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- [00:16]
A
Hello and welcome to Mess World, a podcast dedicated to discussing the highs and lows of pop culture every month. I am Jessica Defino and I write the newsletter Flesh World.
- [00:25]
B
And I'm Emily Kirkpatrick, and I write the newsletter I Heart Message. Welcome back.
- [00:30]
A
Welcome. We're back. Yeah. And we both are the hosts of the Lowbrow Book Club.
- [00:36]
B
We are.
- [00:36]
A
Which we need to plug because later we're gonna be talking a little bit about the book that we're reading this month, which is Naomi Klein's Doppelganger, which is incredible and so relevant to almost everything we have to talk about today, I think.
- [00:51]
B
Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, it's amazing how expansive the book is itself, like, how much ground she's covering from, like, modern day MAGA movement all the way through, like, the Jewish Diaspora and Hitler. And it's just. It's amazing how much ground she's working through and how right she feels about everything. You know, it's just. It makes so much sense. It does connect altogether in a crazy way.
- [01:13]
A
It connects to everything. And, like, less explicitly stated in the book are the connections to beauty culture, but I think there are so many. And we'll be talking about that on Monday night. Maybe this podcast will be out before our discussion.
- [01:26]
B
Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I think so.
- [01:28]
A
It should be. It should be out before the discussion. So if you're interested, as we talk a little bit more about Doppelganger today, you can register and join our live discussion on Monday at 8pm Eastern.
- [01:40]
B
Yeah. What day is that? December 1st.
- [01:42]
A
December 1st.
- [01:43]
B
And also we should mention that we're going to keep discussing Doppelganger into December just because of the holidays. And there's so much to talk about and so much supplementary stuff that we want to look at and talk about. So if you feel like you can't catch up or you, like, need more time with her or whatever, you will have plenty of time. We'll have another month of talking about it, so I would love to see you guys there. It is so relevant and as you'll see today, so relevant to so many trends and things that are happening. Yeah.
- [02:08]
A
Yeah. And before we get into all of today's juicy, juicy topics, something that I was thinking about is that we got a really lovely comment on our last podcast that was like, this is one of the only places I can, like, listen to something for two hours and there's no ads and. And it hit me like, oh, wow, that is exciting. And I don't even think about it because of course we don't do ads.
- [02:30]
B
I love that. Both of us were like, oh, yeah, there. There are no ads. Huh? We do talk for two hours without interruption.
- [02:36]
A
It just struck me as something we should call out at the beginning of the episode. This is an ad free space. An affiliate link free space. And we're just shooting the shit without. Without interruption from advertisers.
- [02:49]
B
And where else do you get that? You don't even get that on, like, TikTok or Instagram.
- [02:52]
A
You're barraged with that, like, it is pretty rare.
- [02:56]
B
Have a little brain break. It's nice.
- [02:58]
A
Yeah. What should we. What should we start with today, Emily?
- [03:02]
B
I mean, I need to start. I need to start with some quick updates.
- [03:07]
A
Okay.
- [03:08]
B
Um, I just was realizing this month, a couple of things unfolded from what we talked about last month that. That were things that we discussed that are being proven true again. For starters, I just wanted to tell everyone we did finally get a pumpkin patch photo. Don't worry.
- [03:23]
A
Thank God.
- [03:23]
B
No. No fears. No worries. We got one singular pumpkin patch photograph from Meghan Markle and Prince and Queen. And I. I'm a little mad at myself because I do feel like I should have guessed that they would be the ones because they. They are a little frantic for attention and good press specifically. And the pumpkin patch so delivers that. And especially in a season when nobody's doing it, it's a good look. And also because, you know, Megan's whole thing is like, Martha Stewart Montecito light, you know, like, folksy, outdoorsy, natural granola. And the pumpkin patch fake farm scenery is very.
- [04:00]
A
That it checked all of those boxes.
- [04:02]
B
And so she got to do some, like, good photo shoots with her kids running through, like, a field of gourds. And I'm just happy to see it.
- [04:08]
A
Yeah, me too.
- [04:10]
B
I still think it's weird that we only saw one, but at least we got one.
- [04:14]
A
It's odd.
- [04:15]
B
And then another. Another update I had for you is Janelle Monae wore one of those. We talked about the bodies on bodies trend, and Janelle Monae attended the Rock and Roll hall of Fame induction ceremony wearing one of the Thom Browne suits from this past Paris fashion week. That has, like, a million arms and legs.
- [04:31]
A
So many arms. So many legs. I love it.
- [04:33]
B
And it's just so good. Yeah, it's so good. And it's so the trend that we're talking about, and it's so interesting to see on the red carpet and. Yeah, I just thought that was very exciting, and it did inspire me to get my shit together and actually start outlining the hyperreal Bodies essay, and I did pitch it to the New York Times last week. So they will be rejecting me soon, and I will be able to write.
- [04:57]
A
This will not be on the New York Times, but it will probably be on iwc.
- [05:01]
B
Yeah, it will be in my newsletter, probably behind a paywall. So sign up for that.
- [05:05]
A
It'll be on the New York Times in, like, a year.
- [05:07]
B
Right, Right. They'll be catching up with me at the end of 2026. I'm sure it'll be their prediction for 2027. So something to look forward to there. And then the last thing that I wanted to talk about is, again, as always, I know that I was joking around last month about the Kardashians being obsessed with me, but since then, they did one more thing that is, like, so heavily suspicious to me. Like, I kind of can't believe it actually happened, which is, like, beyond. First of all, Kim's been wearing a bunch of giant sunglasses that obscure her entire face, as I told her to do. But that. That aside, she did a. An editorial recently for this magazine I'd never heard of called Re Edition.
- [05:47]
A
I don't know that magazine.
- [05:48]
B
I wasn't familiar with it. And it was styled by Jaleel Weaver, who is her new stylist. Rihanna's old stylist. Her new stylist. And he's doing the best he can. He's really putting in the work to make her wear cool stuff, and she's really, like, curbing him at every. Every turn. But he styled this editorial, and in a number of the pictures, she has, like, an outfit that is fully painted on her body. Like a body paint.
- [06:14]
A
Oh, yes. I saw this. It's like a kind of, like, corporate girlboss sort of look.
- [06:19]
B
Yes.
- [06:19]
A
It's like a suit.
- [06:20]
B
Yeah. It's like a super trompe l' oeil painted onto her nude body. And this is something I explicitly told her to do in August of last year. Like, you can go back to the nude. It literally says, kim would be wise to do this. It's so weird that she hasn't done this yet. And because. Okay, to contextualize why I was saying that I'm obsessed with the Claremont twins, and I should say I'm obsessed with them aesthetically. I'm obviously not obsessed with their personalities, which, you know, maybe led them to commit some crimes that they went to prison for.
- [06:55]
A
Right.
- [06:55]
B
And maybe potentially killed John, allegedly. I don't know whose credit cards they stolen. And they went to.
- [07:03]
A
This is news to me. I'm not familiar with the Claremont twins lore, but. Wow.
- [07:07]
B
Oh, I'm deep in their lore. I don't know why. They were kind of like, Yeezy adjacent for a number of years. He used them in that twins campaign that I'm always referencing, but they were always kind of just like in the Kanye orbit. So I was, like, aware of them, and then when I saw how they dress, I became absolutely obsessed with them because they just have these really. They're like very classical video vixens, but they have, like, very extreme plastic surgery bodies in addition to that. So it's like. Mm. Talk about hyper real. It's like, like. Yeah. Enormous chest, enormous ass. Like, very much modeled off Kim Kardashian, but, like, taken to the next level of extreme. And I don't know, they always dress as twins. Like, they always wear identical outfits with each other, and they're like. They dabble in high fashion in this way that's, like, super interesting. And I could never understand why, like, like, big magazines didn't do editorials with them in, like, super high fashion, because it's just a very interesting aesthetic. I'm a very interesting juxtap. I'm always interested in that juxtaposition. Anyway, last summer they posted photos where they had done body paint outfits, and I was just like, brilliant. Like, in a world of extreme nudity.
- [08:17]
A
Why am I doing this? Yeah.
- [08:18]
B
Yeah. Like, that is so funny and, like, interesting and trompe l' oeil and, like, you're naked, but you're not naked, which is what we're seeing now in the bodies on bodies. Right? Yeah. And I said, kim, why aren't you doing this? And now she's doing it.
- [08:28]
A
She's done it. She's done it. You're really an oracle. A Kardashian oracle.
- [08:32]
B
Thank you.
- [08:33]
A
An industry oracle, but Kardashian, Yeah.
- [08:35]
B
No, it's a sickness. And if I wasn't, I. I don't want to be mind melded with them, is what I'll say. Like, I don't wish this upon anyone. This is not something I cultivated on purpose, but now it's like my cross to bear. Yeah. And I wish they would just let me help them.
- [08:52]
A
Someday.
- [08:53]
B
Yeah. One day.
- [08:53]
A
Someday you're going to be getting big bucks.
- [08:55]
B
It'll be too late.
- [08:59]
A
My. What I want to start off by talking about today is the wave of sort of anti plastic surgery essays that have kind of taken over sub stack specifically. I don't know how much wider the influence is, but it's definitely, like, A sub stack trend as of late. And I, I have some sort of conflicting feelings on them. Um, I mean, there's. There's things in all these pieces that I agree with, and then there's things in a lot of these pieces that I don't necessarily agree with. And I think it's because it's very, not only difficult, but just kind of strange to lump like, all plastic surgery together, all cosmetic surgery together under one big umbrella and then be like, I am anti this. Um, and I think it. There's, there's like a lack of nuance there sometimes that like, leads to these weird complications of thought. Like, I don't know, I like to think of plastic surgery, not. I like to think of this is what it is. Plastic surgery is a tool. And there are plenty of ways to use that tool for, you know, in ways that like, support a person's flourishing, in ways that don't, in ways that are great for the individual and weights that are maybe not so great for the collective. So I don't know, when I'm writing about it, I try to be mindful of, like, how that tool is used. Like, to say it's all good or all bad is like saying, like, every use of a hammer is good or every use of a hammer is bad. Like, it matters how it's used. It could be used to like, build a house or like, bludgeon somebody to death. And so, yeah, I think a lot of what is left out of some of these essays that are going viral is the impact on the trans community, number one. Like, a lot of them are leaving out gender affirming care. And then it comes off as transphobic because it's like you're ignoring a huge part of the reality of what the cosmetic surgery industry offers to other groups of people besides the one group that you are concerned with at the moment. And so, yeah, I don't know, I just wanted to, like, bring that up because I do feel like sometimes my work is getting lumped in with some of these essays. And where I do feel like an affinity for it in some ways, I also feel like a distance from it in a lot of other ways. And I think it's important to, like, bring up the nuance and bring up that distance. I don't know. Right.
- [11:35]
B
I think it's a spectrum. I mean, like, it is a. It's a tool that can be used to help and to harm, you know, and it's a tool that can make some people, yeah. Feel like gender affirmed or. I don't Know, the first thought I had was, you know, people getting like skin removal surgery after like extreme weight loss or something.
- [11:53]
A
Completely.
- [11:54]
B
A reconstructive surgery surgery or like, yeah, having like dog bite your face off and being able. Right. Completely back your face is a form of cosmetic surgery.
