Arabelle Sicardi - Plastic Surgery in Mormonism, Biohacking, and the Beauty Industry

This week, the girls are joined by Arabelle Sicardi, writer, image theorist, and author of The House of Beauty: Lessons from the Image Industry. Lola and Meagan confess the cosmetic procedures they've each had, and Arabelle explores how the beauty industry preys on our deepest fears, giving us a false sense of control and training us to worship ideals that are impossible to reach. They reflect on the high rates of plastic surgery in Utah and the LDS church, the gendered differences between the beauty industry and biohacking, and the relationship of beauty to power.

Arabelle breaks down the cultiness of influencer brand trips, Coco Chanel's forgotten Nazi ties, and how easy it can be to isolate in luxury, detaching from the unseen global exploitation within the beauty industry. Plus: why beauty's true value lies not in perfection, but in human connection.

SOURCES:

The House of Beauty: Lessons from the Image Industry

Arabelle Sicard

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Trust me?

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Do you trust her?

Speaker 3 (00:04):
Right ever lead you a story? Trust?

Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is the truth, the only truth.

Speaker 4 (00:09):
If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't
welcome to trust me. The podcast about cults, extreme belief
and manipulation from two beauty junkies who've actually experienced it.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
I am Lola Blanc and I am Megan Elizabeth.

Speaker 4 (00:23):
Today our guest is Arabella Sicarti, author of the House
of Beauty Lessons from the Image Industry. We're going to
discuss the ways that obsessing about beauty and stopping aging
becomes a way of feeling in control of our lives
when they feel out of control, the connection between Mormonism
and plastic surgery, and why Utah has some of the
highest rates in the country, and how beauty and power
go hand in hand.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Yes, we will.

Speaker 5 (00:46):
We'll get into Coco Chanel's Nazi ties, how some of
the scammer sides of beauty and the wellness industry can overlap,
and why the healthiest way to engage with beauty is
to prioritize connection with other people except when it comes
to MLMs.

Speaker 4 (01:03):
Indeed, before we get into it, do you have a
cultiest thing of this week that you experienced.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
You bet your boots, I do my boot. You're okay.

Speaker 5 (01:15):
So we're recording this a couple weeks in advance, so
perhaps when you're listening to this, there will be new
breaks in the story.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Right, but good disclaimer for to day.

Speaker 5 (01:27):
What we know is that basically Tampa, Florida mega mansion
they just discovered sixty people living inside of it.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
And this is the same one we've talked about before,
or no, this is a new one.

Speaker 5 (01:42):
Okay, it's a new one. So it's called the Kingdom
of God Global Church. It's still operating. Actually, even though
the two leaders of it have been taken to jail,
they're still operating their twenty four hour prayer line.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Whoa like a phone like Allah?

Speaker 5 (01:56):
And we've pulled in like fifty million dollars people working
for free, people collapsing, water being poured on them to
wake them up, which is actually something that did happen
to me once. What yeah, in what just like a
wake up water being pored I mean there's.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Like in your sorority or no, in.

Speaker 5 (02:17):
The two by two oh shit, and then the context
of a convention. Wow, it's a long story, okay, anyway.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
Okay, So what's the This is obviously some kind of
like church, like a religious cult.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
It's a church. It's a religious cult.

Speaker 5 (02:28):
They've been using people like to work twenty four hours
a day to raise money that these people have been
using to buy luxury cars. Jet skis a like two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars SUV. I don't even know
what the purpose is. And this the most interesting part
to me that no one keeps expanding upon. They just

(02:49):
kind of drop it in there like it's no big deal.
Is that there's human sized statues in cages?

Speaker 3 (02:57):
What?

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah are their photos? Yeah? WHOA.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
I'm looking at Google images right now, and this mansion's crazy.

Speaker 5 (03:06):
So the mansion is so big and I'm like sixty people.
It feels like that mansion could handle that.

Speaker 4 (03:13):
It does seem like it's a This is a very
large property that I'm looking at.

Speaker 5 (03:16):
Yeah, I feel like they're just sticking the victims in
like the great Enclosed Area something.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Oh my god. So we I have people been into,
Like how did it come out? Do you know the
FBI rated it. I don't know if they got a tip.

Speaker 5 (03:31):
I don't know what exactly happened, but I'm very interested
to see how the story plays out. And I'm very
interested to see where this would have gone had it
not stopped.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
The human size statues and cages. What the fuck? Yeah yeah,
I mean that feels like something's cooking. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:49):
Yeah, at least it's psychological torture of some kind or like,
you know, trying to be menacing, Like there's something that's
very ominous. Yeah, well, I am looking for to learning more.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yes, what about you? It's your cult this thing of
the week.

