On this episode: Talking with Guardian “Ask Ugly” columnist and beauty critic Jessica DeFino on why it's hard to challenge the beauty industry, the slick rebranding of skincare as self-care, concerning beauty trends right now and more.
For each episode of the Don’t Pretend We’re Dead podcast, I’ll be talking with women doing really cool work right now in the fields of advocacy, arts, culture, food, journalism, science and technology. Let’s meet them together. Subscribe for free to learn about new episodes.
Mentioned in this episode with Jessica DeFino:
Articles by DeFino:
“Plumpgasm Nudegasm: The small absurdities of Met Gala beauty,” The Review of Beauty, May 9, 2025.
“Are we heading for a beauty burnout?,” Vogue Business, April 14, 2025.
“The Substance Is A Fairy Tale (But So Is Beauty),” The Review of Beauty, March 25, 2025.
“Post-Election, Beware 'Self-Care': Would Audre Lorde recognize "self-care" today? Would we recognize her?”, The Review of Beauty, November 15, 2024.
“EAT ME,” The Review of Beauty, October 8, 2023.
“I Worked My Ass Off for the Kardashian-Jenner Apps. I Couldn’t Afford Gas.”, Vice, April 12, 2022.
Nonprofit groups to donate to:
Transgender Law Center
Slow Factory
The BeautyWell Project
Book recommendations:
Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom
Ugly Feelings by Sianne Ngai
Disobedient Bodies by Emma Dabiri
Ugly by Anita Bhagwandas
Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert
About Jessica DeFino
Jessica DeFino is the award-winning beauty reporter and critic who writes the Guardian US’s beauty advice column, Ask Ugly, and has been called "the woman the beauty industry fears" by the Sunday Herald. In addition to her column in the Guardian, Jessica also writes a newsletter, The Review of Beauty, and has a monthly podcast with fellow fashion critic Emily Kirkpatrick, called The Review of Mess, which takes a critical look at the dregs of pop culture. Jessica started The Review of Beauty “to cover what traditional beauty publications don’t, won’t, or can’t — whether that’s to appease advertisers, preserve brand relationships, or cling to the conventional wisdom, outdated ideals, and marketing myths that keep consumers consuming.” Her freelance reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Sunday Times, Vogue, Allure and more.
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Transcript
Hi there. Welcome to the Don't Pretend We're Dead podcast. I'm Karina Zappian. Every episode, I'll be talking with women who are doing some really cool work today in the fields of advocacy, the arts, culture, food, science, and technology. The way I think of it is women who give me a shred of hope in these dark times.And who doesn't need a little bit more of that these days? Today I'm talking with Jessica DeFino, the award-winning beauty reporter and critic who writes the Guardian Beauty Advice column, Ask Ugly, and has been called the woman the beauty industry fears by the Sunday Herald. In addition to her column in The Guardian,
0:35
Jessica also writes a weekly-ish newsletter, The Review of Beauty, and has a monthly podcast with fellow fashion critic Emily Kirkpatrick called The Review of Mess, which takes a critical look at the dregs of pop culture. In her writing, Jessica takes on everything from the body horror of the wedding industry to the
0:55
double standards we set for gap-toothed celebrities we admire versus our own harsh expectations of teeth perfection. I first fell in love with Jessica's writing when I read a term she coined cosmetic cannibalism. our curious desire to consume beauty products that make us more consumable ourselves.
1:12
And my love for her work only grew when I read her take on the movie The Substance, which she regards as a feminist fairy tale, but that, a quote from her, its reflection of the conditions of women's oppression has been repeatedly mistaken for endorsement.
1:28
And so I really love that explanation for why some people are regarding it as anti-feminist. So Jessica is a bit busy these days, but has kindly accepted our invite to join us on Don't Pretend We're Dead, which we are very excited by. Hello, Jessica, and welcome to the podcast.
