You, but better. The idea that you are competing with a version of you which exists out there already, ready to replace you and take all your opportunities for happiness as their own. And that maybe, if you buy the right products, and flawlessly perform 'being fun, but not in a fake way', you can defeat that doppelganger by becoming her ... Pretty much sums up the sisyphean anguish of being a woman.
Huh. Being fun but not in a fake way seems like the no-makeup makeup version of the 50's and 60's palatable feminity. We're still supposed to appear to be happy to make the people around us comfortable, but we have to do it better and with less of an appearance of artificiality now because the consumers of our feminity are cannier.
Great interview that brought up so many thoughts and memories! The nothingness of it all is what I find so fascinating about Glossier and about my own relationship with beauty. I was a tom boy/ "cool girl" all through high school and college. I was able to skirt by on perfect skin (ah how I miss youth and being able to take birth control pills without debilitating migraines) and a bit of mascara. I then hit the corporate world where performing beauty was a form of "professionalism" I felt I needed. Glossier arrived at the perfect moment (2 years into my working life). I felt like I could put on "skin tint" or brush my brows and suddenly I had put in the effort of a "working woman" while still feeling like myself. It gave me a twisted and comforting feeling that I had checked the boxes of adult womanhood while also conveniently escaping the trap of superficial vanity. It's GENIUS marketing because as you mention, the products are shit. But when you don't want products at all and only are using them for emotional reasons, shit is fine. When I think back to my early working days, I had such an extreme need to fit in. Seeing a tube of Balm Dot Com on a smart savvy co-worker's desk was comforting and reassuring in an actually meaningful way. And I work in a male dominated industry so girly bonding was desperately needed. In some ways, I feel like being sold nothing but the cult-y side of beauty (feeling of belonging, superiority, "knowledge") was actually better for me than being sold a product that actually worked? Much to consider. And thank God for personal growth and your work so I look back on my silly thoughts with some new perspective!
Oh Glossier absolutely suckered me for a lot of the same reasons, including this vague sense that I needed to be more put together for my male-dominated field but also not in an obvious girly girl way a la the Kardashians. It absolutely felt like I had cracked the system by wearing proper big girl make-up without having to learn any actual application skills. Slap on some tinted nothing that barely changes your appearance and yet still somehow be performing "woman under capitalism" correctly?? What a product!
Does the book mention Emily Weiss's intensive wedding prep treatments that resulted in her giving herself an 8 out of 10 and will live in my brain forever?
YESSSS lol. There's so much in the book that I didn't cover here: her wedding prep, Glossier's abysmal shade ranges, its treatment of employees of color, its tech ambitions, growth and layoffs... SO MUCH!
Jesus. Thanks for sharing. If you start to see aethetic labor for what it is it's just so incredibly sad to see that she (and so so many women) think they do that for themselves and are happy to do it. That whole cleanse thing threw me back to when I graduated high school. The fucking clean eating trend with its diets and cleanses can fuck right off, too.
I read The Cut article about Jenna Lyons this morning and it mentions her spending a week at an Austrian wellness clinic famous for its detox deprivation diet "continuous bathrooming" before going to sail the Greek Isles. Sounds miserable!
You know how I know the Glossier moment is over? I’m a 53 year old woman who just recently decided to try the products, lol.
Cloud Paint (it’s ok), the Lash Slick (also ok), and the product I went in for, Boy Brow. My entire life I’ve had extremely full, bushy, unruly dark eyebrows. Brooke Shields eyebrows on steroids. This was not the late 80’s early 90’s aesthetic, so I tamed them into submission with a pair of tweezers, pretty much on a daily basis. I am now post menopausal and one day looked in the mirror and thought, shit, what happened to my eyebrows? I’ve been trying lots of products over the last few years to fill in the patchy spots without it looking like I used a marker to draw on eyebrows (shout out to my late Aunt Maxine who started drawing her eyebrows on in the 1940’s and never looked back) so I tried Boy Brow.
I was recently using the mascara and my college-age daughter said, “what brand is that?” She shrugged and seemed thoroughly unimpressed, so this must be the twilight of Glossier.