Speaker 4 (04:04):
I was going through our trust Me email and phone
hotline this week, which we have not done in I
was gonna say, damn once we're back on top of it, y'all.
So if you want to share your story, please send
us an email.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Gives a call. But I've found like a.

Speaker 4 (04:21):
Very like an older email from someone pitching a guest,
and it was super interesting to me because this is
a man who was a member of a woman led cult.
And maybe I won't say what it is because I
don't know if i'll I want to identify this person,
but there's a woman led cult that he had been
speaking out about his experiences with, and I was like, oh,

(04:43):
this sounds like a really interesting guest, Like I love
when men are willing to share their stories because it's
much harder to get them too. But then I went
to his Instagram page, and his Instagram page is all
like why I'm not a feminist anymore, why you should
be strong in your masculinity, very like Andrew Taty kind.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
Of like a shiplash back from the class.

Speaker 4 (05:05):
Yes, it's like what a fascinating I mean, like from
the outside, obviously I don't know this person, but from
the outside it very much looks like had a negative
experience with one woman who abused her power and extrapolated
upon that to then react and go with a complete
opposite direction and be like, actually women should have no power,
which is just like, so it's just so interesting. This

(05:29):
is just I mean, that is what we do as humans,
you know, Like I reacted to my religious upbringing in
which I believed really really hard by believing in absolutely nothing.
And sometimes I'm a little rigid in that people who
come out of polygamy sometimes become so vehemently antipolygamy that
they then are actually like against the victims of it

(05:52):
because they're still in it for you know, like, we
have such strong responses after we leave something, and I
guess that's just like one of the things that have
But it's so interesting to me how rare it is
that we balance out and we're like.

Speaker 5 (06:04):
Yeah, I guess that's why therapy is such a necessary
part of the process, so that somebody can like hold
space for radicalness maybe and then reflect it back to
us and be like when we're ready to hear it,
kind of be like, so here's what I'm seeing, because yeah, yeah,
it's it's it's impossible to not repel, yeah, trauma.

Speaker 4 (06:26):
And we overcorrect, Like that's just like I feel like
that's just such a human thing. We overcorrect, But damn
I don't want to, like I don't want to like
just flip flop and swing from one extreme to the other,
you know, and it's.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Easier to do. So yeah, yeah, that's that's a really
interesting one.

Speaker 4 (06:41):
So we're looking for a balance, we're looking for a
moderation and self reflection, and we're looking for beauty and
we're looking to be the most beautiful people alive.

Speaker 5 (06:52):
Shall we talk to Ara about Let's do it.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Welcome Arabella Saicarti to trust me.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
Thanks for having me excited to be here.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Thanks for being here.

Speaker 4 (07:12):
Your book is so beautiful, it's written so well. Nonfiction
can of course be written very beautifully, but you don't
always expect there to be this like poeticism, and I
really appreciated that.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
About it, so great job, Thank you.

Speaker 4 (07:26):
So can you tell us a little bit about your
really impressive background and what brought you to the subject
of beauty.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
So it all started because I was online way too much.
So I've been a writer working in the beauty space
pretty much since my brain started for me, Like I
started writing for magazines when I was like fourteen or fifteen,
So I have many years in the industry at this point,

(07:56):
and I split my time between New York and I
and going other places for reporting on the beauty industry.
Sometimes I write about fashion and wellness, hospitality, but my
bread and butter is the beauty industry, specifically around the
connections between beauty and politics, so I do reporting around that.

(08:19):
I also run a nonprofit called the Museum of Nails Foundation,
which is basically a digital first archive that documents now
art now culture and tries to give beauty workers in
the nail industry their flowers. Because beauty workers are often
uncredited and underappreciated.

Speaker 4 (08:39):
Amazing, This is totally in aside. But were you and
Tavi Gevinson compared a lot?

Speaker 1 (08:47):
Was that?

Speaker 3 (08:50):
I don't know compared? We grew up together, Like we
were really really close friends when we were both teens,
so they were Yeah, like I was part of the
Rookie og staff, So.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
You were a team. Were you a team? Is caat Marnel?
Is that in this world or not?

Speaker 3 (09:12):
I came a couple of years later in like a
little different wave. Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, so Exo Vain
came I guess after Rookie or maybe at the same time,
but kind of different social bubbles.

Speaker 5 (09:24):
Well, you have a really cool perspective on culture, beauty
cults actually, as we discovered while reading this book, and
one of the things that I found very amusing about
your book was that you got super into beauty because
of the fifth element. Yeah, when she has the Chanel moment,
and we can get into Chanel later and the problems

(09:45):
that surround her. But yeah, I was also extremely into
beauty as a child to a degree. That was very
odd because we were both raised in cults, so I
wasn't allowed to have makeup, I couldn't cut.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
My hair had to be in buns.

Speaker 5 (10:03):
But somehow I convinced my parents to get me like
a magnified mirror in seventh grade and no, yeah, and
it was like.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
A ten time magnified mirror.