1:44
Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
1:47
Awesome. I'm just going to get into it. What I often find interesting is some of the absurdist humor that can be pumped from this topic of writing about beauty in which I feel like you're really excellent at leaning into. The Met Gala is always, of course, such a rich source,
2:03
which struck me more than anything with your take on the Met Gala this year was not the writing on Zendaya or Doja Cat, but on Walter Goggins. yeah when you said if sabrina carpenter is an example of effort sold as effortlessness walton goggins is an example of effortlessness sold as effort yeah
2:23
and then you mentioned that his stylist wanted to create an unexpected look for the met gala and so what you mentioned was what's unexpected is not goggins's hairstyle which looks roughly the same as it did when he played a rugged and greasy-haired character on The White Lotus, but the work that went into it,
2:41
and then you go ahead on to proceed and list it, $250 worth of Moroccan oil products, including the shampoo, conditioner, detangler, volumizing mist, volumizing mousse, texture spray, texture clay, and hairspray. So I think of this a lot with some celebrities. I honestly often think about this when I look at Jarvis Cocker.
3:01
This is a man who used to keep journals on the exact brands of coat he wanted to wear in his band Pulp. So I can't imagine that this doesn't somehow extend to his disheveled hair routine that he has now in whatever 60s or 70s celebrity he's clearly modeling after. So I wanted to ask you,
3:17
does this often happen that many celebrities often spend a ton of time and money to look disheveled or something? They do.
3:27
I think so. I think the disheveled look is an aesthetic like any other and it can come from like pure effortlessness, of course, but especially in the celebrity sphere, particularly on a red carpet and especially Especially like at the Met Gala, that sort of disheveled appearance is actually a very studied,
3:47
a studied version of it that's actually meticulously crafted to seem as if it's messy when it's very precisely done.
3:56
Very, very precise. Good to know. Yeah, often kind of one of this because there's such a focus on women. It's the no makeup makeup, but I imagine there is quite the equivalent with men. So I just thought that was pretty amusing. Yeah. You also said something really interesting, and you had a recent article in Vogue Business.
4:13
And I thought this to me was really interesting, that in times of crisis such as today, instead of you would think like the average beauty routine constricting, we're in kind of this time of huge political upheaval. But you said it actually expands in direct proportion to political upheaval, what you called the aesthetic index.
4:32
And I didn't even think about this, but you mentioned during the Great Recession 2007-2008, The financial crisis coincided with the arrival of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which I didn't even put those together. But what also particularly interested me was COVID. I've always thought COVID is this time where we just let the beauty go, couldn't see.
4:52
Everybody talks about, I stopped wearing a bra, I stopped wearing a bra after that, whatever. But you actually mentioned... I was wondering if you could talk about this a little bit, that people were actually pretty focused, fixated on beauty code.
5:05
Yeah. The beauty industry saw a huge growth during COVID. Maybe not the first month of lockdowns and precautions, but after that... Yeah, I think everyone was feeling very out of control. And as I put forth in that Vogue business piece, usually in times of like political upheaval, when everything feels out of control,
5:29
the closest thing we have that makes us feel like we're in control of something is our bodies. So people tend to use more products, buy more things, try to meet particular beauty standards. Yeah. When they're feeling out of control politically or socially or economically, because it's OK, this is the one thing that like I own.
5:51
I am in control of my body. I think the big cosmic joke is that, of course, we are not like the products that we're using and the standards that we're trying to meet are like we're culturally coerced to want those products and meet those standards. So it's not quite the thing.
6:05
this display of control that we might feel it is. But yeah, during COVID, it was a big rebrand from beauty to self-care. So a lot of skincare was now being marketed as self-care, as part of a healthcare routine. We took a lot of things. It stopped mattering about what things looked like necessarily in the marketing and
6:25
more about how they would feel or make you feel. We also saw in the years following COVID, a huge fragrance boom, which I think is a big part of this shift from the Visual marketing. How will you appear if you use this product to like feelings based marketing or
6:42
nostalgia based marketing is how will you feel if you use this product? And then we also had this sort of mass migration online into Zoom rooms, just like we are now where people were suddenly confronted with their own experiences. mirror image on the screen all day every day when normally in the workplace you're
7:01
not forced to look at yourself in a mirror as you talk and people developed this real hyperfixation on what they looked like and their perceived flaws and were going not only to Sephora and Ulta or the drugstore and getting skincare and makeup to work on or correct these perceived flaws,
7:20
but also going into cosmetic injectors offices and plastic surgeons offices and saying, OK, I can see things that I don't like and I don't want to see them anymore. And choosing to go like the semi-permanent or permanent route to be confronted with an image that they liked a little bit more on Zoom.