I appreciated you mentioned how copy was fundamental to building the brand's image, and then how Marisa Meltzer reinforced what you said by saying people know Glossier products'names whereas it is not the case even for very reknowned beauty brands. The power of words is never considered enough be it in beauty or fashion, yet they are needed.
This confirmation is really doing wonders for me as I've been using Vaseline Lip Therapy every night before bed since college. Think of the money I've saved (to waste elsewhere)!
I have to admit when I read Emily’s wedding post 8 years ago, I didn’t think it was weird at all. I’m sure I took notes. I did that a lot as many of the products were hard to get a hold of in Canada. I was a devoted Top Shelf reader back in the day 😣
Jessica I read this the day you published it. Since then I have been subconsciously noticing the word 'You' in advertising EVERYWHERE - not just beauty. Watches, clothing, plastic surgery. It appears this line of marketing is having a moment! And this was just over the course of two days where I happened to be downtown (major East Coast city) each day and either driving/public transport/or walking. It was bizarre!
This is absolutely fascinating, I sort of love the stories behind companies/cults. I have dabbled, and yes - selling nothing absolutely covers it. Boy brow - great for someone who doesn't even pluck their brows, the milky cleanser - very much meh, balm dot com - persistent lip balm loser *shrug*, priming moisturizer - *shrug* it's fine but expensive, ultralip - the same colour as my actual lips wtf?
Wow so many thoughts on this! I was a big ITG fan for its first few years, until the “ITG type” dominated every interview and I got pretty sick of it. Also anyone else notice that every woman they photographed was wearing some peachy shimmery eyeshadow?
I actually ordered Glossier the day it debuted, and they certainly made you feel like you were part of a club! But I think timing had a lot to do with that as well. Your example of working on a Kim K brand yet everyone wearing Glossier behind the scenes is a perfect example. It really was the start of this “trend” of caked/baked makeup faces. And somehow Glossier was the punk answer to all of that.
Besides their formulas actually not being oh so great, I do think that not trying to grow even a little with their customer was a bad idea. Remember “Play” by Glossier ? Also for the first few years they did not release many new products which even though they were building a rapid fan base, a lot of people started to look else where.
I will say though as a mom of a daughter, I certainly would rather have her be a Glossier girl than a Kim K. girl.
Reading about the shelfie's makes me want to go throw out half the stuff in my makeup drawer. But then I'm like, it's a fucking nasty unaesthetic mess in there, there's eyeliner smeared on particle board and glitter all over everything, maybe ignoring it and just rummaging around as needed is the best thing for it.
I had to read this immediately. Coming from Europe, I have always watched Glossier with great admiration and when they launched in UK even enlisted a friend who lived there to get my hands on their products. I visited their first shop in London, which was really cool and in terms of marketing very cleverly done. I was a real fan, but wisdom comes with age? Ordered the book immediately to delve further into it. Thank you so much for this interview! And all your other writings.
I have always felt intimidated by makeup and never felt comfortable wearing it. I also have had eczema my whole life and would not dare try to trigger it with makeup. So I always felt kind of “outside” of the beauty industry and really cautious of any product that was not cerave or aquaphor. So at the ripe age of 28 I got hooked by glossier’s marketing and gave it a try. After trying their boybrow, gen g, and concealer, I didn’t recognize myself and did not like how my face felt foreign to me. It was so weird - even these products that do “nothing” made me feel uneasy. Kind of like the “you but better” doppelganger that Drew describes in their comment. All I kept from that order was the milky jelly cleanser. The rosewater in it smelled nice and didn’t irritate my skin.
You, but better. The idea that you are competing with a version of you which exists out there already, ready to replace you and take all your opportunities for happiness as their own. And that maybe, if you buy the right products, and flawlessly perform 'being fun, but not in a fake way', you can defeat that doppelganger by becoming her ... Pretty much sums up the sisyphean anguish of being a woman.
Huh. Being fun but not in a fake way seems like the no-makeup makeup version of the 50's and 60's palatable feminity. We're still supposed to appear to be happy to make the people around us comfortable, but we have to do it better and with less of an appearance of artificiality now because the consumers of our feminity are cannier.
