THUTT!
The Don't Buy List: Issue #109
Hello and welcome to another edition of THE DON’T BUY LIST! Friction is the word on everyone’s lips lately. We’re friction-maxxing. There’s the friction advantage. Less convenience (more friction) = more happiness. But what about friction of the face? Friction for the eyes??
Beauty standards reflect culture, and I’ve long said that the pull of frictionless lives inspired the push toward frictionless skin: Glazed donut skin. Dewy dumpling skin. Ageless, poreless, expressionless simulacra skin — ideals that are part and parcel of tech companies’ “friction-elimination tools that effectively dehumanize users,” and just as destructive (physically, psychologically).
In The Cut, Kathryn Jezer-Morton defines friction-maxxing as “the process of building up tolerance for ‘inconvenience’ (which is usually not inconvenience at all but just the vagaries of being a person living with other people in spaces that are impossible to completely control) — and then reaching even toward enjoyment. And then, it’s modeling this tolerance, followed by enjoyment and humor, for our kids.”
May I suggest applying this process to our faces? Practice facial friction-maxxing! Let go of glass-ing, glazing, blurring. Stop striving for line-free, screen-smooth, fully optimized flawlessness. Embody the friction!
Even better: One person’s facial friction is another person’s visual friction. One begets the other, and more of the latter permits more of the former. All of it contributes to the collective “tolerance” for — and enjoyment of — our ordinary human faces.
Anyway! Onto the links…
IN THIS ISSUE: Thutts! Choppelgangers! Ugly laws! The Ugly Stepsister! Eye wigs! Eye veneers! Greenland! The Morgue Gaze! Disavowing wrinkles! Reheated anti-aging rhetoric! Piss perfume! Ugliness as resistance! FLUSH WORLD! Bella Hadid in “The Beauty”! & more!
Consider the thutt. I came across this new-to-me term via Dr. Paul Jarrod Frank’s Instagram this week—
—but apparently, it’s been in circulation for years. It gained popularity on the talk show “The Doctors,” where an MD described it as “when the muscles on the back of a woman’s legs are under-developed” and “the buttock and thigh [appear to be] a single anatomical unit.” (That’s right, men and they/thems. Thutts are for the ladies only!)
The vocab lesson continues with “choppelganger” — Gen Z slang for “an individual who bears a striking resemblance to another person yet is regarded as a hideous, grotesque, or otherwise cosmetically degraded imitation,” per Urban Dictionary. If you think about it, our physical selves are just our filtered/Facetuned/frictionless digital doppelgangers’ choppelgangers…
Reminder: President Trump’s obsession with taking over Greenland was sparked by Ronald Lauder, of Estée Lauder fame and fortune. Look at all the influence our money can buy!
After reading “RFK Jr.’s Eugenics-Coded Crusade” in Vanity Fair, I feel like politicians are thisclose to trotting out “ugly laws” again.
As predicted, “bleph-without-the-bleph” content is everywhere, for those with (sagging) eyes to see it. Recently: “Intrigued by Eyelid Surgery? Consider These Non-Invasive Options Instead” from the Wall Street Journal; “The No-Bleph Bleph?” from How Not to F*ck Up Your Face; and these horrifying, hyperreal eyelid wigs from Mara Porter.
On the other hand, I’m very into artist Lady Olgitta’s eye veneers:
I’ve been on a sort of aesthetic “death watch” since last October, reporting on references to mortality as an emerging trend in the industry — from “death row beauty products” to “casket scents” to “death cleaning” your makeup drawer and cadaver fat injections. And they keep coming! It’s time to give the microtrend a name: The Morgue Gaze, maybe? (I’’ll work on it.) Some recent additions to the space:
E.l.f. Cosmetics released its second collaboration with Liquid Death: “Lip Embalms” in coffin-shaped packages — AKA, “Lip Crypts” — “serving death to chapped lips” in shades like “Rest in Peach” and “Doctor Death.” The product is already sold out (or, in e.l.f. parlance, “No Longer With Us”).
In a press release, plastic surgeon Dr. Melissa Doft says Alloclea — “an exciting new injectable made from cadaveric fat” — is a “top trending procedure” for 2026. “The donated fat is thoroughly processed and stripped of genetic material before being reinjected,” she explains.
“Cadavers are fuelling the beauty revolution,” writes Ellen Atlanta for Dazed. Read the whole thing!
Fragrance brand TokyoMilk released a limited edition “Wuthering Heights” Dead Sexy Eau de Parfum ahead of the film’s premiere, in an “embossed glass bottle concealed within a sultry, crimson bed of tumultuous florals marked with a provocative skull, a memento mori reminiscent of the transience of life.”
Finally, a particularly relevant passage from Madeline Cash’s new novel, Lost Lambs: “…she thought sadness added a depth to her beauty. A woman’s magazine her mother subscribed to had taught her this. All the models pouted, their eyes dark and empty and hopeless, like they’d just returned from a wake.”
On a more somber note, Russian influencer Yulia Burtseva died following “a cosmetic operation, reportedly intended to enlarge her buttocks” earlier this month.
“You’ve earned every line on your face,” a new True Botanicals campaign proclaims. “Now there’s finally a breakthrough designed to honor them. So laugh harder, cry deeper, live louder, and let us take care of the rest.”
How does it propose to “honor” these lines? By negating them, naturally. A full “100%” of clinical trial participants “saw a highly significant improvement in fine lines and wrinkles” after using Pure Radiance Supreme Eye Cream, the brand boasts. Translation: Live your life — we’ll make it look like you didn’t! I’m not sure if the True Botanicals marketing team needs psychoanalysis or studies it. This is classic disavowal (accepting reality while denying reality).
One of my favorite films of 2025, The Ugly Stepsister, was nominated for an Oscar (Best Makeup and Hairstyling). Watch it and listen to Mess World’s interview with director Emilie Blichfeldt ahead of the ceremony!
Pagliacci-core icon Sarah Sherman smells like “wet dirt and piss.”
FLESH WORLD has famously always had a finger on the flusher of the butthole beauty category. To keep track of new developments, I’m introducing FLUSH WORLD, a recurring segment on all things hole-adjacent!
The Hot Boy Hemorrhoid category is heating up, and Bryan Johnson — the millionaire tech exec on a quest for immortality, who’s also doing some of the strangest, most exhilarating body writing on the internet today via X and Substack — has a theory as to why. He credits the “+46% higher hemorrhoid prevalence” and “+ 26% higher risk of developing hemorrhoids” to “smartphone while on the toilet.”
After writing about Julia Fox’s David Protein Bar campaign last week, some interesting intel landed in my inbox: Customers are reporting “orange, waxy, disgusting” poops. Marty Supreme collab incoming??
In the opening scene of Ryan Murphy’s “The Beauty,” a rabid Bella Hadid washes her face with toilet water.
Speaking of Bryan Johnson: His Don’t Die organization hosted a panel on skin longevity (“Beyond Beauty, toward immunity through skin health innovations”) in San Francisco this week. This sort of thing would normally trigger my skepticism — when paired with the word “skin,” “longevity” tends to signal reheated anti-aging rhetoric — but one of my favorite microbiome experts, Dr. Elsa Jungman, was a panelist, so I’m open. A “national television crew” filmed the event; I’m interested to see where it ends up.
More recommended reading:
“Voraciousness and Shame” by Vivian Hu for The Drift
“The Bones of Children’s Mouths Are Being Wrenched Apart” by Daniel Engber for The Atlantic
“Invasive Melanoma Cases Have Risen Almost 50% Over the Past Decade” by Elizabeth Gulino for Allure
“I cannot stop thinking about the Skims Ultimate Pierced Nipple Push-Up Bra” by MaiLee Hung 洪美麗 for Cyborg Manifesting
Finally, I’ll leave you with this: Tressie McMillan Cottom says ugliness is resistance.
Lots of great book recommendations in her caption, too! (And one of them is our Lowbrow Book Club pick for March…)
You’re Gonna Die Someday No Matter How Young You Look,
Jessica
Omg omg omg! How i love every word here, tho the education is terrifying! Love " ugliness" as resistance tho id rather see it as being human as resistance! We dont all age alike or look alike at any age and i am never frightened more than when i see a face that diesnt move or looks artifical because it is!!! Bless you for encouraging us to embrace the life of the human face and bodies that are equally unique and remind us of gratitude fir being able to mive in them!
Thank you for reminding me why I should leave social media (just wrote a whole essay about that). I haven't been online much and realized how much better I feel without all this beauty policing bullshit. My eyes are saggy, and I like them that way! I like squinty eyes!! Lol. But I am gonna check out Tressie's reading list.