Quinta Brunson’s Night Cream Commercial Haunts My Dreams
The Don't Buy List: Issue #38
Hello, dewy dust bunnies, and welcome to another edition of the The Don’t Buy List! Today I witnessed a popular beauty podcast issue a trigger warning for mentions of diet culture and I just… I… I almost have no words. Beauty culture (which the podcast promotes) and diet culture (which the podcast trigger-warns against) are ideologically indistinguishable! BEAUTY CULTURE IS DIET CULTURE’S FACE-FOCUSED FRATERNAL TWIN!! SKINCARE CULTURE IS DEWY DIET CULTURE!!! You cannot pooh-pooh the latest Hollywood weight loss fad and promote the latest lip plumping serum with any sort of integrity — or at least, with any baseline understanding of the subject material.
Anyway!
Speaking of podcasts: I was a guest on What Works with Tara McMullin this week, unpacking the concept of “good bodies.” As McMullin puts it: “Beauty culture, the wellness industry, moral panics about health, disregard for othered bodies, and the normalization of ever-increasing demands on the body are all the results of the commercialization of our fear of being ‘out of control.’ How much of the media we consume revolves around ways of exerting control over ourselves? And how does that impact our relationship with our bodies?” Listen to it here.
And speaking of the rotten roots of beauty culture: I wrote an essay for the just-released book Preconceived: Challenging The Preconceptions In Our Lives, edited by Zale Mednick (host of the Preconceived Podcast). This isn’t necessarily a “beauty book” — it covers a wide range of topics, from sex to parenting to mental illness and more — but my chapter seeks to challenge the preconceived notion that “normal” skin consistently clear and calm. An excerpt:
No matter what your skin looks like right now, it is normal. No matter what. Acne? Normal. Wrinkles? Normal. Oily, dry, flaky, dull? All exceedingly normal.
Skin is supposed to react to the world around it. That’s kind of its whole thing. The skin is a go-between for your internal and external environments; it’s your body’s built-in communication center. After all, what better way to get your attention?
Sometimes these attention-grabs are life-saving: breaking out in hives lets you know you’re having an allergic reaction. And sometimes the skin’s attention-grabs are more low-stakes: dark circles could be a sign that you need more sleep. In any case, normal skin—healthy skin, skin that does its job—is reactive skin.
You can read the rest by ordering the book here. (Proceeds go to Pencils for Kids!)
Quinta Brunson’s Olay night cream commercial is haunting my dreams.
“Did you know your skin has a night mode?” she asks in the spot. “Skin cells renew overnight, so I wake up to smoother, brighter skin.” And, like, YES. That’s true! Skin DOES have a “sleep mode!” Skin cells DO renew overnight! These things happen all on their own. These are reasons to skip the night cream, not buy another one. I don’t know, it just strikes me as particularly manipulative (on Olay’s part, not Brunson’s; I’m sure she has no idea what she’s talking about re: skincare, like all celebrity mouthpieces) to use scientific facts about the wonder of the skin itself to sell consumer goods that deserve none of the glory. There is no need to bring products into this highly-intelligent bodily process!!
On that note: Apple News sent a push notification the other day that read, “Skin Care's New 'It' Ingredient Can Stop The Formation Of Wrinkles” and linked to a HuffPost article about peptides. Again, this information is partially true.