I was an editor on the Kardashian apps in 2015 in LA, worked days nights & weekends, could only afford groceries from the 99 Cents Only Store, called out “sick” more than once bc I couldn’t put gas in my car to get to the office, & was reprimanded for freelancing on the side ❤️
“I have the best advice for women in business,” Kim Kardashian says. “Get your f--king ass up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days.”
kim kardashian starving herself for 3 weeks and bleaching her hair for 14 hours to look that boring is a pretty great representation of mass beauty culture
I had to buy groceries at the 99 Cents Only Store when I worked as an editor on the Kardashian-Jenner Official Apps ❤️ and got reprimanded for freelancing on the side ❤️❤️
the depp-heard verdict & the abortion bans & the pro-ana TikToks & the submissive tradwife content & the "i don't want to think i just want to be hot" bimbo comeback & kim kardashian telling the nytimes she would eat *literal shit* if it made her look younger are all connected
The wildest thing about that job: I saw firsthand how the most famous women in the world Frankensteined an impossible standard of beauty, pushed the rest of us to “keep up” with them, weaponized that standard of beauty to sell products, and *still* never felt good enough.
Then I pivoted to beauty media because I want to change the industry & quickly realized how fucked up and exploitative *that* world was. It’s why I do what I do now: Critiquing the beauty industry and reporting on the harms of beauty culture for my newsletter, The Unpublishable.
most beauty reporting is bribery. when i was a beauty editor brands sent me like $2,000 worth of products every week + offers to pay for facials, filler, botox, all-expenses-paid trips. once a pr team sent me $100 gift card to barney's for no reason. objectivity is impossible
To be clear: Love the 99 Cents Only Store, fantastic produce department. And the freelancing thing was in my contract. It’s an awful, exploitative policy that makes sure eager, inexperienced, & poorly paid employees remain inexperienced & poorly paid.
they all send the same message, there's only one way to be a woman in this country: to give up, to shut up, to shrink. to be property, an object, a plaything. to empty your head & surrender your body to the state until it kills you.
(by which I mean… consider whether the effort you put into controlling *your own appearance* is ultimately worth the time, energy, money, emotional toll, & mental space)
@IRSFUNFACTS
This is not about tearing down other women. This is about comparing Kim's (unhealthy!) aesthetic labor to mass beauty culture, in order to encourage self-reflection about the effort the rest of us put into ultimately meaningless displays of beauty
@IRSFUNFACTS
This is not about tearing down other women. This is about comparing Kim's (unhealthy!) aesthetic labor to mass beauty culture, in order to encourage self-reflection about the effort the rest of us put into ultimately meaningless displays of beauty
and b4 u tell me i'm "tearing a woman down," read my reporting on how kim 1) tears the women working 4 her down & 2) enforces an impossible (even to her) standard of beauty that's causing anxiety, depression, dysmorphia, eating disorders & literal death
from the replies I'm starting to think no one understands what "representation" means or what "beauty culture" is. this isn't a tweet about Kim, it's a tweet about US
so grateful to everyone who subscribed to my newsletter from my kim k tweet! i was barely able to write/work the past 2 yrs—got divorced, moved in w my parents, my mom got cancer, it all broke my brain—& w/ the $$ from new subs i just paid off 2 credit cards & an overdue gas bill
i understand the bimbo thing but I also understand the history of beauty standards & aesthetic communication! and an aesthetic stemming from patriarchal, capitalist values communicates those values—it’s what makes standardized beauty such an effective weapon. more in this thread:
like... you can get on bimbotok and SAY you're anti-capitalist or a leftist or a revolutionary or whatever, but in practice, you're adopting and perpetuating an aesthetic of accumulation, an aesthetic of consumerism, an aesthetic of colonization
lol for everyone who's like "i want this job!"... THIS is why we're all so obsessed with products! because beauty product makers bribe the beauty media to write about their (mostly useless, harmful, wasteful) beauty products and make people believe that consumerism = beauty
& our beauty behaviors affect the collective! performing beauty reinforces a physically & psychologically harmful ideal, and encourages others to sacrifice their *actual* sources of power (time/money/effort/headspace) in service to that physically & psychologically harmful ideal
@allways_ally
I think you meant "the beauty culture that conditions women to take on extreme/unhealthy diets and aesthetic labor in the name of embodying a societal beauty ideal based in patriarchy, white supremacy, and consumerism can't let women just live their fucking lives"
not to mention the downstream negative effects of beauty products on people/planet. sure, it's nice that you want to subvert the standard in theory! but in action, you reinforce the standard & financially support a system that thrives when people feel like shit about themselves
and i wasn't even an important beauty editor! just a low-level nobody at the zoe report + some extra freelancing. this is just how the beauty media works
and like… yes, makeup *can* be a tool of self-expression & -examination, but its most common uses today are consumerism, conformity, & complacency. the more we lean into the exceptional "self" element w/o critiquing its common use, the more we allow the latter to thrive
ok glad we've all read the essay now let's take our "it's so sad to think your best years are 20-25" & "youth is not a superpower" takes and direct them toward the beauty industry which mystifies the same exact messages as feminism/ empowerment/ fun/ health/ beauty every day!!!