7:39
So this was kind of a little bit after lockdown when people started going into it.
7:43
Yeah, I would say like 2021, 2022.
7:47
It makes sense. I just saw my dentist and I was like, I never noticed this with my teeth. And there I am thinking about Invisalign because I've seen myself on videos all day long for work. So I guess, yeah, you just look at your personal self. It does make sense. But yeah, it is interesting.
8:03
And there was like a misappropriation of an Audre Lorde quote, wasn't there?
8:07
Oh, yeah. And I think the big quote that like started circulating, I would say after like 2016, I The election, the first election of Donald Trump, a lot of people were circulating these activist quotes, one in particular from Audre Lorde that said self. What is the quote exactly?
8:27
It's like self caring for myself is an act of self-preservation. It's an act of political warfare, something along those lines. And. That is very true. We need to care for ourselves in order to be the best political activists and most effective political activists that we can be.
8:44
But the beauty industry really took the popularity of that quote and ran with it and just sort of inserted the word skincare instead of self-care and really imbued, yeah, the beauty space with this sort of liberatory political potential that I don't think it actually has and I don't think it's actually lived up to in the years since.
9:06
I was wondering how all of these things got so well combined, so smoothly. I don't know. They're very good at what they do.
9:14
Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I think the industry is partly good at what they do because a lot of people in the industry... I think are very well-intentioned and are just repeating these beauty culture ideas that we're all taught like almost from the moment of our birth, these cultural messages that your beauty is your worth.
9:36
And when you look as beautiful as possible, you will be treated better. Like those things are true. I just don't think they're the things that we want to hinder political activism on and say, if people treat me better when I'm beautiful, being beautiful is actually great for me. It's OK.
9:53
Maybe let's look at what are the underlying factors there. And can we change that? Can we direct our energy toward changing the world to better reflect our bodies versus changing our bodies to fit into the world?
10:06
No, that totally makes sense. I did have a question. So I know that previously you used to work on the Kardashian-Jenner apps, like all five of the Kardashian, Kourtney, Kim, Khloe, Kylie, whatever, Kendall. And I know that's an experience you wrote about for Vice magazine.
10:22
I know you've written for a lot of beauty and fashion publications in the past. What made you decide to turn more of a critical eye towards the beauty industry? Was there a certain event, a certain kind of confluence events?
10:33
Mm-hmm. There were so many things. I think it was like a lesson that I had to learn over and over again in different ways. But I think the first like glimmers of something being amiss in beauty culture that I was very much a part of was one working.
10:51
It was a company called Whale Rock Industries that ran these apps with the sister. So working at Whale Rock. And working on the Kardashian-Jenner apps, it was the first time in my career that I'd been on the receiving end of beauty PR. So I was getting a ton of free products, the top of the line products,
11:05
products I had lusted after my entire adult life, like La Mer. Oh, my goodness. Yes, exactly. And so that felt very exciting. And of course, I used all of the products. I was obsessed with all of the products. And my skin steadily grew like worse and worse over time. It was extremely reactive. It was red.
11:25
It was peeling. It was dry. It was oily. It was oozing. I developed contact dermatitis, I think, from a combination of just like overuse of products and also just being in a high stress environment. Stress also really affects your skin. And was prescribed topical steroids for the dermatitis, had a horrible reaction to the topical steroids,
11:45
was just like thrown into this like this space where my skin was like literally peeling off of my face. My skin was so sensitive. I couldn't even splash it with water without it burning. And I was sort of forced to go through this almost like recalibration phase where I
11:59
couldn't put anything on my face in order to let it heal for a couple of weeks at a time. And having to go out in public like that, not having the shield of beauty products that I had used in my life up until then, really did a number on me. I felt absolutely worthless.