Great interview that brought up so many thoughts and memories! The nothingness of it all is what I find so fascinating about Glossier and about my own relationship with beauty. I was a tom boy/ "cool girl" all through high school and college. I was able to skirt by on perfect skin (ah how I miss youth and being able to take birth control pills without debilitating migraines) and a bit of mascara. I then hit the corporate world where performing beauty was a form of "professionalism" I felt I needed. Glossier arrived at the perfect moment (2 years into my working life). I felt like I could put on "skin tint" or brush my brows and suddenly I had put in the effort of a "working woman" while still feeling like myself. It gave me a twisted and comforting feeling that I had checked the boxes of adult womanhood while also conveniently escaping the trap of superficial vanity. It's GENIUS marketing because as you mention, the products are shit. But when you don't want products at all and only are using them for emotional reasons, shit is fine. When I think back to my early working days, I had such an extreme need to fit in. Seeing a tube of Balm Dot Com on a smart savvy co-worker's desk was comforting and reassuring in an actually meaningful way. And I work in a male dominated industry so girly bonding was desperately needed. In some ways, I feel like being sold nothing but the cult-y side of beauty (feeling of belonging, superiority, "knowledge") was actually better for me than being sold a product that actually worked? Much to consider. And thank God for personal growth and your work so I look back on my silly thoughts with some new perspective!
Oh Glossier absolutely suckered me for a lot of the same reasons, including this vague sense that I needed to be more put together for my male-dominated field but also not in an obvious girly girl way a la the Kardashians. It absolutely felt like I had cracked the system by wearing proper big girl make-up without having to learn any actual application skills. Slap on some tinted nothing that barely changes your appearance and yet still somehow be performing "woman under capitalism" correctly?? What a product!
Does the book mention Emily Weiss's intensive wedding prep treatments that resulted in her giving herself an 8 out of 10 and will live in my brain forever?
YESSSS lol. There's so much in the book that I didn't cover here: her wedding prep, Glossier's abysmal shade ranges, its treatment of employees of color, its tech ambitions, growth and layoffs... SO MUCH!
Wow that is definitely one of the aforementioned "manipulative genius or high on her own supply?" moments
what do you mean she gave herself an 8 out of 10?!
Ohhh you're in for a treat. The post lives on, lol....
https://intothegloss.com/2016/02/emily-weiss-wedding-beauty/
that is so sad. so sad.
so sad. and so useful for illustrating the delusions of beauty culture
Just filing this under spas, facials and rich people problems...
Jesus. Thanks for sharing. If you start to see aethetic labor for what it is it's just so incredibly sad to see that she (and so so many women) think they do that for themselves and are happy to do it. That whole cleanse thing threw me back to when I graduated high school. The fucking clean eating trend with its diets and cleanses can fuck right off, too.
I read The Cut article about Jenna Lyons this morning and it mentions her spending a week at an Austrian wellness clinic famous for its detox deprivation diet "continuous bathrooming" before going to sail the Greek Isles. Sounds miserable!
I think Haley Bennett just went there! It looked awful. It was in her stories and I was like whyyyy would you pay for this
I can "continuous bathroom" for days in the comfort of my own home for free, without requiring my passport!
😂😂😂😂😂
You know how I know the Glossier moment is over? I’m a 53 year old woman who just recently decided to try the products, lol.
Cloud Paint (it’s ok), the Lash Slick (also ok), and the product I went in for, Boy Brow. My entire life I’ve had extremely full, bushy, unruly dark eyebrows. Brooke Shields eyebrows on steroids. This was not the late 80’s early 90’s aesthetic, so I tamed them into submission with a pair of tweezers, pretty much on a daily basis. I am now post menopausal and one day looked in the mirror and thought, shit, what happened to my eyebrows? I’ve been trying lots of products over the last few years to fill in the patchy spots without it looking like I used a marker to draw on eyebrows (shout out to my late Aunt Maxine who started drawing her eyebrows on in the 1940’s and never looked back) so I tried Boy Brow.
I was recently using the mascara and my college-age daughter said, “what brand is that?” She shrugged and seemed thoroughly unimpressed, so this must be the twilight of Glossier.
