Plastic Surgery Poesy

Summary

Mess World - "Plastic Surgery Poesy"

Podcast by Jessica DeFino & Emily Kirkpatrick
Episode Date: June 9, 2026

Main Theme

This episode of Mess World dives into the absurdities, contradictions, and critical moments from the world of pop culture, fashion, and beauty in May 2026. Jessica and Emily dissect the return of Marc Jacobs Beauty, the ongoing obsessions with phallic and body-symbolic imagery in cosmetics, the cultural resurgence of tanning and divine aesthetics, messy Met Gala trends, and the self-mythologizing feminism of celebrity facelifts. The hosts cut through industry nonsense with their trademark dry wit and analytic bite, investigating everything from sexual innuendo in product names to why we can never get rid of James Charles.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Met Gala Recap: Forgettable Excess and Lost Themes

[01:12], [80:05]–[114:47]

• Both hosts agree: this year’s Met Gala was “stupefyingly boring,” with most looks quickly forgotten.
• The theme “Fashion as Art” proved overly broad; vague themes lead to uninteresting, uninspired choices.
• Only a few celebrities (Emma Chamberlain in custom Mugler, Jordan Roth, Gwendolyn Christie) interpreted the theme with inventive references—melting painterly dresses, mirrored masks.
• Favorite quote:
  • Emily: “It was entirely a forgettable evening. On a night that is famously bad, you are lucky to get three people who absolutely kill it.” – [81:12]
• Rising trend: prosthetics, fake body parts, faux nipples, excessive use of artificial bodies (Cardi B, the Kardashians, Lizzo).
• On the Kardashian’s fake nipple trend: “If you’re summarizing the looks of fake nipples, the most accessible way to sell that look for other people to get is through Skims. So... I’d be curious to see if there was a Skims faux nipple bra, post Met Gala.” – Jessica [115:19]
• The hosts note that most celebrities failed to understand or play with the concepts of art, opting either for blandness or misplaced references (e.g., the overuse of John Singer Sargent’s Madame X).

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2. Marc Jacobs Beauty Revival and Phallic Symbology in Products

[01:34]–[08:29]

• Marc Jacobs Beauty’s return features new products heavy on playful packaging and nostalgic, Jeff Koons-inspired balloon motifs.
• The design is seen as “capitalist Dada” and invokes consumer culture’s obsession with disposable luxury.
• Quotable:
  • Jessica: “It’s about making something so ridiculous so expensive… The mirrored finish is about our self-obsession and like seeing ourselves in all of these objects and building ourselves through these little objects.” – [04:12]
• New product names (Money Shot Highlighter, Hard On Lipstick) spark discussion on how beauty and sexuality are bound together with tongue-in-cheek, and sometimes cringe-worthy, references.

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3. Gun Metaphors, Lipstick as Symbol, and Bro-Tager

[09:05]–[13:49]

• The singer from Cobra Starship launches “Brotager,” a men’s beauty brand featuring lip balms named after gun inventors, encasing them in modified shotgun shells.
• Lipstick’s shape and history: bullet-shaped packaging traces back to WWI munitions factories, fueling discussions on weapons as Freudian phallic symbols.
• Quote:
  • “Freud says that all weapons and tools are used as symbols for the male organ. So the bullet, naturally, and the gun both are symbols of the phallus.” – Jessica [13:28]

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4. Hyperreal Bodies, Memento Mori, and Doubled Selves

[13:49]–[33:23]

• Fashion’s recent turn to doubling, doppelgangers, and freakish, hyperreal bodies (from prosthetic nipples to mannequin parts on dresses) mirrors anxieties about technology, digital existence, and post-pandemic trauma.
• Lizzo’s Cannes dress and Lady Gaga’s conjoined twin act are cited as prominent examples.
• Insightful Exchange:
  • Emily: “It’s like once you’ve perfected... their version of, like, whatever perfected is their own faces… let’s invent new dimensions, new problems to have.” – [20:13]
  • Jessica: “A body, if not our body.” – [32:56]

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5. Material Death in Fashion & Beauty: Teeth Dress, Placenta Lockets, and Baby Duck Bones

[24:22]–[31:45]

• Dresses covered in (fake) teeth, Kesha’s placenta necklace, and memento mori jewelry highlight a morbid trend: confronting mortality through wearable art.
• The hosts connect this to a lack of public pandemic catharsis and a cultural desire to reconnect with corporeality and death.
• Memorable Moment:
  • “If you can get a BBL with fat from a cadaver, why can’t you use real teeth for a dress?” – Jessica [25:03]

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6. Tanning, Media Simulation, and The Divine Gaze

[33:23]–[40:31]

• Allure Magazine’s contradictory coverage of tanning (warning against dangerous sunburns while glorifying the aesthetic in products and tutorials) is dissected.
• The hosts ponder how media can claim to fight a trend while simultaneously perpetuating it, and link this to broader social and cultural confusion.
• Jessica’s Rant:
  • “You can’t be confused about why people want to tan in the sun if every other article on your site is like, here’s how to look naturally tan, healthy, glowy, and sexy.” – [40:13]

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7. James Charles – The Case for Cancellation

[40:54]–[67:08]

• Emily recounts her recent Interview Magazine piece, “Enough with James Charles Already,” chronicling his career’s cyclical scandals (clapping back at underpaid workers, manipulation allegations, sex scandals involving minors, and persistent brand deals).
• The pattern of influencer “clapbacks” at non-famous critics and the media's inability to fully dispossess canceled celebrities are critiqued.
• Notable quote:
  • “It just makes me think of Chrissy Teigen… just dunking on randoms and nobodies to enormous applause. I do not understand that mentality.” – Emily [44:26]
• Jessica links this contempt for “the customer” to broader trends in capitalism (see: Kim Kardashian's infamous “get up and work” quote).

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8. Divine vs. Male Gaze in Skincare

[68:04]–[78:59]

• Jessica, referencing bestsellers “Yesteryear” and “Someday Perfect,” discusses the beauty industry’s progression from marketing sexual pleasure (male gaze) to religious/angelic purity (divine gaze).
• Dew Skin’s (Dieux) “Deliverance Serum” launch is highlighted as an example of sacred branding layered on with little irony.
• Quote:
  • “That feels regressive to me. The God gaze feels like the original male gaze. … Both are outside pressure telling you what you should look like.” – Jessica [77:26]

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9. Mess Segments

Elena Lenina at Cannes

[125:27]

• Emily’s “Mess of the Month” is Russian socialite Elena Lenina’s outlandish hair sculptures at Cannes, calling her “the Queen of Cannes... She attends every year, just wears increasingly insane hairstyles... There’s someone who understands their brand.” – [126:16]

Rosie O’Donnell’s Facelift Poem

[128:30]

• Jessica’s “Mess of the Month”: Rosie O’Donnell announces her facelift on Substack... via a poem. Jessica critiques the self-justifying feminism-Rosie invokes, rolling out old chestnuts about beauty, identity, and morality.
• Recitation:
  • “I went through a full existential feminist crisis, had my face and neck surgically altered, and the result is zippo, which honestly is the best possible outcome... I just stopped arguing with the mirror. And maybe that's enough.” – Rosie O’Donnell, read by Jessica [131:09]
• Jessica: “I don’t care. Do whatever you want. No one’s telling you you’re not allowed to get a facelift. But... I don’t think that you should be allowed to propagandize it as being yourself. Your true self doesn’t have a facelift. I’m sorry.” – [136:50]

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Memorable Quotes

• “It always comes back to the penis, you know?” – Emily [13:49]
• “Marc Jacobs’ new beauty is so packaging forward... It’s definitionally cute for sure.” – Jessica [02:44]
• “Conjoined twins are happening and I don’t know why. I already thought that was funny... Never really saw it coming for the head.” – Emily [19:59]
• “It’s like, let’s invent new dimensions, new problems to have.” – Emily [20:13]
• “I really enjoy this aesthetic... but it does feel kind of potent in like a post-pandemic, not-post-pandemic world where we never even took a moment to grapple with the extreme trauma and loss of this global event.” – Emily [30:18]
• “You can’t be confused about why people want to tan in the sun if every other article... is like, here’s how it looked. Naturally tan, healthy, glowy and sexy.” – Jessica [40:13]
• “Why can we not let go of these losers? ...Why do we have to keep dragging them back into the public sphere?” – Emily, re: canceled celebs [42:05]
• “The God gaze feels like the original male gaze.” – Jessica [77:26]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:12 — Met Gala as non-event, art theme, packaging-forward beauty
• 09:05 — Phallic imagery: lipstick, guns, Brotager
• 13:49 — Hyperreal bodies: prosthetics, mannequin fashion, symbolic mortality
• 24:22 — Teeth fashion, memento mori in aesthetic trends
• 33:23 — Tanning, media contradictions, the “simulation of sunlight”
• 40:54 — James Charles, influencer backlash, cycles of “cancellation”
• 68:04 — Skincare’s turn from the male gaze to the “divine gaze”; literary tie-ins
• 79:52 — Mess of the Month: Met Gala antics; Elena Lenina at Cannes; Rosie O'Donnell’s facelift poem

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Tone & Style

Jessica and Emily’s conversation is sharp, cynical, irreverent, and always analytical. They dissect “high” and “low” culture with equal wit, alternating between wry mockery and genuine cultural theory. Their banter is full of in-jokes and expertly researched references, but always keen to debunk industry spin and name the contradictions at the heart of beauty and fame.

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For New Listeners: Why Listen

This episode is a one-stop, no-BS tour through the strangest beauty launches, the phallic subconscious of lipstick and guns, the very visible hands of death in current style, the paradox of tanning, and a Met Gala that barely tried. Come for the Kardashian nipple prophecy; stay for incisive rants on capital, cults of beauty, and one of the best public readings of Rosie O’Donnell’s poetry you’ll ever hear.

Transcript

[A]

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

[B]

And I'm Emily Kirkpatrick, and I write I heart message. How's it going?

[A]

And we're back. It's good. I'm happy to see you. I feel like this.

[B]

I'm happy to see you.

[A]

This month has been so busy. We've barely gossiped about our industry.

[B]

We've barely gossiped. We've barely chatted. This week. I mean, this week. Oh, my God. Oh, that. That is the evidence of what this month has been like for me. It has been so busy, and it also. I don't know, I was thinking about it earlier because I was like, oh, did Jess interview MJ this month? And I was like, oh, my God, that was this month.

[A]

That was like, a couple weeks ago. And it feels like a really long time ago.

[B]

It feels so long ago. I don't understand. This month has gone by so fast, and also, it's been an eternity. It's very strange, the mech. I guess that's the nature of the Met Gala and, like, having a job.

[A]

I know when I was, like, putting together some notes for this episode, I was like, oh, obviously we have to talk about the Met Gala. And it is so far out of my mind already that I'm like, I cannot believe that was a few short weeks ago.

[B]

No, it feels like it happened last year. And it's. Yeah. The most boring Met Gala in history and also a rich text for years.

[A]

Truly speaking of things I'd like to ignore entirely, but I'm not going to Marc Jacobs beauty. Have you seen it? Have you seen the new movie?

[B]

Of course.

[A]

It's back.

[B]

It's back. The girls are clamoring. They're clamoring for the new beauty goods.

[A]

I actually feel like I had no idea that Marc Jacobs beauty was so beloved back in the day.

[B]

I have an inkling it was, like,

[A]

fine, but I just don't remember.

[B]

I think in. I think in. I think in nostalgia, it's grown exponentially. You know what I mean?

[A]

Like, at the time, I think more popular.

[B]

I think there were certain products.

[A]

It couldn't have been that right below.

[B]

Right. I think there were certain products that were always, like, cult favorites is kind of my memory of it, but it certainly wasn't, like, a huge splash at the time. I do think. I also think that it's the campaigns that he did. It were quite impactful. Like Jessica Lange to Me for Mar Jacobs video is like enormously impactful. And so I think that those image. I also obsessed with her. I think she's like an icon of all icons. But I think maybe it's that those images have been so enduring that like there's also a feeling of more nostalgia for him.

[A]

Yeah. So anyway, Marc Jacobs Beauty closed in 2021. Came back this week. It's all new products though, so it's not like relaunching. It's basically a whole new brand. And the brand is very packaging forward, I would say. It's like the products have like this artsy sort of toy, like childhood aesthetic. Very Jeff, actually. Oh, it's. Oh, it's. It's cute. It's definitionally cute for sure. And it's like all of the icons on the product packaging, there's like hearts and stars and flowers are kind of the. They look like Mylar balloon, like mini Mylar balloons.

[B]

It's very Daisy, his perfume.

[A]

It's very Daisy. It's clearly inspired by the Daisy packaging because Daisy is like the most successful product that Marc Jacobs beauty has ever put out.

[B]

And I would say Jeff Koons is like the most successful commercial artist of all time.

[A]

And it's so the Koons reference is so funny to me because I feel like, like a pretty generous analysis of his balloon dog sculpture is it's about taking this sort of like disposable, silly object and magnifying it to like a more appropriate size, like vis. A visual. The cultural relevance of like stupid disposable objects.

[B]

And it also feels very like capitalist Dada to me.

[A]

Of course.

[B]

Of course.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And it's like, it's like taking this like silly object of not much significance and putting it into like a high art framework and then like pricing it accordingly. Like it's about making something so ridiculous so expensive. I think it sold for like 58 million. Like its size symbolizes like excess and wealth. And the mirrored finish is about like our self obsession and like seeing ourselves in all of these objects and building ourselves through these little objects. So it's just so funny to me to see Marc Jacobs beauty, like take that aesthetic and miniaturize it again. Like take all these like high art elements and make them again disposable, mass produced items that like literally and figuratively are reflecting our obsession with beauty.

[B]

Can I just say two random thoughts?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I just had one is here's a piece of lore about me is that when I worked at the Daily Mail, we worked in a building with A Jeff Koons dog in the lobby.

[A]

Really? That's so funny.

[B]

Yeah. So I would have to walk by it every day. Well, every night on my. I worked the night shift every night on my way to work there, and I always thought, like, how stupid. Stupid. How stupid is that? Also just to, like, be making. No, not my. He is truly could not. He's nowhere close to my favorite artist. But also just like, I don't know. And there's something about, like, not making any money and like, having to walk by a $58 million balloon dog every day that's like, so. So soul crushing. But also, when you're talking about mirrored finish, it just reminded me of another Marc Jacobs perfume, which is Bang. Do you remember Bang? I do remember Bang, because the packaging was very, like, emergency blanket. Like, reflective.

[A]

Yeah. Yes, yes.

[B]

Like mirror mirrored. Like a Jeff mirrored chrome.

[A]

Yes. That's like a big part of his packaging thing.

[B]

Yeah, Similar. Similar aesthetic.

[A]

Super similar aesthetic. Also, the product names of these new products are very sexual, especially for such, like, toy, like, objects, which I guess is, like, apt. With the Daisy reference. Like, a big part of Daisy perfume marketing has been, like, this Lolita image, like youth and innocence, but make it sexy sort of thing. Like, I remember there has been. There was controversy around Dakota. Dakota Fanning being like a child and posing. Yeah.

[B]

With Daisy and for the fashion line proper.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, that's like, in the background of Marc Jacobs beauty. But these new products. First we have money shot highlighter, which is so in line with what I have called wet dream beauty. Like, trends that, like, directly or indirectly reference semen as a beautifier. So, yeah, there's. There's a lot of that. And the. The phallic references don't stop there. The lipstick has, like, a little heart on the top of it, like a mylar balloon heart of the packaging. And it's called Hard on Lipstick, Heart on lips.

[B]

Listen, these are Hard on. He's killing it.

[A]

I don't think so.

[B]

I love it.

[A]

They're so silly and just.