12:15
I felt like I did not deserve to be seen. I did not deserve to date. I did not deserve to be at work, to have this career. And that really got me thinking because I was like, wait, what else have I built up in my life?
12:29
What other sense of like self or self-worth do I have without beauty if not feeling beautiful for this number of weeks that I have to go through in order to heal my skin is enough to make me feel like my life is not even worth living. Like something is seriously wrong here.
12:43
Like I've invested way too much in like the aesthetics of life and not enough in the experience of life. And that was my first little wake-up call to start thinking a little bit more deeply and a little bit more critically about the beauty industry. And, yeah,
12:57
I eventually pivoted into freelance beauty reporting to try and explore some of these topics. And then in the reporting and trying to get these articles placed at mainstream publications, I quickly realized why this sort of harmful side of beauty and beauty culture isn't really talked about, and that's because the beauty media is dependent on beauty advertisers. And so there's this almost inherently corrupt relationship there that really makes it challenging to talk about beauty in a more critical way. Which kind of fueled my fire, I would say.
13:30
Yeah, no, that leads into my next question. I do feel there's, I know you started the review of beauty newsletter to explore how the current beauty culture impacts us physically and mentally. And yeah, I noticed there's not a ton of critics who do what you do on such an ongoing basis.
13:46
Occasionally there will be a book here or there critiquing the beauty industry or existing trends, but somebody like you who does it weekly on a weekly basis and looks at it that often is very rare and very valuable to me. What do you think is the advantage of doing this work on a more regular basis than
14:03
turning out an occasional book, that kind of thing?
14:07
I mean, I would love to do both. I'm sure you'll be there. Working on that book and it is a much more difficult and lengthy process than anticipated. Yeah, I think being able to have this like ongoing conversation is is really helpful because it's not just looking at sort of the broad strokes.
14:26
I'm writing this newsletter right now, and I'm also working on a book, so I can kind of compare and contrast. And I think when I'm looking at book material, I'm almost tempted to do these sort of look at things from a more like zoomed out, overarching perspective. And sometimes the specifics get lost.
14:43
And I think in beauty industry, the specifics are actually very complex. compelling and when something is like happening in the moment and I can take a look at it and take it apart with a critical eye something that might not seem like it's
14:58
as big of a deal something that I want to put in a book format a product launch with a product name that I find abhorrent or something like that like it might not feel important enough overall to fit into that book but it feels like
15:13
timely enough and of the moment enough and interesting enough to put into a weekly newsletter. And I think, yeah, I think the specifics help readers identify these larger overarching themes of beauty culture in like our day to day lives. Whereas when you read a book, sometimes there are I don't know,
15:34
a lot of the books that I've read on beauty culture, I find them completely inspiring and also hard to apply in an everyday sense because there's like this push-pull of, okay, yeah, I know beauty culture is harmful or the beauty industry is manipulative,
15:48
but how do I navigate that in my everyday life when I feel like I want to buy this product or what's the harm in adopting a tend-to-step skincare routine or something, you know? So I'm trying to like bridge that gap between, yeah, zoomed out analysis and commentary and making it applicable to day-to-day situations.
16:10
I think one thing you're really great at is bringing in, putting it in this larger, it's not easy to do, putting it in this larger historical and social context and also adding the dialogue of other writers writing about beauty and putting in a lot of the financials attached to it, etc.
16:30
And bringing all of these together is, I think, such a great skill set you have. What I was wondering was, we talked about these, you were talking about some of the books you're reading, and sometimes it's hard to find that more practical day-to-day application. Are there any books about beauty that you regularly fall back?