not hearing much from the "sexual wellness" brands that built a $100 billion industry on "feminine" washes and "yoni oils" and "v serums" and vaginal rejuvenation procedures... almost as if they don't care about "sexual wellness" at all huh
my mom’s 60th birthday is in two days. she has stage 4 cancer in her lungs and bones. i’m crying in the middle of target because almost every birthday card here features a joke about how awful it is to get/look older and she’d do anything to get to live to be a wrinkly old lady
the piece i'm most proud of publishing this year: a report on my experience working for the kardashian-jenner apps in 2015, labor conditions at the sisters' current beauty brands, & how the family's "aesthetic american dream" is literally killing women:
everything about this article in the cut is disturbing and regressive and awful, and including these (irrelevant) details is another way to imply “she deserved it”/“what to you expect”/“boys will be boys”. beauty is a weapon deployed against women.
which is not to say that beauty writers are aware they do this. when you're indoctrinated by the industry, you truly believe what you're writing! you believe products solve every problem, that they're essential to your self-expression and self-care and self-love!! (they're not)
ugh people are making this about kim and about how she looked in the dress. it's not about how she looked in the dress. it's about the outsize aesthetic labor so many of us perform for a reward that never actually comes
female artists with tens of thousands of dollars worth of skincare, facials, dermatological treatments, cosmetic injectables, dental work, and/or surgeries
selling people makeup, skincare&shapewear to manipulate their bodies into closer alignment w beauty standards is not "loving your body.” this is why beauty culture is a mental&physical health issue on a massive scale. media giants like TIME insist manipulation is love. it’s sick
@allways_ally
I think you meant "the beauty culture that conditions women to take on extreme/unhealthy diets and aesthetic labor in the name of embodying a societal beauty ideal based in patriarchy, white supremacy, and consumerism can't let women just live their fucking lives"
@CredenzaDav
yeah, my point was more about the "mass beauty culture" of it all. this is level we as regular women put into our appearance all the time, not to be "knockout" celebrities, just to exist as basic women in the world
& which is not to say that bias is directed toward specific, gifted products! bias is directed toward *products and procedures in general.* in truth most skin concerns are more effectively treated by removing a product, or just using fewer of them (read "clean" by james hamblin!)
did an interview the other day & was asked how i developed my "aging is living" philosophy. i can't stop thinking about it bc it's not a philosophy! it's not some faux-positive "everybody is beautiful" inspirational saying! it's just the truth. like that's literally what aging is
putting this out to the universe...i want to write a beauty advice column somewhere. not bullshit product recs but really getting into BEAUTY & what it means to us & why & how it got so one-dimensional/unfulfilling & how to handle beauty culture in ways both practical & spiritual
@ButNotTheCity
I totally get that it’s satirical! I just don’t think it works. The aesthetic itself can’t communicate “rebellion,” it communicates oppression. If someone’s idea of political push-back conveniently aligns with exactly what the current oppressive politic wants out of them… 🤷🏻♀️
Earlobe Rejuvenation ✨
Earlobes change with age—like anything else, they can become droopy, they can “deflate,” and they can even develop folds and seem “collapsed.” Fortunately, earlobes can be rejuvenate either with filler or surgery..
just saw an article about aging that used exact phrases from an article i wrote months ago & referenced a study i linked to in a recent newsletter. looked up the author, she subscribes & opens every email. love that we're fighting ageism here but can we do it w/o plagiarizing??