Speaker 5 (10:13):
And I would just like, and I'm older than you,
So this was like way before kids my age were
even doing this.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
But I was like really thinking.

Speaker 5 (10:23):
About anti aging and like fourth grade and it's just
really odd. So I really related to a lot of
your book and the way it just kind of creeps
in there.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
Yeah. I think we were all obsessed with not wanting
to die as children in some form or another. Right, Yes,
I mean I think you know, like those hotel magnifying
mirrors that you can pull in and out. Of course,
I feel like they should be like criminalized. I know.
I don't think that they should exist. No, they just
pause everyone to want to like hate themselves or book

(10:55):
a hotel spat treatment because they're like, no one should
be looking at their pores.

Speaker 4 (10:58):
People, Oh my god, No, absolutely not. So what are
some of the obviously the fears that beauty praise upon.
You just mentioned one, which is the fear of death.
Can we talk about how this industry can kind of
take advantage of some of our deepest anxieties.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
Yeah, of course. I mean one of my taglines or aphorisms,
I would say it's like beauty is terror, but on
the same side, or like a different side of the
same coin. It's also an active care and for a
really long time, and kind of the guiding motive behind
the book was that I wanted to trace the connection

(11:34):
between terror, like the political form of terror, but also
just the feeling women feel and people feel navigating the
world in our bodies, always being judged, and see how
it plays into all the different industries around us, not
just the beauty industry, but how it's connected to every
other industry there is, because all of our products are

(11:55):
made of many different things and they are all connected
in some form or another.

Speaker 4 (12:00):
Yeah, I mean corporations and companies in general that are
marketing anything to us by design have to make us
feel inadequate or like there's something there's something missing from
our lives and something that we need. And obviously the
beauty industry, it just makes it centered around ourselves and
what is missing or wrong with us.

Speaker 5 (12:17):
Yeah, and that moving goalpost, it never you never reach utopia.
It always always be hotter, so you can always be hotter.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
Yeah, some of the.

Speaker 4 (12:27):
Hottest women I know are the ones that are the
most anxious about how they look all the time and
being hotter. I'm like, you're literally I would like die.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
To because it's a disease. It's a disease.

Speaker 5 (12:41):
But I love in the book how you kind of
go at it from both sides, where it is like
something very dangerous and corruptible, but it's also such a
beautiful way of connecting with people, and we can get
to that more later. You have a really perfect quote
about it. I also like how you call it like
body hacking. Can you tell us a bit more about

(13:03):
what the term body hacking means?

Speaker 3 (13:05):
So body hacking, at least in the framework of the book,
it really refers to this impulse to let's call it
like body optimization for the boys and the boyfriends of
beauty girls. It's basically doing a bunch of different things
either to your body or different wellness things. Might be surgical,

(13:27):
it might not be where you are trying to either
like live longer or like be a little healthier, be younger.
You know, all this anti aging stuff that we do
or we're seeing pop up in different clinics, or the
adaptogens or like the really fancy scientific founding skincare products

(13:48):
GLP one. All of these things they have to do
with this impulse to try to delay death in some
form or another, because the idea of being healthy has
so much to do with just like staying homozomaly, like younger,
because when you're younger, you have less chronic illnesses. So
much of the transhumanist movement pretty much is just about

(14:10):
trying to stay alive and as young as scientifically possible.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (14:14):
I mean, honestly, Percella Pressley to me looks like she
could run a marathon. Yeah, like, and it's just like
an illusion. I'm like, she's she's young. You know, it
works on me. I'm like, you're young.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (14:28):
Well, it's interesting talking about biohacking versus beauty. I mean
it almost seems like for men it's sort of outwardly
named as life extension and like this idea of health
or something, whereas for women or from people, it's more
like the appearance of youth.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
No, I totally agree with you. It's definitely like gendered.
It's like it's like gender washed somehow. These conversations and
you can actually see this in like how different wellness
spaces are marketed at at least in New York City.
I'm thinking a lot about this because I'm just going
to a bunch of them for the bit, because I
love doing that for research and seeing how people are

(15:05):
treating themselves in their body in different ways. Because wellness
is a cult. Beauty is a cults in itself, so
I want to see all the little cults and how
they're hanging out and what they're doing and chatting about.
So for men, I feel like it's really marketed in
terms of like almost like Terminator is on the mood board.
Oh my god, what I mean. It's so like we're
in tron We're going to do an AI robot massage.

(15:28):
We're going to get our like body scanned so we
see every single thing that possibly be wrong with us.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Optimize, Optimize.

Speaker 4 (15:36):
Yeah, We're going to.

Speaker 3 (15:37):
Do like ivy infusions. We're going to do all these
things and make us feel like we're in a spaceship.

