Old & Hairy & Monstrous

Hello and welcome to another edition of THE DON’T BUY LIST! I haven’t written one of these in a while because I’ve been reading too many books that make me feel like everything good and smart and true has already been written: Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert (just came out this month); White Noise by Don DeLillo (ahead of its time for 1984); Ugly Feelings, Our Aesthetic Categories, and Theory of the Gimmick by Sianne Ngai (I just took a class on her work from The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research); and Ways of Seeing by John Berger (for a book club). Would recommend all. Also: Review of Beauty book club? Who’s in?

Be warned: This newsletter is apparently “too long for email” and will cut off in your inbox. You’ll have a smoother reading experience if you click the headline to open via internet browser instead.

Anyway! Onto the links…

IN THIS ISSUE: The “beauty” in Trump’s big, beautiful bill! Hair removal and the monstrous-feminine! Intergalactic glam! Y2K aesthetics! XL lip gloss! Hugs not (dermatological) drugs! SZA’s celebrity beauty brand! New butthole beauty products! Gen Z is not well! Meta isn’t helping! Roblox! Godmode! & more!

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” includes a proposed tax break for indoor tanning salons, BeautyMatter reports. Tanning beds are, of course, known to increase one’s risk of developing skin cancer — but given this particular piece of legislation also aims to cut health care coverage for millions of Americans, the tanning provision is in line with its overall ethos. The bill’s titular “beauty,” as interpreted through its content, is death. Also wealth. Which is actually pretty close to the beauty industry’s definition of beauty (if you consider anti-aging, which translates to anti-living, a kind of death).

Nood — that of “want a hairless asshole?” fame — is at it again. Its latest ad targets the “old & hairy” with a product that supposedly offers “firmer, younger-looking skin” as well as “long-lasting hair removal.”

Women make up the majority of Nood’s customer base, and the “old and hairy” woman could be seen an example of “the monstrous-feminine,” as theorized by Barbara Creed: “an abject figure because she threatens the symbolic order” (i.e., the patriarchal symbol of woman as youthful and hairless). “The monstrous-feminine draws attention to the ‘frailty of the symbolic order’ through her evocation of the natural, animal order and its terrifying associations with the passage all human beings must inevitably take from birth through life to death,” she writes, and therefore must be defeated. These quotes are from a book about female representation in horror films, but what is beauty culture — and this ad, specifically — if not a performance of ordinary horror?

Some listening material:

• I’m on a new episode of the MOTHER podcast with

  talking about the importance of dead skin cells, conspiracy theories about sunscreen, and how studying melanocytes showed me the meaning of life. (The short version: melanocyte cells are shaped like squid and produce melanin; squids produce squid ink, which is also melanin; proof of interconnection is everywhere!!)

• The hosts of The Internet Is Dead podcast —

  and – had me on to chat about post-feminist beauty standards, lukewarm critiques of cosmetic surgery, the paradox of “representation” on social media, and more.

• invited me to go live the other week and we touched on morning routines (mine includes an entire coffee pot of Café Bustelo), “writer’s block” vs. blocked thoughts, etc. I also read an old essay of mine about death, hair, and inheritance aloud! Here’s the rewatch.

Important updates to the butthole beauty category!