16:46
I know everybody talks about the beauty myth, but I think that's the one I've read, but beyond the beauty myth, if there's any recommendations you have about ones that you're like, this is really...
16:57
Yes, so many. I mean, my number one is always Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom. She's a brilliant sociologist and just really just cutting commentary about the beauty industry. Let's see. Right now, I've been really into Sian Nye, who is a critical literary theorist who's written a lot of books on aesthetics. She's written a book called Ugly Feelings.
17:20
One called Our Aesthetic Categories and one called Theory of the Gimmick, which are not necessarily about the beauty industry in particular, but just cultural aesthetics overall with insights that I think are pretty easily applied to the beauty industry. So she's definitely someone I look up to quite a bit. Trying to think.
17:38
There's a great book called Disobedient Bodies by Emma Dabiri. There's a great book called Ugly by Anita Bhagwanda. Yeah, those are the ones that are coming to mind right now. There are. Oh, I just read this really great book, Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert,
17:57
which takes a look at the 2000s and misogyny in pop culture in the 2000s. I know. And so beauty culture is not the whole book, but there's definitely a chapter or two that are dedicated to beauty standards that are fascinating and depressing.
18:13
God, I just think of those American apparel years. Oh, my gosh. Yep. Of course they are in there. That's awesome. No, good to know. What do you like about the book Ugly? You mentioned that one.
18:26
I feel like Anita is I like consider her a contemporary like she is an editor who's been working in the beauty industry for a really long time which is actually kind of rare in beauty books. I feel like we often get a lot of beauty culture commentary from like a feminist
18:42
perspective or even from like a scientific perspective from dermatologists but There's not actually a ton in book format from the editors who are the ones writing about beauty day in and day out and know sort of the small corruptions in the industry and the pressures from advertisers and the press trips that you're sort of
19:02
bribed with and the products that you get. So I thought Anita just does a really fantastic job of weaving things. all of that experience into a broader cultural commentary. While also, and this is something that I don't really do in my writing, and I appreciate when other people can do it well,
19:19
weaving in like a real appreciation for beauty and all that it can be. That's not something that I really write about that much. I feel like there's so much of it out there of people championing beauty products that I'm like, I don't need to do this, even though, of course, I use some products in my day-to-day life.
19:35
But yeah, I think Anita and Ugly just really weaves all of that together very masterfully.
19:40
Do you ever think there are certain misconceptions about what you do or about how you feel about the beauty industry?
19:48
Yeah, I think that I don't even know if I would call it a misconception because it might be my fault that I haven't emphasized this part of my own ideology enough. But I think people think that I hate beauty or I'm like very anti beauty. And I don't feel that way at all.
20:05
I think I critique beauty because I love beauty so much. Most of my life has been oriented by beauty. toward beauty and around beauty and I feel like the work that I do now pulling it apart and critiquing it is born out of if not a love for it at least like a deep
20:25
obsession with it and a need to know why I am so obsessed why I did dedicate so much of my life to this pursuit and like a sort of Yeah, I guess justification for how I spent the earlier years of my career wanting to atone for that. But yeah,
20:44
I think it's because I believe in this almost like spiritual relationship to beauty that I feel compelled to critique the things in the industry that are like masquerading as spiritual beauty, but are really just purely physical manipulation or cosmetic adornment or there's a difference.
21:07
I always imagine it was also born of a fascination and interest as well.
21:11
Yeah, completely.
21:13
What do you find most difficult about critiquing the beauty industry? In some ways, I see them almost like silent force, like a silent air gas or like a monolithic, like Leviathan type of sort of thing.
21:25
I think the most difficult thing for me is... Trying to be aware of my own limitations and the limits of my own perspective. I think I had a couple of lessons that I learned a little bit earlier on in my career where I was really excited about what I was researching and writing.
