everyone kind of talks about in this nebulous way as though, like, you know, they were drinking celery juice for the last month. We didn't see them. And this is magically reversed time.

[Jessica Defino]

I've been meditating and just drinking water.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Exactly, exactly.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. I guess my point is just, you know, justice for Heidi.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Justice for hiding.

[Jessica Defino]

Justice for Heidi.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

She's getting a little taste. She's getting a little taste of justice. I think she is.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. But, yeah. We're gonna move to our conversation with Emilia Blickfelt, who is the writer and director of a new movie called the Ugly Stepsister, which Emily and I saw a press screening of a couple weeks ago. And, I mean, I loved it.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's so good. It's so fun. It's a retelling of the Cinderella story from the point of view of the Ugly Stepsister Elvira and her Cinderella sister Agnes. And, yeah, it's very dark and it's like kind of turn of the century castles with, like, some modern 60s flair. It's really fun. It's very good. And I say that as someone who literally cannot watch horror films, and I watched, like, half this movie through my hands.

[Jessica Defino]

You did such a good job.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I was so scared and I was so disgusted, and I still loved it.

[Jessica Defino]

So, yeah, it's brutal, but definitely worth watching. I'll look for, like, a list of where it's being shown or when we can stream it and put that in the show notes too. But yeah. Thank you to Amelia for being on the pod. Here's our convo. Amelia Blickfeld, writer and director of the Ugly Stepsister. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Thank you for having me.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, we. So we saw a press screening of the Ugly Stepsister the other week, and I. I have not been able to stop thinking about it. I loved it so much. I loved your Q and A at the end, and we were just delighted to get the chance to speak to you more about it.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

I'm so happy. Thank you.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. And you really deal with so many issues that we talk about in this podcast and Jess talks about at length in her newsletter, which is all about beauty and kind of the problems with beauty, the horrors there, the horrors of beauty. I was wondering if maybe, just to start, you could describe, for listeners who haven't seen the film yet, kind of just the general plot of the Ugly Subsister.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

So the plot is kind of. Or the idea is kind of simple. You know, I wanted to make a movie about Cinderella's stepsister and why she cuts off her toes to try to fit the shoe, which she actually does. In the Brothers Grimm's version and, you know, revisiting that story as an adult, I immediately identified with the stepsister cutting off her toes. Like I have. She's size 11, so.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Me too.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Yeah. Right. So, yeah, it's a. It's a grim gothic fairy tale body horror. Sometimes I call it beauty horror. About the stepsister and, you know, her journey to that moment.

[Jessica Defino]

I love this concept of the genre of beauty horror, which I feel like is popping up more and more in film, even in the literary space. Can you just, like, tell us a little bit about how that, like, concept of the genre really formed in your mind and how you brought it to the film?

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Yeah, you know, I wanted it to be a body horror, but then again, it's. It's not. Or I knew it was a body horror. You know, I was making a movie about someone cutting their toes off, and I saw how this was, you know, thematically interesting, seeing, you know, with what people are doing to themselves today, but also what especially women have been doing to themselves for decades. And then, you know, also I just had this idea that I wanted to lure in, like, an audience that wouldn't necessarily go and see a body horror. And I think that's when I started thinking about. About it as a beauty horror because I really wanted to lean into this idea, you know, that we have this femininity that's wrapped in all of this, you know, pink tulle and ribbons and all these nice, cute names on the. On the products and all that. You know, there's a surgery called the Cinderella surgery where you can get parts of your toes removed.

[Jessica Defino]

I have not heard of this.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

It's a real thing, and it's. And I just. I wanted to play on that, you know, how. How this, like, soft, girly, feminine thing often coexists or is dependent on this horror and how these. How they contrast and. Yeah. And coexist and. And to always kind of fill every frame, if possible, with that.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, yeah. And I think beauty at large is very good at kind of disconnecting, like, the aesthetics and the pretty package from that kind of underlying the pain, like you said, in the horror and, like, what you really have to go through in order to achieve those things and your film really makes them indistinguishable. Like, you cannot have one without it. You can't see one without the beauty, without the horror.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Yeah, yeah. I would say, though, that I. I think it's interesting you say it's. It's beauty because, like, what is beauty? Right? And. And I'm actually trying, but it's really hard because it's so ingrained in our language. But actually, there's a whole industry that is. Has kind of, like, taken our language from us. And, you know, just the word beauty products, it's kind of implies that you need to buy these things, that they own the beauty, and you need to buy that to get that beauty. So I'm actually trying to talk about appearance or appearance ideals. You know, even that or beauty ideals is still, you know, it's not so much the industry, maybe, but really be conscious about it because it's these words that's a part of the whole. You know, how you're lured into the idea that your value is on the inside and someone else is going to give you that value if you use that money and endure that pain.

