Glossier Has The Fragrance Market Locked Up
Glossier Has The Fragrance Market Locked Up
The Don't Buy List: Issue #81, guest-written by Ochuko Akpovbovbo.
Hello and welcome to another edition of THE DON’T BUY LIST! This month I’m handing the DBL reins over to a series of guest editors. Today’s list comes from , the writer behind the newsletter . Trust me — her business, beauty, and culture roundups are essential reading. But onto the links!
IN THIS ISSUE: Telemedicine! Testosterone replacement therapy! Hair growth start-ups! Skinny influencers! Releasing trauma for weight loss! Undetectable injectables! Medical hotels! Glossier’s padlocked press mailers! & more (plus a few quick notes from me at the end about non-skincare skincare, editorial affiliate sales, breast reductions, nipple care, The Substance, etc.)!
The Don’t Buy List: Issue #81
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Not enough people are talking about the toxic love triangle between men, telemedicine, and Testosterone Replacement Therapy. Thanks to fitness influencers, manosphere podcasters, and the occasional ex-presidential candidate, millions of men across America, young and old, are shooting up testosterone the way the rest of us pop multivitamins. According to healthcare research firm Iqvia Holdings, the 12-month total of dispensed prescriptions in America surpassed 10 million in February. Fun! Over the last two decades, private clinics have expanded the TRT market by becoming increasingly “flexible” about what counts as testosterone deficiency. Feeling fatigued? Take T. Lack of motivation? Have some T. Unexplained weight gain? Oh, you definitely need T. Because Hulu is the chosen host of all ethically questionable telemedicine ads, and because I’m unfortunate enough to be stuck in their ads tier, I get a front row seat to big pharma preying on the insecurities of men who dare to look even slightly different to Henry Cavill or Michael B. Jordan. But hey, there’s a sordid comfort in knowing that this kind of thing is big business across genders.
Case in point, hair growth brand Scandinavian Biolabs raised nearly $4.5M in Series A funding. This is just one of many funding announcements for hair growth companies I’ve seen in recent months. I know at least two young men saving up for trips to Turkey right now. Like I said, big business.
TikTok banned this “skinny influencer,” and just about every major publication covered the story. All I want to know is what kind of bad karma Liv Schmidt is carrying around with her. Because let’s be real, I’ve watched her videos—they’re sad, cringe, and potentially very harmful—but so are thousands of others like hers on TikTok. Liv’s “What I Eat in a Day” videos mirror many others on the app, the only difference being that Liv is clear about her goals—to be skinny. Most other influencers are smart enough to brand themselves as “wellness” influencers, showing off their “healthy” meals and preaching self control as the highest form of self love. They don’t care about being skinny; they only want to be well. Or strong. And always, healthy.
So no Liv, it’s not a sin to want to be thin. But it is a sin to say so.
Kids these days are losing weight simply by releasing their trauma. According to TikTok, at least. I spent the first sixteen years of my life in Nigeria, but I’d never met a self identified traumatized person until I moved to America. At my liberal arts college in Portland, everyone was traumatized, and I needed to tread carefully lest I trigger that trauma. I too was probably carrying a lot of trauma, and the key to a happy, fulfilled life was finding ways to release said trauma. No one I met had yet managed that, but it was a utopia to which we could collectively aspire.
It was a weird four years.
I would have been a lot more dedicated to my “inner work” if I had known that was the key to dropping my freshman fifteen. Because according to a slew of apps and influencers, “somatic exercise” or “trauma releasing” will help heal my mind and body from traumatic events and improve my sleep and weight loss. Wild.
Dazed said we’re about to enter the “undetectable era” of beauty, and it’s the worst thing I’ve read all week. It used to be that you could tell what kind of work someone had done, and if not that, you could at least tell that they had gotten work done. There was a certain comfort in knowing that even if you didn’t look like her, that was okay, because neither did she. Technically. But what happens when cosmetic surgery advances to the level where the procedures people are doing to their faces are undetectable?
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