Dating While Divesting From Beauty Culture
A new podcast episode (I'm in it) and ethically-made porn (I'm not).
A while back I was a guest on Impressionable with Beccy Lee, a podcast that “uncovers all of the small and big ways in which we have been shaped by the world around us.” The conversation is worth a listen in-full — topics include: beauty as alienation! “pretty productivity culture”! the pitfalls of skin positivity! and more! — but I’m sharing an excerpt below, on a subject I get a lot of questions about: dating while divesting from beauty culture.
Let me preface this exchange by saying I am only talking about my limited personal experience here! Please don’t take this as universally applicable advice so much as insight into how one 30-something divorcée who (literally) can’t be fucked to wear foundation approaches partnership.
Beccy Lee
There’s a pull to adhere [to beauty standards] — to contour, to look a certain way. And I think often that’s maybe because it’s like, beauty is power. So how do you navigate that?
Jessica DeFino (me)
Yeah, I think a lot of the reason that we’re drawn to what I'll call standardized or industrialized beauty is because it is so closely associated with power. Beauty culture and the beauty industry in particular have really done a masterful job at equating this very specific type of beauty with not only power, but with love, acceptance, community, success — all sorts of things that are just natural, human things to want. So it’s not bad that we’re drawn to beauty, but I think it can be helpful to ask yourself, like, What am I really drawn to here? What do I think becoming beautiful in this way will get me? Because very often, we don’t take on these beauty behaviors purely because we want to from an aesthetic standpoint, but because we want the things that we associate them with. So for me, it’s been very helpful to just sort of ask myself, like, What do I think adhering to this particular beauty standard will get me? Is there really any evidence to show that it will get me that thing? And is there another way that I can work toward this goal? Like if I want to become beautiful because I want, you know, love in my life — clearly, standardized beauty is not the only path to that. By beauty culture’s definition of beauty, the majority of people in the world are average or ugly! And lots of people have love in their lives! So physical beauty is not the sole path to romantic love.
Beccy Lee
I know a lot of my friends — if they go on a date, they’ll put makeup on or they’ll change their appearance slightly. What would you say to someone that's like, “I’m dating. That’s why I'm doing all these things to my body”?
Jessica DeFino
I would say that makes a lot of sense. That can seem like a logical choice under the illogical systems we’re living within. One thing that I can say from my personal experience is, I’ve done dating both ways. I’ve done dating where I have never let a boyfriend see me without makeup, where I’ve subscribed to all of the beauty ideals and tried my hardest to be as beautiful as I could possibly be, and dated people who were into me because of that. And what I found is that those are not the type of people that I want to be with — I don’t want someone who values me for those things. For instance, I’m divorced. My ex-husband would would say things like, “Would you please wear a little bit more makeup? You’re so pretty when you wear makeup,” when I was starting to divest from beauty culture. Or like, he bought us a Peloton so that I would work out more, because I was gaining a little bit of weight. Really horrible things. And I tried for so long, because I was like, This is the type of person I should be with. He’s an artist, he makes good money. He had all of these other qualities that I thought I wanted in a partner. Eventually what I realized was like, those are not qualities that I necessarily want in a partner! What I want in a partner is somebody who values me for me and loves me beyond the physical. When I started dating post-divorce, I went with a completely different approach. I mostly dated via apps. My first photo on the app was me with no makeup — a very close-up selfie of me with no makeup on. The second picture was me in a giant muumuu blowing in the wind, because I love a flowy garment and I’m not going to be someone who’s like, showing off my body in the things that I wear.
For context, here’s how I presented myself the last time I was dating, before I met my ex-husband:
This helped me weed out the type of people that I don’t want to be in partnership with, and find the type of people who I do want to be in partnership with. Because if somebody is swiping on me, they’re already fine with me without makeup, and they’re fine with me not dressing sexy or showing off my body — they don't even know what my body looks like! So that was a bit of a psychological balm for me going through the dating process. I set expectations from the get-go. And through that, I only attracted partners that I was confident would not make an issue of my face or body in the future.
Beccy Lee
Yeah, definitely. I think just honoring your own values often attracts people that kind of share those values. You just never want to feel like you’re betraying yourself, you know?
Jessica DeFino
Yeah, it’s interesting too because not caring about beauty is its own aesthetic. It can signal other things, like I'm an intellectual woman, I won’t be bothered with that kind of thing. So what’s happened for me is like, I often matched with people who were interested in me because they were like, I don't want someone who cares about beauty. I don't want a vapid woman. And then that became a problem because I’m like, “Oh, actually, my whole career is beauty! I care about beauty quite a bit!! And it’s not vapid!!!”
A good companion to this small snippet of conversation might be “Who Is Beauty For?”, in which — guided by the research and writing of Fariha Róisín — I attempt to answer another question I get a lot (often related to dating): “Is the ability to resist standardized, industrialized beauty a form of privilege?”
I also recommend reading BLIND DATA, a new comic by Paula Rogers all about the “algorithm of desirability” that powers dating apps.
Transcribing this podcast interview made me think of my article on the Martha Stewart Sports Illustrated cover, too. The most-quoted line from the piece was this one: “Wrinkly, fat, disabled, average old people with age spots and dentures fuck too.” Or maybe it was this one: “It’s important for us, individually and collectively, to shift the focus from looking fuckable to doing the actual fucking (if that’s what you want to do).” Either way, I guess it’s nice to be reminded that contorting your face and body to conform to the standard of beauty is not the sole portal to sex.
If you need another reminder: MakeLoveNotPorn is a user-generated, human-curated “social sex platform” featuring ethically-produced porn made by all kinds of people in all kinds of bodies. I was already an MLNP member when the team reached out to offer Unpublishable readers some free videos — so even though I normally don’t do brand partnerships, this one feels particularly aligned and useful to the project of divesting from beauty culture. If you’re interested:
Email curators@mlnp.tv with the subject line “The Unpublishable” and they’ll send you a collection of videos for free.
Watch and wash your brain of the idea that physical “perfection” is a prerequisite for pleasure!!
I often don’t realize how indoctrinated by beauty culture I have been until I come here. Every essay helps me be like eeeew that’s not true, somebody just put that toxic idea in the water. I would have felt totally confident saying that making an effort to look pretty would be a prerequisite for dating. What a strange baseline, especially if you’re not ultimately interested in attracting a partner on that basis. Frankly, it’s a horrible friction to set in motion from the start. And yet it never would’ve occurred to me that you could just be bare faced to signal what you actually want reflected back. These presumptions are so built in...it scares me.
Wait. Wait. The blond woman is also you, too, right? Wow. It’s like we put on a costume and I’ve never looked at it that way before.