& besides the appearance stuff, BEAUTY is so much more expansive than the beauty media leads us to believe. the writing & reporting could be so RICH!! instead we get shit like "17 Resurfacing Treatments To Give You The Glow of A Recently Refinished Hardwood Floor"
& the other "problems" the beauty industry purports to "solve" — crises of self-expression, self-love, self-care, self-worth, confidence, empowerment, etc — are rarely solved by products or procedures. (they're more often exploited by brands offering products and procedures!)
unbiased reporting wld cover the physical science of skin (which shows most products, save for spf, are useless or damaging) & the social science of beauty culture (which shows the beauty industry often perpetuates the harm of beauty culture) & products would RARELY come into it
ugh people are making this about kim and about how she looked in the dress. it's not about how she looked in the dress. it's about the outsize aesthetic labor so many of us perform for a reward that never actually comes
kim kardashian starving herself for 3 weeks and bleaching her hair for 14 hours to look that boring is a pretty great representation of mass beauty culture
fun fact about facial fat: your skin can't function without it. adipose tissue (fat) is essential to developing fibroblasts (like COLLAGEN!), produces anti-inflammatory compounds, and communicates w skin cells to stimulate wound healing & cell differentiation (renewal)
trying to imagine another area of journalism where you know your subject is lying & you publish the lies anyway & that’s just ok. wish we’d stop giving beauty “journalism” a free pass here. if people treated beauty culture as the public health issue that it is, this wouldn’t fly
Gaetz: "Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb."
this is a pretty great example of how participating in beauty culture = perpetuating beauty culture, & how
so many women would rather uphold the systems of oppression that privilege them than work toward collective liberation
She’s 25 and has never had a child. I’m 43 and have 4 kids.
When people say I have to celebrate her body but I should feel ashamed for showing mine, I realize that society doesn’t care about praising hard work, ethics, and self control.
It takes work to stay fit. It takes /1
you know what's wild? whenever i see an article that seems to borrow heavily from my work, the author is always a newsletter subscriber, and a very active subscriber, opening emails multiple times each
i feel like we need to stop referring to “gaining power within an exploitative system” (like, say, being a landlord! or adhering to the beauty ideal!) as “empowerment”
a woman just unsubscribed from my newsletter by saying “thank GOD my daughters are not like you” (plus some other pretty insulting stuff) & because i’m petty and sad i emailed her back “and thank GOD my mother is not like you”
there is no such thing as a "realistic beauty standard." the standardization is the unrealistic part
there is no such thing as a "liberatory beauty standard." the standardization is the oppressive part
when i write about skincare being a scam and ppl are like “but skincare has completely changed my skin! look!!” it’s like… i didn’t say skincare won’t aesthetically manipulate your skin?? of course it will. i said skin doesn’t *need* most skincare products in order to function
FIRST YOU CLEANSE TO DESTROY YOUR SKIN'S PH LEVEL, THEN TONE TO REBALANCE IT. THEN YOU GOTTA EXFOLIATE TO GET RID OF THE DEAD SKIN CELLS THAT HOLD IN MOISTURE & MOISTURIZE TO REPLACE THAT HYDRATION. A SERUM WILL TARGET BASIC HUMAN FUNCTIONS LIKE AGING — IT'S ALL VERY SCIENTIFIC
roses are red / violets are blue / deep human connection depends upon microexpressions that your conscious mind doesn't pick up on and limiting your ability to convey emotion the name of beauty will not bring you closer to the transcendent love that's waiting for you <3
an article titled “13 Ways To Fake Looking Like You Got Sleep” suggests beauty products totaling $110 — roughly 10 hours of labor for the average American citizen.