- [12:04]
A
But yeah, I like often try to think about it in terms of my own family. Like, my family is a big inspiration in the back of my mind when I am writing about beauty culture because so many people in my immediate family have had surgery for beauty. Various reasons. Like, my brother is trans, he's had gender affirming surgery. My mother has breast cancer. She has had, you know, reconstruction and a breast lift after that. So there are just like so many other ways to use it. And I think the. I also think like, just because there are like these affirming, healthful ways to use these tools, that shouldn't be a reason to say, oh, plastic surgery is good. And any critique of beauty culture, plastic surgery culture is inherently like transphobic or something. Like, I think it's weird to also use the trans community to discount the wider harms of beauty culture and plastic surgery culture for the collective. Like, you know.
- [13:05]
B
Sure.
- [13:05]
A
Because I don't know.
- [13:07]
B
While gender affirming surgeries can make someone feel more like the gender they feel they are, you know, it's also like that is a small. Like there's also a part of that that is about, I think, passing or feeling safe.
- [13:20]
A
Yes.
- [13:20]
B
In the world. Which is also the standards that you're talking about that the oppressive standards of beauty culture. Like these are, you have to look feminine, you have to look masculine. Like there are these tropes of beauty that you have to fulfill and if your body or your appearance is aberrant in any way. Right. Like that makes you be unsafe in this world. And that's a problem completely.
- [13:41]
A
Like the increasing demands of performing this unattainable ideal of femininity or masculinity as we're seeing more and more is in the beauty space, like hurts the trans community as well.
- [13:52]
B
Yeah.
- [13:52]
A
And so must be critiqued for the overall well being of all in a way that's not like, oh, all plastic surgery is bad or harmful or whatever. I don't know. I was thinking about it in terms of this piece that I just wrote for the Guardian about facelifts. So I got a question from someone who was like, I do not want a facelift, but I kind of do want a facelift because it's becoming so normal and like, what's happening to me and and like, they explicitly asked for me to convince them not to get a facelift, which I thought was, like, a really fun question. And I don't know, in the editing process, I had a friend work on it with me, like, after I was done, just, like, give it a once over what comes up for you. And I had, like, some reservations because I. It was a piece that ended up being, you know, broadly anti facelift. And some of the concerns that came up were like, oh, you're not mentioning gender affirming surgery. Are you anti that too? How can this piece be, like, misconstrued as being transphobic? And so I was like, okay, well, a facelift is not gender affirming care. People of all genders age and don't look the same over time. Like, that's where I think being specific about what surgeries we're talking about and what inform those surgeries, what standards inspire those surgeries, what the. What standards those surgeries perpetuate are really important. Like, I feel fine. Being pretty generally a facelift is not necessarily a helpful application of plastic surgery in a way that I wouldn't apply that to all surgery all the time, you know?
- [15:29]
B
Yeah, I'm sorry. I just was realizing my own, like, my own internal biases. Because even when you said, like, there's something so feminized about, like, facelift, and even when you're like, it's for aging, I was like, oh, right. Like, a facelift is for age. Like, it's. You know what I mean? Like, it's almost been rebranded. Like, this is just something women do right. At a certain point in their life. And it's like, no, no, it's something everyone does because culture is telling you it's like, you can't age, you can't look. Right, Right. That's the. That's the framework of.
- [15:59]
A
Yes.
- [16:00]
B
Of the facelift.
- [16:01]
A
Definitely more normalized for women. But I think to call youth, like, a feminine quality is.
- [16:08]
B
But it's almost like they're divorcing it from even aging, where it's just like, like tightness or something, or like plum. I don't know. Like, they're selling all kind of like, the side effects of it without saying, like, you're. We're doing because you look old and ugly. I. You know what? I don't know if I'm making no.
- [16:24]
A
Sense when I say you are making sense completely. And I think that's like, this is part of the confusion of thinking through these issues and talking through these issues, nuance and understanding. And like, I Don't know. It's just something that I think about all of the time. Because while I am generally criticizing beauty culture, there are uses of these tools that the data shows, like the opposite. They are health affirming, they are identity affirming.
- [16:52]
B
And that's also why beauty, like, it does get away with so much almost, is because it does have this, like, scientific side. It has this helpful side, you know, Like, I don't.
- [17:03]
A
Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, I think just, like, being mindful of this and like, making an effort to think through all the uses of these different tools is, like, important not just to me, but to, like, the criticism of beauty culture at large. And I don't know, it's just something that I'm always thinking about and maybe don't always get right or maybe, like, leave out of a piece because of word count or whatever. But, yeah, I don't know. It's just been a big topic on substack as of late, so I wanted to totally.
- [17:36]
B
I think it's also just difficult. Like, beauty is. I mean, what I learned through your work all the time is, like, how ingrained and normalized certain aspects of beauty or the language we use are. And so it's like, it's so invisible. It's often hard to even see or to, like, extrapolate, like, all the actual ramifications or the actual meaning of, like, how we talk about stuff. And so I don't know, sometimes I think it's just part pieces get pulled to the surface and we don't. And it's hard for us to, like, see the full picture or put things in context or. Yeah, yeah.
- [18:11]
A
I mean, that's something that I completely agree with and definitely want to write more about. Like, I think a lot of the issues with beauty culture are actually, like, an issue of language and how we're talking about things and mystification through kind of feel good language a lot of the time, rather than explicitly stating, okay, here's what is happening, here's why it's happening. Here are the effects it's having on the population, physically, psychologically, blah, blah, blah. Just so much of that is mystified through language and makes it really hard to, like, think through and write about.
- [18:44]
B
And yeah, I think you pointed that out even in the last podcast episode where you're talking about, like, the cuts, like Wrinkle Week or whatever. And it was like, a no judgment.
- [18:54]
A
Yes.
- [18:55]
B
Guide to, like, facelifts or whatever. And it's like, right.
- [18:58]
A
So completely. I wrote about that in my Last Guardian piece too. It ended on like, am I being judgmental? Like, yeah, but everyone, like, we have to judge. That's like part of the human condition. Beauty is judgment. And like, I'd rather judge facelifts as being weird than aging as being weird.
- [19:16]
B
Sure.
- [19:18]
A
But again, maybe that's a not very nuanced point of view as well.
- [19:22]
B
So room to improve in Brian Johnson's opinion. It's not very nuanced. Never die.
- [19:27]
A
Never die. Okay. End rant. That is my little. That is my little rant on surgery criticism for now.
- [19:35]
B
Okay. I now have like the opposite of a rant. It's just like a pure fascination. Yes. Pure wonderment at what Cardi B. Has done with her umbilical cord.
- [19:46]
A
Oh, my gosh.
- [19:48]
B
So Cardi, I am just obsessed with it. I can't stop thinking about this. And I'd love to know your thoughts on it. Cardi B. Just had her fourth baby on November 4th with her boyfriend Stefan Diggs, who's like the Patriots wide receiver. And she, I guess she didn't share this video, but the lady who made it shared the video and like tagged Cardi B in it. And she had her son's umbilical cord turned into a gold heart shaped pendant. And we're gonna have to like link out to the photo or something because you really have to see it to truly understand what I'm speaking of because it's hard to kind of wrap your mind around.
- [20:26]
A
I saw the picture.
- [20:28]
B
It's. It's going to be burned in your brain for life. Yeah. So I was looking up like, who did this, why they did this, how they did this? It is, it was done by Julianne Marie Corona of Mommy Made Encapsulation. So Mommy Made Encapsulation turns your placenta into placenta pills that you can, you can eat. And this is actually just a bonus feature that they offer as they're turning your placenta into. Into pills. So this is like an add on.
- [20:58]
A
We can also just turn your umbilical cord into pistolery.
- [21:01]
B
Yeah. While we're, while we're here. Like, why not? Let's just toss in that umbilical cord. So the, the, the main thing you're paying for is the encapsulation. That's $500. And then you can get the symbilical heart add on for $50. And then there's also an option to do something I've never heard of. Well, I'd never heard of this gold umbilical cord either. I guess I should say I'M not in this market, but there's also a $65 placenta print add on where they liken to print. Great question. They take your placenta, they dip it in paint, and then they, like, press it onto a white piece of paper.
- [21:37]
A
Okay. You know, like a stamp, like baby footprint on a.
- [21:40]
B
Like baby, like baby footprint. Yes. But it is your placenta and it looks kind of like a tree. Okay. So you could, like, frame it. Um, so that's cool.
- [21:50]
A
Honestly, I feel like $50 is very affordable. I was expecting this to be a lot more.
- [21:56]
B
Okay, well, when you dig into what's happening here, you realize why it's $50, despite the gold patina, what's happening here. But also, can I. I just want to explain also, I'm sorry. I went deep into Julianne's about me page, and I'm just obsessed with her trajectory in her life and her explanation of what she's doing. So she worked for her. She graduated from college. She worked for her mom for six years doing marketing. And then she decided to take a year off. And she says in that year she met her husband and they became pregnant with their first child. She knew right away that she wanted to do something in all caps with her placenta. But what? And I just love that as, like, the journey that got you into this. Like, I have to do something with this placenta. Like, God, what can I do? What can I do? And, like, this is what was born out of it.
- [22:42]
A
It's like such an inspiring origin story.
- [22:45]
B
I know, it's so beautiful. And then she said. So she. She decided on encapsulation is what she wanted to do with the placenta, ultimately. And then she couldn't find anyone in California who did encapsulation, so she trained under a specialist and then got a bloodborne pathogens and OSHA's safe food handling certificates. And then she went to something called Placenta University that I. I didn't Google, but I. I am obsessed with the idea of going to Placenta University.
- [23:11]
A
I need, like, an expose on Placenta University.
- [23:14]
B
I would. I'd love to know what's happening in there. And, like, who are the, like, you know, famous alumni of Placenta University, aside from Julianne, but so she does this for, like, every celebrity and reality TV star. She has a list, like, of names. I don't know if she should be maybe naming all of them. I guess it doesn't matter. But yeah, it's very funny to just like, fully put all these clients. There's a lot. There's a lot. Chrissy Teigen is the first one that I read and I was like, okay, yeah, completely.
- [23:41]
A
I wonder like, how she got into the celebrity space.
- [23:44]
B
Yeah, I don't know.
- [23:45]
A
I think, like, who found her first? And then it's probably word of mouth.
- [23:48]
B
Fantastic. Maybe I should be interviewing this lady. Actually, now that we're talking about it.
- [23:52]
A
I would love a Mess Investigates Placenta University.
- [23:55]
B
Okay. I'm gonna write that I might actually do that. But yeah, I don't know how she got into the celebrity space, except maybe that, like, as she said, like, she's maybe the only one doing it. I mean, I assume now there's a lot of people doing it. Cause it is kind of like a trendy to encapsulate your placenta.
- [24:13]
A
Yeah.
- [24:14]
B
But her saying that she didn't couldn't find anyone when she was pregnant makes me think like, oh, maybe she's just like the gal. And so everybody goes to her. Anyway, getting back to the gold umbilical heart, the most important thing going on here, she shared the creation process on an Instagram video. And so basically, you take the umbilical cord, you take a wire, and you stick the wire through the center of the umbilical cord, like threading it, you know, and then you shape it into the shape of a heart, trim it, dehydrate it. And then it's not gold plated, it's gold chromed. And so I was looking into what the hell gold chroming is. It's just chrome. That's the color of gold.
