Would You Rather Die Hot or Live Ugly?
The Don't Buy List: Issue #68
Hello and welcome to another edition of The Don’t Buy List! It’s Women’s History Month and plastic surgeons are celebrating by introducing a brand new specialty: revisional labiaplasty. The technique was developed to fix botched labiaplasties, of which there are apparently many, since so many women want them and so few doctors are properly trained to perform them yet perform them anyway. The PR angle on this email was “vaginal wellness” but it all sounds pretty sick to me!!
Anyway.
In this issue: Dying hot vs living ugly! Prescription-strength suntans! Why I don’t support all women! A Presidential ticket of beauty influencers! Andrea Long Chu! Lauren Oyler! Gen Alpha skincare! Carcinogens in acne creams! SZA regrets her breast implants! The Rock launches a beauty brand! Millie Bobby Brown minimizes her aesthetic labor! DEI in dermatology! Regressive feminism! And more!
What a headline, what a world: “‘I’d rather die hot than live ugly’: Tanning mania returns.” Anne Branigin interviewed me for this one at the Washington Post:
Health as an aesthetic, not a state of being, is a growing problem in the world of beauty, argues beauty writer and critic Jessica DeFino.
This tension is particularly apparent with the surging popularity of sunless tanners, said DeFino. The latest products promise more natural results with easier application. They can certainly feel healthy: no UV rays, no skin damage. But obsessing over the look may mean we’re paying less attention to the very activities that do boost our health: fresh air, sunlight, nature.
“Projecting the right image is more important to people than living the type of the life that that image suggests,” she said.
Along those lines: Lady Gaga hosted a party for pharmaceutical company Clinuvel. I checked the Clinuvel site; the brand claims to be “pioneering new skincare technology that … bronzes skin at a cellular level.” I get that people want the appearance of health (a “healthy” tan) and a pill (or nasal spray) seems like a “healthy” way to get it. But! If you believe sitting out in the sun long enough to get the tan you want would increase your risk of developing skin cancer, then you’re not adopting an aesthetic of health. You’re adopting an aesthetic of injury.
New Halima Jibril for Dazed Beauty: “Does having bad morals really make you ugly?” (See: Claims that Anne Hathaway is beautiful because she’s “unproblematic” and Amy Schumer is ugly because she’s a Zionist; the childish moral code of a Disney cartoon.) I’ve been interviewed by Jibril twice now — once for this article, and again for her piece on separating skincare from beauty standards — and I think she’s one of the most exciting young voices in the beauty space. Pay attention to her!
I was a guest on podcast with Christy Harrison last week. We talked about the parallels between skincare culture and wellness culture, anti-aging as ageism, and an economic vs. existential framework for evaluating your beauty behaviors. Listen here! (There’s also a bonus episode for Rethinking Wellness’s paid subscribers.)
This part of Andrea Long Chu’s latest for New York Magazine, “Freedom of Sex: The moral case for letting trans kids change their bodies”, made me think of dermatology: