A Serum For Your Teeth

The Don't Buy List: Issue #57

Hello, dewy dust bunnies, and welcome to another edition of the The Don’t Buy List! I have good news: The beauty industry is running out of body parts to correct, as evidenced by the just-launched Luminous Shine Teeth Serum from Kendall Jenner’s MOON Oral Care. Yes. A serum. For your teeth. Surely this is the end, right? (If not of beauty culture, then perhaps of everything?)

Anyway!

I took July off from the Don’t Buy List — did you miss me? — but I did not take July off from collecting links, so we have a lot to get through.

In this issue: The SAG strike plastic surgery surge! Injectable moisturizers! Hairy armpits! Abjection! Emotional abuse as an SPF sales tactic! What to do when Black Joy causes laugh lines! Latte Makeup! Baby beauty junkies! Skincare advice from Esther Perel! Sunscreen advice from AOC! Extended Barbie discourse! And more!

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Joining “teeth serum” to portend the end:

• Injectable moisturizers (there is already a very easy way to get water inside your skin and that is to drink it)

• Aesthetically-pleasing SSRI cases from Dosey (drab #shelfies are “visually draining” and trigger depression, obv)

• Traveling with a separate suitcase for all your skincare (a multi-level climate catastrophe)

• Freckle tattoos (apparently hyperpigmentation is only acceptable if you can buy it)

• A skincare brand meant to “mitigate lifestyle problems” (because why reconsider a lifestyle of overconsumption when you can consume more stuff instead?)

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I’m sure you’re done with the Barbie discourse by now, but you know what? For all the think-pieces on its politics, I don’t think any of them adequately covered the movie’s measurable, material effects on beauty culture and women’s bodies. (Mostly they preferred to argue for or against a blobby, vibes-based understanding of feminism.) I wrote about some of those material effects here — Barbie arms, Barbie Botox, Barbie blonde, Barbie-branded anti-cellulite lotions — but more data emerged after my article came out. Like: Searches for ‘Margot Robbie diet’ rose by 1364% after Barbie was released in theaters (via Total Shape). Also: “Plastic surgeons are starting to see request for Barbie noses” (via Fox Greenberg PR). And then there’s this sign, sent in by beloved Unpublishable reader Max:

IDK, I just think that if a film is inspiring women to coalesce into a thinner, blonder, younger, button-nosed sameness, then its feminist bonafides must be questioned a little more rigorously! I predicted all this back in April, by the way. (Shout-out to journalist Carla Seipp for quoting me on it in Beauty Matter.)

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My favorite bit of Barbie criticism was “We all dress like Barbie now” by Rachel Tashjian for the Washington Post:

“To create clothes that capitalize on the buzz around an upcoming film is to insist that marketing is a worthy source of inspiration. It suggests a paucity of sources for original ideas — that it’s now valid to mine promotional campaigns when we want to make statements about what is happening in our world and who we want to be, which is what fashion does.”

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“U.S. Sunscreen Is Stuck in the ’90s. Is This a Job for Congress?” asks Sandra E. Garcia in the New York Times. I thought this was a really great overview of SPF, the FDA, and how AOC hopes to streamline the drug approval process in order to equip U.S. citizens with better tools for skin cancer prevention. I was particularly struck by this passage, though:

…“because sunscreen ‘makes a drug claim’ — namely, that it can prevent sunburn, decrease the risk of skin cancer and mitigate early skin aging — the agency regulates it as an over-the-counter drug.

Let it be a reminder that many, many, many beauty brands are ~illegally~ using drug claims to market their non-SPF cosmetic products. (Drug claims include promises like “wrinkle removal” and “hair restoration” — anything that “affect[s] the structure or function of the body.”) The below Instagram ad from Truly Beauty is an almost shocking example of this: The company claims its body lotion can “regenerate skin tissue” (!!!) even as its website warns the statement has “not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.”