- [24:59]
A
Whoa.
- [25:00]
B
So it's just chrome. There's no gold involved at all. Which also I'm like, does Cardi know that? Because I feel like Cardi would have wanted real gold.
- [25:08]
A
Right. It feels like an easy add on for this woman to invest in different options for. For plating.
- [25:17]
B
Yeah. Because from, again, I'm not an expert in this, but from what I was reading, the like chroming process is the same as a gold plating process. Like, I forget what. It's electro something. People out there will probably. No, I don't know. This is not my forte, but it just seemed like not the process seems the same is what I'm saying, between the chroming and the gold plating. So she should be offering like a more premium VIP level. I mean, especially if you're doing all these celebs.
- [25:46]
A
Emily's Business Consultation Services again.
- [25:49]
B
Yeah. Once again, just giving you some crucial feedback that's gonna take your business into the stratosphere. This very successful placenta encapsulation lady to the stars. But I would just think, like, wouldn't celebrity? I don't know, I would imagine celebrities would want something fancier. Anyway, I'm just curious. I'm absolutely obsessed with this idea, especially when I thought it was real gold. Because I just love. One of my great passions in life is celebrities spending their money in like, really outlandish, foolish, obscene ways. And this seems like such a wonderful example of that. And also, I don't know, it immediately called to mind, like, memento moris from like Victorian period, which are like completely. For people who don't know, they're like charms or pieces of jewelry that were kind of like meant to memorialize the passing of a loved one. Sometimes they would include like pieces of the dead person's hair or.
- [26:40]
A
When I worked at Alexis Batar in Venice, California, we had, you know, in addition to the regular Alexis Batar jewelry, there was an antiques closet in every retail location. And Alexis was obsessed with memento mori. So we had a ton of like Victorian or older. I can't remember what the time frame was. Hair jewelry.
- [27:01]
B
That's so bone jewelry.
- [27:03]
A
It was incredible.
- [27:04]
B
Yeah, yeah. My mom is. I know about this because my mom is obsessed with memento mori's and we own a couple pieces of hair art, if you're familiar with hair, Victorian hair art. It's. I will say it's very disturbing to me, but it is incredibly beautiful. Like, it is really masterpieces. I don't know how. I guess they had a lot of free time is how they were doing that. But yeah, it's really detailed, like intricate work. Anyway, I love that kind of like morbid Victorian. I do think celebrities should be spending more money on that. Anyway, it's like the inverse of a memento moria. Memento viver. I guess I don't speak.
- [27:38]
A
Glad. Yes.
- [27:40]
B
But it's a reminder to live is what memento vivere is, which I think is beautiful.
- [27:45]
A
Gorgeous.
- [27:46]
B
Yeah. So I thought that was cool. But I was expecting a little more from Cardi, you know, like, I don't know, I think she should like turn this into like a bangle. Like a diamond encrusted bangle or something.
- [27:57]
A
Maybe with baby number five.
- [27:59]
B
Maybe more to look forward to. There's still time yet.
- [28:04]
A
I love this as a segue because, you know, a little. Little preview. I have been thinking about 2026 beauty predictions and something that we've talked about before is the rise of fetal skincare, which I think is going to become a focus. Piggybacking. Yeah.
- [28:26]
B
Tell Julianne to get on the ground floor right now.
- [28:29]
A
There's gotta be something. Yes. There's gotta be some sort of placental skincare thing that she can do. But I was thinking about that because of all of the buzz about Shay Mitchell's new skincare line for three year olds and, like, how much more ridiculous can this get? And I do think fetal skin care will be the future. But for now, I think we need to talk about Shea Mitchell's skincare brand.
- [28:53]
B
Can I also just ask, is this not also just like a knockoff of that Christian Dior infant skincare line? And also who do an infant skincare line? Because it feels like it was Dior to me, but I don't know that for sure.
- [29:06]
A
It was before Dior. Dior was like, this was Dior, I think is 20, 23. They launched like an infant baby skin.
- [29:14]
B
Care line, but all scented as well.
- [29:17]
A
All scented, yeah. No, all horrible for anyone's skin, but particularly infant skin, which again, I wrote about for the Guardian, if you're looking for a detailed review of that. But yeah, so this last week, this month, Shay Mitchell launched a line called Rinni, which is skin care for kids. And the star product in the campaign photos was a sheet mask. And they say it's for people three years old and up, children three years old and up. And I was shocked by the public reaction to this because I have been talking about toddler sheet masks for four years now. Like, Renny is not the first to do this. Shay Mitchell is not the first to do this. Has been around for a long time, particularly in, like, the K beauty space. There's like, lots of like, childish sort of pattern sheet masks that have been around for a long time. Um, but yeah, so, I mean, the Internet, the media, the like, regular news has blown up in response to these sheet masks for toddlers. And the reaction has been, like, largely negative, which I find so surprising because the reaction to like, baby child tween skincare over the past, like three, four years has been like, let girls be girls. It's totally fine. This is what little girls do.
- [30:37]
B
Totally. But I do feel like this is just my theory. But I do feel like the rise of like, tween extreme skincare and beauty interest has, like, exhausted parents in a way where they're like, no, more like, we can't not another layer of this like, that they have to draw the line for their own sanity, you know what I mean? Because they're already like, fighting off children in Sephora completely.
- [31:01]
A
And I think they. They should draw the line. The line needs to be drawn for sure. But yeah, I, so I was initially like sort of heartened by this reaction of just like complete backlash to Rinni and Shay Mitchell's.
- [31:15]
B
Has Shea responded to it at all?
- [31:17]
A
Okay, she has. Okay, I'll, I'll skip ahead in my notes to talk about the Shea reaction. So she actually went on, I think it was the Today show, some morning news show, a couple of days after the launch to address the backlash. And she sort of doubled down, she doubled down on like, why this is totally fine and okay, let me find my notes because I, I went deep on, on all of this. But so her reaction was like, you know, this is what girls do. We all like play it with our mom's skincare and makeup growing up. And she was responding specifically to the backlash of like it's ridiculous to expose 3 year old girls to beauty standards. And her response was like, these girls aren't thinking about beauty standards when they put on a sheet mask. They're thinking about like the cooling sensation and how fun it is. And like they're not thinking about beauty standards. And it's like, okay, yes, that's, that's the problem. Like we internalize these things before we can articulate these things. And we have plenty of data to show that. I think the book Beauty sick by psychologist Dr. Renee Engeln is really interesting here because she does a ton of interviews with like preschool age children and pulls from a ton of data on young kids and how they've internalized beauty standards. And it's like, yes, we internalize these things before we're able to articulate what it is we've taken away as a lesson from being obsessed with our bodies, from being obsessed with beauty.
- [32:49]
B
Yes. But also what, what does the child think? Like, why do they think they're putting on a face mask to begin with? Like what, what are you explaining, what are you saying to them of like why you're even doing this activity? You know what I mean?
- [33:03]
A
Like self care. They just want to take care of themselves.
- [33:05]
B
But what are you taking, what are you taking care of? Like any part of this experience. It's like you would have to explain something about like beauty or skin care or like hydrate or you know, like some. They're not just thinking like, oh yeah, put this cold piece of paper on your face just, just for funsies. No, and if so, just put a cold piece of PA. Their face than if.
- [33:29]
A
Right, exactly. Just let them splash their face blue cold water, like run through a sprinkler there's sensory experiences that don't involve the cosmetic manipulation of a three year old body.
- [33:38]
B
Right.
- [33:40]
A
But yeah, that's exactly the problem. And so that was Shea Mitchell's reaction. The reaction that like did not surprise me at all and also just like floored me for its just in your face quality was an article that Glamour wrote about it and the headline was literally, it's not that deep. And they're like, this isn't that deep.
- [34:05]
B
No worries.
- [34:06]
A
Like Shane Mitchell's skincare line isn't that deep. Stop arguing about it. And I just think that like this is an insult to beauty culture. Whether you're pro or anti.
- [34:15]
B
So funny.
- [34:16]
A
Whether you love it or you hate it. Like to say it's not that deep is so insulting and frankly misogynist. I think it does a disservice to all people but especially young women and especially young girls to wave away concerns about these products with like the beauty industry doesn't mean anything. It's not.
- [34:31]
B
Chill out losers. Calm down.
- [34:34]
A
Like, well if it's nothing, why are we doing it?
- [34:37]
B
Like right then we shouldn't buy it at all. Then I guess hugged it like doesn't matter.
- [34:41]
A
Exactly. Like, it's like, I know it's not that deep to you because you're not thinking deeply. It's not that deep to Shane Mitchell.
- [34:49]
B
And making money off of them. Of course it's not that deep to you. It's sales to you.
- [34:53]
A
It's not that deep to the people who are launching these products because they aren't thinking deeply either. Like I don't think this is a, a deep conspiracy to like we're gonna damage kids skin and self esteem so we can sell them more stuff in the future. Like it's just same as all the.
- [35:11]
B
People in my comments telling me I'm overthinking fashion and fashion. It's not that deep. And I'm like, that's interesting because it's like one of the largest like multi trillion dollar industries in the world.
- [35:20]
A
Like if it wasn't that deep, it wasn't that deep.
- [35:23]
B
It wouldn't be that, you know, it's.
- [35:24]
A
Like, it's like essential. People conceive it as being.
- [35:27]
B
Stop overthinking weather manufacturing.
- [35:30]
A
It's not that deep, Emily.
- [35:32]
B
It's not that deep. We're just making guns like God, who cares? Stop talking about it.
- [35:36]
A
Well, the argument for it's not that deep in this article and beyond stems from the fact that like throughout history young girls have like mimicked the behavior of the adult women around them. Like I said, like, plenty of us grew up playing in our mother's makeup or with like, Noxima cream or whatever. And like, the argument is like, it's not that deep because this is a normal part of girlhood. To which I say, okay, if we want to invoke girlhood, we have to define girlhood and how is girlhood different from childhood? And like, yes, it's a normal child behavior to, like, mimic the actions of adults.
- [36:10]
B
Yeah.
- [36:10]
A
And where girlhood differs is in the social conditioning. What actions are we imitating and why are we imitating those actions? And what are we learning from those actions? Like, manipulating your own physical appearance to meet an impossible ideal is not inherent to girls. It's indoctrinated. And so when you say it's not that deep, it's like, no, it's, it's extreme. Just because it's normalized doesn't mean it's not totally deep.
- [36:37]
B
Also, like, look at all of history. And there's a lot of things that have been normalized that, like, weren't good. Yeah. And were and were that deep, actually. But they were the cultural norms. So we all just, like, took them at face value and we're like, well, that's how things are. And it's also like, are these people in therapy? Like, if you're in therapy, you should know that, like, I would. There's a lot of things that we're taught by our parents that maybe need.
- [36:58]
A
To be, if they need to be. Well, that's another thing that I'm like, thinking about too. And it's like, okay, it's normal because I did it as a 3 year old 20 years ago, 30 years ago, whatever. Okay, and how has that turned out for us? Look at beauty culture today. I would argue broadly, it's not good. It's not promoting human flourishing. A lot of us are racked with insecurities and anxious about our appearance and depressed and have dysmorphia, disordered behaviors, obsessive compulsions to buy products and consume, consume, consume. Like, just because you did it doesn't.
- [37:32]
B
Mean it's the right or the good thing to do. Yeah, but we also, we know that, like, we talk about so many other things from, like, our childhood, like growing up in the early aughts and how toxic it was and the way media talked about women. And like, so we can recognize that. Right. Or like, we had a me too conversation. Right. So we can recognize that, like, behavior of the past isn't necessarily indicative of, like, good Choices.
- [37:53]
A
Yeah.
- [37:53]
B
Or like, standards we should live by forever.
- [37:56]
A
I would even argue that the behavior of the past was potentially not as damaging as it is for, you know, three year olds being indoctrinated into beauty today because beauty culture has changed, has gotten more and more extreme. There are more and more products that we're expected to use, and technology has allowed us to manipulate, manipulate our appearance in so many more extreme ways. And the end point for a lot of people is much more extreme than it was in years past.
- [38:23]
B
Yeah. And on a very basic level, we're also consuming our appearance in, like, way more than ever in history. Like, there are way more screens around us. There are way more mediators of our appearance. Like, you are looking at yourself more than anyone in history ever looked at themselves. That alone is like a huge change completely.
- [38:41]
A
Like, it's a very different world that young people today are growing up to inherit and in many ways a worse world. And I think it's fine to be concerned about that. I think it is pretty deep. And warrants are a concern. I mean, and even if we're just looking at it at the most superficial level, like, there are plenty of physical complications that come from using skincare too early on. Developing skin, like your skin is part of your immune system. We have studies that show that, like, overusing skin care and soap at, like, infant and toddler ages can cause lifelong complications like eczema and asthma. Even like this. Your skin is your immune system. And what you're doing is you're constantly bombarding your immune system with products that it does not need in order to function. And that can cause plenty of complications. And I mean, this is kind of true at any age. Like, Right. The skin does not need as much as, as we're doing to it. But the other thing that really strikes me is, like, when we're saying it's not that deep, this isn't a problem. Let girls be girls. I think particularly of young black girls. And a few recent studies over the past couple years have posited that black girls are entering puberty and younger. And one of the reasons that they're entering puberty at younger and younger ages may be beauty products, hair care products, and combined with higher environmental risk and increased sensitivity to endocrine disruptors for people in this population, like, they're entering puberty younger. And when you enter puberty younger, you're at an increased risk for breast cancer and heart disease and pcos. So there are like lifelong, wow. Potential dangers of being exposed to certain cosmetic chemicals depending on, like, Your genetics and your. Where you live and. And all of these factors. But, like, it contributes, like, so to say that this is just like, I know it's fucking deep. It's deep. And then, like, psychologically, we know the harms of beauty standards and what's. What's really fascinated me kind of about the public outcry against the sheet masks, against these rainy sheet masks for young girls is like, people are like, it's not safe to internalize beauty standards at that young of an age. Which is true. And I want us to continue that conversation because I'm like, what age do you think it is safe? At what age?
- [41:18]
B
When does it become Safe?
- [41:20]
A
Is it 10? Is it 15? Is it 25? Is it 40? Because long before these particular sheet masks have existed, we have been collecting data on the harms of beauty standards for people of all ages. And I would just love us to use this as, like, a jumping off point in the beauty industry to discuss some of those harms to young girls and old girls and old women.
- [41:45]
B
Totally. And also, I was just thinking, you know, I have the same thought when people tell me that I'm, like, overthinking fashion stuff, but, like, okay, so if it isn't deep, then, like, what's the harm of me overthinking it? You know, why do you want me so badly not to overthink it?
- [42:00]
A
Right.
- [42:01]
B
Deeply about it if it's really. Doesn't matter if it's really harmless and ridiculous? And then let me.
- [42:07]
A
Yeah, you know, just let me say my stupid little comments.
- [42:09]
B
Yeah, don't say my comments. Yeah, let me dive in. I got time.
- [42:15]
A
I really find that to be one of the most insulting and silly things to say in reaction to anything fashion or beauty related. Because in, like, trying to preserve, like, it's not that deep. This is just what women do. It's like, that's so misogynistic and writing off women's interests as being frivolous or not worthy of deeper thought.
- [42:41]
B
And also, after all of the. The real risks that you just laid out for young black girls, it's, like, also racist, like, to say that it's not a big deal and it's fine and everyone needs to chill about it. It's like, okay, well, you are ignoring some very. Sounds like some very real scary data.
- [42:55]
A
Yeah.
- [42:56]
B
Of, like, the impact that it does have on people. That could be lifelong health conditions.
- [43:02]
A
Yeah, Cool. Scary.
- [43:05]
B
But yeah, no worries.
- [43:06]
A
Self sustainability, if you're listening. It is that deep, Shay.
- [43:10]
B
Just stick to those weird travel bags or whatever you Make. Yeah, just keep doing that like you already have a business. Like, you don't need to do this, actually. Well, in completely frivolous and unrelated news, I want to talk about Asin Rae's blindfold.
- [43:29]
A
Oh, my gosh. I saw this and, of course, thought of you immediately.
- [43:32]
B
It's just really fantastic imagery, and I'm curious. I have some, like, vague musings on. I don't know. It just really struck me as a powerful paparazzi image, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it as well. Basically, for those who haven't seen it, Asenrae arrived at LAX wearing what TMZ is calling a blindfold. But. And in early headlines, they were really making it seem like she was completely blind and, like, couldn't see where she was going. So they've since like, moderated their headline because it's, like, very obviously a lace eye mask that she can.
- [44:03]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [44:04]
B
See through. Anyway, so this moment was captured by tmz, which, to me means that this was definitely a setup. Like, it was prearranged between TMZ and Addison. That set usually how TMZ operates with that type of stuff, especially when it's a celebrity landing at an airport. Yeah, yeah. That's orchestrated. Which I think kind of makes the moment more interesting. That's intentional because. I don't know. Well, first of all, the look is very bird box, so.
- [44:33]
A
Bird box. Yeah.
- [44:34]
B
And there's. I just love a PR stunt. I always love a PR stunt. I love something done, like, purely for attention and the moment and the imagery. And Addison is very, very good at that. And there's. It's. This particular moment is also, like, a callback for. To her own iconography, because there's this. Anyone who's into Addison and has been watching for a minute, and there's this really amazing photograph of her from 2021 during the pandemic, where she was, like, famously very, very bad at masking, as many of her TikTok peers were. And there's this really iconic photo of her walking around New York City holding, like, a plastic face shield, like, you would put over your face. Like, when someone sprays hairspray and you have makeup on or whatever. It's like that. And she's just holding it up, like, half in front of her face. But that was, like, her version of masking. Anyway, Obviously, bad COVID pandemic practices. However, it became an iconic meme because it was so insane and so indicative of the moment and how celebrities were behaving in that moment. With their flagrant ignore all public safety measures.
- [45:40]
A
Yeah.
- [45:41]
B
Anyway, so this, this for a lot of people, this blindfold called to mind that moment and I actually found the ID on the, on the blindfold because. Okay, one of my great, one of my great passions in life is like for any celebrity that exists, there is an Instagram account called that celebrity's name Closet. I don't know if people outside the.
- [46:06]
A
Industry know this obsessed with those accounts and I just want to know who runs them. I mean there must be profiles online of like.
- [46:13]
B
No, there are. No. Dude, I literally, I once went to an Instagram event and I literally pitched this to like all the girls who worked at Instagram because I'm like, you have got to get on this. Because there are so many like literally teenagers, like literally 14 year olds running these Stan accounts. And I was like, you need to get them all, all the biggest accounts in the world. You need to get them together in a room and treat them like there's a celebr. Like do profiles on them and like how they got into this. Like, does it make them any money? How much time does it take? Like I'm feeling, are they in contact with the celeb?
- [46:44]
A
A media company, a mess world adjacent media company where we just assign out these stories.
- [46:52]
B
I know.
- [46:53]
A
And every like silly little interest that we have.
- [46:56]
B
Our hair extension one last time was very, very good.
- [46:59]
A
It's a. I'm still thinking about that.
- [47:01]
B
Me too.
- [47:02]
A
I'm still thinking we actually, we should team up. We should sidebar about this. But we should team up next year for the Victoria's Secret fashion show and do that. Exactly. But oh my gosh, I would love some profiles of, of these Celebrity closet.
- [47:16]
B
Counts because I'm, I'm obsessed with them. Because when I was doing, especially when I was at People and when I was at Page Six is like these, these mostly girls made my job like so much easier because I didn't have to hunt for everything. And they always had it and they will have it within minutes of a new photo coming out. I know I have correctly id'd the weirdest randomness stuff. And you're like, how the hell did you find that? Anyway, so in, in writing up this little report, I found Asenray obviously has one. Asenray's closet. I highly recommend everyone go follow. They're very good at their job. They have like 12,000 followers and they ID this blindfold as the Myrma Earth fern headband. How the hell they found this Murmur Earth. I love that I have no idea how they found this because it's the most generic black lace headband I've ever seen in my life. And it's right. They're completely right. I forget.
- [48:06]
A
Not important.
- [48:07]
B
But let me look.
- [48:09]
A
You know, inquiring minds.
- [48:12]
B
$82. Pricey. Pricey, pricey.
- [48:15]
A
Yeah. For a tiny little piece of cloth.
- [48:19]
B
A tiny little piece of lace, and then two black ribbons.
- [48:21]
A
But you can't put a price on those media impressions.
- [48:24]
B
No, you can't. You really can't. Worth it.
- [48:26]
A
Worth it for Austin.
- [48:27]
B
Anyway, I was just. There's something about this photo. I was just really struck by the idea of a celebrity calling the paparazzi on themselves and then and creating an outfit where you were like you're denying the public your own gaze back at them. Does that make sense? Like you are being consumed, but you refuse to consume. You're being perceived, but you refuse perception. I don't know. There's something about that. And it does tie into the Kim Kardashian like giants anonymous sunglass thing as well.
- [48:58]
A
There's something a little Tilly Norwood or AI about it as well because. Are you familiar with Tilly Norwood?
- [49:07]
B
I'm not familiar.
- [49:07]
A
She's the AI actress.
- [49:09]
B
Oh, okay.
- [49:11]
A
Not real. Doesn't have the ability to perceive.
- [49:14]
B
Yes.
- [49:14]
A
And I think, you know, it kind of says something about modern culture where a lot of our icons of beauty are not real. A lot of our models even are not real. They can't perceive themselves. Like, I'm thinking of the H and M Digital twins where they just have fake models modeled after real models now. But yeah, there's something a little futuristic about perceiving a woman who doesn't have the ability to perceive.
- [49:45]
B
Yeah. I don't know, as though like her viewing you is so valuable or something. Like her, you know, gaze landing upon you is like so precious that, like, it can't be wasted or just, you've.
- [50:01]
A
Got to pay for this at the meet and greet. You're not going to get it at the airport.
- [50:04]
B
Exactly. Like you don't get this for free or something. Like this is. I don't know, I'm just really struck by. I don't really have any answers or like a hard, concrete theory or something. I just feel like there's something palpable there that's very interesting to me.
- [50:19]
A
A little commodification of one's own.
- [50:21]
B
A little commodification of one's gaze. Yeah.
