The 'I Do It For Me' Delusion
Plus: a podcast, an NPR appearance, some newsletter news, and a meme.
Occasionally there will be so much content referencing The Unpublishable published elsewhere on the Internet that it makes me feel like a liar and a fake (in the best way). What am I supposed to do? Change the name of the newsletter?? It’s too late for all that!!! Which is just to say: Please enjoy this roundup of decidedly ~publishable~ articles and podcasts I’ve appeared in and on lately.
1. First, a big thank you to i-D Magazine, which named The Unpublishable the #1 Substack to subscribe to this summer! This write-up made me feel so seen I almost cried:
As all beauty writers know, it’s tricky to write about the beauty industry. It’s trickier still to publish writing on the beauty industry at publications and companies which invariably have close links to the industry. Critique, even the lightest critique, is rare. Writer Jessica DeFino has circumnavigated that problem with the aptly named The Unpublishable, her newsletter about the weirdness and the wonder of the world of beauty. In a politics-free zone which she calls ‘the beauty industry’s least favourite newsletter’ Jessica covers ageing, the Kardashians, Barbie, cannibalism and more.
Check out the full list — featuring some of my own favorite newsletters, like
and — on i-D.2. I was thrilled when
asked to interview me for her Stylist article, “Why do I feel like my bare skin looks ‘scruffy’?” In it, she attempts to make sense of why she happily goes makeup free “at home, on Zoom calls, at the gym, when popping to the supermarket, lounging at friends houses” but feels the need to put makeup on for “an event, a dinner, a work meeting, at a bar” — a situation that industry stats suggest is true for many women. “The number of occasions we use cosmetics has fallen by 50% since 2017,” Gray writes, even as “makeup sales went up 229%.” Click through for her full essay, but here’s a preview of my input:The behavior you're describing directly contradicts modern beauty enthusiasts’ favorite delusion: "I do it for me!" I think the practice of performing industrialized beauty for specific events illustrates a subconscious knowing that beauty is a performance we put on for other people. It illustrates a subconscious knowing that, in modern society, aesthetic communication often overrides other kinds of communication. When we perform beauty, we're attempting to communicate big lies of beauty culture: I'm good. I'm healthy. I'm respectable. I'm valuable. I'm worthy of your time, attention, money, care, trust, love, etc. because I’m “beautiful.” It makes sense that this urge would be strongest in professional, political, and social settings, as adhering to the rules of standardized beauty is shown to translate to better treatment: “beautiful” people are shown to get hired for jobs more often, make more money, see better legal outcomes, receive more attention from teachers and mentors, and have more choice when it comes to romantic/sex/life/friendship partners. Performing beauty, especially for women, is often a plea to be seen as a human being worthy of basic human dignity.
3. NPR just re-aired a portion of my chat with host Brittany Luse from November 2022! This segment is all about “the increase in celebrity skincare lines and why the the way we talk about skin is regressive” — plus, why I refer to skincare culture as “dewy diet culture.”
4. I was a guest on the
podcast with Tara McMullen, where we discussed “Aesthetic Labor and the Politics of Beauty.” The episode is paywalled (Tara’s newsletter/pod is worth the subscription!), but here’s an excerpt from the transcript:I talk a lot about performing beauty, the consequences of performing beauty, and the effort that goes into performing beauty. And a lot of times people think I'm talking about like emulating a Kardashian or Bella Hadid or like a TikTok influencer, or something. And that's not what I'm talking about at all. That's like the highest level, right? Most of us in Western society are performing beauty all of the time without really even thinking about it anymore. So I'm talking about carrying out these tasks that are so integrated into the image of public-facing femininity, that they seem thoughtless. But they're very effortful, and they're very expensive. Things like shaving your legs and your armpits, shaping your eyebrows, getting a blow out for a job interview (or just for going to work). Dying your gray hair, having manicured nails, dealing with facial hair — bleaching your mustache, waxing your mustache or your peach fuzz, plucking those chin hairs — and whitening your teeth. And then, especially in the job market, wearing "professional makeup." So there's like kind of this no-makeup makeup that's supposed to look like you're not wearing a lot—but you really are. This is all invisible labor. This is just the baseline that we are expected to perform. And like a lot of traditionally women's labor, it is completely devalued and not acknowledged as labor. You know, we see the same with care work, with housekeeping, with raising a family. This is labor. It's work, and it's work that we have been conditioned to believe we have to do in order to ascend throughout these systems, these patriarchal systems, these white supremacist systems, especially, when you're talking "unkemptness" and "cleanliness." It's a form of presentability politics, and a lot of it is wrapped up in racism and classism.
5. I also chatted with i-D for “How Teens Got Hooked On Anti-Aging” by Daisy Schofield. She writes:
The exploding popularity of skincare among younger generations also has links with the rise of wellness culture. Self-care has become synonymous with skincare, as corporations look for more ways to commodify our leisure time. “The language of care is embedded in a lot of these products, even as the products are not about care at all, but about control and physical manipulation of the body to [fit] a very strict standard of appearance,” notes Jessica DeFino. With teen girls now reporting record levels of sadness, it’s perhaps unsurprising that so many are turning towards products which offer a vague promise of improved wellbeing.
We’ve seen how, as ‘body positivity’ became increasingly en vogue, the focus shift towards skincare and away from the eulogising of thinness that felt inescapable in the 90s and early 00s. But moving the conversation from fat rolls to fine lines was never going to be the answer to the oppressive beauty standards people face. As Jessica puts it, the focus on skincare “is just a more socially acceptable way to convince women primarily to control themselves and funnel their time, money, energy and headspace back into their own bodies”.
6. Here’s a hint at where you might find me next…
;)
7. This last one has nothing to do with anything; I just wanted to make a meme for you.
lmaooo "politics-free zone" yeah this is sooo unpolitical. It'd be sad if this was a politics-free zone! It would feel hollow.
Thank you, as always. I’ve been wanting to talk to my teenage nieces about the anti-aging skincare obsessions they’re currently swimming (drowning?) in. I’ll use this as a jumping off point.