Speaker 4 (15:42):
It's about strength. It's about like being stronger, longer or something.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
Maybe, yes, there's this phrase in the book. I think
so like longevity, velocity or something. At this point, I
don't remember exactly, but it has to do with like
just trying. There's like a barometer that's scientists and people
that are doing all of this body hacking stuff. They
are obsessed with statistically trying to make sure that you

(16:07):
live a little longer, and all of this stuff is
just for that effort, whereas all of the stuff that's
thrown that women for anti aging is really just about
like fake your age to be younger, remove and erased
parts of yourself so you give an idea of being
younger than you are. Your health kind of doesn't matter
in these conversations.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
Right at all.

Speaker 5 (16:26):
It doesn't even matter if it's a dangerous surgery, Like no,
bbl's are so dangerous, and people are like, gotta get
that fat ass babe, Like it.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
Just I'm attempted and I haven't been yet.

Speaker 5 (16:38):
I mean, I have fake boobs, Like it's a whole
I was telling Lola, getting my fake boobs was the
happiest experience of my life. So like it's just a
complicated subject because I also am like people shouldn't have
to change, and then I'm like, but I want to.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
Yeah, it's tough.

Speaker 3 (16:55):
Yeah it could be a playground or it could be
a prison, and sometimes it's both at the same time.

Speaker 5 (16:59):
You there it is, that's why you're the expert. That's
exactly what's happening. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 4 (17:04):
Well, speaking of prison, the prison of beauty, I mean,
so you did talk about on another podcast, which is
I think how we came across you in the first place,
the connection between Mormonism and plastic surgery. And as someone
who was raised Mormon, this was very surprising to me.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
And I don't know how.

Speaker 4 (17:22):
Deep any of y'all have gotten into this, but like
when I was growing up, you could not get your
ears pierced, you could not get tattoos, nobody got plastic
surgery because your body is a temple, and like if
somebody did, they really would try to hide it. It
was not something that was normal or acceptable. And I
started asking around about how that's changed. But can you

(17:43):
tell us some of them a little bit about that,
because it's changed a lot.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
It's changed a lot, it has. I mean when I
was just lightly doing the research about Mormonism and plastic
surgery and self cared body stuff, I was really surprised
that people are spending a lot, a lot of money
to do that, and it's so kind of related to
the paradynamics of being in the church and how much

(18:08):
money people are spending to kind of align themselves with
a very new, kind of off topic version of grace
and values that seem antithetical, as you said, to like
what it might have been before. I mean, now there's
Real Housewives situations going on on Hulu where you have
Mormonism kind of funneled through the lens of a Kardashian right, right.

(18:33):
And I'm sure for a lot of people that doesn't
feel like the religion that they might have grown up in.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (18:40):
And I was asking some friends and family members because
I was like, is this are you guys noticing this
is happening in your communities? And it seems like it's
definitely more prevalent in Utah specifically than to Mormon culture.
Outside of Utah. It seems to be the consensus. But
my Salt Lake friends.

Speaker 5 (18:58):
Were like, oh, yeah, Utah in general has those plastic
surgeons besides Miami and Los Angeles?

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Is that correct?

Speaker 3 (19:03):
Yeah? Yeah, outside of Brazil, it's like one of the
capitals of plastic surgery in the world.

Speaker 4 (19:07):
It's fascinating that the religion of don't drink coffee or
tea because that will because your body's a temple is now, Like,
but boob jobs are great, and in fact, do everything
you can.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
To be beautiful for God.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (19:22):
Yeah, but of course obviously there's a patriarchal element, you know,
like your kind of role as a woman in Mormonism
is to be presentable to your husband or your future
husband to bear children. Like, have you gained any insight
into some of the thinking that goes on there?

Speaker 3 (19:41):
I think what I've observed from across different religions that
are also they have like a patriarchal lens through which
they view women is that you're kind of a commodity
for God, and it is in your best interest and
in God's best interest or higher powers best interest if
you do this, that and the other thing. And if

(20:02):
you don't, you don't love the higher power quite enough.
You haven't sacrificed yourself enough to transform to be closer
to the vision.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
Wow, Okay, it's a ritual.

Speaker 4 (20:13):
Yeah, but who determines what is Like the dudes, dude
in each community, the men in each community are like,
this is what God likes. But it's so fascinating because
like if you look at the FLDS, like that's the
app like, yeah, no makeup.

Speaker 5 (20:29):
Yeah, but I remember one of the women saying, and
I don't remember where, but like Thinness was very stressed
for in her family in which family and her FLDS family.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Oh, I mean that might be true, but it's not everywhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
I mean one of the things I think we can
all kind of clock is that just because testimony or
like the actual primary source materials say one thing, it
doesn't mean that any specific like church or organization is
exactly following, of course, the rich in guidance.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Of course.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
The other day I just saw that like some church
had created an AI voice of Charlie Kirk around it. Yeah,
and they were having like group hallucinations about like Charlie
Kirk giving some sermon for the church, and it was
just an AI voice, you know. So I'm like, we
love a lot.