- [50:24]
A
It could be like, I don't know, maybe this is too far fetched, but like a continuation of the Bathwater. Commodification of one's own bathwater.
- [50:34]
B
Interesting.
- [50:34]
A
Commodification of your eye contact.
- [50:37]
B
Yeah. I don't know, like, all of kind of our physical capabilities, like, you have to reserve them for the real fans who will pay for them. I still. I can't believe, you know, now that the bathwater thing is gone mainstream, I can't believe no one else has picked up on Belle Delphine's, like, other big stunt, which was bottling her farts.
- [50:58]
A
I wrote about her bottling her farts recently, and I. I. You know, I gave you credit because Cat's Eye just did this sort of collab where they made room sprays and they bottled their breath in the room sprays.
- [51:14]
B
Whoa.
- [51:14]
A
Okay. That was very Belle Delfino holding her bar.
- [51:17]
B
Yeah. Delphine bottling her farts.
- [51:19]
A
Bottling your emissions. Yep.
- [51:20]
B
Her influence, man. That's crazy. That's. Once again, the adult entertainment industry. Like, just steam had, like, just at the forefront of every celebrity movement. It's so crazy.
- [51:32]
A
Like, honestly, as a callback to the beginning of our conversations, I do feel like we could see celebrity hair art or celebrity, like, hair memento. Memento. Celebrity jewelry or something soon.
- [51:45]
B
Absolutely. Well, you know that Kim Kardashian owns a lock of Marilyn Monroe's hair.
- [51:49]
A
Yes.
- [51:50]
B
It was gifted to her by Ripley's Believe it or not after she wore the dress that they own.
- [51:53]
A
What a gift.
- [51:54]
B
Yeah. What a gift. What a Horcrux to add to her collection of dead lady Horcruxes.
- [52:00]
A
Really something there. Yeah. No, I remain fascinated by Addison, you know.
- [52:07]
B
Yeah. Her team is really, you know, whatever you think about her. I always think, like, if a celebrity is able to, like, accumulate a team around them like that who is, like, so just exceptional at their jobs, like, you got to give them credit for that.
- [52:22]
A
She at least has taste in her creative taste.
- [52:24]
B
Exactly. Yeah.
- [52:28]
A
The next celebrity. Well, okay, I was trying to think of a nice. I was trying to think of a. Of a. Of a segue, but I can't. I can't because I'm so distressed about subject matter. Jump cut. Simone Biles.
- [52:45]
B
We're talking about segue between Addison Rae and Simone Biles.
- [52:49]
A
I was trying to think of something about commodification because that. That is relevant, but I couldn't get there. I couldn't get there. Champion Olympic genius Simone Viles has opened up about her plastic surgeries recently. She has said that she's had breast augmentation, a lower blepharoplasty, and an earlobe reconstruction.
- [53:12]
B
I didn't real. I knew about the breast augmentation.
- [53:16]
A
She's been like, slowly rolling them out on TikTok. I think the first time she talked about it, she was like, I've had three plastic surgeries and you'll never. One of them, you'll never guess. And that was the earlobe reconstruction, I'm sure. But now she's, she's fully out and talking about all of the surgery. She's had a lot of it on TikTok. And then she did like a big interview with People magazine recently. Like sort of disclosing all of these and making a statement. Yes.
- [53:45]
B
Ask a stupid question. Is the earlobe one. Is that for like when earrings, like, rip through your.
- [53:50]
A
Yeah, okay. Yeah. She said like an earring ripped out when she was younger. My mom actually had that reconstruction too. At the same time as she got her breast reconstruction done, the surgeon like threw it in there because she had ripped her ear open when she was a kid. So, yeah, my, my mom and Simone Biles so much.
- [54:07]
B
I just was curious if there's some like, new ear surgery I wasn't familiar with.
- [54:11]
A
Is a new ear thing unrelated, of course. There have been a couple articles about OIC earlobes, which I don't think are a real thing, but surgeons are trying to say that like, losing weight from oic. They're saggy. They're saggy, they're sagging. Old looking. Because you lose, you lose weight in your ear.
- [54:29]
B
Put filler in them.
- [54:31]
A
Yeah, I think that's what they're doing. I don't know.
- [54:33]
B
I haven't read Plump and Taut Lobes.
- [54:35]
A
You've gotta plump those.
- [54:36]
B
Everyone's gonna notice. Everyone's gonna notice.
- [54:39]
A
You've gotta plump your lobes, ladies. But anyway, so Simone Biles, Simone Biles told People magazine that there is, quote, no shame in getting plastic surgery. And she said young girls have the right to their own choices. She also said, I feel like nowadays with social media, you see everyone and you're like, oh my God, how does she look so good? Social media is not real. So that's why I try to be as transparent as possible.
- [55:07]
B
And she said, I love the double logic of that. It's like, you know, not real. But like, I am going to make my body look more like that to be under, you know, like, don't believe it. But also, I bought into it and.
- [55:18]
A
I. I'm going to be emotionally real with you and tell you that I've done this.
- [55:21]
B
Yeah.
- [55:22]
A
And then she like ended it by saying she doesn't want women to feel pressured to fall in line with what other people are doing, plastic surgery wise. And that's part of why she's being transparent, which obviously, like, right off the bat, we know that this is kind of like nonsense word salad. Like you want to have your cake and eat it too, where you are falling in line with beauty standards and then being like, but I don't want other girls to feel the pressure to do this. So this is why I'm talking about it. Yeah, I mean, it's very much related to the cut article we talked about last time of getting a necklift at 41 and saying I'm being transparent about it. And I know. So it keeps coming up, but I feel like I have to keep talking about it because this line of thought is just so. Delusional. No, it's just like this idea that the things that we want are disconnected from the collective and that our actions don't have those collective consequences of making other people want the things that we want is so delusional. I mean, I wrote about it in my, my last Ask Ugly column about, you know, mimetic desire and how it's kind of unavoidable. And like, this is how human desire works. We want the things we want because other people want those things and model what we should want back to us. And it seems so dangerous to me that none of these articles that are coming out about cosmetic transparency are acknowledging that that basic function of. Of human desire. But something that I wanted to bring up here got cut from my last article because I couldn't quite find the right way to say it, but like, so cosmetic transparency, like what Simone Biles is doing, obviously, like, destigmatizes cosmetic work. It also hands people like the blueprint to how to look like this. But I think what's really interesting is that it's. And we've talked about this before, but it reframes meeting beauty standards through cosmetic surgery as somehow virtuous, as long as you are honest about it. Like, I'm thinking of people calling Kylie Jenner a girl's girl.
- [57:29]
B
Yeah.
- [57:30]
A
After she revealed the details of her breast augmentation surgery. And I mean, we actually have a lot of data from surgeons over the past couple of years that show this cosmetic transparency movement is encouraging more and more people to get these surgeries.
- [57:47]
B
Like, I mean, of course, I mean.
- [57:49]
A
I know exactly what to do.
- [57:50]
B
The early days of plastic, like, early days, whatever. But they would, like, bring in a picture of Angelina Jolie's nose and be like, I want that. And now it's like, okay, and what if Angelina Jolie told you the exact, like, medical specs how to get that nose? Like, of course that would just encourage.
- [58:04]
A
Bring that in. Yeah.
- [58:06]
B
Because now they really know how to get it.
- [58:08]
A
Right. But so the reason that, that, that part got cut from my articles was because I had kind of a back and forth with my editor about the word virtuous. And whether that is true, like, whether there is some sort of virtue signaling component to cosmetic transparency. And I think, like, maybe virtuous is not the best word, but I do think that people who are being transparent about this are trying to force a sort of moral, ethical component here. Like Simone Biles saying she wants to help young girls realize why she looks so good so they don't feel bad about themselves. Like, that is a sort of, like, virtue signaling. I think. I don't know what's the word?
- [58:47]
B
I think even if she's not the one who is. Is placing it as virtuous. The public is placing it as virtuous because completely celebrities who are transparent about the work they've had done are treated very, very differently from celebrities who obfuscate the work they've done.
- [59:01]
A
Yes, completely.
- [59:02]
B
And I think that alone is a virtue signaling, you know.
- [59:05]
A
Right. And I mean, that has a lot to do with how, I mean, we know that, that people judge those who have had overt cosmetic work, whether that's plastic surgery or like, very clearly going tanning or wearing heavy makeup, they're judged as morally inferior. And so I think this move towards cosmetic transparency is like, maybe an unconscious way to try to mitigate that judgment by saying, okay, here I'm going to illustrate my morals and my ethics and my, my personal moral code to you in another way. Like, I value honesty.
- [59:38]
B
Yes. Well, I also think celebrities are always trying to gesture towards authenticity while having nothing authentic happening. Does that make sense? Like, yes, celebrities are always, like, giving you a behind the scenes look. They're always posting a no makeup selfie, you know, or like, oh, here's me at the gym. Like, they're always creating this illusion of, like, raw, unfiltered looks into their life that make their fans, because it makes their fans feel closer to them and it makes the parasocial bond stronger. And so I think that this is just like one. Celebrities kind of like reading the room. Like, people demand this type of, like, information from them that, like, they don't respect people who lie, quote, unquote, lie to them, even though the whole thing is a production and a lie. Or like, or, yeah, just put things in their face and tell them it's the opposite. Even though, like, this is a version of doing that. But it just reads as honest, authentic, true, moral, virtuous, completely.
- [60:34]
A
I also think there's something that I haven't quite worked out yet that's like, confuses the narrative we have around beauty standards and plastic surgery that I, like, can't quite put my finger on. But, like, I think a lot of times defense of conforming to certain beauty standards through surgery or through products or whatever really relies on this idea that women are judged in the world by what they look like. And therefore, if you don't look a certain way, you have fewer opportunities for jobs, for success, for, like, financial success, for, like, social networking, for relationships. And I think it's kind of interesting that, like, Simone Biles and a lot of the celebrities who are seeing this cosmetic transparency from have all of that already. And, like, what does that mean for this part of the narrative? Like, she's successful, she's rich, she's an Olympic champion, she's happily married. Her husband, like, helped her get through all of these surgeries. So, like, what are we now saying that this is for?
- [61:42]
B
And also, I mean, this is just, like, a practical question, but does the. Do the new boobs not fuck with her sport? Like, wouldn't that kind of be, like a wild. Like, it just puts the weight in different places. Like, your balance is different. Like, I imagine the jumping and the turning is different to accommodate. And is that not a concern? Is she not. I don't know about. If she's, like, continuing to pursue. Maybe she's retired. Maybe she's retired. I'm not sure.
- [62:08]
A
I don't know.
- [62:08]
B
I just wonder. And.
- [62:10]
A
Yeah.
- [62:10]
B
Is that not a concern as a professional athlete, that you might somehow be hindering or. Or worsening even your performance because of this augmentation?
- [62:19]
A
Right. And again, my argument is not, like, she shouldn't be doing all of this or she shouldn't be honest about it. I'm just really interested in how we talk about it and how we mystify it. The other thing that I was, like, a little disturbed by in this story is that Simone Biles really emphasized that her blepharoplasty, she got a lower bleph because of her genetics. To fix a genetic trait. She calls her under eye bags genetic. She calls them, like, the Biles bags or something like that. And I don't know. I mean, it's a little, like, eugenicsy. Yeah. To be like, I have to fix My genetic inheritance with surgery. Um, and again, if you're explicitly saying there's, quote, no shame in getting plastic surgery, when do we address that there should be no shame in having a genetic feature such as the one that she had? And if, like. Right. And if. If young girls have the right to their own choices, like, when do we talk about, like, young girls should also have the right to feel fine and normal in their bodies as is. And how do, like, these actions complicate these narratives?