[Jessica Defino]

That's actually the premise of the book I'm writing now. I'm writing about the language of beauty and how it sort of mystifies what we're actually doing to ourselves.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Exactly.

[Jessica Defino]

And, yeah, it's really fascinating to hear you talk about it. And I just feel like there are so many visceral moments in this film, too, that, you know, the audience, like, can't help but feel. If you don't look away, you're feeling it, like, in your gut, in your bones. Like the removing of Elvira's braces without anesthesia and her nose job without anesthesia. The sewing in the eyelash extensions was really a rough one. And, of course, chopping off the toes. But I love this idea you've talked about, about, like, wanting to make the audience feel these things viscerally, like, I guess as a way to provoke empathy or just, like, feel this experience that we have sort of been dissociated from through beauty. Yeah, I'd love to hear more about that.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Yeah. You know, I'm a big fan of body horror, and I knew this was gonna be a body horror. And there was. And I was really excited for that because I think, you know, being a woman is so such a bodily experience in so many ways. And, you know, with birth and with periods and all of that, but also this idea of us as an object that needs to be perfected or made into something beautiful. What I love about body horror is that you are connected to the person through their. Or, like, the character through their bodies. And often with David Cronenberg, he would have, like, ideas about the modern day and the. The person living in modernity and technology and what happens to that person. But it's all kind of those Thoughts are delivered intravenous. That's an English word, through the body horde to the. So you. It's. You don't receive kind of the message with your mind. You do it with your body. And I think the pain and horror, I think it's quite. I made a quite angry movie. And I think, you know, it's something about really making people feel the anger and the hurt, but still sympathize with that. That was really what I wanted to try to do. And I think also, you know, when I see body horror myself, it's a reminder that I have a body, and that body is vulnerable. And that body is something I shouldn't take for granted, you know, And I'm not only a mind, I'm also my body. And I think for women, often we feel like we have to be either or. And there's so many things with it that I think is the reason why body horror is so amazing for especially feminist movies. And then also it's a lot of fun.

[Jessica Defino]

The other thing that really struck me in your notes on the film was this idea of morality and beauty. And you mentioned that in the Brothers Grimm version, the ugly stepsisters are, like, not ugly. They're actually just as beautiful as Cinderella and.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Or almost, I guess.

[Jessica Defino]

Almost. Yeah. And so was it. It was like Disney that brought in this idea of, like, beauty equals good and evil equals ugly.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

I think it's been there, you know, partially in fairy tales always. You know, the Wicked Witch often has a. Knows, you know, that. I think if you go deep enough and maybe there's like racial problems in that and, you know, against Jews or, I don't know, there's stuff there that's not okay. But so it's always, you know, the looks of a evil character or has. Has been used before. But I think it was really Disney that made this into, like, the standard idea and made it really one to one. I think that's what I've seen, like, going back to old fairy tales, in contrast to Disney versions, is that they're often very, very simplified. You know, they're actually made very sanitized. But somehow the moral also becomes more evil by doing that. Because in the older fairy tales, you know, there's a richness and maybe a more ambiguity to the thing, you know, while he's just saying literally, like, if you're ugly, you're mean, and if you're kind, you're nice. And I think even though, you know, the Brothers Grimm's version, it says that they're beautiful, like in the children's book that I read when I. Of their version, they still had, like, a weird nose, you know, so the kind of. The idea has. Has come into our. In our culture. You know, I. I tried to make a version that was not. Where I was not following just one version. I was trying to, like, just remember what I remembered of any Cinderella version and kind of do that version, the Cinderella story, that it's kind of present in our mind between all of these different versions that have been made or told. Yeah, yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

I feel like part of the updated morality of it, too, is this delineation between effortless beauty and effortful beauty. And how. I mean, we have studies now that show if we see someone who has overt cosmetic work done, we judge them as being morally inferior. And I thought that was kind of an interesting update because Elvira is, like, trying.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Yes, yes. She's absolutely trying. And I think. Thank you for seeing that. You know, I think. I guess anyone who sees the film can. Can understand what I think about, you know, trying to change yourself to become, in quotation marks, beautiful, you know, and what potentially can happen to you by going down that road. But also, I really, really. I'm very. You know, I don't want to judge anyone trying to navigate this very small, narrow, you know, space that is like being a woman and where whatever you do, you tread wrong somehow. You know, personally, you know, I stopped shaving. What is it, like, almost 20 years ago now. Yeah. Or at least 15. And I've stopped using makeup. But I tell people, you know, it's not because shaving or wearing makeup in itself is wrong. It's just that I had no idea if I did it of my own free will or not. And then I choose, because I've also been very under the influence, bad influence of body pressure and pressure for being beautiful in a specific way. So I decided I would rather live within the one opportunity or, like, one way that I knew wasn't affected by or, you know, the one other way that could potentially widen that space. So there would be potentially more ways of being a woman, you know, or expressing yourself. But. But I don't think that's the right way to do it. I don't think we should end up, you know, becoming like men, presenting like men, even me in my tie today. But I really like to play on these, you know, on the expectations. But I don't. I think, you know, we should really show each other compassion and understanding. Whatever we end up or how we express ourselves or the choices we do, we have no idea why people, you know, the background for those choices or how people feel or think or what philosophy they live by. And. Yeah, so I have a lot of sympathy for Elvira, especially because there's so much shame about, you know, when you try and then fail to fit, you know, you're really trying to do your best because that's what you told, you know, you have to. That you will only become as beautiful as the work or the money or pain you put into it. So it's even like this double shame. Like it's your own fault if you don't become beautiful enough, but it's also your own fault if someone finds out that you tried really hard. You know, It's a catch 22. No.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. And I think your empathy comes across even, you know, for, like, Agnes, who's also kind of like, complicit in this whole beauty complex. You know, you feel for her at every turn, you know, like being torn away from her lover or having to marry the prince. In the end, like, we do become empathetic for her, even though she's like getting this kind of quote unquote fantasy.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's like not what is what's made out to be, but she's. She's dealing with what she's been given, you know, like that is her kind of leg up in the world and she's taking it.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

I think that was one of the. Or that was one of the hardest characters to write or the hardest character because, like, I can't. I can't imagine being, you know, Cinderella, pretty and living in the world and. And I was, like, questioning a lot, like, how to make her. Because I wanted to not change the archetypes. So I didn't want the stepsister to become the good one and Cinderella to become the evil one. You know, I wanted her to become the stepsister as we know it from the fairy tales and the stepmother to be that evil stepmother, you know. But what I'd found in the stepsister, you know, that set. The whole project of. Is her humanity within that archetype, like the human. The human version. So I need to define that with Cinderella as well. But there's no one that is just kind. Right, right. If they're just kind, I guess they're.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

A bit less concerning.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

It's concerning. Right. So I was wondering, you know, should I make her this, like, stupid blonde who was just like, la de da mai, oh, my God, the prince is coming to get me. You know, I kind of wanted to do that for A little while. But then I thought, no, that would be to, you know, make myself less intelligent and sympathetic than I. Than I am. And. And then I worked a lot with her to find kind of my Cinderella quality. What was the quality that would make her into Cinderella? And for me, I found this, like, effortlessness. Right. That's what you're also talking about, Jessica. It's like. And also that she's a natural. And I thought, like, oh, she doesn't just have natural beauty. Like, she's a natural in life, you know, this is from. Also about class. She's grown up with money. She knows how to behave. She's had loving parents.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