[B]

Of course they're silly. Of course they're silly. But if I have to have a silly, horrible name.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Also I will say, like, Marc Jacobs has always very much been, like, peripheral to the adult entertainment industry. I would say he has always been kind of like, circling that aesthetic. His ex boyfriend was a famous gay porn star. And I don't know, Bang. Even Bang also played a lot with the imagery of pornography, and it was him nude with, like, just the bottle over his dick. I don't know, Mark. Tickets is always, like, played. Played in this, like, sexual realm. I feel like I do understand. I understand what you're saying.

[A]

And I mean, lipstick is always playing in the sexual realm too. Like, this really reminds me of, you know, my. My least favorite Isa, Maya French lipstick. Like the penis lipstick that was just shaped like a chrome cock and balls. And then last year, it could be so much worse.

[B]

You see?

[A]

It could be so much worse. Last year, Half Magic, the makeup brand Half Magic promoted their lip plumper with the phrase, are you ready for a lip boner?

[B]

So there's like, I think that's worse. I think that's way worse. For some reason.

[A]

It's way worse.

[B]

A lip boner actually is like, a gross. A terrible idea to me. A. A heart on. I don't know.

[A]

I know.

[B]

A heart is desensitized.

[A]

Yeah, I know. I think lip boner is much worse than hard on. I think hard on is like, fine.

[B]

Compare. If I have to rank them fitting

[A]

into this sort of, like, wider lipstick as phallic object trend. All very detailed and. Yes. So sort of related. I'll. I'll bring it back. I'll bring it back around to phallic imagery that I just wanted to mention here too. The singer from Cobra Starship has launched a men's beauty brand called Brotager.

[B]

Cobra Starship. First of all, I haven't heard that name in an eon, but thank you for bringing me right back.

[A]

I just listened this morning when I was talking about this protege line, and I was like, oh, wow. I haven't heard this in 15 years. I can't. I know. They did that one song with Leighton. Leighton.

[B]

Okay, thank you. That's. That's literally exactly what I love. And I was like, am I crazy or are they good girls go bad. They're good girls. That's their claim to fame, obviously.

[A]

Obviously.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Their claim to fame. Well, now their claim to fame is Brode J. And. And they launched a line of lip balms this week. And the. The lip balms are named after what they call outlaws, but one of the lip balm names is Mikhail Kalash. Kalashikov. Is that how you say his name? Kalashikov. Mikhail Kalashikov, who invented the AK47. So, like, they just. They just released a lip balm named after the guy who invented the AK47. And the tube of the lip balm is a brass base that is modified from actual shotgun shells.

[B]

Oh, I was hoping it was gun shaped.

[A]

No, I was hoping it was a gun bullet. Shaped. Oh my God, Emily. Genius.

[B]

People need to complain. Every. Every point along the description of the story, like, you've lost me a new. Like, can we just rewind for a second? So the band. The band is releasing Lip Balm.

[A]

The singer of the band.

[B]

The singer of the band.

[A]

I forgot what his name is releasing.

[B]

But he, as a. As a entity is releasing.

[A]

He has a solo entity passion of his has a men's beauty brand called bro.

[B]

Oh, right.

[A]

And I guess existed for a while and they had like, sunscreen was their first product. And now they're. Now the brand is launching lip balms named after the man who invented AK47.

[B]

I'm already like, I'm sorry. Each detail is just getting so hung up on it. But so protege. I'm lost again. I'm lost at the portmanteau. So it's a. Yeah, it's a bro who's a protege. But, like, what is protege? I'm over.

[A]

I think I'm overthinking on words that, like, doesn't have any larger significance. When I.

[B]

That's my mistake for thinking about it.

[A]

No, I was reading this article and I kept saying in my head, bro Tege. And then like in the. In parentheses in the article, it was like, pronounced as like, protege.

[B]

Okay, so.

[A]

And I was like, okay, I need

[B]

to let it go. Yes, of course, of course. And of course it's named.

[A]

We're not gonna get it.

[B]

Of course he's releasing lip bombs.

[A]

Yeah, of course he's releasing. Named after gun makers put in bullet casings.

[B]

It's got to be manly, you know, it's got to be like a rugged, individualistic.

[A]

But it's also just such a funny callback to just regular lipstick. So, like, there is debate about this, but some historians have said that bullet shaped lipsticks became the norm after World War I, when bullet manufacturing facilities, like, weren't needed anymore and they were transformed into cosmetic facilities which also, like, conveniently kept people good at making bullets for the next war. Like, for what we do was still going. And like, I think entrepreneurs. What's her name? Helena Rubenstein. Her, like, early cosmetic line, she was like, pretty clear about the fact that she wanted her lipstick to look like a bullet. So this is just like par for the course in lipstick.

[B]

What is funny when you think about the red? The red is like blood, you know? I don't know. It's very interesting.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely. But to bring it back to the penis, I have to quote Freud, who said, Freud says that all weapons and tools are used as symbols for the male organ. So the bullet, naturally, and the gun both are symbols of the phallus.

[B]

Right. And the mouth.

[A]

So lipstick.

[B]

The yoni.

[A]

Yes, exactly. Lipstick has always been sort of a phallic symbol. And. And Marc Jacobs is just making that obvious in his naming conventions. And that was just a big loop in my mind that I needed to talk about.

[B]

Absolutely gorgeous. Stunning. It always comes back to the penis, you know, Always comes back to the peniscapable. I mean, speaking of, are we ready for. There's a bit of a penis in my topic as well. It's an accidental one, but it's pretty present. So I want, obviously it's kind of my whole business. Just wanted to talk about a little. A strange trend that I've once again manifested that I've scared myself with, which is like conjoined twins or the aesthetic of conjoined twins is trending. And as always, it very much started out as fully a joke that I was making.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because Julia Fox wore this, a turquoise dress to an Elizabeth Taylor AIDS foundation event. And the dress had this like built up shoulder that was so built up it was as high as her head. One. I should say one. A one shouldered gown, asymmetrical one shoulder gown. And the shoulder where the dress was was built up to the height of her head. And. And it looked incredibly phallic from the front. Incredibly like comically circumcised penis from the front in a way that I genuinely don't understand how they even. How it even happened. And then once it happened, how nobody saw it because that's like all I could see. It was like a very strange optical illusion of the gown. But anyway, I. I made this joke in the newsletter that the look was like very Sarah Paulson in season four of American Horror Story, which is of course the problem. The problematic season of Freak show in which she plays Bette and Dot Tadler, which are conjoined twins. And it very much looked like Julia Fox was like hiding her conjoined twins head underneath the shoulder pad. Because even, I mean, we'll have a photo in the video version of this so everyone can see what I'm talking about. But it's like. And there was something about whatever was underneath the fabric, like propping up the sleeve actually kind of like had a head shape. I don't know how to explain it, but like it looked kind of cranium. And so, yeah, so there was something Betton happening. And I made this joke. And then the very next week we get the music video For Runway from the Devil Wears Prada, too, of course, sung by Lady Gaga. Oh, I haven't seen either, because I don't want to punish myself. And I just know that it's going to. It's like, it's a movie. That shouldn't make me as angry as I know that it's going to make me. So I'm like, why don't we just opt out? And I, like, don't partake at all because it's like, it's just going to send me into a rage that I can't. It's going to be impotent. I can't do anything with it. So it's like, let it go. Yeah, Don't. Don't subject yourself. And so all I know is the music video of it, and, well, of course, the things on the. On the press tour that we've spoken about. The. The heinous things that they've inflicted upon. Again, things that would make me angry. And so I'm opting out of the press cycle. But so they did a music video. And in the music video, Lady Gaga and Dochi are conjoined twins at one point where they are wearing a custom Luar skirt suit that's actually so gorgeous. It's like, Luar is amazing. It's so.

[A]

I like.

[B]

Yeah, I really like him. I think he does really beautiful work. But this skirt suit is, like, so immaculate, just, like, tailored to within an inch of its life. And to do that for a piece of clothing that two people are wearing at the same time, I don't know, is, like, kind of insane. And also, like, it's one of those moments I talk about this. I've actually let go of this thread in the newsletter. But in the early days of the newsletter, something I used to talk about obsessively because it drives me insane, is, like, the true absence of good tailors in Hollywood. And I don't understand. I don't understand how a whole community of people can't have one good tailor amongst them who knows how to properly edit a red carpet look. Anyway, that's an old grievance that I've discussed at length. But again, it was kind of brought up anew when I saw this beautifully tailored piece of clothing for two bodies. And I was like, okay, so he can do it. He can do it for two ladies at once, and you can't do it for one lady's body? Singular body. Okay, I see how it is. Men, too. Men are not exempt from this. Men actually maybe are worse than women. Like I would say the problem with famous women's clothing is it's always too tight. It's overly tailored, I would say. And the problem with the men, famous men's suits is it's not tailored at all. It's barely touched by a steamer, in fact.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Wrinkles about wrinkles on these red carpets.

[B]

Lot of wrinkles. A lot of wrinkles. And I don't understand why they are portable. I don't know if stylists know that, but you can buy portable ones.

[A]

Maybe it's related to, you know, the botoxification of the celebrity face. Like as we erase the wrinkle, we

[B]

have to go back into our clothes. You have to look lived in in some manner.

[A]

There's some sort of physics law about the amount of wrinkles that must exist in time and space at any given moment.

[B]

That's beautiful. I think you should coin that. That's Jessica's law. If no wrinkles exist on the face, they must. They must in equal proportion exist in the clothing.

[A]

They will manifest somewhere like a, you know, call this number. If you see a child in a car.

[B]

It really does. It really sounds like a child is inducted law. I think you're right, though. Like, there is some cosmic balance that has to be restored. Like if we can't have it on the body and the face, it has to exist in the fabric. That certainly seems to be the case visually, anyway.

[A]

I'd rather have it the other way around.

[B]

But of course, of course. I rather have pristine garments and wrinkled as hell faces. That's obviously superior. Anyway, I forgot what I was saying. It doesn't matter. Conjoined twins are happening and I don't know why. And I just. I don't know. I already thought that was funny. And it's like, it is kind of the hyper real thing I've been tracking all year. All year plus, I guess, but like transcended to this. Like, I never really saw it coming for the head because the head is just like such a difficult thing to duplicate, you know, it's. It isn't like attacking an arm on or tacking a leg on or extra sleeves, extra pant legs. It is a more extravagant.

[A]

Yeah, it's not an extra head, but I would say the hyper real head is. Is probably the most normal head in Hollywood.

[B]

Right, right. I mean, facelift and surgery wise, but yes.

[A]

Not a double head.

[B]

Absolutely. The hyper real head in that capacity. A thousand percent in my kind of like doppelganger, duplicate freak reality. This is a new phenomenon. But it does also Kind of speak to that. It's like once you've perfected or, you know, their version of like, whatever perfected is their own faces. It's like, well, let's get another face to make it a problem, and then I'll fix that. I don't. You don't know. It is kind of like that. It's like, let's invent new dimensions, new problems to have. And I don't know. And we just saw hyper real bodies this month come, like, surging back in such an insane way. Like, I don't know. I kind of thought we'd moved on from this bodies on bodies, hyperreal thing. I. But I was so wrong. I'm always so wrong. I always think of like, we've seen the last of it and it comes roaring back. I mean, we'll get into it. But at the Met Gala, of course, we had so many. So many fake sexless nipples.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

And I was so struck to it by it, too, because it's not just that we had fake nipples. It's like completely automaton nipple. Like, just. No, real. No, like they're gesturing to a reality that's not real. I don't know how to explain it. It's like, no areola. Like, just nothing about them is real.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't know if that makes sense. No, they're so artificial. They're so artificial to, like, a preposterous degree. Like. They are. They are. What would be on. What's her name? I know that we talked about her before, but the Metropolis robot.

[A]

Oh, yeah. I don't remember, but I do remember Maria.

[B]

Yeah, it's very Maria. Something that's going on there. Yeah, Very Maria nips. And then also, which kind of. I think what blew me away the most is we had Lizzo at the AMFAR Gala at Cannes at the end of the month wearing a Robert 1 dress, who we also saw at the Met Gala and we've been seeing for a while now. But he's kind of famous for doing these, like, fake mannequin bodies atop the body, often kind of like looming behind and over the person wearing the dress. And in Lizzo's case, they were straight up, just like forearm cuffs that ended in mannequin hands that said, sat atop her real hands.

[A]

So wild.

[B]

It was very, very wild. Very. She also had fake nipples, I should say. She also had the weird Maria Maria nips that were fake. Also fake pierced fairy chapel roan of her. They were fake pierced with. It was a lot of look. That was my Note for her in the newsletter, I said, you're doing too much, actually.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That.

[A]

That is why I'm thinking it's too much. Because I read you.

[B]

You're doing. You are way too much. Just pick a lane. Just pick a detail. Pick a thing. And it's very. We'll get into that, too. But it was very Katy Perry at the Met Gala to me. Oh, my God. It's just like, pick a fucking lane, my dude. Like, you don't have to do 20 different weird trends at once to make a dress interesting. Like, it's actually very distracting and chaotic and feels, like, not intentional.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, it actually loses the thrust of, like, what's interesting about.

[A]

Yeah. The impact of the one cool detail is.

[B]

Yes. Gets totally lost.

[A]

Diminished. Yeah.

[B]

And that's how I really felt about that Lizzo thing. I was just. I was so struck by the fake hands on top of her real hands. I thought that was so crazy. I haven't seen that in a minute.

[A]

That is wild.

[B]

And, yeah, of course, as with all this hyperreal stuff, I just think it's interesting. Like, this doubling, this doubling of the physical body, this doubling of the face, and, like, of course, reflecting, like, a distance we feel from our own bodies in this day and age, but also kind of like our own lived experience. Like, our lived experience is increasingly happening online, away from other people and kind of, you know, as always, it makes me think of Naomi Klein's doppelganger and kind of our digital avatars and, like, the fake us. As though us is. Is a crazy word that I just said. The fake us is that we're, like, sending out into the world as our representation and the kind of the real us that exists behind that facade. I don't know. I find that very striking.

[A]

I do, too. Yeah.

[B]

I guess I can talk about something else I found striking this month. That I guess it's kind of related to the hyperreal body in a way, is that heated rivalry star Nadine Babha. She hosted the ACTRA Awards, which I believe is a Canadian ceremony. And she wore this dress designed by Sarah Davaron, who's a young. I think she's 23 years old, Canadian designer. And the dress was covered in 540 teeth.

[A]

540 teeth?

[B]

Yeah. Which I was very. Well, which I was very, very excited about, until I found out that they're not real human teeth. They're resin replicas.

[A]

I guess it'd probably be, like, unethical to collect 540 real human teeth.

[B]

Well, but it's like if you can

[A]

get a PBL with fat from a cadaver, why can't you use real teeth for dress, you know?

[B]

Exactly. Thank you.

[A]

This is the world we're moving toward, I think.

[B]

Don't limit my art. Let me express myself with dead people's teeth. God damn it. But I don't think it even has to be dead people. You do children's teeth. You could use animals.

[A]

We're all losing teeth all the time.

[B]

We're all losing teeth all the time. And I also think there's, like. I think there's an ethical way to do it. Like, just ask people for their old teeth. Ask them. Crowdsourcing.

[A]

My cat just had surgery and she had a bunch of teeth taken out. And I was like, I want those teeth. I want to make a little necklace. They wouldn't let me take the teeth. Medical waste let you know.

[B]

That sucks.

[A]

I know.

[B]

Stupid. I know. When Fran was a baby, her teeth, her baby dog teeth fell out. And I was like, do something with that. I kind of love that. But I didn't do it. Well, it's weird because the baby dog teeth, they don't really look like teeth is kind of what I decided in the end. Like, it's not really impactful because they're, like, very strange looking and so, like, no one would really identify it as what it is. And so it's like, not really fun in a two way.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't know how to explain it. Dog baby teeth look stupid. No. No offense to Fran, but they're. They're not the ideal tooth to turn into a necklace. There is this woman, though, that actually she's the only person who's ever advertised in my newsletter, in my entire newsletter career, which I think is funny. This woman, Erica Wiener, she makes amazing jewelry, but one of the things she's known for is that she makes necklaces out of your. Your children's teeth or your loved one's teeth. Whoever.