- [63:26]
B
Like, yeah, it reminds me of. It was a joke. I made it. I made a joke in the last podcast. But it does remind me of, like, you know, if we have wrinkles week, like, where is the representation of people who want to cultivate maximum wrinkles? You know, like, if the premise is wrinkles week, like, don't we need both the people who want to exterminate wrinkles and the people who want to. Who are enjoying them and want to see more come in? I don't know.
- [63:48]
A
Yes, totally.
- [63:50]
B
Like, if that was true, like, wouldn't there be representation from all sides? I guess, right?
- [63:54]
A
Exactly. Yes. If this was just like a do what you want and nothing is informing what I want, people would be also getting surgery to make their under eye bags puffier.
- [64:06]
B
Yeah.
- [64:06]
A
If there was no social conditioning about what is good and what is bad.
- [64:10]
B
Add a flap of skin to my eyes, you know?
- [64:12]
A
Yes. Maybe that'll be. Maybe that'll be the next. Like, add an arm to your dress is. Is add a bag to your under eye.
- [64:21]
B
That's exciting. It is interesting. You also just reminded me this is related, but also unrelated. But I was wondering if you saw. Because I saw this clip and I was being like, oh, my God, this is like the richest text for Jessica that I've ever seen in my life. But Kathy Griffin went on, like, Sherri Shepherd's morning show. Did you see this?
- [64:38]
A
No, I didn't see this.
- [64:39]
B
Holy shit, dude. You're about to write magnum opus about this. She walked out in a bikini and high heels. That's it. To show off her body. To show off her. Her. What is she, 60 something body. And to show up her new facelift because she just got her third facelift. And so the whole segment was about how good she looks in a bikini and how good her new facelift and how expensive it was and et cetera, et cetera. They go on the. The entire. Literally the entire interview is that. And I was just like, what a weird. First of all, it feels like a weird 90s throwback to just have a Woman walking out of the bikini to, like, promote her appearance, like, to promote her age.
- [65:17]
A
The project I'm promoting is the project of my own body.
- [65:20]
B
Because she's not. Not promoting anything. She literally. She doesn't have a new project coming out. She doesn't have a standup special, and there is nothing she's promoting except her literal appearance.
- [65:28]
A
Yeah.
- [65:28]
B
Post op. It's really incredible. You have to hear.
- [65:31]
A
Interesting. I'm sure that's motivated by all of the positive press that celebrities have been getting for being, like, transparent about their procedures as of late. And she's like, oh, great.
- [65:41]
B
No, that was just celebration of her doing something for herself that has nothing to do with beauty standards at all. How dare you?
- [65:48]
A
I would love actually for this exact same scenario to take place and then have, like, a frank and honest, emotionally transparent conversation on the. On the whatever show about what's really motivating you and how do you feel about your body and how do you feel about aging? And when did this start and when did you internalize this?
- [66:11]
B
In the early hours?
- [66:12]
A
I would love that.
- [66:13]
B
That.
- [66:14]
A
Because again, it's not like, don't do this. It's like, let's just be honest about what's motivating us, please.
- [66:22]
B
Yeah. And I. I would especially respect that from someone whose whole job is their appearance to be like, you know, I'm put under a lot of pressure to look a certain way to not agey. Like, why can't we be frank about that? Like, everybody knows it.
- [66:32]
A
Right, Right. Exactly.
- [66:33]
B
I got a nose job because everyone was. Everyone in the Internet was making fun of my nose. You know, like, that's a real answer. Okay.
- [66:40]
A
Yeah, I would love that.
- [66:41]
B
It was preying on my insecurities and I didn't want to deal with it anymore, so I took the easy route out and I got a surgery to change it. And now hopefully every. And now everyone will talk for the rest of my life about my surgery instead of my. My problematic. Yeah. Or anything else I'm doing.
- [66:56]
A
Yeah. I don't know. I feel like everything that I've brought up today has been just so vague and blah and, like, I don't even know if I'm making a point, but I'm just like, yeah, I think I'm. I'm in the muck of.
- [67:08]
B
That's why we have a podcast, so you never have to make a point.
- [67:11]
A
How do we talk about this? How should we talk about this? I don't know. Yeah.
- [67:18]
B
I always see the podcast as, like, a ground for us to. To hash out things that we have vague notions about. And so we can start to hone in on what the hell we're saying and thinking and talking about. That's how I think about this podcast. I never come here with an answer, I'll tell you that.
- [67:34]
A
Speaking of hone in, I was thinking about how you had that, like, Instagram troll that was like, it's homing. It's homing. Oh, yeah, you said hone in. And then I was listening to the New Yorker podcast critics at large today, and they used the words hone in in an advertising part of their thing. And I was like, this is. This is just how we speak. It's fine.
- [67:53]
B
Well, and from. And from my Google, after I was chastised, both are. Are technically correct because colloquially people say hone. And so language is malleable and adaptable with the times, which is something that we should all know. And so because everyone says hone, hone has become as acceptable as home, maybe.
- [68:12]
A
That brings me to my point, which is that language is malleable and adaptable, and I think we're adapting it in some. Some pretty for sure dangerous ways right now, and we should adapt it in a different way to be a little bit more straightforward and honest about what we're doing. There we go.
- [68:29]
B
That's a good point.
- [68:30]
A
And there you go.
- [68:30]
B
We found it.
- [68:31]
A
Yeah.
- [68:33]
B
Let's do a quick chat about Doppelganger, because obviously this is going to be, like, a big part of the book club conversation, and I don't want to. No spoilers. No spoilers. But I don't know, we just finished reading part three of the book, and it. I don't. Just the way she was talking about colonialism and how colonialism, like, while we may not expand and take over countries anymore, we. We still all live by this colonialist mindset and, like, the invisible. Well, invisible to us, but not invisible to other people. The people being colonized mindset.
- [69:09]
A
Right.
- [69:10]
B
And I don't know, it just really hit home for me. I think it's very profound. And I start to start thinking about the obvious correlation in fashion is fast fashion. And there's this idea that, like, Naomi Klein calls it, like, the shadowlands. Like, in order for, like, our culture to be one way, like, parts of the world have to live in these shadowlands, like, doing the horrific thing that makes our thing possible. And, like, we've decided in a colonialist mindset that, like, that's okay with us. Like, that is the cost of living the life we want. And, like, somehow we are Superior and we deserve this life while they deserve what they're getting. And I was just thinking about the chain of fast fashion and this mentality of like, you know, sheen mentality where it's like I deserve to pay $1 for a T shirt. And so when you say I deserve to pay $1 for a T shirt, you're saying that like all the people who make that T shirt, like the whole manufacturing process, like those people don't deserve anything.
- [70:08]
A
Yes.
- [70:09]
B
And like, and just to be comfortable with that mentality, it's just really wild to me. And true, like a true thing that I think you can kind of see how it, it spirals out from that extreme example.
- [70:19]
A
Well, it makes me think of like beauty culture and like say palm oil, which is in a huge percentage of beauty products. When we're saying like I deserve my self care moment with this sheet mask that uses components of palm oil, we are saying I'm okay with the fact that my self care is contingent on all of the human rights abuses that are inherent in the palm oil industry, for example. And it's like, okay, obviously we're not going to change that on an individual level, but, but it's good to be explicit about what's happening.
- [70:51]
B
Right? Right. I don't think that this new framing or whatever is going to change how we consume our light. But I don't know. Just like that is the honest way of thinking about this behavior and what you're engaging in. And I don't know how you can continue in good faith to engage with it and not think about how many people have to be truly not over exaggerating. Like, like how many people have to die in order for you to get, for your life to be easy, for you to get next day delivery for you to wear a shirt that costs nothing, that costs a penny? I don't know. My friend Diane also sent me this Instagram reel recently from a business of fashion talk that I need to go watch the full conversation. But it was talking about the city in Africa where we're dumping all of our clothing waste and just the tons and tons of clothing waste and that the people responsible for like, like moving this clothing waste around are all women and children and they, and they do it by carrying like hundreds of pounds of clothing on their heads and that this, if not like snaps their neck and kills them. It like is horribly deforming and like crushes their spinal column, can make them infertile and I don't know, it's really, really horrific. Really, really terrible. But yeah, it's just like, okay, so that is the real human cost of your clothing consumption and production. And like, we are all tacitly saying, like, we are okay because those are. Those people are less than us. Like, that is colonizer mentality. Like, somebody has to take the brunt of the horrible things in this world. It's okay to me that these people in Africa are taking that on so that I can live my life the way I want to live. I don't know.
- [72:31]
A
Yeah. There's a new book about the beauty industry that just came out this month by Arabell Sicardi, who's fantastic. The book is called the House of Beauty. And the first chapter, well, the first chunk of the book is sort of like a choose your own adventure type section where these, like, you know, little one page or two page write ups on a facet of the beauty industry. And then you choose, like, where you want to jump ahead to. And the adventure might be you're coming from the point of view of a child who is mining mica, you know, being forced into some sort of child labor to make a sparkly eyeshadow or something. Or you're on like, a cargo ship that's transporting ingredients. And I think, yeah, that book in that section in particular has a lot to say about this, like, shadowland aspect of the beauty industry.
- [73:26]
B
And I should also mention, like, in Naomi Klein's analysis of this, it's like her argument is that like, like this shadowland always exists, I guess, and it's not like a fluke or a freak abnormality. Like they are very much. This is what she's talking about, doppelganger. Like they are the doppelganger to white supremacist culture. Like the people who are benefiting from that. Right. And it's like this always existent. And she's comparing it to like, Covid, for example, where it's like suddenly we see these people who are on the front lines, you know, slaughtering chickens in a meat factory or working at a hospital and like, having to wear plastic trash bags instead of ppe. And it's just kind of like laying bare how the world works largely. But, like, because it's now, I don't know, brought into a different relationship with the public, I don't know, we have to, like, confront it differently and we treat it as like this freak, you know, like this is brought on because of the pandemic. Like, oh, it's so crazy. But like, no, that's actually always how this operates. You're just being confronted with the reality of it.
- [74:33]
A
Yeah. For the first time.
- [74:34]
B
Normal situation.
- [74:35]
A
Yeah, completely. Yeah. I need to read that piece. We'll have to put it in the show notes, the one that you were just talking about. It sounds, I mean, horrific and.
- [74:44]
B
Yeah, it's very necessary. It's a video. Yeah. It's like a TED Talk. It is extremely horrific. And there are images that supplemented that are wofi. Yeah, I'll link out to it.
- [74:54]
A
Okay, great. On that note. Wow. On that note, should we talk about the Costume Institute's Spring 2026 exhibition?
- [75:05]
B
I love that we're having a double, like, extremely bleak and apocalyptic conversation. And, like, the dumbest, also most frivolous conversations back. There's the Doppelganger and there's the Shadowlands.
- [75:15]
A
That's our shadow.
- [75:17]
B
Now let's talk about the Met Gala. Yeah. Let's talk about the Costume Institute Spring 2026 exhibition, which was announced this week. It's costume art.