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Speaking of cosmetics as drugs: I gasped when I saw ELLE published a piece called “The Rise of the Baby Beauty Junkies” and loled when, a day later, they changed it to “The Rise of the Baby Beauty Fanatics.” Deranged title aside, I am sad for the children in this article and upset that ELLE, after outlining some very worrying outcomes of beauty culture — eating disorders, depression, anxiety, skin rashes and open wounds — chose to end it on the “beauty is a way to love yourself” note. When “beauty” is (wrongly) defined as “a specific standard of physical appearance,” it’s not. It is a way to destroy yourself. I weep for the youth; I weep for the state of women’s media!!

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Since the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes have shut down Hollywood, there’s been a surge in celebrity plastic surgery appointments, Allure reports. (Not filming and not doing press gives one ample time to heal from an invasive procedure.) It made me think: Could you imagine the impact an aesthetic labor strike would have on Hollywood? On everyone?? Should we start a beauty union??? (A beaunion????) Should we go full Silvia Federici and demand wages for beauty work?????

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Something I’ve been thinking about since reading “Are the girls OK?” on

Embedded

: We say “Hot girls have IBS” and go on “Hot Girl Walks” and eat “Hot Girl Food” now because when woman is object, the human is abject, and in order to justify our humanness, we rebrand our basic human traits as hot, actually.

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On that note: The industry’s most enduring trend — dehumanization —  continues with Latte Makeup and Strawberry Makeup. Both looks come courtesy of Hailey Bieber, who seems hellbent on turning herself and, indeed, all women into a variety of foodstuffs. (Stay tuned for a longer post on “milky” skin and nails in the next week.)

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The future of armpit aesthetics is uncertain! Vogue predicts shaving will soon be a thing of the past, Joban Beauty is selling underarm concealer.

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In “Esther Perel Thinks All This Amateur Therapy-Speak Is Just Making Us Lonelier,” the relationship therapist might as well be talking about beauty culture rhetoric:

There is such an emphasis on the “self-care” aspect of it that is actually making us more isolated and more alone, because the focus is just on the self. The focus is not about the mutuality of relationships — the reciprocity, the way that you weave fabric, you know, between people who are relying on each other … In the end, it creates more and more isolation and fragmentation. That is not necessarily a good thing for the community and for the social good.

Beauty culture is a collective phenomenon, and if beauty truly is a tool for “care” and “expression” and “love,” it must reach beyond the self!!

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You know how the beauty industry evangelizes about SPF — how it positions UV avoidance as an act of moral goodness and UV exposure as a violation of ethics so severe it warrants the denial of medical care? It’s at it again! After actor Jonah Hill’s ex-girlfriend released text messages exposing his controlling behavior, skincare company Sun Bum posted a picture of a sunburned Hill with the caption, “Doesn’t look like he wears SPF either…”

via the Link In Bio newsletter

“Don’t be like this emotional abuser — buy our sunscreen!” 10/10, totally normal marketing tactic.

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Are you experiencing too much Black joy? There’s now a melanin-safe procedure for laugh lines, says Allure.

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More recommended reading:

• “The Perils and Promises of Penis Enlargement Surgery” by Ava Kofman for the New Yorker

• “Colorism is driving women of color to use harmful skin lightening products, says new study” by Char Adams for NBC News

• “Ohio Plastic Surgeon Loses Medical License After TikTok Livestreams” by Amanda Holpuch for the New York Times

• “Beware the ‘beige-fluencers’, cheerleaders for a life of no surprises” by Sarah Manavis for The Guardian

• “Who Will Stand Up for the Hair Braiders?” by Houreidja Tall for Harper’s Bazaar

• “What Really Happens To Returned Beauty Products?” by Lexy Lebsack for Beauty Independent

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Finally, I’ll leave you with a tweet of my own, as a way to memorialize my now-deactivated Twitter account:

You’re Gonna Die Someday No Matter How Young You Look,
Jessica