You know, she wears the right things, she does the right things.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Exactly, exactly. And that's already in Disney version. The Disney version, Right. The silhouettes that Cinderella has this, like, 1850s, 60s dress, while the stepsisters have the 1880s dress because they're new money and therefore they have bad taste. And I think it's like. And also this idea that we say that Cinderella is, like, rags to riches, but in almost all the versions I've come over, she's always a woman of nobility. That's just for a while, you know, in the kitchen before she rises up again. And I think that's just a certain. And. And that's the thing, you know, talking about beauty standards, I think with. And also beauty procedures and all of that would talk way too little about class, you know, and how. How, you know, you can see in South Korea how women now, and also men more and more, but they take up loans to do plastic surgery to even get a job, because the standard of how you should look has become so narrow. And it's a class thing. It's. It's really. It's really a big deal for me. But anyways, so Cinderella, you know, she's natural. She can have sex, she can do whatever she wants. She has no shame. And I love that about her.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

That's.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

That's all. That also makes her kind of still. She's still kind of, you know, a good example for girls that they should love themselves. They should have the sex they want, you know, and have the emotions they have and all of that.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah. Another moment that really stuck out to me was when Elvira ingests the tapeworm eggs. And you had said something in the Q and A about this really being a moment, one of agency. It's the first time that she is not at the mercy of, like, her mother deciding what her nose is going to look like or to get her Braces off. It's a moment of agency, but it's also a moment of like internalizing those ideals, the ideals of others, the gaze of somebody else and self objectifying.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Absolutely.

[Jessica Defino]

Can you talk a little bit more about why that moment is such like a hinge for this story?

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Yeah, yeah. You know when, when she was cutting off her toes, like that moment, I was like, okay, but she's not mad, she's kind. She's doing. I wanted her to do it but partially herself, you know, someone else comes and helps her, but because I think, you know, I myself have gotten so deep and dark into the craving of a certain look that it's become self harm, you know, And I think that's what I saw, that action as, you know, there's no logic in it anymore or there's no. But it's like this self hatred. Why is my foot so fucking big and ugly? You know, Let me just cut some of it off. And I think. But somehow I was like, but she's not alone in that moment. It's not just her mind working. She's actually infested or like she's been hacked by something. There's something else present. And then when I found the tapeworm and I really wanted to use it because I know that, you know, weight is a big thing for women either way. If you're too skinny or too fat or whatever.

[Jessica Defino]

Statement.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Yes, it's like, it's the thing with the beauty, the. The struggle for beauty and. But I felt too cheap to just let her like eat it and then be. Become skinnier. And then I had this idea that it would come out and suddenly I understood what it was, what I. What meaning I could infuse into it. And it's really, you know, what self objectification can do to you. Right. That's what it felt like for me. It's. It's really. That's maybe the most personal thing for me in the movie is like the idea of being this like innocent, naive kid who's kind of like, I know I'm a bit weird, but I hope I can find love someday. You know, I might be. I might be okay. And then, and then just, you know, enter this world where you're told otherwise in quite, quite gruesome ways. And. And then I guess with the tapeworm where she takes the egg, it's like a blue pill, red pill moment, like in Matrix. It's like that's where she chooses to accept a truth or like in quotation marks, like a truth about the world or how the world works where, you know, her value is in her looks, in what she looks like. And she accepts also the truth that she, it's her will and kind of job to change herself. You know, that's her trajectory. And then it just grows into this monster in her belly.

[Jessica Defino]

Right, right.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Eating her up, like both mentally and physically.

[Jessica Defino]

One thing that really I've been thinking about since is, you know, there's this moment where her hair starts falling out because her body is under all of this stress. And I don't know if you've seen this, but pretty recently a small study came out that linked like newer weight loss drugs to hair loss.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Oh no. Really?

[Jessica Defino]

Yes. And it just, I mean it's just so on the nose, but in no way that you could have predicted. And I'm wondering what it's like for you. Cause I'm assuming you've been working on this for years. Like as you see the real world normalize these things that you've conceived of as horror in this film, like what has that been like, really?