[A]

Oh, I think you've told me about her before. I have a. I have the bones of a little baby duck that I wanted to turn into a necklace, so maybe she could help me.

[B]

Wow. I think she could. I think she could help you. What a confession. What an incredible pod. Only confession everyone's getting right now, and

[A]

I'm not going to tell the story.

[B]

The bones of a baby? Yeah. That's a mystery. Just for you. Keep that secret to yourself forever. That's amazing. No, it's beautiful, Lore as it sounds. I don't care. Don't let them know. Keep that Lore. To yourself. That's incredible.

[A]

You know, write in.

[B]

If that's my secret, I'll never tell.

[A]

Maybe we'll do a paywalled pod episode. That's just about how I got a hold of these baby death bones.

[B]

I love that. Anyway, you could make a dress out of it, and I would prefer it to this fake resin teeth. Anyway, I understand. I understand the volume of teeth that was needed. It's cool. A lot you have to get. You have to dabble in plastic ones. But I just think it would have been more powerful with real ones.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I did. I did want to also say I did appreciate that despite the resin of the teeth, I did also appreciate the dress because its construction actually taught me a new word. Because I was thinking. I was thinking that the whole gown, the way it's constructed, it looks like the underside of a mushroom cap. You know how they're like.

[A]

Oh, yes.

[B]

Guild, I would say. And so I looked up the word. It's hymenium. That's what that part of the mushroom is called, a hymenium. And so it's very hymenium inspired, I would say this dress. And I just bring it up because I. We've just been having such a memento mori year. Yes.

[A]

Oh, my gosh.

[B]

Of 2026. And I just think that's very interesting. And I was thinking back about, of course, Margot Robbie's hair bracelet, you might recall, from the Wuthering Heights press tour, that was supposed to be Emily Bronte's hair, but actually was, like, nobody's hair, which in and of itself, kind of feels like a potent metaphor for emerald fennels. Wuthering Heights.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

If I do say so myself.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And then I was thinking about Kesha on Call Her Daddy recently.

[A]

What is that?

[B]

It's a buzzsaw outside. Okay.

[A]

Oh, okay.

[B]

All right. Yeah. My neighbor broke their door, so they're getting a new door cut. So enjoy that sound, enjoy the smell. A little ambiance in the background. I forgot what I was saying. Oh. On call her daddy, Ke$revealed that she wears her own placenta and a locket around her neck. And I think that's kind of beautiful. It's also kind of beautiful because the story is actually that her mother, like, kept it in a drawer for, like, 20 something years.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And then it was like, oh, you want.

[A]

That is beautiful. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Like cleaning something. I was like, oh, you want this?

[A]

No, I have your placenta here, honey.

[B]

Is that something you might be interested in? She's like, obviously, I'm Ke$ obviously, I'm interested in that.

[A]

I want.

[B]

She just ground it up. She ground it up and she put it in a locket. And what did she say about. She said something very f. Oh, she said that she believes that wearing her own placenta gives her second sight and that it opens up her third eye. And I love that for her. I believe her sort of adjacent to

[A]

the conjoined twin thing. You know, it feels a little bit like absorbing a twin in the womb or something.

[B]

I don't know. I didn't even make that connection. But there is something there. There. There is something there to that. Wow. There is a dot and Bet Tatler undercurrent to modernity at this precise moment. And then of course, we have cardi B's gilded, not so gilded, umbilical cord, naturally, just kind of being just the trilogy of our Memento Mori situation.

[A]

And.

[B]

Yeah, I don't know, I was just thinking about. I really. Obviously this is right in my wheelhouse and I enjoy this aesthetic and I enjoy where it's going, but I don't know, I was also just thinking about, like, it does feel kind of potent in like a post pandemic. Well, post. You know what I mean? Not post, not post pandemic world where it's like we've never. We've never even like, taken a moment to like, grapple with like, the extreme trauma and the extreme loss of this, like, global event. And I was thinking about it because somebody brought up the point about like 9, 11 and the way that we like, eulogize and memorialize this single tragic day in like, American history and that we have nothing comparable for like a year of people's lives that was like, fully. And all the millions of people that we lost, like, there is nothing kind of similar. And it's like. And then there's so there's like this lack of catharsis that we all have because we. We don't get to process and we just do have to go back to life, quote, unquote, normal after going through that. Anyway, so I was thinking about, like, acting. Acting out that kind of catharsis in this, like, fashion way of like creat these Memento Mori's and like, I don't know, feeling closer to death than ever. And like incorporating death into, well, you know, in beauty and fashion.

[A]

I mean, it's everywhere in beauty. I was just gonna say this, like, reminds me so much of the more gay stuff that I've been talking about.

[B]

Exactly. The cadaver fabric hyper visible in the beauty Industry.

[A]

And yeah, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that like since pandemic times, I mean forever, but especially since pandemic times, it's just been like sort of mass death event after mass death event. Like it's totally the pandemic. It's genocide, it's wars all over the world, it's gun violence. Gun violence. It's, you know, ice in the streets, like murdering civilians. And it's just January 6th. Exactly. I mean it's everywhere and it's just so incorporated into the day to day and it's become so visible that it's like just incorporated into the aesthetic.

[B]

Totally. I don't know. Totally. And then, and simultaneously I feel like it's also this response to like in the same way that the hyper real is. Is that response is like feeling increasingly disassociated from nature and being animals in the real world and, and feeling like this gesture towards like a return to that. Like these are real corporeal products and materials that like make us, I don't know, feel kind of forcibly reconnected with the natural world, I think.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. A body, if not our body.

[B]

Yes, totally, totally a body. Yeah. A human, if not the human that you are. And. Yeah. And then I don't know, I was thinking about our conversation about chickens last month and I was like, oh, is that, is that likewise a gesture back to the natural world and, and exiting the digital and again reinhabiting an animal, if not the animal that you are? I don't know.

[A]

Yeah, I think it actually is so related to what I want to talk about next, which is tanning and like tanning in the sun and laying out in the sun as this sort of like connection to the natural world and like rejection of artificially producing that.

[B]

And also like when you think about like a sunburn or something, I don't know, I always think about like kind of self inflicted pain as this way of like feeling very in touch with your humanity and your body. Cause it like leaves you like, I think about getting a tattoo or something. Like it leaves you with no choice but to like be very present in the moment, feeling the pain of your body and recognizing that you have a body that is feeling painful.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so that to me is also very. Sunburn and tanning.

[A]

Yeah. Or like making psychic pain or emotional pain felt or like evidenced in the body which we see with so much like that's definitely part of what's behind like the trichotillomania. You know, I pick out my eyebrows and I can't stop. And, and it's anxiety related and like doing reading on like the psychology of it, a lot of it is like sort of akin to self harm where it's like something is happening in your mind and in order to make it understandable and real, there's like a physical effect that happens so that you can like see and quantify your psychic pain.

[B]

Totally.

[A]

But okay, well we, we just got real deep and I just wanted to make a little joke about channing. My. So what I want to talk about is Allure magazine specifically and their coverage of the tanning boom. So they've been doing a lot of articles this month on the resurgence of tanning and why tanning is dangerous. And of course you know it is, it's linked to skin cancer. Melanoma is on the rise. I think melanoma is like the third most likely cancer diagnosis for women under 50. So it's a problem. So some, some of what they've published this month. 1. Social media is driving the resurgence of tanning culture.

[B]

2.

[A]

Tanning beds are even worse than you thought. 3. Please stop weaponizing the UV index and service of a tan. What will it take to get young people to stop tanning? How many times do we have to have the sunscreen talk? This is just like in the past month. And as I'm seeing all these tanning stories, all I can think about is this tutorial I saw last year on the Allure website, which for a 10 minute sunburned makeup tutorial and also on their site at the same time. And right now headlines like Sydney Sweeney is keeping the faux sunburn trend alive and well. Best self tanners for a natural glow that actually lasts. Best self tanning mousses for beach worthy bronze.

[B]

6.

[A]

Self tanners for we trust for a natural streak free finish. And I'm just like these things are so connected. Like when you are promoting the second batch of articles, you're not just promoting the product, you are promoting an esthetic and you are presenting this esthetic as desirable. So the headlines that they're just doing the even as they're doing like the hyper real version which is like self tanners or makeup, it's still glorifying the look of sunburn. This idea of a natural glow, something that lasts like the beach worthy bronze, the like natural finish that is what you're selling. You're saying a natural finish is desirable and tanning is how you want to look. And like I, I've referred to this like the, the sort of product Focused ways of getting this look as like hyperson, the simulation of sunlight.

[B]

Totally. But it's kind of like, I mean, it's just like a cynical PC pivot also, you know what I mean? Like, they just know that they can't promote actual tanning, but that's like, certainly what they've been doing for like, forever. And then suddenly the science bears out, like, oh, it's bad, it gives you cancer. And then like, okay, so we can't promote that, but we have to keep promoting this aesthetic. So, like, let's just pivot to the fake way of doing. You know, it's.

[A]

I mean, yeah, I mean, I feel the same way about when like eco, supposedly eco friendly glitter started trending because it's like, if it is becoming a trend, it's going to increase the prevalence of non eco friendly glitter because that is cheaper, more accessible. It's everywhere. So when we are like praising a certain aesthetic, it's not just the product that you're selling, it's the esthetic in general that's getting popular and the downstream effects of that still happen. So it's like with tanning. Yeah. If you're going to promote the look of a tan as desirable as a symbol of beauty, as a status symbol, as something that makes you look better or healthier, which is a lot of the language that they're using, like, then you are technically promoting tanning. You're saying, like, this is what you should look like and the sun is just an easier, cheaper, more accessible way to get it right.

[B]

It's right.

[A]

Free it. Like, it feels good to be out in the sun. You're getting vitamin D. Like, there are a lot of other benefits that come with it and problems as well. But it's just like, of course people are going to tan. If you say that this is the like, hottest, sexiest way that's how you

[B]

should look, or there's something wrong with you.

[A]

And it's also like, so these, these stories, these fake tan stories are like dovetailing with this Maha messaging of being anti sunscreen and pro sunlight and like also doing the work of promoting that in some weird way because it seems very aligned. And I just like, also think that this, this moment of the tan being back, like, it's not a coincidence that. Yeah, Trump and RFK Jr are like orange.

[B]

Deeply bronzed.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Healthily bronzed. How dare you?

[A]

Yeah, I guess my point is. Yeah, I was just gonna say I'm

[B]

surprised that RFK hasn't brought back the. I forget what they call it. Like sunning your perennium? Is that what it's called? It seems like something RFK is like, absolutely doing. I feel like he's doing it. For those who don't know, I'm talking about getting sunlight on your butthole. Yeah, that was a thing that actresses kept promoting for a while. Like, I remember Shailene Woodley talking, but I feel like other people talked about doing it too, as, like, part of their wellness.

[A]

It was like a big wellness practice for men specifically, too. There was a lot of really sunning your asshole stuff happening.

[B]

I just feel like that's so up his alley. I can't believe he's never mentioned it before. It's like something that he loves to do.

[A]

I know. I've gotta. I've gotta look into that because it does feel so on the nose for him. But, yeah, I guess my point is just like, you can't be confused about why people want to tan in the sun. If every other article on your site is like, here's how it looked. Naturally tan, healthy, glowy and sexy.

[B]

Like, and yet you're doing it. And yet they'll be surprised by it for the rest of the time. They're act like, oh, so crazy. Where does. Like, where are people getting that? Why are people doing this? It's nuts. We keep telling them not to, you

[A]

know, but, yeah, that's. That's my little rant.

[B]

Speaking of someone else who can't be stopped.

[A]

Oh, I'm so excited.

[B]

I would like to talk about James Charles. Just a pet passion of mine. I. I wrote an essay for Interview this month that's really, like, completely breaks with, like, all at a type of editorial that Interview has previously done. We've never. They've never really just like, written opinion essays before. But I felt so. I felt so passionately that I was like, I think we have to.

[A]

I love what this book looks like.

[B]

I think I have to write this and that we have to publish it. And I ran it by Mel and Mel was like, go with God. You know, I don't. I don't care about this guy. If you feel so strongly about his cancellation, please. And I just think, again, that's what I mean when I was saying up top too. I just think it's cool, like, what we can do there. I genuinely can't imagine anywhere else I've ever worked allowing me to publish a story like this, even though it's, like, completely legitimate. Like, yeah, no one is ever going to work with James Charles when no one is ever going to feature him in the magazine, like, all of this stuff is factual. He has personally admitted to it. Like, there is no speculation here. But the fact that, like, we still just, like, cannot say stuff like this in media, like, drives me out of my mind.

[A]

Yeah, it's wild.

[B]

You know, it's the same. I mean, this is different, but. But the same. But it reminds me of the conversations we've had about Dolce and Gabbana. The conversations we've had about Alexander Wang is like, why can we not let go of these losers? Like, why do we have to keep dragging them back into the public sphere and, like, acting like they're legitimate individuals that we have to pay attention to for some reason, we don't let them go. And basically. So my title was Enough with James Charles already. Because I've had enough.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I simply. We have to, like, put him out to pasture. Like, we have to stop talking about him like, he is so pathetic. He is such a loser. He is such a corrupt, just like, morally impoverished individual. Like, we really don't need to keep pretending this man is famous and that he's worthy of our time or discussion. The most. The reason that it came up this month, it could come up every month because honestly, he's doing something deplorable literally every month. But it came. It came to a head this month because basically he posted this TikTok where he was calling out. Her name is Amber Lendoff Vargas, and she is a former Spirit Airlines employee. Of course, we all know Spirit Airlines, like, surprise. It, like, surprising everyone, like, suddenly shuttered this month and which meant that, like, hundreds and thousands of people suddenly didn't have a job overnight. And that is scary. And that is kind of the nature of our economy at the moment as well, I would argue, is, like, everyone's like, kind of very scared about their. They're like, we're rapidly losing work, there's not work to be had, and prices are going up everywhere. And so I think not unreasonably, she sent him a cold DM and she asked if James Charles, beyond multimillionaire, by the way, could send sixteen hundred dollars to her GoFundMe after the airlines shut down. And Charles Charles James, we've been calling him Jimmy Chuck in Slack, which really cracks me up. It's like the most benign nickname anyone. My associate editor has been calling him that. And it really makes me laugh every time. Jimmy Chuck. So Jimmy Chuck decided that he was going to clap back at this former Spirit Airlines employee. And I already, right off the bat, that's a Huge problem with me. Celebrities who think they can clap back is always, like, embarrassing.

[A]

Private citizen.

[B]

Yeah, like, it's always. It's always a fucking private citizen who has like a hundred followers. And they're like, I'm gonna show this bitch. Like, I'm gonna teach her a lesson today. And it's like, why, why? And why is that your mentality? It just makes me think of Chrissy Teigen and how Chrissy Teigen was on Twitter for forever, just, like, dunking on randoms and nobodies to, like, enormous applause. And I've never understood it. I do not understand, like, that mentality. And I don't understand why we as an audience think that's like, that's clever or enjoyable or relatable. Like, it's embarrassing to. In my opinion, deeply, deeply. And, like, so beneath you. Anyway, so not beneath Jimmy Chuck. It's right on par with Jimmy Chuck, but. So he decided to make this clapback video in which part of his scathing response to her was he said, you know what else would help you getting another job? Try that. Because in the time it took you to copy and paste the same fuck ass message to me, who you don't follow, by the way, and to 100 other influencers and celebrities, you could have applied to a hundred other jobs because you're a lazy piece of shit and you're entitled. Why would I ever help you?

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

Yeah, it's pretty intense.

[A]

What?