Speaker 4 (21:36):
Quite aggressively, quite aggressively, we have lost the plat well.
I mean, yeah, Christianity and America has taken a gone
way far from the Bible in many cases Evangelical Christianity.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
M hm.

Speaker 5 (21:47):
I like the history you explored in this book of
how far back beauty and power and politics have intersected,
and just you know, beauty attracts power, it attracts political power,
and so it is it might be painted as something silly,
but actually it is kind of an end to a

(22:10):
sort of power that women aren't really granted otherwise. So
I don't know if there's a question in that, but
I would love for you to expand upon that a bet.

Speaker 3 (22:21):
Sure. I tend to qualify beauty as a form of
like soft power, and soft power is technically a term
in like political theory and strategy about like it's it's
the things that you might do, or the conversations that
you might have, and these ways of finessing a situation
in order to impact real change. Right, you don't need

(22:41):
to be physically violent or threatening to get something done.
And oftentimes women are not afforded actual weapons or other
tools or financial means in order to get things done.
But that doesn't mean that they aren't the most important
person in the room. Right. There's like that quote like
behind every powerful man is a woman, you know, And
beauty has always been kind of an exitdoor, a loophole,

(23:04):
a way of having some sort of currency in a
world that wants to constantly discredit women. And that's not
just true in beauty, it's really true in how money
and aesthetics are intertwined overall. I mean the art world specifically.
It's all about aesthetics and beauty, right, But it's also
a commodity in which really wealthy people move their money

(23:25):
around on a global scale, and it's often a front
for more serious conversations and bargains, and that has so
much to do with beauty, politics, currency, and soft power.
In these conversations, it's like, oh, it's a beautiful thing,
but I also want this person to do something for me,
so I'm going to buy their stuff or this, that
and the other thing. But in terms of just the

(23:47):
beauty industry and power and currency, the beauty industry financially
is one of the most significant industries in the world,
and it's connected to other industry that we use every
single day. Right. It's connected to shipping. It's connected to
like boxing and shipping supplies and materials. It's connected to

(24:09):
retail spaces. It's an industry where you can work as
a service worker, you can work retail. You might be
a makeup artist, you might be a model. There's so
many different careers within the industry, and for a lot
of women for generations, working in the beauty industry was
the only way that they could actually make money right Financially,

(24:29):
women were needed allowed to have credit cards in their
own bank accounts until like, you know, the mid nineteen hundreds,
like the fifties or so. I might be wrong about that,
but it was.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
It's within it's within the living memory, right within living memory,
and so beauty has often been one of the only
ways that women could actually find financial agency and a
sort of actual material power in their.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Lives and even in sex work before that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah, the oldest industry in the world has to do
with beauty and desire.

Speaker 5 (24:59):
Yeah right, I think that you were talking about this
on the podcast that we listen to. But you know,
I've even started to think this way. I'm ashamed to admit,
but like, I need to budget my life differently because
I'm going to need a facelift. And then once you
start getting that work done, your retirement might go back
a couple of years, and then you also look younger,

(25:22):
so maybe you can stand spaces for longer and keep working.
And it's like a bigger conversation that has really serious
repercussions that we're beginning to see more.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
I think, yeah, I think it's a really pragmatic way
of looking at the realities of capitalism honestly, Like, yes,
it's depressing, but it's also just realistic about how beauty
and agism and how men treat women that are older.
That all factors into pretty privilege and you know, career

(25:52):
opportunities at any age. So yeah, I get while you're
thinking that way, it's the industry is kind of meant
for you, shaped itself for you to do that.

Speaker 4 (26:01):
I mean, and it makes me think about cultures outside
of Utah. In Utah, it seems like it kind of
like started and then everyone else was doing it, and
then everyone was like, well, if they're doing it, I
have to do it because I have to keep up.
Are facelifts on the rise overall and or happening younger?

Speaker 1 (26:17):
Do we know?

Speaker 3 (26:18):
I think they are happening younger. The type of facelifts
that are popular now are different than they were maybe
five or ten years ago. The trends and the micro
trends of what kind of things you're getting that has changed,
and more and more people are getting things younger but
they might not be as permanent because you can get

(26:38):
facial threads right, which is not you know, it's like
a different form of alteration and it's not a traditional
facelift the way that we've potentually thought about it. And
I've been in group chats with you know, gen z
girlies that are financially like having me to do whatever
they want, and I remember they asked me for facial

(26:59):
threading places and I thought they meant like hair like eyebrass, right,
because understandably that's more affordable for most people, because like
that might cost like twenty dollars and a lot of
this day, I was like, oh, well, I go here, here, here,
and they're like, no, we want facial threads.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
And I was like, you're twenty two.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
Your face is that's highest it's ever gonna be.