[Emilia Blickfeld]

You know, the reason why I wanted to make it as a fairy tale and not like a modern day thing, because I could have done that is just. That would be way too on the nose. Right. But also I really wanted to remind people that what we're doing today is not something new. We have this, we have this tendency to think that it's today that we want to change our bodies. And it's like really a free choice thing. And it's really like empowering to have this possibility to change and become, you know, the person you want to be or whatever. But I really wanted to show that this is not a new idea. This is like a very old idea. This is something women have been doing to themselves for a very long time, but also kind of to point out what they are linked to. Right. Which is women in the western world. We were emancipated a little bit over 100 years ago in Norway. And before that women had lived has a history for thousands of years as objects owned by men. And the only way you've more or less had the possibility to have power agency is through the gaze of the man. If you can please that gaze or if you can please him sexually or if you can. And I think that our cultural role hasn't really. Although we're emancipated by rights, by law, I don't think we've been emancipated in the cultural role. And when I started thinking about, you know, in terms of all the Women before me and see myself as just like the arrow point of that, you know, suddenly I had so much more compassion for myself. Because if you just think of yourself in this moment, you're totally lost. Right.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

And I. And, and. And, you know, so in that sense, what people are doing today, I'm a bit. I'm a bit over it. I'm like, yeah, there's not. There's not something new I'm not that interested in, actually, the hair loss thing is. And I did some research on. On what could happen to you if you do a tapeworm. And that was one of the side effects. So, you know, and. And I tried to make stuff that could carry more story or narrative or images than just the image in itself. Does it make sense?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It does make sense. And I think in that light, also the body horror, making this a physical experience as well, it collapses the time in a way where it's like, right, we've been doing this for centuries and centuries, and you are no different than she. It's a continuum. And we find new ways to, you know, chisel our noses or whatever, like new technology. But it's the same. The same ideals that we're getting after.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Exactly, exactly. Or even though those ideals, you know, are ever changing.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Sure. They go in and out.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Yeah. And I think that's also. That's something I want to tackle in my next movie. There's. It's like, set in the. In the near future, and two Western girls, they get a bespoke plastic surgery from. Yeah, that's where it comes from. It's a secret. But they're twin girls and identical twins, and they get offered a Middle Eastern nose, you know, and they're Scandinavian because in this near future, the beauty standards has changed into this, like, multicultural, multiracial, everything that's unique kind of thing. That's what we find beautiful. And I think it's so interesting to just take a nose that so many use surgery to get rid of today and then present it as the beauty ideal within a movie and really see what. What happens to the audience. Because, you know, I don't think beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think beauty is an eye of the culture of the beholder.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Absolutely.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

And I think it's so interesting to try to change that just within, like, two. Two hours of a movie or something.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, that's so exciting. I cannot wait. There's one last thing that I'm just personally curious about, because it's something I've been thinking about a lot. I Would love to hear more about Elvira's official presentation at the ball. And she kind of has this little dog theme. She holds her hands up, like, their paws, and she barks at the prince. And it's, like, a hit. Everyone loves it. And I've been seeing quite a bit of dog symbolism in cinema lately. Like, Baby Girl or Night Bitch.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Oh, I haven't seen that yet. Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

And, yeah, I mean, the dog, like, stands in as this symbol of, like, femininity and domestication. And I'm just, like, really curious where that idea came from.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I was also curious about just. Because when I saw them, like, practice it backstage, I'm like, oh, everybody's gonna hate that. Like, they're not gonna like the dog move. And then everyone loved it. And I was like, oh, okay. Awesome.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

That's a. That's, you know, that's a. It's. It's a funny question because it kind of came about as a act of rebellion on set a little bit. No, my script consultant, you know, I had this great line that he told me over and over again that, you know, you're retelling the Cinderella stories and everyone knows the story, so they're interested in your take on the story. So when we come to the ball, what ball is it? You know, what's your version of the bowl? And I had this idea that I wanted it to be kind of this, you know, meat market or dog show. You know, the mothers presenting the dogs and all the men being there eating their stuff and, like, growling over it. But we had, like, two days to shoot the ball. And without the flower dance, but everything else, like the waltzing and everything, two days, and it was insane. So I had very, very little time to shoot that sequence. And I had, like, two shots and two takes on each shot or something, like, ridiculous. And we shot the version where they're in the ballroom first. And I really wanted to do, like, the barking, but I was a bit unsure if it would be taking it overboard, if people, like, audience would get it or not. And. And so I had this thing like, either I take the safe route and I don't do it and adjust the presentation. And I hadn't gotten as many, like, hungry men eating beef as I wanted to either. So the whole sequence was a bit lacking. And then I was just. I was in the bathroom and I was depressed. And I said to myself, you know, go big or go home. You know, I have to do something I think is funny. So I made them bark. And then this. The mother doing the barking With Lea, we shot that scene right after, and I understood that, you know, the audience needs an introduction to what the hell is going on, so we came up with that.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah, I'm so glad it made it in. I thought it was brilliant.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It was very funny and just, like, how much they love it, like, how much they're eating it up. They're like, oh, yeah, she is like a little doggy, like, so cute. It really makes it.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Sometimes the best art is when you get the knife on your throat, you know?

