Hey!

Last week I wrote about personal and political scapegoats and the heaven/hell of having something to blame all your problems on. The original inspiration for that essay was, randomly, a recent experience I had taking a new license photo, which had me thinking about the beauty industry in a new way, as a kind of scapegoat industrial complex. In the end, I didn’t mention beauty in the essay because it felt like a whole separate topic, one I’d rather explore in conversation. So I invited beauty critic Jessica DeFino on the podcast to discuss it.

Jessica writes FLESH WORLD and is, to me, a consistently steadying voice in the headache of modern beauty discourse. I asked her to help me explore the idea of scapegoating in beauty and naturally this lead us all over the place, from the classic cosmetic procedure debate (a mini version of which took place in my podcast comments a couple weeks ago) to our own beauty scapegoats. I hope we were delicate enough with our language to avoid making anyone feel attacked! I think and hope we all have the same goals and are just trying to collectively figure out a humane way forward. (If you missed Jessica’s first appearance on my podcast, you can find it here.) (Also shout out to my episode with the GOAT Barry Schwartz, who I mention in this ep.)

If you’re a free sub, welcome to the podcast! The episodes normally run on Wednesdays for my paid subs only, but I’m sharing today’s with everyone as a kind of part 2 to last week’s essay. You can listen through Substack (the site, the app) or your favorite podcast app by clicking the “Listen via…” button underneath the podcast player above.

Also, trust I tell the (stupid) license story in detail, and on account of my journalistic integrity, have provided the photos below…

Thanks for listening,Haley

p.s. ICYMI:-Lots of good discussion/analysis about Hannah Horvath and Fleabag in the discussion thread comments last Wednesday.-So many good recs for movies to watch with your kids (that don’t suck) under 15 things last week.

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