- [75:28]
A
Yeah, costume art. Which was, like, when I read about it, it's being described as a series of thematic body types. So I guess it's like clothes on the body. But the body types are the naked body, the classical body, and then those that have been traditionally overlooked, such as the pregnant body and the aging body and also the anatomical body and the mortal body, which. The mortal body killed me because I'm like, it's so funny that this is a separate category of body.
- [76:06]
B
Well, I wonder, too. Yeah. They never invite me to the preview, so I didn't get to preview the exhibit, unfortunately. I wonder also if they. By mortal body. It's also kind of grappling with. Because I saw there's a lot of Comme des Garcons. There's a lot of stuff that's like the bulging off the body, like, weird lumps and bumps collection. And I wonder if that, too, is maybe part of the mortal body.
- [76:29]
A
Yeah.
- [76:30]
B
Section. Kind of like when we transcend, like, the limits of the form, maybe. I have no idea. I'm purely guessing. Also a side note, I think we should, just in case people don't know this, but the theme of the exhibit is always different than the theme of the red carpet for the Met Gala.
- [76:49]
A
Right.
- [76:50]
B
So the theme for the exhibit is costume art, but we don't have the announcement yet for the theme for the red carpet. So, for example, last year, the exhibit was super fine tailoring black style. But then the red carpet theme was tailored for you. And I just love. They do this every year, and I think it's so funny. I love it. They make it, like, super vague and just, like, catch all. Like, please just wear a costume. Like, please just wear an outfit that's like, vaguely related to anything at all. We're begging you. And you, like, can't make it too hard for celebrities. And so this year, I do feel like the theme is just gonna be, like, wear a costume. It's a fancy dress party. Like, wear something a little kooky that's not like you. And they're gonna be like, okay, they're gonna like, put on a masquerade mask or something.
- [77:33]
A
Interesting. I know. I wonder. I mean, because I was looking at the, the website as they're like, announcing this. And what is the. What is the piece of art that they're using? Oh. So the main image to promote this is this terracotta statuette of the goddess Nike. And so it's a lot of this kind of like, old Greek statue. Yeah. So I wonder if the theme might be related to that in some way to like, goddesses or the idealized body. I mean, it made me think of how much the David, the statue of the David has been functioning in men's marketing. Specifically, like, there's that protein bar called David. There's a lot of, like, is that.
- [78:23]
B
Where the name for that protein bar comes from?
- [78:26]
A
Yeah.
- [78:26]
B
And have I said on the podcast before that that protein bar is God awful. It is one of the worst protein bars I've ever had in my life.
- [78:33]
A
I think I read this in your mess recommends.
- [78:34]
B
It's like having a power bar in the 90s. Like, that is bleak. That is darkness. I just don't. The technology has really advanced since then. I don't know what they're up to or why anyone's talking about them. I do think I've said this on a podcast before.
- [78:46]
A
Yeah, probably. I mean, it's like a real taste of like, women's marketing where it's, you know, here's the idealized body that doesn't actually exist in our marketing. And then we're going to force feed you some of the most disgusting food you've ever eaten in pursuit of this body.
- [79:05]
B
Also funny because, like, the statue of David is like as tall as a building. You know what I mean? Like beyond, like the anatomical, like not being a real body, it's like it literally the proportion, like, it's just not. It's a fantastical body.
- [79:18]
A
Yes, exactly.
- [79:20]
B
In the true sense. It's just very funny that that is like the male ideal.
- [79:23]
A
Right. I mean, it's also. The fantastical body is also the Female ideal. Like, I feel like this exhibit is very now even looking back at these, like old statues of bodies because they weren't modeled after real people or real bodied. These were like idealized visions of what the gods in all of their divine glory might look like, which has become the ideal for humans. So it's kind of like the body as an art project of idealization, like mixing and matching these different ideal body parts onto your body through surgery. Yeah, yeah. I don't know.
- [80:01]
B
Definitely a bodies on bodies trend as.
- [80:03]
A
Well, you know, so bodies on bodies.
- [80:05]
B
Body as costume, body as trend. And I'm. I am curious how celebrities are going to interpret this and if they are going to show us kind of any of these overlooked bodies, as the exhibit calls them.
- [80:17]
A
Overlooked bodies.
- [80:18]
B
Yeah, I mean, someone has to do a pregnancy reveal, right?
- [80:21]
A
Yes, they must.
- [80:22]
B
Has to. That's the law. But, like, are we gonna see an aging body? Is Cardi finally gonna put those aging prosthetics back on and give us what we've all been asking for since the Garden Time exhibit? I'm just, I'm in a. In a demographic where bodies are like, so normal. I don't know. So cookie cutter. Right. I'm. I'm interested to see if anyone's gonna play.
- [80:46]
A
Right. With bodies. I was just gonna say I feel like the Hollywood version of the aging body, which has been trending for some time, is just like, look at how young this actually aging body looks. It's like Jennifer Lopez. Can you believe she's 50? She looks like she's 25 or something. So, yeah, it would be interesting.
- [81:05]
B
She only works out four hours a day.
- [81:07]
A
Can you believe a different version of an aging body that appears to be an aging body?
- [81:14]
B
Yeah. I was also struck by the mortal body section because it reminded me I had this conversation and I can't remember who I had this conversation with, but we were talking about the bodies on bodies trend and specifically J. Hart, the musician who showed up at the VMAs with four arms. And someone was telling me that it reminds them of Indian gods and goddesses who have multiple arms. And I was like, wow, that's so interesting. And I do wonder. The trend to me already seems to be like, like something about AI as well. Something about, like, moving beyond, like, the traditional restraints of like, the physical form and like, what our bodies can allow us to do to like, move into the realm of the hyper real, like a fictional, a fully fictional body that can actually exist. And I was like, what? And it makes sense to me that it is also in that vein, like a gesture towards divinity. Like. Like the body, a man made body beyond what. What God, quote unquote created.
- [82:14]
A
Right. Or our new God technology, AI. If we're thinking of gods as what we worship and worship as what we sacrifice our time and our brain space to, I think you could say AI is. Is a sort of God figure and all. All intelligent being or something. And I'm thinking of the extra fingers and extra arms and legs as like ChatGPT prompts kind of gone wrong. But this is the body in the image of. Of the AI God.
- [82:45]
B
You know, I think that's really interesting. Yeah, I think there's something there.
- [82:51]
A
And then, of course, we have to. We have to say that the exhibit is being made possible by Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sanchez Bezos.
- [83:01]
B
Of course it is. Of course. Because they're obsessed with becoming popular.
- [83:06]
A
Yeah, Rich people.
- [83:08]
B
They are obsessed with being popular and invited to cool things and interacting with cool people, which is why you'll notice they had a bunch of celebrities they've never met before in their entire lives at their wedding because they want attention and they want to feel like they're in the cool crowd. And Kim Kardashian does a lot of that for them, I'll tell you that. And now Anna Wintour does a lot of that for them. Because I don't know what they're paying her. I don't know what deals they're working out on the back end, but something's happening. Something's happening. I mean, I already knew something was happening when they did the whole, like, Jeff and Lauren editorial in the magazine. That was blue Origin ad. Super weird.
- [83:45]
A
Yeah. And then the digital cover, and then.
- [83:47]
B
The digital cover for their wedding. And then, I don't know. You know, the Bezos' were everywhere during Paris Fashion Week in the front row at every big haute couture show. And I'm just like, I know that we're an industry that obsessed with money, run by money, but it's like, what happened to being elitist? Fashion used to be a lot meaner. You know, we used to be a lot more judgmental, and we wouldn't let losers like that buy their way into the front row ever. And I just like a little bit of the cattiness, a little bit of the bitchiness to come back for two people specifically. But it's like, it speaks to. I don't know that you can really buy your way into anything because, like, clearly they bought their way into these front rows because even I was Thinking, like, are the Bezos even, like Vic's very important customers, for those who don't know, for, you know, because brands, if you are a very important customer, you will sit at the front row of the show that you're a very important customer at because they want you to look at the clothes. They want you to write down what you want and buy them. Right. That's traditionally what fashion shows were for. You know, they were for buyers, both individual buyers and store buyers. And now they're just like media spectacles. But I was like, are the Bezos even Vic's? Because I don't think they are.
- [84:59]
A
I wouldn't say so. I don't know. I'm thinking, can we just blame this all on Kanye? Like, Kanye bringing Kim into the fold.
- [85:06]
B
Kim bringing the floodgates.
- [85:09]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [85:10]
B
Can't keep anybody out now.
- [85:11]
A
Yeah. I think this is all Kanye's fault.
- [85:14]
B
I'm fine with that. I'm fine with blaming the Nazi for everything that's going on that's bad. Currently that we're saying as we should. I always think with Vic's. This is a very abstract reference, but people should know. This is one of my favorite articles ever written, is there's this guy. There's this author, Buzz Besinger. He wrote Friday Night Lights, and he.
- [85:34]
A
Oh, yes, you've talked about this man before.
- [85:36]
B
I've talked about him before. One of my favorite essays of all time, he wrote for GQ in, like, 2011 or 2012. At the time. They've since changed the title. At the time, it was called Confessions of a Straight Male Shopaholic. And it was about. He has a fetish for leather, Specifically gushy leather. And so he was like. He was bankrupting himself buying Gucci leather. But because he was doing that, he was a Vic. And so every season, they would fly him out to Milan and set him front row. And so anyway, when I think about Vic's, I always think about Buzz Besinger in his sexual addiction to leather.
- [86:12]
A
I need to reread that.
- [86:13]
B
It's one of the greatest essays on fashion, I think, ever written. But, yeah, it's a personal obsession of mine.
- [86:20]
A
I also wonder. I think the beauty industry is going to have a great time with this particular Costume Institute theme. And depending on what the theme of the Met Gala is, I think the beauty industry is really going to thrive in this one because, I mean, you know, since the beginning of time. But recently I have been seeing a lot more marketing that leans into this idea of the body as art and face as. As art or as a canvas for art. And I think that's going to be like a really natural tie in for beauty with this particular theme.
- [87:00]
B
Also, what is IMS painted on clothing if not body as art?
- [87:04]
A
Completely. Completely.
- [87:06]
B
As blank canvas to receive.
- [87:09]
A
Yes. And it's often like when we're using art in beauty marketing, it's often used to frame beauty as something just like super valuable and like essential to like human life and fulfillment and flourishing. Something expressive and artistic. And then I think what gets lost in that messaging is the fact that like art, art is an object. And so body as art, face as art is inherently objectifying. Like the beauty industry loves to frame like pun intended women as the particular object of the artwork. Like a canvas for expression or like clay to be sculpted.
- [87:51]
B
In this case, we're talking about celebrity bodies which are literally commodities used to sell whatever. Completely.
- [87:59]
A
Yeah. So I think, I think there's going to be a lot of that from the beauty industry in the lead up to this year's Met Gala.
- [88:07]
B
Oh yeah. I would also just like to add my personal conspiracy theory that I did say on our friend Alyssa's podcast earlier this month, but it just got me thinking with like the Bezos, like deep entrenchment with all these fashion brands, like we are 1000%, maybe even as soon as next year going to get a Runway show in space. I just know it. I know it in my bones. I can feel it.