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Totally. Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

Well, I'm conscious of our time. I don't want to take up too much. I know you're, you know, a busy woman. Thank you so, so much for being here and chatting with us.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Thank you, guys, and thank you for, you know, your work on this theme. I myself have done a little bit of, you know, writing on it in Norway with opinion pieces and stuff, but it's so hard to do it, you know, with the langu and a way where people want to listen to it and don't feel, like, judged by it, you know, because it's such a sensitive subject, because it's such a big part of our identity, you know, how we present ourselves and all of that. So thank you so much for that. It means, you know, more of that.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes, agreed. Okay. Thank you so much, Emilia.

[Emilia Blickfeld]

Thank you. Bye.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Bye.

[Jessica Defino]

Okay, I think it's time for our messes of the month.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Oh, boy. Yeah, My mess of the month. It very well could be Lauren Sanchez, but it is specifically Lauren Sanchez's stupid clutch. Her stupid Balenciaga coffee mug clutch. That is my mess of the month.

[Jessica Defino]

I have to look this up because I haven't seen her carrying it.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Oh, it's because it's been drowned out by the coverage of the. The 11 minute orbit of our planet, naturally, and her catsuits and such in space. But right before that, as all of the, like, they're doing all the, like, PR media rollout for this. This rocket launch she called the paparazzi on herself, pretty obviously, to document this. This outfit that is so boring. It's just a black tank top tucked into, like, a dark denim pencil skirt. But she's carrying this $6,000 Balenciaga clutch that looks exactly like a to go coffee cup, but it's made out of leather. Your face, your horrified face.

[Jessica Defino]

I'm looking at the pictures.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Your jaw is slack.

[Jessica Defino]

I cannot believe this is a clutch. And I'll say, why I'm so shocked because I was considering. I don't know if it was this Christmas or last Christmas, buying my best friend a Balenciaga coffee cup.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Really?

[Jessica Defino]

And it's like a hundred bucks and it looks exactly the same.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Exactly. And that's the joke.

[Jessica Defino]

And it's just the coffee cup.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, my Lord.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. So my problem, how do I even articulate.

[Jessica Defino]

It's not even like oversized so you can fit stuff in it.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

No, it's. It's real life size. It's exactly the size of a to go coffee cup. It is indistinguishable, as you said. It's completely indistinguishable from their real to go coffee cup that Balenciaga also makes. This one is just made out of like leather and acrylic, I believe. Yeah. I don't know. It's stupid on many, on many levels. I just. Of course my primary problem is always just like that. We have to suffer on this planet with multi billionaires and they can't even have any good taste. I think that's a big through line of my critique always with rich and famous people is I just don't understand how you can be so bad at being rich and famous and. And to even just hire people who have taste. Hire people who know what to do with your money, because you clearly do not. And it's like if you want to make a gilded age, act like it, Create a gilded age. You know what I mean? Make things I want to see in a museum a thousand years from now. Also, first of all, fly into space. That's one of the whole problems, is invest in Earth, invest in humanity in a way that's tangible, beyond stupid fashion objects.

[Jessica Defino]

I think if you have gotten to the point in this world where you've amassed that much money, where you are a billionaire, I don't think you. I think you've lost contact with beauty. I think you've lost contact with beauty.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And truth, lost contact with everything, with reality.

[Jessica Defino]

And there's no. I don't think you can ever develop true taste. I think that.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I don't know. Yeah. If you're not of the people, you can't ever kind of like understand. People are like, what is cool and what's not? Or why you're living in an own.