Speaker 5 (27:21):
I started getting botox when I was eighteen eighteen, and
I don't really anymore because I can't. It's very expensive.
But yeah, I had access to somebody who was like
willing to do some experimenting and I was like, hand up,
every wrinkle in my four head gone, and I was like,
in high school.

Speaker 4 (27:40):
Okay, I hear that, and I raise you My friend
has a daughter who is I believe six, Oh god,
she and her friends have gotten TikTok brained and are
trying to use like retinal products. I'm like, you don't understand,
Oh no, you're a baby. Like they're not obviously lending them,
but like they're seeing these in their feet.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
And thinking that they need to do that, and their
babies so crazy.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
It's quite depressing. And I'm really just genuinely waiting for
Sephora specifically to roll out a children's wing, yeah, because.

Speaker 5 (28:17):
It's unbearable to go there and now as an adult,
because it's just all kids. I'm waiting for them. I'm
waiting for them to roll out the baby face left.
That's what I want to see, just in a bottle,
just like yeah, yeah, I want to see a baby
with like that surgery.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
Coming up on the New Children's program.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah, I mean yeah.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
Our perception of what is normal and what is human
is just becoming skewed, and I imagine that's only going
to keep happening and keep getting more and more uncanny
over time. Speaks speaking as someone who has botox and
filler and I've done peels.

Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yeah, oh yeah, you love the peels.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
Well it wos are great, Yeah, should that's yeah, they're so.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
I mean she can handle more than me. I put
one on and.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
Was like, get it off of me.

Speaker 5 (29:12):
But it's just it's an endless cycle that can really
take all of your money and all of your brain
power and completely hijack your thoughts and your agency as
a human being on this planet who should be maybe
thinking about other things.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
That's been my experience. Yeah, I see I see.

Speaker 4 (29:35):
It happening among people I know, and sometimes I myself
as well, where like we feel really out of control
in this like healthscape world that we're living in and country,
and so the easiest thing to turn to to feel
a sense of control again is our own bodies. And
we've talked about that in terms of like eating disorders

(29:56):
and the connections that eating disorders often have to cults,
but I think it also very much rears its head
in the form of like do I get the surgery,
do I get the surgery? How much filler do I need?
How much dissolver do I need? Did I do too much?
You know, it's just this like obsessive sort of mind
consuming thing. I mean, we're really sucking at having actual

(30:17):
questions today, But if you have any say on.

Speaker 5 (30:19):
That, Yeah, I'm like, do you mind just framing your
book into a list of questions for us that relate
to cults because we read it, we loved it, but
we can't talk today.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
No, It's totally fine because like the overarching vibe that
you understand about it is that beauty is a cult
and there's just little sex within it, right, And the
idea of the constant self correction and the self the
constant self policing is something that anyone in the beauty industry,
where like considers themselves a beauty girly, experiences and it's

(30:52):
the same policing and surveillance that people and cults experience
on a day to day basis. You just fill in
the blanks a little differently, right, That's ultimately what it is.
And I think in order to be able to find
a sense of peace and love within yourself and be
able to pause on doing things or going into debt,
you really have to find a sense of self removed

(31:14):
from other people's desires or expectations or like the idea
of a higher power and what they might want out
of you. It's really just like looking yourself in the
mirror and being like is this enough for me today?
And if you can't reach that, you are doomed, right,
And it's not a constant state of being, Like on

(31:34):
one day I might be like, I am the hottest
bit alive correct, And another day I might be like,
if I don't get a facial with extractions and my
eyebrow's done and maybe a two hour massage, I'm going
to lose my mind. And both of those versions of
me are true, and they're the same person. It's just

(31:55):
the target. And my balance between these two planes is
always changing. And I think when it comes to the
cult of beauty, a lot of people get lost at
sea because they can't find a sense of gravity within
themselves that doesn't ask for someone else to love them unconditionally.

(32:15):
It has so much to do with like is it
enough for me to be myself today? And what does
that mean? If I don't have the answer? Or the
answer scares me. That is a scary place to be.

