Introducing: The Review of Beauty

New newsletter name, same focus (and 20% off to celebrate).

For months now, I’ve been contemplating a makeover.

I named this newsletter “The Unpublishable” without much thought. It was 2020 and after five years of working in the beauty media — first as an editor on the Kardashian-Jenner Official Apps and then as a freelance reporter for outlets like Vogue and Allure — I couldn’t find an outlet willing to publish an industry-critical investigation I knew was important. I decided to publish it myself. The Unpublishable was born. (More about the origin story here.) Since then, it’s gained over 100,000 readers. It’s led to commissions from the New York Times and the Sunday Times, and a monthly advice column at the Guardian! It’s been awarded by Adweek and Country & Town House Magazine! It’s garnered interviews with Jameela Jamil and Dua Lipa, endorsements from E. Jean Carroll and Sian Clifford, features in the Washington Post and the MIT Technology Review! My work doesn’t feel Unpublishable anymore.

With that, I’m ready for a new name. Welcome to The Review of Beauty!

The Review of Beauty feels better suited to the project of this newsletter, I think: to understand what Beauty is by considering what it is not. (To me, there is no combination of words more nonsensical than “beauty industry.” Beauty: the innate human longing? Beauty: the immeasurable, incorporeal, energetic force? The thing that fuels the human spirit? Beauty: as in, Beauty, Freedom, Truth, Love? Turned into an industry? You cannot industrialize that! That’s why beauty products and procedures never satisfy us, not in any real way. The void between the Beauty we crave and the beauty we’re sold can’t be filled with a 0.5mL syringe of hyaluronic acid — and anyway, the point is not to fill the void but to feel the void.)

Don’t worry, The Review of Beauty will remain — as the Sunday Herald puts it — the newsletter “the beauty industry fears.” Expect a practical, political, philosophical inquiry into beauty culture; don’t expect retinol recommendations. (Because where the beauty industry reviews beauty products, The Review of Beauty reviews the industry.)

All of my reporting will still be free, too. Anyone interested in extra insight can become a paid subscriber and receive two issues of The Don’t Buy List per month, as well as access to the comment section and subscriber chats.

I’m so grateful to you for being here. As a thank you, I’m offering 20% off subscriptions today — that’s $4/month down from $5/month, or $44 for the whole year. In other words, you could buy a travel-sized jar of Crème de la Mer… or a yearly subscription to The Review of Beauty. Twice.

Thanks for helping The Unpublishable grow out of its name. Thanks for bringing The Review of Beauty into being.

-Jessica

(Logo: Nick Hensley / Designer & Illustrator / nickhensley.co)