[Jessica Defino]

Or even what you like.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah. Or what you like. Because it's not about what you like. It's about like what costs money.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

You know, and you're like, well, I can afford it. I can buy this stuff. So that must be good because the brands are telling me it's good. And it's like, it's not good. And also, I just think, for one. Let me just also clarify that I don't believe billionaires should exist. So this is not a critique of women. This is a class critique. This is a class critique of billionaires who I don't think should exist. I have. My friend and I have, like, a running joke about, like, the rules that we would apply if we ran society, which are all, like, extremely problematic, and no one would ever agree to let us do any of it, but it would fix things. And one of them, we always say, is, like, illegalize billionaires and we will be so, so generous to you. I'll even let you have 2 billion. I won't even cap it at 1. I will let you have $2 billion and then no more.

[Jessica Defino]

I think that's beautiful.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And then redistributed to society. Like, get a grip. You don't need that much.

[Jessica Defino]

Have you read the book Limitarianism? It's fairly new. I just got it. But I have not read it. But I think it's about exactly that. Banning. Banning billionaires.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Awesome. That's the correct take. Anyway, just to be clear about my Lauren Sanchez stance, my problem is billionaires, not women, quote, unquote, astronauts, which they're not legally allowed to call themselves because they did no training for that mission. Anyway. My other main problem with this, beyond, like, the lack of taste and the lack of. It's kind of just the lack of understanding of the fashion that you're participating in, which I think is not a specific billionaire or Lauren Sanchez problem. I think it's a larger problem of everyone who engages with Balenciaga and Demna Visalius, specifically the creative director of that brand, Jess knows, because I went on a rant at a party about this for. I want to hear it again, probably 45 minutes. But there's just. Just Demna's work is a joke. Like, Demna is parodying you as the fashion consumer, as the fashion elite, as the billionaire. He is making fun of you. That is. That is at the root of everything Vetements did, which is the brand that he founded with his brother and he worked at before he was hired by Balenciaga. It is at the root of what Balenciaga does. And I'm sure when he goes to Gucci next season, it will be at the heart of what Gucci does. But it's like he is selling back to you. He is selling back to you like the proletariat fashions as a joke at a price point. That's a joke. And the fact that you're all buying it. That's the joke. And so to just be a billionaire, not kind of realizing the ecosystem you're participating in, I'm like, that's just kind of. It's sad and it lacks vision. There's a way to reclaim the joke of it in a way that shows that you're in on the joke or that you understand the camp nature of what you're doing.

[Jessica Defino]

Right.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

You know, I'm trying to think if I need to give people, like, an example of Demna doing that. It's like when Demna started Vet Mall, in his first collection, he showed a bunch of oversized T shirts and oversized graphic sweatshirts that were not dissimilar from stuff you could already buy. He was kind of sampling, if you will, from like a rap perspective. Like, sampling and remixing regular kind of graphic things and then selling them back to you for six to $800, things that should cost $30.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And when I first saw it, I was like, that is fucking hilarious. And to show that in front of Anna Wintour and for Anna Wintour to then put that in vogue is so funny. Because that's the joke he's making. Like, that is the nature of fashion is commodifying regular everyday stuff and elevating it. Like, you've never seen a pair of distressed denim before, you know? Or you've never seen a to go coffee mug before. Like, that's the joke of it. And again, I don't know. I wrote a little bit about this in the newsletter, but it's like, if Lauren Sanchez wanted to really make this a paparazzi moment, like a pr. I'm in on the joke moment. Put your coffee in the handbag.

[Jessica Defino]

I was just gonna say, put your.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Latte in that leather bag. And now you're in on the joke. And now it's funny again.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Or my flip example was, take a paper coffee cup and cover it in diamonds.

[Jessica Defino]

That's so funny.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Same thing flipped. You're doing the same thing. You're proving that you get the joke. You're proving, I don't know, like, that is so much more interesting and camp and fun and high low than anything that's actually happening. And the fact that you don't get what's happening is just underscoring that, like, you're the patsy. Like, you're the punchline.

[Jessica Defino]

Well, this is kind of like the breakdown for me. And the joke, which I. I mentioned the other night too, is just like, there's so much that happens on the Runway Level where I'm like, oh, this is a brilliant critique. This is such a funny joke.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yes.

