Mess World – "Simulacra-Mania!" (October 3, 2025)

Hosts: Jessica DeFino and Emily Kirkpatrick
Theme: A sharp-witted, deeply analytical, and often irreverent discussion of pop culture’s current obsessions with simulation, branding, celebrity run-ins, beauty industry absurdities, and the ongoing collapse of authenticity under the weight of capitalist aesthetics. This episode dives into pop phenomena from Selena Gomez’s Wondermind scandal, Kim Kardashian’s Skims x Nike, the enduring Kardashian cultural empire, and fashion and beauty's obsession with artificiality and "simulacra"—the copy without origin.

Episode Overview

This episode explores how pop culture and the beauty industry are increasingly saturated with aesthetics and products that simulate or perform authenticity, wellness, and individuality, but are ultimately capitalist projects flattening and commodifying human experience. Touchstones include the Wondermind exposé, Kardashian brand omnipresence, performance art at fashion events, and the body-horror of current fashion trends.

Table of Contents

1. Rebranding, Perception, and Event Recaps (00:00–06:25)
2. Wondermind Exposé — Mental Health Commodification (06:28–14:50)
3. Kim Kardashian’s Skims x Nike and Simulacra Collaborations (14:53–33:24)
4. Pamela Anderson: Authenticity, Capitalism, and Co-option (33:30–38:41)
5. Doja Cat's Edible Lipstick and Beauty as Performance (38:48–44:54)
6. Bodies on Bodies: Fashion’s Simulacra & Body Horror (45:00–57:12)
7. Fashion Month Beauty Trends: Dolls, Dirt, and AI Skin (57:17–65:04)
8. Mess of the Month: Karl Marx’s Grave and Ear Seeding Hysteria (76:12–85:38)

1. Rebranding, Perception, and Event Recaps (00:00–06:25) <a name="section1"></a>

• The hosts announce their latest rebrand as "Mess World," confessing a love of rebranding and the anxiety (and liberation) in being perceived on camera.
  • Jessica: “Apparently I can’t stop rebranding. I really can’t stop rebranding.” (00:34)
• Discussing the Lowbrow Book Club launch party at St. Dymphna's, their simultaneous attendance at a Balenciaga party, and the pleasant paradox of receiving compliments in real life versus anxiety online.
  • Emily: “As a New Englander, I simply can't accept or internalize [compliments], but I do appreciate them.” (03:42)
• The book club recap and the anticipation of critical discourse during their next discussions, especially on theories relevant to pop culture figures like Taylor Swift.
  • Jessica: “He welcomes discourse. Welcomes discourse. No, I think it'll be a good next one because...for me, by and large, with Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottam, I'm like in full agreement completely.” (05:10)

2. Wondermind Exposé — Mental Health Commodification (06:28–14:50) <a name="section2"></a>

• Emily summarizes the New York Magazine exposé on Wondermind, Selena Gomez and Mandy Teefee’s mental health startup, as a “gotcha” piece exposing managerial missteps, erratic behavior, and ironic harm to employee mental health.
  • Emily: “The story...alleges that...Mandy was acting as CEO, she had, like, erratic outbursts against her employees…snorting substances in her office, neglected hygiene...mismanaged the finances...which are all reasonably attributed to her illness.” (08:04)
• Critique that the article misses the bigger story: aestheticizing mental health cannot destigmatize it—it instead feeds more stigma by packaging solutions as consumer products.
  • Emily: “I think the story is about how aestheticizing mental illness in order to destigmatize it does not work.” (09:01)
  • Notable product names: “Kind Words Matte Lipstick. Positive Light Liquid Luminizer. Stay Vulnerable Melting Cream Blush.” (11:45)
• The hosts reflect on the flattening of radical, revolutionary ideas (like self-care) into hollow consumerism.
  • Jessica: “It also kind of reminds me of what we've done to self care. Like, the concept of self care, of taking it from this, like, real revolutionary, like, radical action to just kind of this generic, like, feel good, you know...It's just the lightest, most consumeristic version of this actually, like, radical movement.” (12:57)
• The parallels to other celebrity mental health scandals (Kanye West), and the press's complicity in turning suffering into clickbait and commodification.
  • Key Reading: Freddy DeBoer’s essay on the same subject (linked in show notes).