[B]

And I think I'm kind of, like, doing it a disservice because if maybe we'll. We'll splice in the actual video clip. I'm sure they do, sweetheart. I'm sure they do. You know what else would help you getting another job? Yeah. Try that. Because in the time that it took you to copy and paste the same fuck ass message to myself, who you don't follow, by the way, and probably 100 other influencers and celebrities, you could have applied for 100 other jobs, but you didn't because you're a lazy piece of shit and you're entitled and you think that influences and celebrities should fund your life for you. Why? Why would I ever help you? Because when you really hear the tone that he's using and kind of the over the top emotion and like facial animation that he's doing along with this message, you're like, oh, this is actually like a lot more vicious than even the language comes across. Like, it's. It's actually very hateful. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty wild here. So people were understandably what would make

[A]

a multi millionaire celebrity even think they have the right to an opinion on any of this?

[B]

I'm just like, that was kind of my first stopping point in the essay.

[A]

I have a job.

[B]

James Charles, like, right, right, right, right, right. If someone is entitled here, I think there's only one person who's entitled. But anyway, I. That was kind of my first point where I hit pause in the essay because a lot of people like you were like, completely shocked by this reaction, found it, like, to be wildly over the top. But maybe this is just like me being immersed in kind of like YouTube creator world and like, what these people are like. But I do think it's kind of like par for the course of, like, YouTube sickness brain, which is like, especially with someone like James who's like, sorry, Jimmy. Someone like Jimmy who's grown up entirely on the Internet and has made his career entirely from not only being on the Internet, but honestly, like, a lot of controversies like this have very much, like, made him in his career and made him a household name. And so to me, it's like, yeah, it's a content brain sickness. It's like, he does this a lot. He bullies people, he makes fun of people, he belittles people, he claps people back and it gets him a ton of views and it makes him a ton of money.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then he makes subsequent apology videos. And honestly, those two rack up a ton of views, a ton of money. And so ultimately, like, it makes you, I think, very cynical and it makes you kind of think, like, all clicks are good clicks, all news is good news. Like, I make money whether they love me or they hate me. So, like, why not drum up the controversy? So I don't know. I didn't find it quite as surprising as other people, I guess. But also maybe, like, I'm more familiar with how YouTube, how stupid YouTube people are, frankly, and also how, like, sick of an individual he is, specifically because I've been on the. I've been on the Jimmy Chuck hate train for a long time. A long.

[A]

I know, but it feels like he's. There have been so many controversies lately, especially that I'm just surprised he would splash out like this after.

[B]

He's never been afraid to splash. I'll say that he's never shied away from a entering the fray, we'll say. So anyway, so he posted this video. It gets huge backlash immediately. Everyone obviously is. Is siding with this woman who he's mocking Amber. And he proceeds to post multiple since delete. And they're all deleted. They've all since been deleted. I do actually think he has a new one that he just posted yesterday that I haven't. I'm not caught up fully on the new post apology, but he. He's posted at least three apology videos at this point where. And he's deleted all of them. I mean, the first one calling it an apology video is it was not an apology. Yeah, it was very much like a. A sorry you feel that way with a double down of like, sorry you're poor. Sucks to be poor, basically. So I don't. Wouldn't count that as apology. But then he went on to apologize and delete those as well because they were not satisfactory. And also I just. A recommendation that I would make to Jimmy, if he's listening, is maybe put on a shirt when you make an apology. Maybe don't do it in bed shirtless. You know, just maybe take it a touch more seriously. A little decorum for the apology is what I'm saying. You know, I appreciate the casual affect that you're putting on, but maybe a little more gravitas for the next. The next apology video, which I assume there will be another one after this one because I have assumed you've already deleted the newest one. Anyway, people did not take well to his apologies. They did not accept them. He now has, I mean, last time I checked, 39 million TikTok followers. So he lost about 5 million followers over this. Interesting.

[A]

Okay, good.

[B]

Not even his first or most substantial follower loss, as we'll discuss in a moment. But it should be probably why he's feeling so contrite all of a sudden, I would imagine, about. About what he's done. He also said that he reached out privately to Vargas to apologize, but she made a TikTok video of her own replying to basically all of this and her feelings on it. And people ask her if she accepted his apology and she said, hell no. Which love that for her icon queen. And on the bright side, him shitting on her publicly like this has led to her raising $43,000 for her GoFundMe. So there is a really.

[A]

He did.

[B]

Did a public service. We should all be thanking Jimmy Chuck. Actually, we should be saying thank you. Thank you so much for dunking on her. You highlighted a needy individual who we can all go support, even though you are the. Again, the multimillionaire who could not give her sixteen hundred dollars or just frankly ignore the dm. Don't reply.

[A]

Most people who are sending those kind of DMS are just assuming Nobody's gonna see it.

[B]

And that's what she said. She's like, I just assumed he'd never see it. Like, I just. It was just a shot in the dark because, like, I was in a desperate time situation. It's like, why not, why not shoot for the stars? Like, why not try it and see? It's the same. You know when people, like, invite brands and celebrities to their wedding and stuff, Right. Have you ever seen that? It's like, they don't think you're gonna come.

[A]

They think, my mom just sent me, like a gift. A TikTok of brands to invite my wedding that, like, always send something.

[B]

Well, you know, we're looking for that fishmonger sponsor.

[A]

I would love a fishmonger sponsor. Apparently, Southwest Airlines, if you invite them to your wedding, they'll send you free tickets for a honeymoon. So I'm going to try it. I got to try it.

[B]

Let's try it. But also tickets to wear. It's kind of would be my fear with Southwest, like, wearing on the subway.

[A]

Anyway.

[B]

But yeah. So all this happened this month and it just got me thinking. It's crazy to me that this is the thing that moves the. The needle on him and that might actually, like, hasten his cancellation when, like, this is literally by far the least bad thing Jimmy Chuck has ever done. Yeah, the least bad thing. So then I was like, okay, I have to write it. I actually have to, like, I need to, like, do a chronology and, like, point out to people like, hey, you missed a couple conversations here of, like, when this guy should have actually been, like, exiled from society.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I mean, the first. The most famous one. Well, we do have. He had some tweets, of course, that were quite racist. And so that was his first brush with cancellation. I think that is also very much YouTuber status quo. And also, to be fair, he was a child. He was probably like 12, 13 writing this stuff. And so I do think that is just kind of the nature of 12 and 13 year olds being on an Internet before even understanding the Internet would have receipts. Like, this would be forever like this that everyone would go through this type of scandal. Anyway, so the first kind of major public cancellation we get is in 2021, which actually was it. No, 2019. I'm sorry, 2019. And honestly, I was surprised by how recent that is. For some reason in my brain, it happened much longer ago than that. But maybe that's the lore around it. It looms so large. The mythology of this YouTube moment is so enormous that that it Seems longer ago. But in 2019, we get, of course, the iconic Tati Westbrook video that has since been deleted by Sister. The iconic. By sister. A 43 minute. 43 minutes since deleted video where Tati, another. For those who aren't into the. Into the YouTube universe, Tati was like an OG, really iconic beauty vlogger. And. And very much Charles's, like, mentor, I would say, in terms of, like, being in the beauty vlogger space. She was before him, and she kind of, like, took him under his. Her. She took him under her wing and very much, like, helped guide his career and to stardom. And so they're falling out was like a massive drama on the Internet, like a crazy situation. And really kind of the crux. What's even crazier is the crux of this drama and this fallout is essentially that James Charles promoted Sugar Bear Hair, which both of us, being former Kardashian experts, I feel like that that name haunts. Haunts the imagination. But so he promoted. Yeah, for sure. So he promoted these. Sugar Bear hair. These, like, gummy vitamins. Insane. When he was at Coachella. And Tati was very offended by this because she had her own, like, gummy hair supplements that he had never promoted. And he claimed that he would. That he wouldn't promote them on his channel because his audience was, like, super, super young. They're all children. Which we will get back to that demographic detail, because that is a very important fact about James Charles.

[A]

Foreshadowing. Yeah.

[B]

That all of his fans are literally underage children. That is a very crucial detail. Anyway, so he said he couldn't promote the supplements because that was dangerous to, like, promote those to his f. And then he goes and promotes her number one competitor.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And Toddy was, like, very, very offended by this. And so that is the impetus for this whole video. But then, as just like an aside, in the midst of this video, she also accuses him of using his fame. This is a direct quote. Using his fame and money to try to manipulate someone's sexuality, which he has denied. He says that he never did this, but basically she implies that they were having a dinner at her house. And I believe there was a straight waiter. I can't remember if it was a guest or if it was a waiter at the dinner. And that James Charles basically, like, tried to manipulate him somehow using his fame and his power into having sex with him. And that is. Will also become a recurring.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Theme that we will find out. Yes, that is very much his status quo. We find out. Although he has completely denied that this situation ever happened. Regardless, this video lost him 1.26 million followers on YouTube all in one day, which to this day is the biggest recorded YouTube subscriber loss in history in a single year.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

Yeah. Which is so crazy. Especially when you realize what the drama was actually about and you're like, that's, that's what you lost you the most. YouTube subscribers. The YouTube, YouTube. Everything I learn about YouTube creators, I'm like, oh, there are no laws here. Like, nothing. Like, you all are like sinister and you're doing like evil, depraved things. And they're all like, that's. That's my fave, though. That's my YouTube guy.

[A]

My problematic fave.

[B]

That's my problematic fave. I gotta come back to him. So anyway, that happens. Years pass, he bounces right back. By the way, it's all fine, but by 2021, a then 21 year old Charles is accused by multiple underage boys of soliciting nude photos and sending them sexually explicit messages and sexually explicit photos in return. Multiple, multiple boys. Charles initially denied the claims, but later released another since deleted. You'll notice a theme, a since deleted apology video. And that video was titled Holding Myself Accountable, also an insane title for this video. And in this video he completely admits to doing it. He did it. Yeah, yeah, he admits to it. And he said, he said I fucked up. That's the direct quote. I fucked up. And quote, these conversations should have never happened. But these conversations did happen with two minors confirmed. With two minors. And there are more than two who came forward and said that this was happening to him. With receipts, I would add, with screenshots.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And somehow. And it happens also over like a stage, over time, like, like it kind of this initial wave comes out and then in the subsequent months, like more and more boys step forward claiming they were. They had similar interactions with him, which I find very troubling.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But no one else seems to find it troubling because despite these boys incredi. I mean, absolutely credible. Because James Charles admitted to it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

His career once again bounces from right back. He has proceeded in subsequent years to land more and larger brand deals with major brands. His YouTube channel was temporarily demonetized after these revelations came out, which is kind of YouTube standard practice for people who allegations come out against them or they face criminal repercussions. YouTube's kind of standard practices, turning off monetization for their content so at least they aren't making money off the platform. And so they did that with James Charles and then about a year or two years later remonetized his channel. So his channel is monetized once again, despite nothing having changed.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

These stories still being legitimate and he's grown his audience actually to new heights. I was. And I would particularly say on TikTok, TikTok is doing a lot of like the laundering of his.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Entire career.

[A]

Blew. TikTok really blew up after like post this scandal thing.

[B]

Exactly, exactly. And so. And first. And I don't know, it seems, I don't know who represents James Charles or who his team is, but they do seem to be at least working incredibly closely with TikTok on a practical level. Because I. I mean, it's kind of common knowledge, I think right now, if you're. If you're interested in James Charles at all. I think it's kind of common knowledge that videos speaking out against him are getting wiped completely off of TikTok, if not just kind of suppressed generally. Like they're not being seen, they're not being spread around and. And no one's quite sure why that's

[A]

happening, what's going on.

[B]

Unless he somehow has some sort of. I mean, it's completely possible that he is making TikTok so much money that they've arranged some sort of, you know, backend communication line.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That his team has open. I don't know. I don't know. I just think it's a very odd thing that's happening around discussion of him on TikTok. And then of course, so all of this kind of gets swept under the rug and people aren't really talking about it anymore. And James Charles is like allowed to just go on as he's always gone on. And then actually in February of this year, we get another OG YouTuber, Ethan Klein, who has the H3 podcast. And he's been a massive YouTuber since probably around 2010 doing like commentary videos. And so he really has it out for James Charles and has had it out for him for a minute because I think rightfully so, he has a major issue with sexting minors and like the, the danger that James Charles presents to minors. Yeah. And he's had a number of his victims on his show as well and talked with them about their experience directly. Yeah. And so he took it upon himself. Well, because he noticed, as we've all noticed, that like his, his. He was being like laundered again to the public. Like he was kind of being whitewashed in this way. And he was like, not on my fucking watch. And so he paid $10,000 to put up a billboard in downtown Los Angeles. Oh, my God.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I remember calling out James over the allegations. And the billboard is a picture of James Charles, and the text says, hey, James, I hear you text him young. Of course. A riff off, of course, the Kendrick Lamar Drake song, if I hear you like him young, with the implication being he's a pedophile, which I don't know that James could even argue with, because again, in that video, he admitted to pedophilic activities, certainly if not being of that sexual persuasion. And so, again, and this billboard, Ethan had it approved by both his lawyer and he went back and forth with the advertising firm Lamar, who owns the billboard itself, to basically, like, make sure that it, like, complied with all of their legal standards. And, like, wasn't going to be an issue, obviously, because it's, like, a little bit of a controversy. Right. And he was assured at every point, like, his lawyer signed off on it. Lamar signed off on it. Like, he was assured that, like, this is a freedom of speech thing. You know, billboards can be run by, like, white supremacists, you know, like. Or they can be like. Or, like, campaign rivals and stuff. Like. So I think this falls very much under that kind of. That line of advertising.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so the billboard was put up and it was removed two days later. It was supposed to be up for a week, I believe, or two weeks. And it was removed two days after it was installed. And when asked why it was removed two days after it was installed, Lamar said that it did not comply with their, like, rules and regulations despite it. Very much complying with their rules and regulations.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Before it went up and went public. And so again, I think much like the TikTok stuff, it prompted a lot of people online to kind of speculate, like, what is really going on behind the scenes. And I remember, too, when. When the billboard was taken down, it was on, like, a holiday, long weekend. And so everyone found it, like, extra. Like, why would it be taken down on, like, a Sunday of, like, a long holiday week? It just seems, like, very weird.

[A]

You're taking some pains to take this down right now.

[B]

You're taking some pains to take this thing down in a rush, I would say. But anyway, I think that billboard kind of, like, jogged everyone's memory about, like, what the James Charles situation is. And so when this moment happened, it kind of, like, I don't know, a little bit of a perfect storm. But, yeah, I don't know. I was just prompted to write this essay and I kind of concluded the essay saying that, you know, beyond Jimmy Chuck kind of being a despicable character that we need to. We need to depose of, dispose of. Excuse me. It reminded me a lot of Kim Kardashian's the get up off your ass and work line. And. And just this kind of, like, there is an ambient feeling from both celebrities, and by extension, I would say corporations and capitalism in general, of this, like, disgust with their. I think we've actually talked about it on the podcast before. Like, this disgust with the customer and, like, and this implication that we're all just lazy and pathetic and that's why we can't get ahead under capitalism. It's very. I think I wrote in the essay, too, it's very. Avocado toast is keeping millennials from owning homes where it's just, like, so obviously, like, insane. But, like, the onus is always on us, and it's like the onus is actually on us because if we don't have disposable income, then these people aren't rich and famous. Like, that's the actual tension of, like, what they're saying is like, they're mad at us for not having more money to spend on them, but they're putting it like it's our fault, like, it's our problem. It's not their fault. They don't need to be entertaining or make good products or like, the reason

[A]

is spread their money around, taking our money. I can't remember the exact statistics, but when I wrote an article on that Kim Kardashian get up and work thing for Vice, I looked into the stats of, like, how much, like, executive earnings have risen over the past, like, 30, 40 years and how much the average workers has. And it's, like, astronomical in comparison. So it's like, people are working harder than ever before, and this, like, elite class of people is, like, reaping all the benefits. So someone like Kim or James Charles can work really hard, and because of their place in the system, they get compensated in a way that we can work really hard and not ever lose that level of compensation. Like, because that's just how it's structured.