[Jessica Defino]

And it's there in the Runway presentation, and then all of it just breaks down at the level of mass producing it and selling it and consuming it.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Always. Cause you think about something like Demna's leather garbage bag for Balenciaga, and when you see it on the Runway and you see it in the context of them, like, that was the collection where they were stomping through the mud.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

If people remember that and I don't know, it's a vision. You get the joke of it, and you get, like, I don't know. And then when people are actually buying leather trash bags, the joke is soured.

[Jessica Defino]

Yes, completely. Then it's just sad.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, it's just sad. And I don't know. There's something very interesting about that tension to me in that it can never quite be resolved and that the consumer is never quite getting the joke that they're participating in, and so they always end up being the punchline of the brand.

[Jessica Defino]

Yeah.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

And Lauren Sanchez is the ultimate example of that.

[Jessica Defino]

I agree. Speaking of attention that you never can quite resolve. My mess of the month is my own self. I listeners.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I bleached my eyebrows, and she looks good. Everything looks good and fine, and it is completely unnoticeable.

[Jessica Defino]

So I'll give a little backstory. Longtime readers will know, but I have trichotillomania, which is sometimes called hair pulling disorder. It's very similar, like, skin picking disorder. It's like a mental illness where I just feel the uncontrollable urge to pull out my own hair. And I've had it since I was, like, 15 or 16, and mine is focused on my eyebrows. So I've long had breakdowns about what to do with my eyebrows. I would say it's, like, 90% of the reason I have bangs. Even though I love my bangs now and I've had, like, microblading done to tattoo the eyebrows on. I've, like, this is one area where, like, even though I've gotten away from, like, most of the makeup I use on an everyday basis, like, I'll still fill in my brows. And so I had, like, a particularly bad picking session the other day. I had, like, 10 hairs left on each brow and, like, right in the center, you know, and it was just, like, a stark contrast between these dark black hairs and then just completely bald brows. And I was like, wait, what if I. What if I bleached the hairs that are left? And so they all like, blended into the skin together. Like, maybe it would feel more deliberate and less horrible. And so that night, I got dinner with Emily. I ordered two drinks. I got a little bit more.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

She got braids than I thought.

[Jessica Defino]

They were strong. And, yeah, on my way home, I ran into Walgreens, got Sally Hansen cream bleach, and drunkenly bleached my own eyebrows at, like, 10:30 at night. And it actually turned out pretty good.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah, it's good.

[Jessica Defino]

I felt really good the next morning. I was like, this looks, looks.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It's strong, fun. Yeah, it.

[Jessica Defino]

My bangs still cover it, but I just felt less exposed, I guess, in a weird way, which, of course, made me feel like a hypocrite, because I have written about how ridiculous the eyebrow bleaching trend is before. Okay. And then, like, but you're doing it.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

To, like, address a real problem, and if it does offer you, like, a real solution and make you feel, like, less engaged in your eyebrows, I think that's a win. It also reminds me of girls who, like, shave their head because they're like, I don't want to with my hair anymore. Like, I'm sick of dealing with it. It's liberating.

[Jessica Defino]

It did feel liberating. And, like, now we're about five days in, six days in, and I have some, like, new hair starting to grow, and the, like, roots are coming in. So it Now I didn't even think about that. Strange. And so I was like, okay, I'll just bleach them again. I'll just keep bleaching them. And then the shade is now too light. It's like a clownish yellow orange.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

I like that.

[Jessica Defino]

Now I'm like, see, this is why I was hating on the bleached brows. Like, it's not sustainable.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

You're moving into new, edgy zones of.

[Jessica Defino]

Beauty than have been previously experimenting, which does feel fun.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

You're doing a clown brow, and that's going to be the hottest new trend next year.

[Jessica Defino]

Oh, my God.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Yeah.

[Jessica Defino]

Pagliacci core.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Pagliacci core. You're just participating in your own trends.

[Jessica Defino]

I feel good about it again. What a ride. What a ride.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

It does feel, as with all things beauty, it's a roller coaster. You know, you're in and you're out every day.

[Jessica Defino]

Push my own boundaries. Oh, okay. Well, thanks for listening, everyone. If you've made it this far.

[Emily Kirkpatrick]

Thank you, guys.

[Jessica Defino]

If you like it, remember to review us on itunes or wherever else, and we will see you next time. Bye.