21:41
And then only post-publishing in public outcry did I realize, oh, I missed a really key part of this. There are real sensitivities and especially cultural sensitivities about beauty routines because beauty is such a part of our lives and yeah I think balancing the critique with almost like a respect for the history of certain beauty
22:05
practices and an awareness that my own interpretation of events is not the only interpretation and bringing in yeah making sure that I'm just covering all of the bases and not just hating for the sake of hating
22:23
Fair enough. Which is easy to do and I love to do. I totally understand that and have definitely leaned on that too in my own writing. What would be to you the biggest change you dream of seeing with our current beauty standards and how do you think we can work towards that?
22:42
I know that you do donate to a number of different non-profits that have their own vision and whatnot.
22:48
Yeah, yeah. So some proceeds from the newsletter go to Slow Factory, which is all about decolonizing these large industries. It's mostly focused on fashion, but there's definitely some beauty in there too. And focusing on the environmental impact of these industries, which I think is something that's overlooked in beauty sometimes.
23:07
Proceeds go to Transgender Law Center because I firmly believe that a lot of the things that we do categorize under the beauty umbrella, right, are tools and tools that can be used to liberate or tools that can be used for harm. And I think in so many cases, plastic surgery can be this like amazing tool from
23:31
gender normative things it's an amazing tool for gender liberation and i definitely want to preserve that power and who's the other one oh the beauty well project who which is doing incredible work on colorism in beauty culture and white supremacy and doing the work to like both fight for safer products because a lot of like skin lightening
23:57
creams are still used it's still like an eight billion dollar industry a year globally and these products come with like really terrifying physical effects but then also addressing the roots of colorism and white supremacy and culture and making sure that at the same time as we're fighting for safer products we're also
24:15
working on fixing the culture so that people don't feel this pressure to use those types of products so those are the organizations that i'm not like affiliated with we're not like partnered but i donate to because i really believe in their mission for me right now i'm really interested in like
24:34
how much we could change beauty culture just by massaging the language that we use a little bit or being a little bit more precise in the language we use. So something that I'm really interested in is when is the word beauty not appropriate to describe what we're using it to describe?
24:52
And I would say that like most of the beauty industry is not about beauty at all. It's about appearance and beauty and appearance are very different things. And so I wonder if we could call the beauty industry the appearance industry, How would that affect our relationship to it?
25:07
And would that lessen any of the pressure we feel or the drive we have to use these products or change our bodies in these ways? Because I think the word beauty has a very deeply like spiritual, metaphysical connotation. And I think that's used a lot as justification for things that, you know. That's interesting.
25:29
I never think about it like as the, I don't know, it's kind of really an interesting thought. What is continuously surprising to you about the beauty industry or maybe or about people's reactions to the industry, say?
25:47
I think what's continuously surprising to me about the industry is I think actually most consumers have this idea of knowing better. Like, we're all kind of aware, like, beauty marketing's a little bit of a scam. We all make fun of it. And yet the, like, most dedicated beauty consumers, despite having this, like, this point of view,
26:12
still feel compelled to buy in, right? And, yeah... I'm always surprised by the gap between our beliefs and our behavior. I think when I started out, I assumed like people must not, if people are buying into the beauty industry at this rate, they must not know some of this stuff. But it's like, no, we know.
26:39
We all know. And we're doing it anyway. And I'm just really curious about that. What does that hinge? When do your beliefs and convictions actually start to modify your behavior? Yeah, I don't know. It's a great question.
26:58
Is there anything that never ceases to surprise you? You're like, yep. Classic.
27:06
Oh, that doesn't surprise me at all? I mean, like... the many ways like anti-aging has been rebranded. We're always coming up with new words to describe anti-aging that are supposedly not anti-aging, but in practice are the exact same thing as anti-aging. So we have like pro-aging and... Preserve aging and non aging. Yeah, it's like a portmanteau. Yeah.
27:32
Or like preventative aging or like the big one is aging gracefully. And these are all supposed to be terms that signal like aging is great. But when you look at the products they're promoting, they're used to reduce your wrinkles and erase your fine lines. And it's all the same as anti aging. So. Yeah, there's always,
27:54
anytime a new, exciting, supposedly positive term for anti-aging comes out, I must roll my eyes and...
