Just How ‘Minimally Invasive’ Can A Scalpel Be?
The Don't Buy List: Issue #80, guest-written by Anita Bhagwandas.
Hello and welcome to another edition of THE DON’T BUY LIST! This month I’m handing the DBL reins over to a series of guest editors. Today’s list comes from , the beauty reporter behind the newsletter and author of UGLY: Why The World Became Beauty Obsessed & How To Break Free (available in the UK here and the US here; click here to for other countries). You can follow her on Instagram here and learn more about her here. Trust me — Anita’s work on the beauty industry is essential reading. And now… Onto the links!
IN THIS ISSUE: “Demure” beauty! Unoriginal marketing! Dolly Parton’s lipstick! “Minimally invasive” face lifts! Men’s beauty pageants! Radioactive facials! & more (plus a few quick links from me at the end about “clean” beauty, showing bush, the FDA’s apparent love affair with formaldehyde, etc.)!
The Don’t Buy List: Issue #80
by
A plea to the beauty industry; bring back originality.
There’s nothing more cringe-inducing than brands jumping on a TikTok trend en masse to sell everything from tampons to mascara. In case you’ve missed this curious cultural moment, TikTokker Jules Lebron posted a satirical video about how she goes for a “demure” look for work. As the trend took off, behold a small sliver of my inbox below:
Here’s the thing: I get why beauty brands would do this. There’s a chance they’ll be featured in “demure” round ups by digital titles, and maybe that works a little, for a very short period of time. But there’s a flipside. It’s laden with unoriginality, is deeply off-putting, and risks scarring a brand if they either don’t fully grasp what’s being said or the product doesn’t really fit the brief. More often than not, it reeks of desperation. Last week you were fully “brat” — and now you’re the very opposite, and “very demure”?
Look, I’m not a bore — I like an internet funny as much as the next person. But what’s utterly baffling is that this giant pile-on to catch a trend before it subsides negates what beauty brands think they stand for: empowerment, individuality, and self expression.
They don’t stop to consider how their consumer is feeling (exhausted, time-poor, overwhelmed) and are stuck in the loop of thinking social media is real life and that everyone gives a shit, when they really don’t.
I’d love for a brand to do something that’s genuinely fun, interesting, and unique — honestly, the lack of originality has hit its peak.
A celeb beauty brand to actually give a shit about…
I know this is the “Don’t Buy List,” but hear me out.
Like me, you’re probably exhausted with celebrity beauty brands. So few feel genuine (hi Blake Lively), few create products that feel original or necessary (hi Brad Pitt), and more often they feel like a ploy to extract hard-earned cash from fans in a way that feels genuinely exploitative.
But my personal gripe with celebrity beauty brands is this: It’s never the people you actually want to release a beauty brand. If Chloe Sevigny released a haircare brand with a dry shampoo called “Zero Fucks Given,” I’d be all in. If a Slayer did a lip gloss called Raining Blood, I’d join that waitlist so fast you’d see smoke. That’s why I fully back Dolly Parton’s venture into makeup. Whatever you think of her, or her music, she’s defied societal expectations, and in some way beauty standards too, to march to her own beat in a male-dominated, ageist music industry.
The range looks, well, as you’d imagine — sparkly. If anything, my only criticism is that I want MORE bling. I want tiny rhinestone cowboy boot charms on the end of the lipsticks. I want a powder compact filled with a celestial powder that makes you sparkle like a galaxy. I want a candle that smells of sugar, whiskey, palma violets — which is how Dolly smells in my mind.
So a polite shout out to any celebs who might be thinking of starting a beauty brand. Just because you can, please don’t. Unless you’re Dolly, that is.
How young is too young for a facelift?
The internet is awash with commentary and theories on Christina Aguilera’s magical transformation. She’s achieved the ultimate goal placed upon women: to turn back the clock to look like her younger self because women aren’t allowed to age, especially those in the public domain. That alone seems to be enough to make headlines. It’s sad, isn’t it, that this is what it takes to be championed, lauded, and celebrated these days?
Speculation suggests this transformation is a combination of Ozempic and an endoscopic facelift. What’s missing from the commentary is how much we think we’ve progressed as a society and yet stars are feeling the pressure to get facelifts at 43 — which, by the way, is a lot younger than most surgeons would generally advise.
It also genuinely terrifies me how the language around cosmetic surgery is dumbed down to make it feel like a relaxing facial. Injectables are sold to us as mere “tweaks” and the endoscopic facelift itself is described as “minimally invasive” and “facial rejuvenation”despite it involving incisions along the hairline and an endoscope camera inserted into the skin to allow a surgeon to manipulate the tissues, muscles, and fat. Call me a scaredy cat, but that sounds fairly invasive to me?
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