[B]

Yes, but I just feel like this. This contempt for your own fans, for your own customer feels like a very. It's like a truth that's always been the truth of capitalism, but it feels like it's become so bare in recent years. Like, it's become so. The relationship has become so antagonistic and, like, okay, then we'll just put poisons in your food. That kills you. See if we care if you won't buy our goddamn nine dollar eggs.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't know. It feels like so aggressive.

[A]

It is.

[B]

And I just feel. And just like it's perfectly, like, personified by these celebrity talking heads.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, especially for like a Kim Kardashian or James Charles type, like, who thrive on controversy, get the views off.

[B]

And literally your career are our view, like, without our views, without our engagement, you are quite literally nothing. There is nothing to, like, fall back on there. And so, like, the antagonism is also kind of speaks to their frantic. You know what I mean? Like, their feeling of the rug being pulled out from under their career because of our refusal to spend money or time or attention on them. As though that's our fault, not their fault for not entertaining us or not being interesting or not making good products or being good people. But yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

They're mad. Mad at the audience.

[B]

Anyway, I love that my. I told a friend that I was writing this essay and she was like, I love that your thing has just become writing essays where you're like, stop it. Because she was talking about the Marilyn Monroe essay I wrote for the cut. And she's like, I love that your thing is just like, stop looking at that person.

[A]

Wait, what's the Marilyn Monroe thing that you did?

[B]

It's called Let the woman Rest. Yeah. It's old. Where it was. The year where we were just like, obsessively doing it was Kim wore the Marilyn dress, De Armas, made that terrible Marilyn movie. There's like a sculpture of her going up. And I was like, just shut the up about.

[A]

There's a new Marilyn Monroe beauty brand that just came out this week. So I'm gonna have to revisit that essay as I do my critique. And I'm like, it does. It fits well into the. The dead morgue gays trend. It's just like.

[B]

That was kind of my argument.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is that she's just like this empty vessel that we Americana, like, we fill it up with this Americana nonsense. Like, she isn't a human. She's just. She's Coca Cola, she's McDonald's.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Andy Warhol, Mickey Mouse.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. She's not a human. She's a projection of a fantasy woman. And it's just. I was pointing out how sad that is when, like, that's what she, like, railed against. Her whole actual existence was like this character that she had to play versus the person who she was in her private life. And like that dissonance, I think also called her, caused her like a lot of mental strife, a lot of emotional strife. And the fact that like, all that is left of her is kind of this thing that this character that she hated. So depressing. It's so depressing. And that we can't just like let her exit. We can't just leave it alone. We can't let this mythology go.

[A]

And that's just like.

[B]

So exhume her.

[A]

Problematic of some of the problems with beauty culture where it's like, we look at this woman who had it all according to beauty culture, like literally set the trends, was revered as the most

[B]

beautiful person, greatest beauty of all time.

[A]

Yeah. And like, was so depressed that she potentially killed herself. Like, I don't know. It's. Man, man, what a.

[B]

What a bummer. Oh, man.

[A]

Oh, God. Okay, let me talk about, Let me talk about something else. Let me talk about yesteryear. Have you heard anything about the book Yesteryear?

[B]

Have you? I've heard. I've heard much about it. Yeah, I've heard much about it. I've heard a little bit of the. I've dabbled in the discourse. I haven't read any of it. And I don't really know much beyond the plot and the discourse. But I do know my editorial assistant at work, she moonlights at Barnes and Noble. And so she really has her finger on the pulse of books in the way that's like, I actually tell her, I'm like, it's kind of your like, superpower, honestly, because you like, are tapped in in this crazy way where she actually knows like, what the weekly book sales are like, what's trending and what people are reading. And she said yesteryear has been huge. She said, oh, it's been like the

[A]

number one New York Times bestseller for like.

[B]

She said, it's massive. Massive every week.

[A]

Yeah. So, okay, I am going to talk about yesteryear. But the reason I started thinking about yesteryear, which I read and I liked, is my sister in law. Her name is Kat Schneider. She's an author and an illustrator. Her first book, it's a graphic novel for young adults, came out this month. It's called Someday Perfect. And I did an interview with her for my newsletter, which I'll link to, but it's about going to like a strict Christian sleepaway camp as a teenager while, like falling in love with a fellow camper. And as she put it, she put it, learning to navigate life under the male gaze, but also the gaze of a Higher being, because it was like, God is watching, but the boys are looking. And like, how do you deal with both of those things? Which immediately made me think of trad Wives, because that's like, those are the two gazes that they're catering to, for sure. And then that made me think of yesteryear, because it's kind of like a trad wife thriller. And Yesteryear is written by Carol Claire Burke, who is the co host of the podcast Diabolical Lies, which we have shouted out before. And so I read both of these. I read Someday Perfect, and I read Yesteryear, and I sort of see Someday Perfect as, like, maybe like, a potential prequel to what happens in yesteryear. Like, how somebody who grows up to become, like, a very Christian, religious trad wife influencer on social media might have grown up, like, what they might have gone through in their teenage years to, like, make them that way. Because the camp that Kat writes about in Someday Perfect is kind of like this trad wife training ground. Like the girl campers do, the boy campers laundry. It's based. And then it's based on her real experiences. And, like, the girl campers didn't get as much food because they were like, you want to preserve your girlish figure. So it's like. And this was all considered, like, divinely designed, you know, like girls. Exactly. Um, so I thought it was, like, really interesting to pair them together. And so I was thinking of this idea of the. The divine gaze and the male gaze and how they converge in online culture today as being particularly relevant to yesteryear. So basically, the. The main character in yesteryear is very religious. She's internal as this idea that God is watching. And it actually makes her very social media savvy because she's used to this idea of, like, being watched and being judged. Exactly, exactly. So I was thinking of, like, okay, how do I draw some parallels between these two books for this interview? And I didn't end up going into it, but I found it so funny that. Here's the skincare angle. The skincare brand, dewskin D I E U X Gaud. In French.

[B]

God in French. Yeah.

[A]

Hosted a launch party with Carol Claire Burke for yesteryear and gave all attendees dew skin products at the end of it with names like Deliverance Serum and Angel Instant Angel Moisturizer. And I was like, this is so bizarre that this book that is, like, sort of talking about the dangers of internalizing this divine gaze is, like, completely unironically, like, gifting readers the divine gaze. The Divine gaze.

[B]

Oh, the divine glaze.

[A]

Should I say, oh, my God, yes, it's perfect. It's perfect. You know, like, this is a brand that, like, says that they are, quote, religious about results. They used to have, like, the ten commandments of skincare on their website. And in the, like, event flyer, they were like, come, come to this event. We're, like, unpacking the influence of tradwives and the performance of being a woman, and you're gonna get these skincare products. And I'm just like. And are we talking about how that's part of the performance of being a woman? Have we thought about how, like, the names and ethos of your product is like.

[B]

No, I don't see it compounding the

[A]

gaze of God that Caro is writing about in this book.

[B]

Compounding the gaze of God is a beautiful turn of phrase, by the way.

[A]

Well, thank you. Thank you. But, yeah, I just found that so, so funny and kind of an iconic book. And, yeah, beauty brand.

[B]

Aggressively on the nose.

[A]

Aggressively on the nose. But I think unaware. Like, I don't think it's, like, ironic of, like, oh, my God, and you're going to get Deliverance Serum. Like, there was nothing. There was no irony in the way this was presented. And to me, it just speaks to how internalized that gaze is, especially in beauty. So I wrote about this a little bit in the interview that I did with Kat Schneider, but I talked a bit about how we've been moving in marketing from male gaze stuff in the past decade or so to more divine gaze stuff where it was like, we used to have, like, orgasm blush and Better than Sex mascara and those, like, herbal Essences commercials where you were, like, having an orgasm in the shower while washing your hair. And now you're more like, you still have things like hard on lipstick, but you're more likely to see things. I know. Those were good commercials. I loved them.

[B]

I also liked them as a tweet.

[A]

I did not know what was happening. I was just like, oh, she loves the shower.

[B]

She loves. And you know what? And I was. And I was smelling those herbal essences, and I was like, I get it. This smells incredible.

[A]

Yes, yes. But today you're more likely to get marketing that's like, Deliverance Serum, Divine Skin Essence, like the Alicia Keys soul care routine, like ritual. It's much more, like, religiously tinged than it has been in the past. And I think that people tend to think of this shift as being, like, progressive, as in, like, we're not catering to the male gaze. This is about me. This is about my spiritual well being. And I'm just like, but why is that better? Like, that feels regressive to me. The God gaze feels like the original male gaze. Like, why is this pressure to look pure and disciplined and good better than the pressure to appear sexy? They're both sort of this outside pressure that's like telling you what you should look like. And I don't think people have grappled with that.

[B]

I don't think so at all. But I was gonna say, like, I think the God gaze to me just feels like, well, God is sky daddy. It's like you're just, you're just like zooming out to a meta level of the male gay. You know what I mean? Like, God is, is the OG man here. Like, he is gendered male traditionally in religion. Like, yeah, it just feels like they're like, oh, right. Like we're, we're all angry at men. Like, we're mad at men. So like, let's shift, like, let's shift focus. It's not the men who want you to do this, it's God who wants you to do this. But it's like the same gaze, it's

[A]

the same when you trace back, like how these ideals have emerged over time, even just taking like the ideal of youthfulness, like men, like a, a young fertile woman. It's like that was associated in like the Middle Ages with being young, pure, innocent little lamb, like not having accumulated sort of like sin and the weight of the world as much. Like, so there's this real like divine innocence that's like around youth at that time and that's part of why youth is idealized. So there really are these sort of very religious influences that have created what is considered good under the male gaze.

[B]

So we're just going back to the source. We're just going regressing.

[A]

We're regressing. We totally are regressing. And I just think it's like, it's funny to see this pairing and what I would say is like a lack of awareness about.

[B]

Totally. But it's also like interesting, right? It is interesting to think about, like we are regressing to like the source of all these beauty standards almost while simultaneously doing all these kind of like, like a mental loop de loops of like logic and explaining to get to this place that's actually the old place, you know what I mean?

[A]

If you want to talk about mental loop de loops, wait till my Mess of the month where I talk about Rosie o' Donnell's poem about her facelift.

[B]

Boy, I knew you were gonna have something to say.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

I've been reading the headlines all weekend, chuckling to myself about the. The shame of the deep plane facelift. And I was like, I know Jess has something to say about this.

[A]

I do, I do.

[B]

We can hasten in the mess of the month direction if you like. Unless you.

[A]

Yeah, let's say about. Let's move on. No, I'm done. I'm done with the God gaze. Should we talk about the Met Gala?

[B]

The mess gala, Mass gala, my favorite time of year. Yeah, we can just rifle through this. I don't. It's honestly, frankly, not interesting enough to. To speak about at length. But I know that people were clamoring for us to talk about it.

[A]

People were asking. But I've already forgotten. I was very bored by this year, and very few things stuck in my head.

[B]

Actually, I couldn't agree more with that. It was. It was entirely a forgettable evening. And I say that as someone who typically loves a forgettable evening of celebrity fashion. It was stupefyingly boring is how I would describe it. And again, on a night that is famously bad, you know, like, no one truly. No one expects anything from. If you expect anything from the Mecca, you're a fool, frankly. Like, you're never going to be satisfied with the things that you're seeing there. The celebrities will never follow the theme. They'll never do it. Well, you are lucky to get, like, three people who absolutely kill it. It's like, it's worth it for them usually. But like everyone else, you should know is a travesty. But I felt this was a travesty beyond all reason. I was like, well, okay, here. Let me say the best thing that happened that night is I figured out how to live stream correctly. And so that was a very exciting. It was a very exciting development for me and the, like, five people who watch me live stream because they didn't have to yell at me all night about the many technological foibles of my production.

[A]

I wanted to watch the live stream so badly, but I happened to be in San Diego that day, staying with my sister, and I think we were at dinner or something or lunch because it was a different.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

Time zone.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

Oh, no.

[B]

You didn't miss a thing. You truly didn't miss a thing. Except that I learned how to do a screen in screen sharing so that we could all watch things simultaneously. So that felt like a huge coup.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then, of course, that's the last. That's traditionally the last red carpet. I live stream of the year. So I've learned it how to do it to absolutely no end.

[A]

I know the technology by next year,

[B]

I know by next year I'll have forgotten it at all and I won't know how to do it and there'll be some new technology that I don't understand to mess it up again. Oh, my God. Also, this is unrelated, but it just occurred to me and I just have to express it out loud. I'm so mad at myself because for another year I have missed the pornhub awards. And when I tell you, when I tell you, for like every week, for the past probably three months, I have been emailing their press contact being like, hey, hey, when is this happen? When is this happening? Could I be on the record? Could I come to the red carpet? When is this happening? Could I be there? And they have not responded to me. They have left me on red for three months. And then I. And then I read yesterday that friends of the newsletter think 1994. These people, I love them. Do you know them? No, I'm a long. I'm a longtime Think 1994 fan. Anyway, they're amazing. They. They do all sorts of things. They do all sorts of like funny little projects and art gallery shows and they made a line of merch that you might be familiar with. They made the ashtray. That was the Mary Kate and. And Ashley.

[A]

Yes. Okay.

[B]

Yep, that's them. And they do a lot of Sex in the City, so there's. They're super fun. Anyway, they posted something about being at the pornhub Awards and I was like, God damn it, why them being sabotaged again. Anyway, I'm sorry, that has nothing to do with anything. I don't even remember why I brought that up except that. Oh, because of live stream. I would have live streamed that. Anyway, so I fucked it up and I didn't do it. So back to the Met gala. That was deeply disappointing. Yeah, there were some best dressed of the nights. Let me just run through a few of my thoughts here. Yes, there were some best dress of the nights. There were some standouts to me. One was Emma Chamberlain in custom Mugler.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

It looked like a painting that was melting off of her body.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Again, in the video version we can insert photos, but I compared it to what Dreams May Come, if you're familiar with that movie.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't know why, but there's. There's this particular scene in that movie that looms enormously large in my brain and I. And I think of it as a reference all the time. And, like, probably, like 10 millennials know what I'm talking about, which is that there's a scene. So Robin Williams. The whole point of what dreams may come for those who have not seen this film, which you should, is that Robin Williams is, like, his wife committed suicide, and he's, like, going after her, like, her spirit and, like, because it's, like, trapped in purgatory or something. So he has to, like, go through the. It's kind of. What is that myth? Orpheus. Orpheus, yes. It's very Orpheus, where he has to, like, go down into hell. Is it Penelope? I couldn't remember.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

I don't know. Let's. Let's just leave it at Orpheus. It's very Orpheus, where he has to, like, go into hell and he has to, like, save the love of his life. And. Yeah, it's very that. And so Robin Williams goes into hell to save his wife. And then there's this scene where he, like, is in this kind of, like, heaven, waiting room type of thing. And it's like one of her paintings that he's, like, living inside. And so, like, every. It's like nature and, like, a field of flowers, but very, like, globular lumps of paint that are kind of like, smashed around. It's, like, tactilely, like. So. Yeah, it really, like, scratches a niche in my brain. The, like, the tactileness of that space. Anyway, that's what Emma Chamberlain's dress reminds me of, like, precisely. And so I thought that was, like, a really beautiful interpretation of the night's theme, which is, of course, fashion is art, which is fucking preposterous and absolutely preposterous. Nothing of a theme. And also, I will say that this. This red carpet is testament to what I've always said about these themes, which is that, like, Anna, there's always a theme for the exhibit itself. And the theme for the exhibit itself is usually good. And I agree with it. And then Anna Wint, over the years, has decided that no famous people can correctly interpret the exhibit theme. And so she creates a separate theme just for the red carpet that is always, like, wildly more vague and meaningless. Yeah.

[A]

And it's like, no one's correctly interpreting this either. Just give them the good theme.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Just let them.

[B]

And that's what I say every single year. I was like, actually, you're doing it wrong. Because I know that in her brain, she thinks I'll make it so vague and wide that everyone. If you wear an outfit, you will fall. Like last year's was tailored for you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Tailored for you. So, like. Yeah, everyone is everyone. Literally everyone, no matter what you did.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because again, literally everyone is wearing a custom garment. It is quite literally has to be tailored for you. And so you cannot fail. And I know that was her line of thinking with fashion is art is like fashion is quite literally art.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So if you wear fashion, you have succeeded at the night scheme. And I would like to. I would like to counter to her that the vagueness is actually the problem. When you don't give celebrities enough parameters and, like, strict, narrow rules, they start to get creative. And that is actually wildly more dangerous than. Than being hyper specific with them and forcing them to do something good.

[A]

Yeah, I think I agree.

[B]

And when will we learn this lesson? Like, how many times do we have to do this before we discover that you gotta crack down on these people? Like, you can't just tell them it's camp and expect. You can't also. That was one of the worst, bro. But that was also a huge problem I had with this year's red carpet is people were wearing stuff where I was like, okay, so that actually would have been phenomenal three years ago if you had worn that three years ago to camp or to. To super fine. The black tailoring exhibit or Garden of Time. I was like, that would have murdered. That would have murdered at that event. But you've worn it to this event, and I don't understand why. It's cr. It's maddening. It's crazy making. So that was my big takeaway of the night.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Anyway, another best dressed for me, Jordan Roth, who. Who wore one of the Robert one gowns that we talked about before, a custom version of it that with the.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

The mannequin man kind of looming over Jordan's back. And I thought, that's a perfect interpretation of fashion and art. And also the itself was just about the relationship between fashion and the body. And so I expected kind of more of this play between.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The hyper real body and fashion. But I thought Jordan kind of did kind of maybe the best version of it. And Gwendolyn Christie, I also really enjoyed her take on it, which she wore like a mask of her own face. And then on the flip side of the mask of her own face was a mirror, which I thought was really clever.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then, of course, her gown was Gilles Deacon, who is an amazing British fashion designer and also her husband.

[A]

Her husband. Yeah.

[B]

So that. That really works. Out for her quite often when it comes to these sorts of galas. And then also, I was thinking with Gwendolyn, the funny thing about her is, like, I feel like she did that Margiela artisanal show where she was the doll and, like, she, like, found her true self.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And, like, she is just. She's just been riffing off that aesthetic, like, ever since. Since. Because her Mecca look to me was, like, very much like that 2.0. Like, not that I'm complaining. Loved it. Beautiful. Loved her in the show and on the gala carpet. But, like, I just feel like she's really found her aesthetic niche, and it happens to be, like, haunted Victorian doll. So I love that.

[A]

I do like that.

[B]

Thoughts I have of the night. I mean, one that I've been talking about kind of at length was Sarah Paulson wore a matier figure couture dress. This is. I believe we talked about them before when Brian Johnson walked in their show. Right?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

So this. I don't know. This collection's so crazy to me because it's called the 1%. The whole show is a critique and a commentary on the uber rich and kind of like, just the. The narcissism, the self obsession, the devotion to, like, beauty that pushes them into these, like, freakish alien plastic surgery beings. And also just kind of like, the way that the wealth blinds you to, like, the real suffering around you and kind of the real impact and change that your money could make on the world around you because you're so, like, solipsistic in it, I guess. And that's what the collection's about. And so it just is cracking me the fuck up that celebrities keep wearing it in these very unironic, very, like, sincere ways where it's like, I don't think they're understanding that they are the punchline of this joke.

[A]

No, I mean, that's how I felt about Brian Johnson walking that Runway anyway. Like, he did not know.

[B]

Exactly. And that's what was funny about that.

[A]

The joke was on him. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And even the public, like, in their anger at Brian Johnson walking in the show, were, like, refusing to understand the joke of the show in the context that he had been, like, put inside of. And that's what I've kind of found in the response, not only in. In celebrities wearing these outfits, but even the response from the public to them wearing these outfits, because I keep pointing out how funny it is. And one of the critiques that I got back was, like, well, who can afford to even wear this collection? Who isn't of the 1%? And I was like, yeah, right, That's. Yeah.

[A]

And the joke will always be on you.

[B]

Right. It's a performance piece. It's an experiment.

[A]

It's like a thought experiment on, like a. Much like a higher fashion scale of the. Like, Jacobs by Mark. By Marc Jacobs. By Marc Jacobs.

[B]

Yeah. By mj.

[A]

Yes, exactly.

[B]

It's.

[A]

It's a joke on whoever buys it. But, like, it wouldn't be a joke unless so many people bought it, sort of. And like, most people who are buying it are not aware that this is a joke about their own consumerism.

[B]

Totally.

[A]

And Marc Jacobs, like a flaccid tote bag just because it has the name Marc Jacobs on it 17 times.

[B]

And it's like Marc Jacobs making fun of both his own love of diffusing himself. Like, he does have a million diffusion lines. And, like, so he's mocking himself. He's like, doing all this stuff, but also it, like, is gesturing at something true, which is like, he does have to make all these diffusion lines to, like, have products at all these different price points so that he, like, can be a relevant fashion brand. But also, like, parts of that brand are spun off to larger conglomerations, like luxury conglomerate brands. So, like, he doesn't personally own, like, large swaths of his own company that has his own name on it, so he actually has to make diffusion lines that he himself owns so that he has control. Like, that is where Heaven came from. I don't know if people are familiar with Heaven by Mark Jacobs, but, like, yeah, but that's a spin off line. So that Mark actually, like, had Ava, so creative director of that or was the creative director of the line. Like, that's how he was able to hire her and work with her and, like, have a say in part of his brand is because, like, that's not Marc Jacobs proper, which is owned by a larger conglomeration.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, that's the thing.

[B]

It's this very weird, funny, like, meta thing about the fashion industry, about fashion consumption. It's like, the joke's on you, but the joke is also about him. Yeah, it is very that. It's that taken to, like, the nth degree, though, because it's actually talking about, like, a couture consumer.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Instead of kind of this like, lowest common denominator consumer who's, like, buying fragrances, buying the mascara. Well, it's almost like MJ by Marc Jacobs.

[A]

A Kunzian joke too, because, like, you're gonna pay $58 million for something that looks like a balloon animal.

[B]

That's making fun of you.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

That's making you a joke. Yeah.

[A]

The joke is on you if you are buying this art.

[B]

Totally, totally. And another layer is added when we're talking about something. Celebrities wearing it, because they're not buying that. Those are samples. So there is actually no money. They are actually worthless. They literally don't cost anything. Like, I mean, when you. Again, we've talked about this before, but samples, famously, when you're trafficking in samples, you. You say on tariffs and stuff that they cost a dollar because they don't. They. They technically don't cost anything because they're not for sale. They're not.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Price.

[B]

Like, we're talking about. Yeah, yeah. We're talking about people who are kind of like wearing worthless multi. Thousand dollar garments. And I don't know, I think that adds another layer.

[A]

That adds a very funny layer.

[B]

And I don't know. My. My counterpoint was also that no one's making them wear this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They're making themselves the punchline of the joke. They don't understand. Nobody is forcing that. They don't have to wear these gowns. They don't have to wear this collection at all. And even. I mean, you're even making yourself a punchline in engaging with this brand at all. I mean, the brand's name is Fecal Matter. I was just gonna say, like, you're literally wearing. You're literally wearing shit.

[A]

That's the joke, like, built into the brand at every level.

[B]

Yeah, that's the joke. I don't know. I. Anyway, I love it. Sarah. I guess we got here because Sarah Paulson wore their designs to the Met Gal, which is so fucking funny. And she also wore one of their dollar bill blindfolds with it. And I was just like. I don't know. I was looking at. I was like, girl, do you think this is a protest? Like, do you think that you've successfully made a commentary here because you have it.

[A]

No.

[B]

You're at the Met gala.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You paid. Somebody paid for your.

[A]

One of them. You're up there.

[B]

Somebody paid for your ticket to be at the Jeff Bezos MET gala. So, like, inherently, that is not a protest because you're endorsing it with your presence. Even if you think you're making a public statement about. Again, you are wearing the collection that's making the joke of you. You aren't making a joke of the event by wearing that collection.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You're the 1%. You're the 1% that you're, like, mocking. I don't know. I love that. I think that's very funny.

[A]

I actually got a similar feeling from Cardi B In Marc Jacobs. It was very, like, her dress sort of had, like those tumor like, growths on it. It was very build a body. Just like curves in all of these, like.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Places that they don't exist.

[B]

Yes, yes, Very Sarah Paulson at the Vanny Fair after party for the Oscars. Was that last year? Was that.

[A]

I think that was last year.

[B]

Good God. Time is crazy.

[A]

But I. Yeah, I felt similar because, like, the. Those kinds of dresses are sort of, like, commentary on or at least like, in conversation with this, like, build a body era where you can just add fat wherever you want on your body and take it away in other places. And Cardi B, like herself, is kind of the ultimate. Very much the most of, like, the. Of the modified body.

[B]

Absolutely. And the rapid transformation.

[A]

Yeah. So it was kind of interesting to see her being such a good example of the kind of body that this fashion is speaking.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

To.

[B]

Yeah, I thought that was very interesting as well. And. But again, brings me to another issue of the night. My lifelong hatred of the Vogue method, the live stream that Vogue is doing for the Met gal, it drives me out of my fucking mind. But that's a perfect example, though, because Cardi B arrived after they cut the cameras on the live stream. So a lot of people didn't even see that look. Most people did not even see that look because all the famous people arrived literally after Vogue arbitrarily decides to end their livestream. I'm like, you're in control.

[A]

You own it.

[B]

You're in control. Just keep.

[A]

Do it.

[B]

Just keep streaming. Just keep. Show me. All the people to. All the people are done. Like, it's up to you.

[A]

So weird. Yeah.

[B]

It's so maddening.

[A]

Shots, Vogue.

[B]

And then I also learned that night, another one of my great pet peeves with their way they do the live stream. And I've always. Historically, I've always blamed the camera crew because I assume that the camera crew is a bunch of, like, straight dudes who have not been given directives on, like, how to film fashion. And so they, like, don't know what to focus on or, like, what details people want to see at home. And so I've always blamed them. But then I found out this year that the cameramen literally can't zoom in.

[A]

That feels like a very basic camera capability.

[B]

It feels like the most basic and also, like, I understand, like, focal lengths or whatever. Like, maybe it's set up, but, like, have a second camera then. Yeah, have a zoom camera. Cut to. That's doing the zooms. Is it this hard? That's kind of what I boil down every Met Gala to. I'm like, should it be this hard? Should it be this difficult? I feel like it shouldn't. And yet it feels like an absolutely Herculean task for Vogue to do this live stream every year. Anyway, so I learned that they can't zoom in because they were doing an interview with Paloma. I've never. I've never again always put Essler in

[A]

my head, but that could be wrong.

[B]

Again, the person whose last name I've never said out loud. Anyway, they were doing an interview with Paloma, and she had painted one of her ears silver, I believe. Silver, gold. And Ashley Graham asked the camera if they could zoom in on the detail because it really looks so fabulous. And the cameraman was like, we literally can't zoom. And I was like, that's even crazier because this isn't even the red carpet proper. This is like a holding area where they do interviews. So it's like a still moment where you'd think, like, yes, now would be the time where you could zoom in and zoom out. And they said, no, we can't. And I'm like, okay, that's cool. Because literally everything. All the good parts are happening in the details. But, like, no worries. Anyway, that reminded me because one of the biggest themes of the night was prosthetics. And one of my favorite prosthetics of the night. No one could fucking see because no one could zoom in on her face. Was. Was a knock. A knock Y. Who had prosthetic tears running down her face.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And she's doing kind of like kind of a Virgin Mary type of thing. Anyways. So beautiful. I thought they looked so beautiful. And you literally could not see it at all. On the right car. It translated as nothing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In video and photographs, from a distance. It's only afterwards, when people were posting detail shots of her makeup that I finally saw it. And I was like, that's amazing. Of course, we also have Bad Bunny in age prosthetics.

[A]

Yeah. Which I loved.

[B]

Of course. Cardi B and Stone. Yeah, absolutely. And then also Heidi Klum did an homage to Raphael. Monty's the Van Vestel and that. I also thought that was fucking phenomenal. And both of those prosthetics were done by Mike Marino, who I interviewed.

[A]

For Interview. Yes, for Interview.

[B]

And Mike is extremely cool. Extremely Cool. He does, like, pretty much any prosthetic that you can think of recently that's, like, very famous is Mike. Yeah, the Penguin. He did the Penguin.

[A]

Oh, whoa.

[B]

Yeah, he's. He's incredibly good. And I don't know, I think he made, like, a really compelling point when I was interviewing him, which is he was talking about doing these prosthetics, especially Heidi Klums, and is saying, like, he's very into art history and very into the masters and stuff. And he was saying that. He was like, I think that if they were alive today, they'd be doing what I do. Because it's actually this synergy of all these different genres of art. It's special effects, of course. He's like, but you're literally creating a sculpture. You're hand painting that sculpture to look realistic, and you're also creating couture. You're molding it custom to someone's specific body. Like, you're doing body scans to create something that custom molds to their body.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's also, like, engineering. It's, like, actually a very complicated science of, like, how. How these things move together, how they all fit together. And he was talking about, like, with Heidi Klum, it's like, you have to make sure there's a way for her to go to the bathroom. Because I was like, can she go? Because I've always kind of assumed that she's just holding it all night. And he's like, yeah, he's like, there's hidden zippers. She can absolutely freely move and pee and everything that we make. Because he makes all her Halloween costumes, too. And he was like, can we make sure that she can, like, totally pee? Like, with help, obviously. But he's like, she can pee. She can move around. He's like, in this case, we knew she was going to be at the gala alone. And so he's like, we made sure there was a pocket for her cell phone because, like, she needs to be able to, like, reach people or contact people. And so we wanted to make sure she has all the creature comforts of, like. And it's like, that is just. I don't know. I found that really compelling and moving.

[A]

The level of, like, practicality in the prosthetics.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And of course, I've been. I've been revving for someone to do age prosthetics since. Since Cardi B. So I was happy to see Bad Bunny finally.

[A]

I have, like, mixed feelings on it because I. I love it. I'm really glad that he did It. It looked so good. And I'm also just, like, really interested in, like, how much other people loved it and how much, like, praise it got in the media. And just interesting to think of, like, that aesthetic only gets praised when it.

[B]

It's fake.

[A]

Like, when it's fake. When it, like, implies a level of effort and a level of aesthetic labor or costume or on a man. Because men are allowed to age, and it enhances the qualities we think of as good and masculine or. I don't know. I was even thinking of, like, you know, Iris Apfel, who was, like, that big style influencer who was in her 90s, and she was very wrinkled, like, she didn't do any cosmetic work. And she would be praised a lot, but I think sometimes, like, because her look was incorporated into an otherwise very high effort aesthetic.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it signaled, like. Yeah, she's very maximalist fashion. So it signaled, like, a lot of men. Really interesting.

[B]

Which I always thought was funny. I mean, it's appropriate for her age, I guess people her age do tend to be mega. But I always thought it was funny because she, like you said, she was getting these kind of, like, crazy, glowing reviews.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I was always like, has anyone read what she said about Trump the other week? Because I don't know if fashion. I have. Not quite as fondly about her. Yeah, it wasn't great.

[A]

Oh, that's so interesting.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. But it's like, when someone who is clearly paying attention to their appearance and putting in effort. Otherwise, it's. And keeping their wrinkles, it sort of symbols like, oh, this is a conscious choice. I do know the rules. I'm not letting myself go. I just am choosing this. Which gets, I guess, more respect or attention or praise than someone who just like.

