Microdosing Prejuvenation
The Don't Buy List: Issue #69
Hello and welcome to another edition of The Don’t Buy List! If 2023 was the year of cyborg skin, 2024 is the year of cyborg skincare. In Feed Me,
shared that Soft Services and Experiment Beauty both launched programming-inspired products “within weeks of each other”: Software Update Retinol Serum and Softwear Smoothing Lip Treatment, respectively. Other related arrivals include Prada Augmented Skin Face Cream, ILIA Skin Rewind, and Haus Labs Triclone Skin Tech Foundation. As I predicted over a year ago, the “cultural shift from self-objectification (emulating inanimate foodstuffs) to self-mechanisation (emulating humanoid machinery)” has arrived!
I think Bjork’s new Vogue Scandinavia cover is further proof of this robotization. At first, the image seems to be celebrating human features that fashion has long rejected — wide hips, thick thighs, thick bush. But those features are prosthetics. (Couture Maison Margiela prosthetics.)
We are but cyborgian Barbies now; flesh, fat, and pubic hair, our detachable accessories.
Anyway!
In this issue: Dissociating in the name of beauty! What to do when you can’t stop staring at your reflection! Why Gen Z is “aging like milk”! Why Gen Alpha will too! The Cut essay about youth as a “superpower”! Prejuvenation! Collagen banking! Colgate wants you to love your yellow teeth (but also buy whitening toothpaste)! Oprempic! TikTok derms! Reddit snark! & more!
I spoke to Kathryn Madden for the latest issue of InStyle Australia about mirrors, front-facing cameras, and whether humans were meant to see ourselves so much. An excerpt:
When we can’t stop staring at our features, we risk losing sight of ourselves. “So much of our sense of self and sense of identity is negotiated in the aesthetic realm right now,” says DeFino. “We see so much about self-care, self-love, self-improvement, but if you look at the tools, products and ways we’re told to meet these goals, they’re just physical. They don’t touch the self; they touch the skin, they touch the body. . . Modern society has conflated the body and the self to such an extent that we don’t even recognise the difference anymore.”
She believes we should be looking at ourselves not necessarily less, but differently. “I’ve found a lot of value in seeing myself more without the trappings of standardised beauty,” says DeFino. “I used to wear a full face of makeup every single day and my hair was always out because I hate my ears. It was almost like this costume of Jessica, and I realised I felt so ugly without it because I never looked at myself the way I actually am... If you push yourself to get out of your comfort zone and normalise seeing yourself without lipstick on, or whatever it is that you rely on to feel like ‘yourself’, it helps.”
If you’re in Australia, pick up a print copy! (And mail me one, maybe??)
I also talked to Virginia Vigliar of about dissociating in the name of beauty (among other things).
There’s been a lot of talk about Gen Z looking older than they are, “aging like milk,” etc. And I think it’s probably… true? I wrote about it years ago, but the phenomenon boils down to this:
What we think of as signs of aging are usually signs of exposure, and Gen Z has been exposed to more environmental pollution, UV radiation, extreme weather, nutrient-deficient foods, endocrine disruptors, blue light screens, chronic stress — including beauty standard-related stress — and topical cosmetic chemicals, at earlier ages, than any generation that came before them. Mystery solved.
Gen Alpha will catch up, though. Tweens are driving 49% of skincare sales growth, according to WWD. Their poor, vulnerable moisture barriers!
Tressie McMillan Cottom on Ozempic as a luxury cosmeceutical (and Oprah as an Ozempic evangelist).
The Cut published yet another viral personal essay, this one about “age gap” relationships. In it, the author claims a woman’s “best years” are 20-25 and calls youth a “superpower.” Readers were outraged, rightfully if hypocritically. I don’t know… If it strikes you as blatantly wrong or ridiculous or anti-feminist to hear women peak at 25 so plainly, shouldn’t it strike you as equally wrong or ridiculous to hear it from the beauty industry? From celebrities? Influencers? Dermatologists? Yourself? That is, after all, the message behind the “collagen banking” panic, the Botox boom, all anti-aging products/procedures. I just can’t take criticism of the Cut writer seriously if it’s coming from people whose own neurotoxin-smoothed foreheads function as ad space for the futile pursuit of perma-youth. At least she has the guts to put her mouth where her money is!!
Re: “collagen banking.” I spoke to Vogue Business about the new trend (or, more accurately, old pseudoscience) here.
A must-read on dermfluencers from Brennan Kilbane for Allure:
A 2021 installment of the Ethics Journal Club, a portion of the broader Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, tackled the issue of dermfluence when a resident wrote in wringing their hands about spon-con. The reply took a much harder line than Dr. Cronin: “Recommending products in return for compensation is unethical as it harms the physician-patient relationship and prioritizes your own personal monetary gain over patient well-being.” But not too hard: “If you do decide to advertise products on social media, we strongly recommend that you (1) refrain from making false or unsubstantiated claims and (2) disclose conflicts of interest for readers if they apply.”
More here.
In a new press release, cosmetic dermfluencer Dr. Paul Jarrod Frank says younger patients concerned about aging should skip major surgery and start “performing small tweaks frequently” over time instead. He calls this “microdosing prejuvenation.” (And I’m ready to microdose cyanide.)
Colgate just revealed its “My Smile Is My Superpower” campaign, which “aims to show everyone, once and for all, that all smiles are beautiful smiles, no matter their size, shape or shade.” It would be more convincing if Colgate wasn’t one of the top five conglomerates in the teeth whitening category!
Gore-Geous: Personal Essays on Beauty and Horror by Alexandra West was excerpted in Welcome to Hell World this week and I pressed “pre-order” so fast. I can’t wait to read West’s “revealing blend of personal essay writing and film criticism that explores the concepts of beauty standards and gender norms in films like Cat People (1942), The Witches (1990), Carrie (1976), Black Swan (2010), Audition (1999), American Psycho (2000) and Ready or Not (2019) and others.”
More recommended reading:
“Toddlers Smell Like Flowers, Teens Smell ‘Goatlike,’ Study Finds” by Emily Anthes for the New York Times
“The Reddit pages that investigate influencers” by Feven Merid for Columbia Journalism Review
“Recycling Doesn’t Work—and the Plastics Industry Knew It” by Kate Aronoff for the New Republic
“The Luxury of Being Plain” by Habiba Katsha for ELLE
“Revealed: Photography firm that deleted disabled children from class picture also asked girl, five, to take off her crucial super-strength glasses because 'mummy would like a photo of her looking pretty'” by Andrew Young at the Daily Mail
Finally: When Simone de Beauvoir said, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” this is what she meant, right?
You’re Gonna Die Someday No Matter How Young You Look,
Jessica
You know. For when you need to smooth your software. These idiots don't know anything about skin OR about tech. Listening to the podcast Maintenance Phase and its ilk really turned my grifter radar (grif-dar) into a finely calibrated instrument and all the makeup and skincare pitches hit my ear just the same as the diet pitches, the supplement pitches, the friggin conspiracy pitches, the hustle culture shit and the wellness shit and the capitalist shit, all the same godscorned grift.
"I just can’t take criticism of the Cut writer seriously if it’s coming from people whose own neurotoxin-smoothed foreheads function as ad space for the futile pursuit of perma-youth."
Mic drop.