- [88:32]
A
I completely agree. Yes. And that was actually close to one of my predictions for this year, my beauty predictions. I thought we were going to see Blue Origin backed or Space X backed skin care the same way we have like NASA backed skincare products.
- [88:48]
B
Blue Origin Spa. Spa in space.
- [88:50]
A
Exactly, exactly. Like this is going to happen for sure. For sure.
- [88:55]
B
And Vogue is going to get the exclusive on it.
- [88:59]
A
Of course. Of course. Should we move on to the mess of the month?
- [89:04]
B
Let's talk mess of the month. Mine's quite, quite simple, quite straightforward. And It's Jennifer Aniston's 30 year old toe riddle.
- [89:13]
A
There's something about that that's so beautiful to me.
- [89:15]
B
I think it's so. There's something so beautiful about to me. So to clarify, no one has confirmed, no one's confirmed that she's been wearing this toe ring for 30 years. I'm extrapolating to 30. Page six says at least since 2001, but I'm going to say since friend days seems like a safe guess. So I'm going to say it's 30 years and also page six is doing this entirely based off photo research. So they just looked through all of the Getty images that like exist of her looking for toe rings, and the earliest example they found was in 2001. Wow. So no one's asked her about this? No. There's no quote from Jennifer Aniston. She did not confirm this. She is not participating in this story. Page Six did photo research and is saying she's been wearing the same toe ring. It's a gold. It's gold. It's a thin band.
- [90:01]
A
I think it would have been much more efficient for a reporter to just reach out for comment it a thousand percent. Maybe they did. I don't know.
- [90:07]
B
There's no way Jeffrey Aniston is responding to Page Six for comment on her goddamn toe ring. I'll tell you that. She's got bigger fish for fries. She does not care. But it's the same toe, same appearance ring. So they're speculating and I, I think that's a solid speculation. The first Getty image sighting seems to be from the premiere of the good girl in 2001. That's what they're referencing.
- [90:28]
A
Throwback.
- [90:29]
B
And then I most notably, I suppose the toe rings claim to fames is she wore it to the Emmys in 2002 and she wore it on the COVID of InStyle in 2018. And I just, I love it because it's such normal, regular ass behavior to like buy a piece of jewelry you love and wear it for 30 years. Like, yeah, yeah. But like in celebrity world, that's insane. Like nobody does that. No one even wears it genuinely is. No one even wears the same pair of jeans twice in their entire life, let alone one, you know, very regular, boring toe ring for 30 years. And it's, it's just funny. Sad to me that this is like a big story that a celebrity brought, bought something she loves and has worn it multiple times. But.
- [91:17]
A
And alert the presses.
- [91:19]
B
Yeah, I don't know. And there are moments like that sometimes in fashion press where like the normal. I mean, you know this in beauty too. But sometimes the regular breaks through.
- [91:28]
A
Right? Well, well, it's very like Pamela Anderson not wearing makeup. Like most women in the world are not wearing makeup every day. But because it's a celebrity, it's like, oh my God. Exactly that what's happening.
- [91:39]
B
And I, I love that she loves her toe ring. I think that's beautiful. And it is so like 90s famous person of her to also love a toe ring.
- [91:48]
A
You know who has some gorgeous toe rings right now? Chan Liu. I was on the Chan Liu website the other day because they started an early black not sponsored. I just love of chanl. I have some gorgeous scarves from them from back in the day when I was like doing styling and they threw some extra scarves into the bag and.
- [92:08]
B
I was like, all right, I'm gonna.
- [92:09]
A
Take this, but some beautiful toe rings on the site. And I had two of them in my cart and I was like, maybe I should buy these toe rings. And I, I ultimately took them out. But I'm, I'm intrigued.
- [92:18]
B
Young Jen Aniston, intrigued. I think you need to get into it. I didn't, I don't know about Chandler. I'll have to check out it out. Yeah, get myself a toe ring.
- [92:27]
A
Gorgeous stuff. Oh my gosh, we should get matching mess toe rings for, for the holidays or something.
- [92:32]
B
I'm open to it. And there is something sensory about having a ring on my toe that I don't know if I, I can accommodate it. But.
- [92:40]
A
And these rings are.
- [92:41]
B
I am.
- [92:42]
A
These are like cocktail rings for the toe.
- [92:44]
B
I'm interested. I'm interested. I just don't know if I can handle it ultimately. But maybe I'll, I'll learn to love it.
- [92:49]
A
We'll give it a go. Okay. My mess of the month is Sephora's holiday campaign, but not for the reason that you think. Well, I don't know. Did you see any of the controversy around their holiday campaign a couple weeks ago? It's weird.
- [93:04]
B
I saw literally just the controversy of people being mad at it. But I did never saw the original controversy itself. And then I never, I forgot and never bothered to look into why.
- [93:12]
A
Okay, so the controversy so far is that that their holiday commercial is Mariah Carey doing her annual like it's time reveal. And then it plays, you know, yeah, all, All I want for Christmas is you. And they turned that into a commercial for Sephora and people got really angry about it. There were a lot of think pieces about it because they were like, well, it's turning this, this anti capitalist Christmas anthem of like, I don't want stuff. I just want you into a consumer wrist thing. And I'm like, that's what.
- [93:45]
B
It's a Christmas carol that's used in like every commercial. Like Mariah herself uses it as a self promotional vehicle. It makes her a shitload of money.
- [93:53]
A
And she's licensed it to plenty of other companies in the past.
- [93:55]
B
There's like an every holiday campaign.
- [93:59]
A
So. Yeah, that does not really hold up to me. People also.
- [94:05]
B
Like, are we joking? The Woman wears a tiara, like, casually on the weekend to the grocery store.
- [94:09]
A
Like.
- [94:10]
B
Like, who are.
- [94:10]
A
She's not a capitalist. She's a monarchist.
- [94:12]
B
That's right. She's my. I am so sorry. She literally is like, a monarchist.
- [94:18]
A
They also don't like the. Some. Some of the scandal has been, like, the premise of the commercial is, like, Christmas is canceled. Billy Eichner plays an elf, and he's like, christmas is canceled this year. And Mariah's like, you can't cancel Christmas. And people are mad because they're saying, like, this is making fun of people who can't get Christmas gifts this year because they're poor. Or, like, people can't afford food. Christmas might have to be canceled. And, like, yes, of course. But I just don't see how this is different than literally any other holiday.
- [94:51]
B
Has anyone ever seen the Grinch?
- [94:53]
A
I know. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's like, it's a real reach.
- [94:58]
B
It is kind of just a trope of, like, Christmas. I get. I mean, I think people are particularly sensitive because this is a year where a lot of people can't afford presents or the Christmas as they would normally have one because of, you know, everything being.
- [95:13]
A
Yes, yes.
- [95:15]
B
So I understand how you could interpret, of course, legitimate in your lives. I think you're taking a regular capitalist Christmas trope and projecting your own financial situation, which is legitimate. I mean, but also, they've always been making commercials like this where Christmas is canceled or whatever.
- [95:34]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [95:36]
B
And then Mariah has to save Christmas, I presume.
- [95:39]
A
Yeah, Mariah saves Christmas, and she gets into Santa's sleigh and flies around the Statue of Liberty, which, to me is what is the most fascinating and strange part of this whole thing. It really gave me, like, post 911 flashbacks to where it was, like, the best thing you can do for your country is to shop.
- [96:01]
B
Yeah, but that.
- [96:02]
A
Yeah, that ending shot of Maria flying around the Statue of Liberty was not part of the scandal.
- [96:09]
B
I'm curious what Sephora thinks they were doing with the Statue of Liberty imagery.
- [96:15]
A
I tried to do some thinking about this, and I'm reaching here, but I was thinking, like, it really does evoke this, like, go to marketing trope that like. Like, beauty is somehow, like, liberatory or patriotic or, like, even feminist. And that goes back to, like, the, you know, now debunked myth that Elizabeth Arden handed out red lipsticks to the suffragettes as they were marching in 1912 for the right to vote. Oh, my gosh. It's like, iconic Lore part of every red lipstick campaign ever, like, gives lipstick this, like this claim to feminism. So that was the closest I could get to why Statue of Liberty? I don't know. But anyway, here's my issue with the Sephora holiday gifting campaign and it's that the gifts that they're suggesting are insulting and make very bad gifts. So I actually went into a Sephora this weekend because I was getting my sister in law some Aesop soap and the Aesop store is right next to a Sephora and I was like, oh, let me go in. And they had all their gift displays out. And so under a banner that said skincare Gifts, I found this product set from Dr. Idris and it's called the Dr. Idris Doctor's Orders Major Fade Start Kit. And I'm just like, who would you give this gift to? And say it's the doctor's orders that you have to fix your face. I've been noticing some hyperpigmentation. You must fade. Merry Christmas.
- [97:43]
B
Merry Christmas. You have some dark spots I can't look at any longer.
- [97:46]
A
Yeah, Gifts of Joy. Under the banner Gifts of Joy was the doctor Dennis Gross Fill Plump and Firm Kit. I cannot imagine that I would be joyful if somebody gave me that unprompted. There's also the Boost Collagen Brighten and Firm kit with a red light mask and the Peel Vault, the Chemical Peel vault, which just doesn't seem very joyful to me. And then under the banner Gifts of Love will was the Charlotte Tilbury Airbrush Flawless set, which like, just don't think Airbrush her face by telling your loved one you could use, you could use this. You could use this. I just think like, yeah, beauty. Beauty gifts are almost exclusively bad gifts. And the gift, he would almost like exclusively be better off without them.
- [98:34]
B
My problem with all of those is, as always, the copy, like, who is coming up with these names? They're the most just like ponderous, like unpronounced, like, why are we doing that? You simplify, Streamline.
- [98:46]
A
I know.
- [98:47]
B
Add, add, phrasing, you know, like, what are we doing? Dr. Idris doctor's orders. Da, da, da, da da. Like, what are we doing?
- [98:53]
A
Imagine, imagine like giving your mother in law the Dr. Idris doctor's orders Major Fade Starter Kit. That's so. That's bad. That's bad. I'm sorry, it's bad.
- [99:03]
B
It is, yeah. You are implying, like, I've noticed problems. It's like, yeah, So I see these couple spots here, I just thought, I don't want to look at that anymore and I thought maybe you could fix that up.
- [99:12]
A
Merry Christmas to me. I don't have to see your ugly face anymore.
- [99:16]
B
Dark spotted face. You faded away.
- [99:19]
A
Ugh. But yeah, that's my mess. That's it. That's all I got.
- [99:23]
B
Love it.
- [99:24]
A
Well, thanks for sticking with us through another ad free.
- [99:28]
B
Yeah.
- [99:28]
A
Two hours episode of of the Mess World podcast. Yeah.
- [99:33]
B
Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving if you're in America.
- [99:36]
A
Yeah. And maybe we will see you on Monday, December 1st for our doppelganger chat if you want to dive deeper into the the world of. Of mirrors with us.
- [99:47]
B
Yeah. If you're ready to see evil twins everywhere you look from now on, get into it.
- [99:51]
A
They are everywhere.
- [99:52]
B
They're everywhere. You can't stop seeing them, including in your own mirror, I'll tell you that.
- [99:58]
A
Okay, bye guys.
- [100:01]
B
Sam.