[B]

Yes. And I think we also like letting themselves go. We know there's a hot person under there. We know it's not permanent. I think it's also part of, like, about it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right. The idea that you can opt into wrinkles and then opt out of them back into being a beautiful person. I think that's what's compelling to us about it.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

What else did I like? Oh, we got bubbles on the red carpet.

[A]

I saw that. I thought of you immediately.

[B]

Finally, a gesture towards my transitory fashions. I've been patiently waiting. Yeah. That was from Iris Van Herpen. She adopted a Runway look for Eileen Goo.

[A]

Eileen is so beautiful. Her face is crazy.

[B]

Yeah. Crazy. But I really like the bubbles. I thought that was fun. Yes. Loved it. What else did we Have Jeremy Pope

[A]

went full George Michael Bluth. I don't really know who Jeremy Pope is, but he was wearing, like, a fake. Just like, fake abs shirt.

[B]

Hold on, I gotta. I gotta get a gander.

[A]

It was like bedazzled fancy.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Muscular body.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do. I recall now. Interesting. Yeah. Jeremy Pope always kind of like, makes a big splash at the mecal, and I never quite understand who he is. Hold on. I'm looking at over here. You know what? Also this top is Vivian Westwood. But you know what it really, really reminds me of? Do you remember the Norwegian salmon air?

[A]

Yes, yes.

[B]

Insert photo here. Because everybody needs to remember the Norwegian salmonera. Was that camp that he went dressed like that?

[A]

It must. Must have been camp. I think.

[B]

Must have been camp. Anyway, he had bedazzled abs just like this. And I. I loved it. And I'm. I missed him this year. I don't know if I saw a photo of him this year.

[A]

Was he there? I don't. I don't recall.

[B]

He went to Super Fine. He went to the last year, so I assume that he'd be at this year. Anyway, miss him. Love him.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Love George Michael Bluthcore wherever I can get it. Oh, also, we had an apple crate. Emma Chamberlain standing on an apple crate. Which, of course, is. One of my iconic predictions for the year is that we would move into stilt territory and artificial ways of boosting our height. Perfect. One big takeaway from the night is that celebrities seem to only know exactly one piece of artwork, and it is John Singer Sargent's portrait of Madame X. And I. I don't know how they all landed on this, and I don't know why. It's the only painting they've seemingly ever seen in their entire lives. There were literally hardly any painting references that I. It was so baffling.

[A]

It was weird. I was expecting a lot more, like, on so weird painting stuff, but no, not a lot.

[B]

But there was not. There was, like, weird oblique references to paintings where I was like, okay, nobody knows that painting, but I'm glad you're referencing it, I guess. And then everyone was Madame X. And I was like, I don't know where you guys also. Do they know he painted other portraits of ladies?

[A]

I know.

[B]

Like, beautiful, beautiful portrait. That's kind of his whole thing. Like, I don't. You can. There's other parts. Like, be like, doesn't he have, like, a Lady Guinevere or whatever? Isn't that one of his famous paintings where she's like, she's putting the crown. It's like. That would be a phenomenal reference to make. Nobody made that one.

[A]

No.

[B]

Anyway, it's funny, too, because I was thinking about a portrait of Madame X, because I don't know if you're a Gilded Age watcher.

[A]

No, I'm not.

[B]

Wonderfully dull show I've ever encountered in my life. Nothing is happening. And that's exactly how I like it. That's how I sell it to everyone. She crosses the street in the first season, and it is groundbreaking. She walks right across that road, right across it to the other house.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

And the crowd went wild. So anyway, they have a reference to that painting in the second season of Gilded Age that when I saw it, I was like, oh, that's very funny. That's very clever. Because basically they're implying that she's the woman in the painting.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Carrie Coon is the woman in the paint. And I was like, oh, that's actually. That's funny. Ha, ha. Clever. Clever reference. And then I saw it just brutalized on this cover, and I was actually. We need to leave her again. We need to leave her alone. Stop it. Stop it. Leave Madame X alone. Yeah. So I guess maybe for those who aren't familiar with the. The painting itself, it was like a hugely scandalous painting at the time when it was debuted at the Paris Salon in 1884, because he originally painted it with one of the straps of her dress dangling off her shoulder. And critics were scandalized. Risque. She was a harlot. And so, yeah, they said that it was vulgar and overly sexualized and also, funnily enough, for your beauty and your tanning angle. One of the biggest critiques was the stark contrast between her. She has extremely pale skin, and she's wearing a dark black or navy blue dress. And so people critiqued the contrast between the gown and her skin as, like, lurid.

[A]

Yes. But also great example of just some. The class symbolism of a tan or no tan at the time and how that has changed so much. Like, that was signaling, like, wealth and excess.

[B]

Totally.

[A]

And it's like, bright whiteness.

[B]

Yeah. So it was, like, very scandalous. And it was actually, like, a huge career setback for Sargent at the time and has gone on to become one of his most famous works. It's considered like the American Mona Lisa because it's just, like, mysterious in a similar way. Scandalous in a similar way. So anyway, Lauren Sanchez obviously had to wear a custom Schiaparelli gown where she cosplayed as Madame X poorly. I will Say, because she didn't even put her hair up.

[A]

Really? No.

[B]

If we're gonna reference, let's reference. The hair is up.

[A]

We're talking about tailoring and too tight. I'm like, the dress didn't. It was so tight, it didn't even look good.

[B]

But that I. That was expected to me.

[A]

I mean, yeah, yeah.

[B]

She's. She has the same Kim Kardashian syndrome where it's like, if every inch of the body isn't, like, fully visible and exposed and strapped into within inch of its life, is it really fashion? Like, to their minds? No, apparently no. To Lauren Sanchez's credit, I will say Claire Foy wore an erdem dress that was also a reference to Madame X and it was much worse. So was it? Yeah. So to her credit, at least one person was worse dressed version than her. But also not to her credit. Julianne Moore also did a Madame X reference, and she did it in custom Tom Ford with Monsieur Tom Ford as her date. And I kind of think that's like the definition of being body slammed. Like, you just. You can't. You can't compete with. Sorry. You can't compete with.

[A]

I'm surprised that so many people did the same. Like, don't you communicate? Isn't there, like a group chat about, like, what piece of art are you referencing?

[B]

So this was also my pet theory that Anna Wintour hates her because, like, historically. Well, historically, famously, the party line has always been that Anna Hand approves every outfit that every celebrity wears on the red carpet specifically to avoid situations like this where multiple people are wearing the same thing or look the same or it's gonna cause embarrassment. And so for three people to show up in the same reference to me, either she hates her or she's, like, seriously slacking in her suit of retirement.

[A]

Like.

[B]

Well, I do feel like, yes, I think she hates at least Lauren Sanchez and Claire Foy. I would argue if you're setting up anyone against Julianne Moore, like, aesthetically, like, you're wishing for their downfall.

[A]

Yeah. This is true.

[B]

Okay. Like, knowing Julianne Moore is coming in custom Tom Ford, it's like you are preying on those women's downfall because they will forever be portrayed side by side with, like, perfection in a way that's going to be, like, crushing. So I don't know. I don't know what her beef with Claire Foy is, though, but I thought that was interesting. Yeah, I guess we'll just rifle through some more. There's something showgirl afoot on the red carpet. As well. Lena Dunham and Valentino. Nicole Kidman and custom Chanel. A whole lot more feathers. Mostly I just kept thinking that Lena Dunham's Valentino is like what I was waiting for Taylor Swift to wear literally her entire album cycle.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I. And I never got it. I never. And that's literally all I wanted to see was something like that. A lot of men doing Tom of Finland. A lot of leather suits, which I guess, again, it's appropriate. But again, I was like, and where was this at camp? Where was this when we were doing camp? Seems so easy. And yet a huge trend of the night was like dangly bits and bobs. I genuinely don't know how to summarize that for people except just like chains of jewels, like, dangling off people's arms for no reason. It looked like

[A]

bag charms for the body.

[B]

Bag charms for the body is a perfect way of putting it. It felt bag charmed for the body. It was very annoying. It honestly ruined a lot of outfits for me. Tyla did it. The worst one to me was Emily Blunt wore this, like half a million dollar necklace that was heinous. And it kind of like a body. A body chain. Emily Blunt just catching strays from me left and right. But it was kind of a body chain. Wore a top, this like mock turtleneck that it was not a good thing. I did not like it. And then we also got. Sabrina Carpenter had, like, some jewelry, dangly bags hanging off her arms. And I will say, to Sabrina Carpenter's credit, this is maybe the first Mel outfit I've ever liked of hers. It had a lot of problems, but it was way better. Way better. Especially than that, like, ringmaster, ringleader. 1i. The circus look was so atrocious. This was a radical improvement. It was custom Loewe. And they made it from what I thought was cool is they made it out of film strips from the Audrey Hepburn movie Sabrina.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I thought that was cool. And the way that they rendered the real film strips into, like, a fabric I thought was incredibly. Again, fashion is art, right?

[A]

Yeah. Mm.

[B]

I thought that was extremely cool. They just did. Again, they did way too much with it. They like paired it with this. This big bustle thing and this bejeweled sheer skirt in this flapper headpiece.

[A]

The headpiece was like. I don't know. It was a little too much for me.

[B]

It was a little too much. But again, I will say best, best work her hair stylist has done maybe ever her hairstylist. I've had big beef with for a long time. And I thought her hair looked great, so I will give her that credit. It was on theme for the night. The shoes were atrocious and unforgivable. They were massive suede platform clodhopper heels. Let it go. Let it go. Let her be short. Let her be short again. It's a custom garment. It's a custom garment. Yeah.

[A]

Just make it to fit her.

[B]

She's five feet tall. You're not fooling anyone. She is five feet tall. Like this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Anyway, what else do I have to say? Katy Perry pissed me off. I don't need to talk about her.

[A]

Okay?

[B]

Ugly, ugly, ugly on every dimension even. It wasn't the way I thought it was going to be ugly. And it was still ugly. I hated it. The Kardashians fake nipples. We talked about it.

[A]

Skims propaganda, though. Okay.

[B]

This is what I want to propaganda out the wazoo.

[A]

They coordinate that, obviously, because we have Kendall, Kylie, Kim all wearing fake nipples.

[B]

Yeah. But none of them skims. None of them.

[A]

None of them skims, which is crazy. It's kind of like similar to the tanning thing in Allure. If you're summarizing the looks of fake nipples, the most accessible way to sell that look for other people to get is through skims. So I feel like, I don't know, I'd be curious to see if there was a skims faux nipple bra.

[B]

Boom.

[A]

Post Met Gala.

[B]

Yeah. I also think it's like part of what I've always argued about what they do kind of with other high fashion brands and with, like, artistic masterpieces. I wrote about that for Art Newsletter. But the way they, like, flatten all of these artists and all of these luxury brands back into their own brand, where it's like, right, like, these are all the Schiaparelli. This is Gap Studio. This is another artist, Alan Jones. Yeah, Alan Jones, that they're wearing and. But yet all of it becomes skims. Right. As the same way I talked about, like, Kim making panta shoes. Well, at the same time that she's the face of Balenciaga, she is making panta shoes for skims that are indistinguishable from the Balenciaga panta shoes she's wearing every day because she's intentionally conflating those two brands into. You can't tell what is Balenciaga and what is skin. And I talked about this too, with Kylie wearing. She made a knockoff of these Isabel Marant pants pants. And then she wore the real Isabel Marant pants on the same day that her fake pants were being released. Again, conflating the two brands in a way that I find boggling that any luxury brand would want to work with her or that this would be something that would benefit their bottom line. But. And yet they do. So I don't know.

[A]

Well, it does benefit. And I. I will volunteer myself as tribute for proof because I tried to buy both the Isabelle Barant pants and the Kylie Jenner ripoffs because I love the pants. I love the pants. And once I saw them through the. Through the discourse that her Isabel Marant knockoff pants generator, I was like, I've got to find these pants on the RealReal. Cannot find them. And then, okay, on the KAI site, I don't. I'm sure the rest of them were just sold out, but the only size that they had available for pre order was like, extra, extra small. It's like, this is rude. But anyway, the. The fake nipple on the Kardashian thing reminded me of the interview I did with MJ Corey, who talked about, like, how the Kardashians are always doing the simulacrum thing. Like, she said they already had naturally long, dark hair, but now it's all extensions. Kim and the Kardashian sisters had Kirby figures, but then they surgically modified them, allegedly. So it's like replicating things that already exist on them is like the Kardashian signature. So I thought that was interesting. Yeah, I mean, adjacent to that, which I guess is just par for the course when you're doing fake nips. A lot of fake belly button.

[B]

Yeah. You know, you got to have a fake belly button, but otherwise it's weird.

[A]

Had fake belly button. Hailey Bieber had fake belly button. Heidi Kendall did, too. Yeah. Oh, did she?

[B]

Kendall had it. I don't think you saw it on the red carpet, but she removed the top layer for the after parties and then she not. I actually was going to talk about this in the newsletter, and then I deleted it because I was like, I don't. I don't feel like explaining myself, but something I thought was actually quite odd about the dress, that the corset that was revealed of Kendall's in the after party is not only did you have the fake belly button, but you actually had, like, fake indents of her rib cage and the fake indents of her hip bones jutting out. And so I was like, you've actually, like, built in kind of like a sick body feature of, like, thinness into this corsetry in a way that I find really unsettling. Yeah. The emaciation use built into the corsetry in a way that's, like, actually quite alarming.

[A]

Yeah. Ooh, I gotta look that up.

[B]

I don't know. It was creepy to me.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But, yeah, I found that interesting. I guess the last thing I'll just say. I'd like to just talk about Kim for a second, who proved to me that she truly has no conception of herself or understanding of her. Her brand, or how to successfully market herself in this world. Because she doesn't. It's not even that this outfit was bad. This outfit was honestly the best she's done in a long, long time. It's that she doesn't understand what she's doing. And she made that so fucking transparent to me when she. She flubbed, like, the most obvious, incredible viral moment that she could have created for herself. So she wore this Alan Jones sculpture that is, like, a molded chest piece. And then she wore this weird little skirt over the top of it, which I already thought the skirt was a mistake. Yeah, she should have had her ass out, obviously, but she. She doesn't like having her ass out because she can't control the. She can't control the retouching of the images, obviously. That's why she doesn't like having her body exposed to an event like this where she doesn't own the paparazzi. But then she posted this carousel of, like, other looks of Alan Jones that she, like, almost wore. She was, like, doing a weird, like, Met Gala lookbook on Instagram, which is where she actually revealed that she chose the most boring of the three looks that she was kind of offered. And she showed this other option that I actually think is so obviously the correct option for the Met Gala, which was not only a molded chest piece, but it went all the way down the front of her body. But it was like a bifurcated, like, 50, 50 half and half dress. So the whole back of it was ass out nude, and the whole front molded metal. The whole front was perfectly molded metal. And so she couldn't bend her legs at all. Like, she couldn't move in it. So that's why I think she didn't choose it.

[A]

But I'm like, that. She, like, can't move.

[B]

I was like, when has that literally ever stopped you before? And literally the whole red carpet is lined with, like, strong young men to, like, lift these women, to, like, teleport them up the steps. So it is, like, literally the one occasion to wear something you can't walk in, and it looks so insanely. Good. I can't express to you. So I was already like, you flubbed it. You messed up. Like, you picked the wrong dress. You don't understand what you're doing. Also, she is single white femaleing Nadia Lee Cohen in a way that Nadia Lee Cohen should be so scared if people don't know who that is. She's a photographer. She's a very, very famous photographer who Kim has worked with extensively. She did that whole Santa baby in the. In the crack den, crawling through the abandoned house. That's Nadia Lee Cohen.

[A]

Okay?