28:03
fair enough speaking of terms okay I did love the phrase cosmetic cannibalism and bite me beauty did you and just this idea and I never even you never even think about it until you mentioned it but this idea of you're consuming things to to be
28:19
more consumable and edible yourself it's like I was I was in the I was on the tube yesterday and the woman next to me smelled like strawberries and I was like why do I want to bite her It's kind of creepy, but I don't know. And I thought about your phrase again.
28:35
Did you get any weird reactions on the cannibalistic aspect of this? It makes perfect sense to me.
28:44
The reactions are pretty split with people being like, yes, this makes perfect sense and really having fun with it. And then I think a big thing that I get that I got a lot for that piece was just like, It's not that deep. You're making way too much of this. It's not that big of a deal.
29:00
Or you don't need to go through all these lengths to try to analyze why we're doing it. It's just like people like the smell of strawberries, you know, which I think is a cop out. I don't believe in that sort of point of view. I think everything is deep. It is that deep. We're deep. No, it's weird.
29:15
There are layers to our behavior and what compels us to buy something or whatever it is. So, yeah, I think a lot of people had fun with that one, though.
29:25
Yeah. No, it's weird. I even think like, why do we say to a baby, I want to eat you up? It's weird, man. I don't know. I thought it was fun because it made me think of something and I just never, especially as somebody who always likes fruit scented perfumes and stuff like that. Let's see.
29:42
I think, God, so many questions. What are the three or maybe one just worst beauty trend right now? I know you're not supposed to hate, but this is just, I'm so curious.
29:55
No, I love to hate. I love to hate. Let me see.
29:59
I... One or a few, whatever, if you have more than one.
30:04
I'm going to say, I mean, I have so many. I think this... I'm concerned about... people now it seems we're moving away from this idea of having to appear effortless at least on social media to like wanting the effort one puts into their beauty routine to be acknowledged and celebrated as work and we're seeing a lot of
30:28
different things in the culture around this too like urban outfitters came out with those t-shirts a couple weeks ago that said like too hot to work um and things like that so i think we're seeing like this beauty labor being celebrated as like worthy labor that should be rewarded and
30:45
acknowledged and i think that's kind of a concerning place to get to i think there are layers of that that are interesting of like okay yes we're exposing the labor it takes to look a certain way like that exposure is good rather than hiding it under this like of effortlessness. But yeah,
31:02
I think we need to take it a step further and not be like, look at how hard I'm working. Aren't you proud of me? And just be like, whoa, look at how hard I'm working. And for what? So that is concerning to me. I am concerned about all of the
31:21
beauty partnerships with women's sports leagues and female athletes. I think like, of course, we should have like representation in the beauty industry. But I think combined with some other things that we're seeing, like culturally and politically, this like sort of mass migration of beauty brands into women's sports Isn't necessarily,
31:44
I think what it's saying is that there is no space a woman can go where she is not expected to be as beautiful as possible. Whereas previously, like sports were like a haven for where you didn't have to care about those things. I think beauty is really infiltrating every area of women's lives.
32:01
And there are aspects that are like, can be self-expression and celebratory and adornment and are great. Yeah. And then there are aspects of that that feel very oppressive. So that's a big one. And let's see. Yeah, those are the two things coming to mind right now.
32:21
Fair enough. No, that is a little frightening. I think there's always been this kind of look at some of the fashion. But that's, I don't know, when you have to also think of the beauty industry as well. I've always liked how... Some people can flaunt their own style on the rink, on the courts, etc.
32:41
But I think style is a different thing than, you know, making sure you look flawless at all times.
32:49
Yeah, I will say I think there is a huge difference between beauty that like adorns or decorates the body and then beauty that tries to like perfect or correct things. the body and i'm concerned about like the idea of like corrective beauty um
33:05
infiltrating all aspects of our lives great well thank you so much for being on uh
33:11
the show today really appreciate it jessica thank you so much for having me absolutely
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