Speaker 4 (32:25):
Yeah, I mean, irrelevance is terrifying. And I think we
live in a society that really teaches us that that's
what will happen if we are not perceived in a
way that conveys beauty.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
And it is something that does happen. Yeah, then no,
it does. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:43):
I mean many people will talk about how they became
invisible once they got a little older and it started
to show, or if they gained weight beyond what was
considered societally desirable. It's such a tough thing because like
we don't want to rely on external validation of course,
because we need a centered self, but also like we
do need humans and connection and like, yeah, to feel

(33:05):
you know, confident, and like it's such a tough balance
to strike sometimes.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
No, I totally agree, And I think so much of
finding the balance is finding people that aren't in competition
with you, and that aren't perhaps drowning in quite the
same way, like people that are actually physically drowning. When
you try to rescue them, oftentimes they'll drown you too, right,
And I think that if you surround yourself with people
that are deeply insecure to the point where they're wondering

(33:32):
why you aren't insecure as well, it becomes infectious.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yeah. I've experienced that, I am.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yeah, So for me, what's at least helped me, like
navigating being so deep in a beauty and fashion spaces
for all of my life, and in this book is
finding people that are not within it to be my
closest confidants in my friends, because they can pull me
out of the absurdity of the of my daily life.
Because I mean, I know, I have a very lucky

(34:00):
and random, specific life, and things in the beauty and
fashion spaces that feel normal or are daily occurrence to
me are often once in a lifetime experiences for other people.
And when I can surround myself with people that are
removed from these spaces, I can understand how rare and
absurd it can be. And I don't have to take it.

(34:21):
It doesn't become a competition, it doesn't become a fomo.
If I miss a party or whatever, it's like, oh yeah,
my life is bizarre. I should touch grass and understand
that this is not all there is.

Speaker 4 (34:35):
Which going to draw the connection to cults as well,
because so many stories of people sort of emerging from
indoctrination have to do with getting a little bit of
time outside of the group or a little bit of
time talking to someone else and get just like getting
a little bit of breathing room, an outside perspective that
starts to wake them up, and I can imagine being

(34:56):
surrounded by beauty professionals all the time that would just
start to feel like that for sure.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
Oh totally.

Speaker 5 (35:01):
I mean, yeah, Well, what I'm hearing is that, you know,
the cult leader kind of becomes the ener critic in
your head, and you're nodding for the listeners who might
might not see you. So I think you agree, yes,
And then kind of influencers and celebrities become the cult

(35:25):
leader above.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
That, and then brands that.

Speaker 3 (35:31):
They're all acquire.

Speaker 5 (35:32):
Yeah, yeah, they require a beautiful choir, but but really
the most dangerous one is that kind of enner cult
leader that becomes internalized from the absurd things we're seeing
in the world right now.

Speaker 3 (35:46):
Totally. I think all of the aura of influencer culture
online and all of the money spent by brands to
stay relevant and get you problems for them to fix
for us, and the relationship between them, like the politics
and the vibes outside of the industry, they all kind
of converge to become every single bad thing you've ever

(36:09):
thought about yourself right in your head. Yeah, and a
lot of us can never escape it because we're all
addicted to our phones. Right, what are you talking about?

Speaker 1 (36:21):
I don't have seven hours a day online, right exactly.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
I'm like, I don't need to know. Don't tell me.
I know how bad it is.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
It's getting so much words too.

Speaker 5 (36:31):
Yeah, and like the filters like little kids just wanting
to filters that are on their phone, like recipe for disaster.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
I know.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (36:40):
Like, in all of your work researching and writing and
working in this space, like, have you noticed anything particularly
cult like about how brands operate? Is there what's going
on at the like company level.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
I don't know if I can talk about the inner
workings of the corporations, because one, they're extremely litigious, and
too they don't let me know most things. You know
I'm talking about them. But I would say that the
way that they conduct brand trips, let's talk about that.
So brand trips, at least for fashion and beauty brands,

(37:17):
they spend a lot of money per trip, and they
choose their favored influencers. They usually have more than a
quarter million followers to get on a trip, usually a
million plus. They choose their chosen few. They bring them
to a deserted, isolated space, usually first class or sometimes
private jet style and then they give them a couple

(37:40):
of days surrounded by products and anything they could ever
want in a villa, and they're expected to post about
it constantly. That kind of is just like a religious retreats.
Sometimes oftentimes they actually go to spiritual or wellness retreat spaces,
you know, and they just sprinkle their products around. I've

(38:00):
been on a couple of these fancy brand trips before,
and they're really fun, but they're also extremely insular, and
there's certain expectations that come with agreeing to go on one,
and your appearance and activities are highly monitored and surveyed
the entire time you're on this on.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
These trips, like if you're not posting enough, like is
that oh yeah, oh wow?

Speaker 3 (38:24):
Yeah, And they may not confront you directly, but you'll
get an email like from someone like two steps of
people between you, so everyone will have understood that this
is happening, but they will never say to your face,
but yeah, it's a very regimented, high expectation situation. And
I mean, in some ways I get it because they

(38:45):
may have spent forty thousand dollars a person to get
you there, so they expect at least that much in
terms of their social numbers from you specifically, but it
is very much we're taking you, we're isolating you, or
we have demands.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
Wow, I mean I would do it.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
And they've been fun.

Speaker 5 (39:05):
Like meth building around a brand, you know, and that's
always fascinating to me because it's so similar to what
cults do and oh.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Yeah, it's it's just the parallels.