I appreciated you mentioned how copy was fundamental to building the brand's image, and then how Marisa Meltzer reinforced what you said by saying people know Glossier products'names whereas it is not the case even for very reknowned beauty brands. The power of words is never considered enough be it in beauty or fashion, yet they are needed.
As someone who remembers the insane hype (and shelled out for it), Balm dot com being literally Vaseline hurts so bad 😭
This confirmation is really doing wonders for me as I've been using Vaseline Lip Therapy every night before bed since college. Think of the money I've saved (to waste elsewhere)!
Such a good post, and you bring up so many good points-looking forward to reading this book.
Thank you! It's an incredible read
I just re-read that post and boy, it has not aged well 😳
I have to admit when I read Emily’s wedding post 8 years ago, I didn’t think it was weird at all. I’m sure I took notes. I did that a lot as many of the products were hard to get a hold of in Canada. I was a devoted Top Shelf reader back in the day 😣
Jessica I read this the day you published it. Since then I have been subconsciously noticing the word 'You' in advertising EVERYWHERE - not just beauty. Watches, clothing, plastic surgery. It appears this line of marketing is having a moment! And this was just over the course of two days where I happened to be downtown (major East Coast city) each day and either driving/public transport/or walking. It was bizarre!
This is absolutely fascinating, I sort of love the stories behind companies/cults. I have dabbled, and yes - selling nothing absolutely covers it. Boy brow - great for someone who doesn't even pluck their brows, the milky cleanser - very much meh, balm dot com - persistent lip balm loser *shrug*, priming moisturizer - *shrug* it's fine but expensive, ultralip - the same colour as my actual lips wtf?
This was a great interview, thank you!!!
Wow so many thoughts on this! I was a big ITG fan for its first few years, until the “ITG type” dominated every interview and I got pretty sick of it. Also anyone else notice that every woman they photographed was wearing some peachy shimmery eyeshadow?
I actually ordered Glossier the day it debuted, and they certainly made you feel like you were part of a club! But I think timing had a lot to do with that as well. Your example of working on a Kim K brand yet everyone wearing Glossier behind the scenes is a perfect example. It really was the start of this “trend” of caked/baked makeup faces. And somehow Glossier was the punk answer to all of that.
Besides their formulas actually not being oh so great, I do think that not trying to grow even a little with their customer was a bad idea. Remember “Play” by Glossier ? Also for the first few years they did not release many new products which even though they were building a rapid fan base, a lot of people started to look else where.
I will say though as a mom of a daughter, I certainly would rather have her be a Glossier girl than a Kim K. girl.
Reading about the shelfie's makes me want to go throw out half the stuff in my makeup drawer. But then I'm like, it's a fucking nasty unaesthetic mess in there, there's eyeliner smeared on particle board and glitter all over everything, maybe ignoring it and just rummaging around as needed is the best thing for it.
I had to read this immediately. Coming from Europe, I have always watched Glossier with great admiration and when they launched in UK even enlisted a friend who lived there to get my hands on their products. I visited their first shop in London, which was really cool and in terms of marketing very cleverly done. I was a real fan, but wisdom comes with age? Ordered the book immediately to delve further into it. Thank you so much for this interview! And all your other writings.
Oh my.. I just read Emily and the wedding. She makes me sad on one hand , but happy I’m not in her world.
I am loving your posts!
I just finished the book, an absolute page-turner! Emily sure knew how to build a brand and you Marissa knew how to tell the story. Great job.
I have always felt intimidated by makeup and never felt comfortable wearing it. I also have had eczema my whole life and would not dare try to trigger it with makeup. So I always felt kind of “outside” of the beauty industry and really cautious of any product that was not cerave or aquaphor. So at the ripe age of 28 I got hooked by glossier’s marketing and gave it a try. After trying their boybrow, gen g, and concealer, I didn’t recognize myself and did not like how my face felt foreign to me. It was so weird - even these products that do “nothing” made me feel uneasy. Kind of like the “you but better” doppelganger that Drew describes in their comment. All I kept from that order was the milky jelly cleanser. The rosewater in it smelled nice and didn’t irritate my skin.