10 hours of labor to look like you slept for 8 of them.
for research, i'm putting together a big list of beauty industry clichés and tag lines... things like "you, but better" and "makeup is my armor" and "because you're worth it" and "i do it for me", etc. what beauty clichés have you noticed brands/influencers/enthusiasts using?
one big problem with brands asking for your phone number instead of email now is that every time a text comes in and you get excited thinking maybe it's a friend or a lover but then it's just a discount code from a clothing company, it crushes your soul just a little bit
Iranian women are cutting their hair & protesting patriarchal beauty norms to call attention to the many other ways that patriarchal governing censors, controls, & kills women *because these things are intertwined.* american beauty outlets are framing this as “the power of hair”
the way the beauty industry (and its customer base) is attempting to make beauty standards more inclusive is so backwards. dismantle beauty standards and inclusivity is the default
i have an appointment w a new derm tomorrow & am practicing saying “i am only here for my annual skin cancer screening, i am not interested in hearing about any aesthetic interventions”
Diet Prada writes that bleached brows are “a bold rejection of homogenization and artificiality.” But how? Glomming onto the latest eyebrow trend doesn’t reject homogenization; it redirects it. Bleaching or shaving one’s brows away doesn’t reject artificiality; it requires it.
if you say a beautiful woman is a drug, if you say she’s some celestial creature from the heavens, you’re really saying she doesn’t need to be treated like a human being with basic human rights, and disguising it as flattery
i’m a beauty industry nepo baby (my parents considered getting me plastic surgery before i started preschool so my peers wouldn’t make fun of me, setting me up for a lifetime of body shame & a personal interest in the social, financial, and political consequences of ugliness)
minimal makeup brands love to say "our $42 foundation looks like your skin!" like hmmm... i actually already have something that looks *exactly* like my skin & is free
the thing about beauty standards is conforming to them has the same collective impact whether you do it with an ironic wink or not :) the thing about sparkly eyeshadow is child laborers often harvest the mica & glitter pollutes waterways forever even if you're doing a bit :)
“If you told me that I literally had to eat poop every single day and I would look younger, I might. I just might.”
THIS IS A REAL QUOTE FROM KIM KARDASHIAN TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
THIS IS A MENTAL DISORDER
"clean girl makeup" takes the same time/effort/product. it's hidden aesthetic labor vs. overt aesthetic labor. teens are not lucky to grow up in 2024 beauty culture! it's giving them anxiety, depression, dysmorphia & encouraging them to undergo risky procedures at younger ages
The same way “girlbossing” empowers the individual “girlboss” but perpetuates the patriarchal values of hustle culture for everyone underneath her, performing beauty to gain power within a culture that rewards women for their looks further perpetuates those patriarchal values.
showed my grandma the pictures i put on my online dating profile (one of me in a giant muumuu + one close up of my face with no makeup, so these men know what to expect from me!!) and she said "i'm surprised you've gotten any calls at all"
thinking about how post-uvalde, there was so much discussion & analysis about how most mass shootings start w violence against women & are rooted in misogyny, and then the Supreme Court loosened gun laws. and then they overturned roe. the violence & misogyny is the point
i’m not like other girls… i’ve absorbed no cultural messages equating womanhood with subservience and have never let the patriarchal pressure to shrink and/or shut up infiltrate my personal relationships or professional life
people love to “play devil’s advocate” with my work by parroting the most mainstream defenses of the beauty industry. “but makeup can be self-expression” “but skincare is self-care” like yes… i understand you think that… THAT’S WHY IM WRITING ABOUT IT
@Faith__Robinson
bc beauty is an inherently spiritual concept so it connects to something deep & true within us. the problem is that beauty culture has flattened beauty to the physical dimension — which is why all of it ultimately feels unfulfilling & we keep buying & trying & applying & seeking
@illusClaire
I honestly think that people “ironically” performing beauty are, at their core, unwilling to give up standardized/industrialized beauty as a form of power (bc it’s one of the few we have) and are instead trying to manipulate it into something radical when it’s just not lol
the thing about influencers being all virtuous and practicing “cosmetic transparency” now is that we all already knew you were getting botox, fillers, lasers, light surgery. it is very obvious lol