3. Kim Kardashian’s Skims x Nike and Simulacra Collaborations (14:53–33:24) <a name="section3"></a>

• Emily brings up the launch of Skims by Nike, describe Kim's PR stunts at NYPL, and the strangeness of Nike’s collaboration with an influencer whose body symbolizes surgical (not gym) intervention.
  • Emily: “She's such a strange...she actually does work extremely hard in the gym and documents all of it... But...no one in the public thinks...about the labor that went into it...They think about the surgical interventions.” (16:03)
  • Jessica: “You're looking at [Kris Jenner]...you're looking at her hundred thousand dollar facelift.” (17:28)
• Analysis of Kim’s ability to "absorb and flatten" brands—turning Balenciaga, Balmain, Dolce & Gabbana, and now Nike, into indistinguishable Skims products, and never referencing the true origin (Margiela) as Kanye did.
  • Emily: “...why do you want your brand to suddenly look like Skims? ...when she partnered with Balenciaga...she started making panto shoes at Skims that were indistinguishable.” (19:29)
• The "Bodies at Work" performance at New York Public Library: a dystopian tableau of models in matching gear, the symbolism of capitalistic display in front of a crumbling public institution.
  • Emily: “There was something very dystopian and alarming about it almost.” (22:39)
• On the photographs of Kim, Kris, and Khloe, faces covered by phones filming the event—"men dream of women, women dream of themselves being dreamt of"—and the inability to perceive or live life unmediated by the gaze and the screen.
  • Emily: “These three women are all different ages and are all the same age...And then also...I was just thinking about this family and their inability to truly inhabit themselves or to live their life without it being mediated by some sort of screen.” (27:00)
• Justification for endlessly analyzing the Kardashians despite backlash, highlighting their function as the "laid-bare" engine of celebrity and pop culture.
  • Emily: “To not examine them, to not talk about them, to me is insane...It's like pretending Walmart doesn't exist or Amazon doesn't exist.” (31:45)

4. Pamela Anderson: Authenticity, Capitalism, and Co-option (33:30–38:41) <a name="section4"></a>

• Jessica confesses to buying Pamela Anderson’s $38 Flamingo Estate pickles, reflecting on how Pam's rejection of beauty standards was authentic—then rapidly commercialized into product deals.
  • Jessica: “That authenticity was just, like, drawn and absorbed back into the capitalist market...Now she's like partnered with Sanzi Skincare...Biolage Hair Care…” (35:01)
• Both recall the arc of Alicia Keys’ no-makeup movement being co-opted, demonstrating that all radical or anti-beauty/anti-modification stances are rapidly neutralized by consumer capitalism.
  • Emily: “Because capitalism is always going to find the angle to sell you things off the back of whatever it is. Even the anti capitalist, like, no shot movement.” (38:38)

5. Doja Cat's Edible Lipstick and Beauty as Performance (38:48–44:54) <a name="section5"></a>

• Doja Cat eats a (chocolate) MAC lipstick on the VMAs red carpet. Emily critiques the performance for not going far enough (no mess, no smearing), but loves "performance art on red carpets."
  • Emily: “If you're eating lipstick, I want you to look a little fucked up afterwards. I'm so sorry.” (44:36)
• The act as a symbol: merging product and person, beauty as both self-expression and self-consumption, blurring the boundaries of internal and external modification.
  • Jessica: “To eat the lipstick is, like, incorporating it into her body...there is no separation between self and performance through cosmetics.” (40:35)
• Broader point: edible lipstick brings up the persistent issue of lead and other contaminants in cosmetic products, and broader anxieties about safety and consumption.

6. Bodies on Bodies: Fashion’s Simulacra & Body Horror (45:00–57:12) <a name="section6"></a>

• Emily traces the fashion trend of trompe l’oeil ("trick the eye") body prints and faux muscle/body suits (see: Jojo Siwa, Dochi, Glen Powell’s absurd fake legs for GQ, J. Hart’s four arms on the VMAs, Nelly Furtado’s airbrushed "old body" tee). Escalating from playful to uncanny and grotesque.
  • Emily: “My joke was like strapping mannequin body parts on top of your real body parts...what does that mean? ...True body horror. Like, uncanny. Like, adding on, body parts, expanding…” (51:48)
• Reference to early aughts urban legend: twins swapping limbs as an urban legend of radical body modification—serves as a metaphor for the increasingly surreal nature of fashion's "body as canvas."
• Jessica notes “mannequin skin” and the dawn of "AI skin"—looking digitally perfect rather than human—and the objectification and dehumanization therein.

7. Fashion Month Beauty Trends: Dolls, Dirt, and AI Skin (57:17–65:04) <a name="section7"></a>

• The “mannequin skin” trend: porcelain, flat, perfect (MAC’s term for the Weiderhoff show), contradictorily described by the brand as highlighting "real skin."
  • Jessica: "It's just like a really matte, textureless, like, no variation in tone, like one. One note kind of look." (58:48)
• Obsession with doll-like, automaton object aesthetics—wondering if these are "aesthetics of lifelessness," a protest against an unbearable reality, a wish to be a controlled, unfeeling object.
  • Emily: “If I can just be this inanimate, perfect object that's like, beautiful, you know, and just serve my little function of beauty, wouldn't that be the dream?” (61:12)
• "Dirt as luxury”—runway models with mud, clay, or sand on their faces (Dilara Findikoglu, Le Brum, Demetria Petza)—earth materials as luxury goods in the climate crisis and AI era.
  • Emily: “I was saying...wet look...water is a luxury...Earth is a luxury. Like, we are killing it. And so, like, only, yeah, it's glamorous somehow to, like, reincorporate into your outfit.” (67:09)
• The absurd cyclicality and redundancy of trend reporting; magazines package the same ideas as "trends" across decades, refusing to evolve.
  • Emily: “It just—it drives me insane that we're having this conversation about, like, why are publications dying?...I'm looking at a magazine from 1972, and it's exactly the same content.” (62:51)
• The rise of "AI/Simulacra" skin as popularized by makeup brands—skins that aspire to be digital filters made flesh.

8. Mess of the Month: Karl Marx’s Grave and Ear Seeding Hysteria (76:12–85:38) <a name="section8"></a>

Emily’s Mess:

• Photo of a “Labubu” (trendy, valueless collectible doll) placed on Karl Marx’s grave in Highgate—an objectification and perfect example of commodity fetishism.
  • Emily: “Someone was pondering if this is...peak commodity fetishism.” (77:24)
  • Emily: “Yeah, Labubu is pretty fucking divorced from labor. What you are paying for Labubu is definitely not intrinsic.” (78:14)
• Bonus: Story of gold and blackface Labubus on TikTok—capital, racism, and nonsense swirl together in the global marketplace of meaning.

Jessica’s Mess:

• Harper’s Bazaar article: “Is ear seeding the solution to cortisol face?” goes viral for its perceived ridiculousness. Jessica questions why this trend is being scapegoated when many more dangerous or nefarious beauty practices abound.
  • Jessica: “If you break it down, ear seeding is like, comes from traditional Chinese medicine...Cortisol face is just like, cortisol is a stress hormone...So like all the harmful things beauty can do, like this seems like kind of one of the more benign.” (81:53)
  • Jessica: “It allows us to feel this rightful moral outrage in an industry for the wrong reasons.” (84:08)

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Emily (on beauty product names):
  “Confidence is not a cure for bipolar disorder.” (10:09)
• Jessica (on Kim absorbing brands):
  “It’s like, I’m being sold the simulacrum of health and beauty, which, like, you always are. But it’s just so laid bare in these collaborations…” (17:40)
• Emily (on the Kardashians):
  “To not examine them...to me is insane. It’s like pretending Walmart doesn’t exist or Amazon doesn’t exist.” (31:45)
• Jessica (on doll trends):
  “What does that say about how we feel about the conditions of the world that make living feel...unbearable? Like, this might be some sort of...ineffective protest against a life that feels lifeless.” (61:00)
• Emily (on performance art and body horror):
  “Strapping mannequin body parts on top of your real body parts ...that's the realm this should go: true body horror, the uncanny.” (51:48)

Tone and Language

The episode is sharp, sly, and deeply critical, but always with humor and a sense of personal investment. Both hosts freely mix theory, personal anecdote, and pop culture minutia, never talking down to the audience but always pulling back the curtain, both on themselves and the trends they dissect.

For Listeners Who Missed the Episode

This summary brings you witty, insightful, critical discussions around the major stories of pop culture, beauty, and fashion this month. From the commodification of mental illness and the rise of AI/“simulacra” beauty, to the paradoxes of authenticity and the never-ending fascination with the Kardashians, Mess World delivers the cultural literacy you need—with theory, gossip, and a sense of humor.