[B]

That. That's very much her aesthetic. And Kim has kind of ripped her whole aesthetic for skims. It's mostly Nadia who's shooting it all. And now in that Melo lookbook, she literally could not look more like Nadia. Like, she did her hair in the same. Her wig. Excuse me, in the exact same color, in the exact same hairstyle that Nadia always wears her hair in. And I was like, run, girl, run. Like, she is siphoning your soul. Like, I don't know how else to explain it. Anyway, so I already was like, she chose the wrong dress. And then I realized she really doesn't understand herself or her brand because she walked out of the Mark hotel arm in arm with the artist Alan Jones, which, if you've seen Alan Jones, he's, like, probably 80, and he's just very. He's an old British man, and he looks like an old British man. And there's something about the juxtaposition of seeing them side by side that I'm like, that is everything. Like, that is genius. Like, just to see a real, authentically aged artist next to the extreme plastic control plus in the metal molded bodysuit of it all that he makes. And I was like, there's something about this that's so unbelievably powerful. And then she abandoned him at the hotel. He literally puts her onto the sprinter van, and she goes, bye. Bye.

[A]

I was like, speaking of art, that's, like, a very common thing. I'm like, I'm blanking on the artists. But I was going through some of the art books I have because. Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm in a different room today. I've moved my office, so I have to decorate. I have to put stuff up. So I've been going through some of my art books to be like, what prints do I want to frame and put up here? And I have a couple again, I can't remember the artists. Maybe I'll remember them. Put in the show notes that are riffing on this theme of, like, youth and death together. So it's like a young, beautiful woman and, like, a skeleton, or there's one that's like, three stages of woman and death. And it's like a baby, a maiden, a crone, and a skeleton. So, like, that is a very, like, artsy concept that she could have riffed on, too. I mean, that would have been so cool to see, at least

[B]

cool and so powerful. And also, I don't know, I think just like, bringing him as her date when she's, like, famously now dating Lewis Hamilton, the F1 race car driver. Like, instead of bringing him, bringing this old man. And it reminded me both of Summer Walker last year at the VMAs, brought an old man as her date, like her sugar daddy. And it was a funny little stunt. And then also, I was just thinking about the iconic Anna Nicole Smith wedding photos of her being, you know, like, 20 or whatever, and her husband in his wheelchair. And I was just thinking about how powerful that imagery is still to this day, and what a pop culture moment. I was like, oh, Kim, like, totally missed out on this obviously viral imagery. And also, like, just this potent meme potential. Like, I can just see girls sharing that and be like, me and my sugar daddy this summer, you know, like, and to not. Not to not understand your own media spectacle, I think is kind of the most unforgivable crime to me. Like, to not. I don't know, it goes beyond wearing a bad outfit. It's like you genuinely don't understand how. How your fame operates and, like, what. What is powerful about you as a brand. And, like, that's unforgivable to me.

[A]

Yeah. Wow. I would have loved to have seen it.

[B]

Anyway, that's my Met Gala recap.

[A]

Yeah. I think I was surprised at the lack of, like, high concept makeup looks. Beauty looks. I really thought people were going to play with the idea of beauty as art, but overall, I actually feel like they leaned into the fashion as art and beauty as, like, the blank canv on which to play, which was simultaneously, like, heartening and disappointing because I was like, there could have been some fun, artsy beauty looks, but I think for the most part, people kept it, like, very simple. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. They're like, look, I'm wearing an outfit. It's art.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. The end. But the end, boring. Overall, the Met Gala of. Of fake nips is how I will remember it.

[B]

How it will always be remembered in history, I assume.

[A]

Yeah. Mess of the month. Time for Mess of the month.

[B]

Yeah. My mess of the month is really simple. It's Elena Lenina, who is a long time been a mess, Muse par excellence. She's this Russian lady I don't really even know how to explain. I call her the Queen of Cannes because for some reason she goes to Cannes every single year. She's not in anything. She hasn't been in anything in probably 20 or 30 years.

[A]

Oh, she's an actress.

[B]

Actress is a strong word for what Elena is. She's a socialite. She's just a figure that looms large in my imagination. She attends every year. I assume she just has like a friend who like, gets her ticket or she's on a board or something. And. Yeah, she just wears increasingly insane hairstyles. And that's kind of her claim to fame, and she knows it. See, there's someone who understands their brand and what. And what people are coming there for.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Every single red carpet, she gives you a different hairdo at a different volume and a different height. And that's what she's about. And people love her for it, and I love her for it. And this year she did one that I thought was very fun, where she basically took, like, kind of. I don't know why, but it really makes me think of Pier 1 Imports because I feel like they would always sell.

[A]

I love it already.

[B]

They would always sell these kind of orbs that are made out of sticks that you would. You might place in the garden or you might place in kind of like a rustic tablescape. Yeah. And so Elena took one of those and put it on her head. And then she kind of wove her real hair into it and around it. And then just like Bobby, pinned it aggressively to this orb. And then in the center of the orb, she put some flowers, some rose. I don't know if they were real or not. I assume they weren't real, but she kind of just tossed some. Some.

[A]

Oh, I'm looking at it right now. Wow.

[B]

I think it's really gorgeous. This.

[A]

This is like.

[B]

And sometimes she does a Bride of Frankenstein thing where she just does kind of like a bouffant that sticks straight up into the air. And I really like those. And it's always very stiff. And I do get the feeling that, like, I don't know how much a professional hair stylist is involved in these. And I kind of love the. The home spunness.

[A]

Yeah. The DIY nature. Yes. This feels like a DIY version of like. Like the Simone Rocha flower See through dresses. But, like as applied to hair as a hairdo. Yeah.

[B]

And then I like it. Lady who I always bring up.

[A]

Oh, yes, I know who you're talking about.

[B]

It's Yulia Timoshenko coded, because also iconically, Elena has this one look where she did these, like, big kind of like opera braids and then like.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Wove them around her hair into, like, a sculptural kind of. You know, those things that you put your face through and you take a photograph.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah, it was very that. But done with, like, big, thick, fake braids of hair and it's very. Yeah, Yulishenko coated.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To me, it is very milk made.

[A]

Yes. I can see it.

[B]

Anyway, that's just a lady that I love, and she's my mess of the month. And I encourage you all to go back and look at her many looks through the years, because they're brilliant.

[A]

It's worth it. Yeah, they're really good.

[B]

Worth it. Yeah.

[A]

My mess of the month, as foreshadowed before is Rosie O'. Donnell. Rosie O' Donnell got a facelift. She's 64. She announced it on Substack last week in the form of a poem. And I honestly, like, I just can't even talk about it for that long because it's like, I'm not even mad. I'm just like. For some reason, this post made me want to quit everything. I'm just like, you gotta love that rollout, though.

[B]

You gotta love that rollout plan. Like, not only am I gonna write a poem, I'm gonna publish it on substack for. Okay, thank you, Rosie.

[A]

I have to do a reading of some of it.

[B]

I'm not gonna read. Wow, this is your Brian Johnson moment.

[A]

I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but I just, like, there's some things that just need to be heard in her voice.

[B]

Okay, agreed.

[A]

I used to feel very strongly about facelifts. Not casually, morally. I had assigned myself as head of all women who would never, ever. I thought it was a betrayal of feminism, of aging, of our team, of women worldwide. And then I lost 50 pounds.

[B]

And then I got hot, you dummies.

[A]

It wasn't wrinkles, it was gravity. I'd look in the mirror and think, this isn't aging. This is melting with intention. It goes on as it goes on. This is a new part. She talking about her daughter, talking to her daughter about this. She sounded exactly like me. Like my younger, more certain, more morally rigid self had somehow moved into my house and was now judging my essence because the daughter didn't want to go to faithlift?

[B]

Sure.

[A]

And then I had this quiet realization. If I'm teaching Clay anything, it can't be that my body belongs to an idea either. Even a good idea, even feminism, because that's still not freedom. That's just a different authority telling you what you're allowed to do with your own face.

[B]

I don't think it is.

[A]

I wanted a limit. I wanted to still be me, just less haunted. And it worked. I do look like me. A slightly more well rested, emotionally stable version of me. I'm quite pleased with the whole thing. And guess what? No one has noticed. Not one person. Not a friend, not a stranger, not even people who owe me compliments. My teenager has not said a word. Nothing. I went through a full existential feminist crisis, had my face and neck surgically altered, and the result is zippo, which honestly is the best possible outcome. I didn't disappear. I didn't become someone else. I just stopped arguing with the mirror. And maybe that's enough.

[B]

She became this is but a small

[A]

portion I. I like. There's so much I want to say. I almost feel like. Like there nothing needs to be said. Anybody who would be worth me addressing already knows how insane this all is, so whatever. But first of all, I cannot think of one public feminist who says, you are not allowed to get a facelift. Facelifts are like the norm in the. In public life. They are encouraged by society. It is so stupid and wrong to dismiss decades. Feminism is a trap feminist thought about beauty standards as you're not allowed.

[B]

You.

[A]

You are allowed. You are allowed. Many public feminists do. Like Jane Fonda is your elder. Have you learned anything? It's like, and. And you're allowed to get a facelift, and people are allowed to judge your actions according to their own ideals. Like, we're all allowed to do that.

[B]

And feminism is still just an ideology of equality. You know what I mean? Like, it is. It is still is. It's not. Not like this is part of the problem of our modern conception of feminism, too, is. I feel like it gets warped into like, oh, it's this, like, doctrine that's telling you that facelifts are evil and you're a bad woman if you get one. It's like, okay, so that's literally not what feminism is or is like.

[A]

If there is any discourse happening, it's pointing to the fact that you feel pressured to get a facelift or you believe you desire a facelift because of intersecting forces such as sexism, ageism, and fatphobia. And it's worth critiquing those systems and

[B]

worth examining your internalized beliefs.

[A]

And it's just like feminism, proper feminism, is not like you're not allowed to participate in these systems. It's pay attention to how these systems are shaping our, like, art. Like, literally for her sense of self. You literally don't believe that you exist as yourself, which is crazy.

[B]

Yes. That your face isn't you, that it's something else and you have to get a medical intervention in order to return to look like. I think it's interesting to me because I'm always like, well, who.

[A]

Who are you?

[B]

What is it that's looking in the mirror? Right? Like, what do you think? It's like, you got to that place via time and yet, right, there's this return of like, well, the real me was 20 year old, 20 years old forever.

[A]

Right. This idea of looking like yourself is not different, like, spiritually than any of the male gaze stuff. Like, you are yourself always. You definitionally always look like yourself. It is a lie that your true self looks different in a way that conforms to society's beauty standards. It is a lie that you only look like yourself when you look better or younger or restless, rested or healthy or whatever. Like, entire books have been written about each of those aesthetics. And like, how, like, what we think looks healthy isn't necessarily, like, totally.

[B]

Like, totally.

[A]

I just don't understand how, like, any, like, smart, not even smart, like, average person could, well, just use these.

[B]

But what if nobody noticed? What if nobody noticed that she got a facelift?

[A]

And so this is the other thing.

[B]

Thing.

[A]

The thing about no one noticing kills me because it's like you are still glorifying this, like, quote unquote natural standard of get the work, but don't look like you've gotten the work done. Like, looking like you've had work done is the bad thing. Cosmetic work that looks like cosmetic work is bad work and cosmetic work that doesn't look like cosmetic work is good work. And like, you are reinforcing the ideal through this whole thing about the best thing about my facelift is no one noticed. And it kind of reminds me, do

[B]

you remember, Linden, about shame? I think that's also, like, insane. It's so I got away with it and therefore it's good.

[A]

It's nonsensical. And now I can admit to you that I got away with it because you can't say gotcha exactly.

[B]

But I guarantee you people did notice. I guarantee you people noticed a difference and they just didn't say it out loud to you. And so you think you've gotten away with something that actually, like, everyone noticed and internalized as a truth.

[A]

And what it made me think of was Lindy West's first, like, very viral essay. Do you remember this? It was when she was writing for, I think, the Stranger. So it was an essay about, like, fatness and asserting her right to exist in a fat body and be, like, treated, like, respect and, like, get health insurance from her employer and stuff like that. But it ended with the paragraph about. And the funny thing is, as soon as I stopped worrying about my weight, I lost weight. And it's like, we're just so far gone that even criticism of beauty standards is infected with the underlying beauty standards. Like, it all kind of, like, cancels itself out at some point. And it's just. I just. I don't know. I know I sound angry and I guess I am, but my. My overall feeling is just like, I don't care. Like, do whatever you want. No one's telling you you're not allowed to get a facelift, but, yeah, I don't think that you should be allowed to, like, propagandize it as being yourself. Your true self doesn't have a facelift. I'm sorry. Your true self is whatever you are currently, like, and her true self now does have a facelift. Like, is the thing. Like, you are yourself now, Rosie. I'm not saying you're not the real you. You are exactly yourself. You're here with a face as you are, and you were also you before. Like, this has not brought you closer to your true self. And if you feel it has, that's in how society is maybe looking at you or treating you or how you are looking at yourself or treating yourself because of internalized ideas. And I think it's more important to, like, talk about those things than be, like, everyone's allowed to get a facelift and no one should judge you.

[B]

Also, like, again, cynically, my celebrity, like, PR brain is like, right, of course it's safe to make pronouncements like this, right? It's part of the Kylie Jenner thing of, like, oh, yeah, I had a boob job 10 years ago. And it's like, right now it feels like there's this weird performative transparency that's popular. So it's, like, safe and. And good PR to come forth about. Like, oh, I had so much shame. But, like, now I'm sharing my truth. It's like, it's just a PR strategy, ultimately. Like, it's very. It's just not feeling one way or the other.

[A]

It's not new. There was like a sassy magazine article in like the 90s that was like, I'm a feminist and I got a facelift.

[B]

I know. This has been the dichotomy banal too.

[A]

And it's like masquerading as, like revolutionary. I don't know.

[B]

It's lazy.

[A]

Oh, Rosie, Rosie, Rosie, Rosie.

[B]

Makes for a good mess of the month, though.

[A]

I guess. So. Yeah, I'm done.

[B]

We've talked so much, so long. Maybe our longest pod ever, I think. Apologies.

[A]

I think. So this is what happened when. This is what happens when we don't have, like external gossip sessions throughout the month when we're too busy.

[B]

We are. And this is like on other days. See, this is also like us with the Met Gala theme. It's like we need tighter parameters. Someone needs to rein us in and lock us down or other. This it goes. It's a wide ranging conversation.

[A]

Maybe we should challenge ourselves for the summer. Just like a narrow purview, some boundaries. Put some boundaries on our recording.

[B]

Strict themes.

[A]

No.

[B]

No boundaries, no rules. We won't be tamed. Our pod.

[A]

And we'll say, yeah, you know what? I will say. Some recommendation. I've never really done this before, but I've started listening to podcasts on like 1.5 speed. Incredible. I listen to so many long podcasts and it's like, I don't need to hear all their. I love it, but I know.

[B]

I love it too.

[A]

I do it too lately.

[B]

Maybe it's because I do it with YouTube videos and like social media videos a lot, but I do feel like it's. It's ruined me for normal speed things is how I feel. I'm like, I think it's wor. That's what I mean. I think it's worsening my brain because I'm like, I expect everything now to be. To be at that pace. And then I'm like, why is this so slow? I'm like, oh, they're talking at like a normal. I do it to myself. I'm talking about myself included, because I watch back my YouTube videos at 2x because I don't want to listen to myself or hear myself. And then when I hear myself speaking in normal speed, I'm like, snooze alert. Like, so slow. Like, what's happening? And then I'm like, all right, you're just listening to everything at 2x.

[A]

Okay, well, do it at your own risk.

[B]

But I like everyone listen at your. Do it. Listen. Listen to us at whatever speed you want. I don't care. I understand.

[A]

And we'll. We'll see you next month.

[B]

We'll see you next month. You've had enough. Goodbye.