Nothing makes me feel more awkward than being a guest on a podcast — I’m a writer, not a speaker! — except for perhaps telling people to listen to said podcast once the episode airs. And yet! I continue to do both. What can I say? I gave up chemical peels and microneedling long ago. I needed a new way to torture myself.
That said, my last two pod appearances were truly delightful, all thanks to my hosts and personal content-creating heroes, Elizabeth Kott on Natch Beaut and Virginia Sole-Smith of Burnt Toast!! Listen to both below and have yourself a little podcast-palooza.
Natch Beaut
When regular Natch Beaut host Jackie Michele Johnson planned her maternity leave, she asked Elizabeth Kott — she of That’s So Retrograde fame — to guest-host an episode. When Elizabeth asked me to be her guest, I freaked out and fan-girled and basically said YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES!!
Elizabeth is something of a podcast legend — now a podcast coach — and I’ve been an admirer of hers since the early days of TSR, which was this fun, funny, tongue-in-cheek-but-also-totally-serious wellness podcast that launched in 2015, before “wellness” or “podcasts” were A Thing. I realized she was friends with my cousin Lou a couple years later, and was able to score an interview with her for a (now-defunct) fashion site. To come full circle and be interviewed by Elizabeth for a beauty podcast is like… PINCH ME PLEASE.
Anyway!
Anyone who’s familiar with Natch Beaut knows: It is a podcast for product obsessives. And anyone who’s familiar with my work knows: I am pretty much the opposite of a product obsessive. Lol. So I looked at this as a lovely opportunity to talk about:
the culture forces that inspire our collective product obsession!
“It’s not wrong to want to embody beauty. What’s wrong is that we’ve been fed this definition of beauty that is not actually beauty — it’s sales.”
the emotion behind our collective product obsession!
“Beauty culture, like diet culture, is very traumatic. It’s traumatic to be conditioned from birth to believe that your worth is determined by what you look like, and what you look like isn’t good enough … that’s a spiritually traumatic thing! So we adopt a lot of these beauty behaviors as coping mechanisms.”
practical ways to — gently, slowly, if you want to — decondition from product obsession!
“There’s no problem I’ve ever encountered that can’t be solved by removing a product from my life … I want people to know that one of the solutions is just to divest completely. You can do that!!”
Listen here to hear Elizabeth and I discuss everything from #freethepimple to — fine, alright, you got me, I do use the occasional beauty product — my go-to brow pencil. (FYI: There are ads for Juvéderm in this episode! Not my choice, not my ads, not my call!)
The Burnt Toast Podcast
If you haven’t subscribed to Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith — “a twice-a-week newsletter about how we navigate diet culture and fatphobia” — take a second and do that now. Sooo many of the concepts Virginia presents in her posts, threads, and podcast eps carry over to beauty culture. In fact, that was the main topic of conversation for our episode, “Skincare Culture is Dewy Diet Culture: On beauty standards, Kardashians, and the paradox of anti-aging.” You can listen to it or read the transcript here. (God, I just love a transcript, don’t you??)
A little preview:
“I always say that skincare culture is dewy diet culture. There are so many parallels. In both instances people have been made to believe that a certain aesthetic signifies health, when that’s not the case. We’re sold products to help us achieve that aesthetic at the expense of our health. We’re sent to doctors who reinforce beauty standards and call it medical care. There are all sorts of doctors who subscribe to BMI as a marker of health, and will tell a patient “just lose weight” when they actually have cancer [or something]—and dermatologists are really not that different.
I don’t mean this as a slight against dermatologists. This is an indictment of the entire western medical system where beauty standards have been subsumed into medical care. When you’re going to a dermatologist, very often, aside from skin cancer screenings, you are getting treatments to help you look a certain way without ever exploring the root cause of why your skin is reacting the way it’s reacting. [Treatment] is, “How do we get rid of this as quickly as possible?” And very often achieving that goal goes against your actual skin [functions].
I’ve had so many women tell me specifically that they have gone in for their annual skin cancer screenings and their dermatologist will start talking about Botox or filler … during this health appointment. That messes with your mind because it’s coming from a medical doctor. They’re suggesting, alongside a cancer screening, “Hey, maybe you should get your crow’s feet done. Maybe you should get your frown lines done. Maybe you should get your lips filled.” It starts to feel like these things are part of being a healthy human being when they’re not.”
I mean, many derms are great! DEFINITELY GO TO THE DERM FOR YEARLY SKIN CANCER SCREENINGS!! But if yours starts suggesting Juvéderm out of nowhere, like a sentient Natch Beaut ad?? Run.
I went to the derm for the first time around the age of thirty because I had a mysterious red bump on my lip that appeared suddenly and I wanted to know if it was dangerous. At the time I thought it was super strange that once it was established that it was NOT dangerous the doctor still really seemed to want to cut it off my face. I had no idea my experience wasn't odd and solitary.
I listened to the Nacht Beaut episode yesterday, and it was such a good conversation! Since finding your work, I’ve read just about everything you’ve written, and I get so excited every time you share another podcast appearance with us because listening to you so succinctly speak about the things you’ve been writing about for years really makes them “click” in my brain in a way that reinforces what I’ve learned from reading your work week after week. What you said in this episode about replacing “feminism” with “collective liberation” in our heads and the concept of the eternal toddler and always asking “why, why, why” REALLY stuck with me. I’m excited to listen to the Burnt Toast interview next! Thank you, as always, for all that you do 💕