Speaker 4 (39:17):
Yeah, speaking of that, I mean, can you talk a
little bit about your essay on the Chanel brand and
the history there and how much that's been sort of
cleaned up over time.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
Of course, they actually just did a brand trip to
celebration Tioneal number five and a bunch of influencers and
editors went to grass to celebrate that, which I find
beautifully timed to my book. Literally, I saw on Instagram
like three days ago a bunch of people that I
that I know, acquaintances wise, they're all there, and I'm like,
what a small world. But basically, the origin story of

(39:53):
the House of Beauty was really it came out of
my obsession with Chanelle number five and the history of
Coco Chanel and the elephant in the room of every
biography about her that yes, she was an incredible fashion
designer that changed how women dressed. But she was also

(40:14):
a spy for the Nazis and had a code name,
and was a violently anti Semitic human being. And that's
all documented by people that worked in fashion and were
familiar with her, And she spent a lot of her
personal money funding anti Semitic propaganda papers and going out

(40:36):
of her way to make the lives of a lot
of Jewish people and people more vulnerable than her harder
to live during World War Two. That of course is
not in any of the biographies, right, but it's also
so important to the story of how Chanelle number five
still exists today because the people that funded her perfume

(41:01):
brand were and still are a Jewish family, and during
World War Two she actively tried to have the company
rianized and returned to her while they had fled Europe
because they were afraid of being put into concentration camps.
My gosh, it's a very important part of the brand

(41:24):
history to kind of sweep under the rug the brand
owes itself to its history and the people that kind
of went out of their way to make sure the
brand existed in spite of her anti semitism.

Speaker 5 (41:39):
I like how nuanced you made it in the book,
where you were kind of saying, like, you know, you
wanted to just hate her and judge her, but you
kind of understood was it the Rits she was staying at.

Speaker 3 (41:53):
Yeah, she was a Rits Gurly rets.

Speaker 5 (41:55):
Curly, and you went there and saw the majesty. I
was wondering if you could just say a bit about that.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
Of course, so let me set the scene. I flew
to Paris fresh off of the first election for the
current man, and in the airports there were still, you know,
protests happening, like the taxis were on strike in JFK
when I was flying into Paris, so it was very

(42:23):
much feeling like the end of the world was specifically
happening that day. And I was staying on the couch
of one of my friends who's a fashion editor in
Japan now, but she has a place in Paris, and
we ended up having dinner at the Ritz with some

(42:45):
global supermodel, the head of some model agency, some other
people important fashion people that probably have no idea who
I am. And I was walking through the hallways overhearing
all of these conversations with people to staying at the
Writs talking about politics, but in a way that's like

(43:05):
let them eat cake. Almost Meanwhile, I was texting friends
being like, do you have your lawyer's number written in
sharp beyond your hand? Do you stail money? N how
is your green card status going? Do you know the
best way to wash out your eyes from riot spray? Like?

(43:29):
These are the conversations I was having on my phone
while I was overhearing conversations with people that couldn't necessarily
afford to stay at the writs at any point in time.
And I think what is so alluring about being in
these spaces for a lot of people is like the
ease of luxury that luxury likes to give. It's a
frictionalist experience. You don't actually ever have to think about

(43:52):
harm if you can afford to stay in them, because
you're protected from it. There's bodyguards, there's security, there's sometimes
no windows to the outside space, and it's all about you,
how to serve you. It is a dreamland for a
narcissist with power, and that is ultimately what people with
a lot of privilege and money are sometimes. But being

(44:15):
in there, I understood how easy it is to want
to stay because fundamentally a very beautiful place, incredible atmosphere.
They are there specifically to serve you. And when you
are terrified of losing control and you have a lot

(44:36):
of power and prestige, control is an aphrodisiac that you
would rather harm someone than to ever give up. And
understanding that makes me understand a lot about her, even
if knowing that I can understand her makes me like
myself a little less because of course I wanted to

(44:57):
go there be disgusted by everything, be like, ugh, what
a heartless woman? Like yeah, she might be heartless even
when she clearly loved people, like the people in her life,
but she wasn't deranged. She knew what she was doing.
I just don't agree with what she did, and I
don't agree with a lot of people. That doesn't make
them crazy. It just means that we have different moral compasses.

Speaker 4 (45:20):
So yeah, I mean I completely relate to this, like
friction of feeling connected to ideas about capitalism being harmful
and wanting to you know, make the world better, and
like a lot of that has to do with confronting

(45:40):
you know, excessive wealth. And then at the same time,
like I love a beautiful house, you know, like I
just am dying to live in a beautiful house, you know.
That's like, and when I'm somewhere there where it's like
everything's nice and luxurious, Like of course, it's like so
tempting when you are in spaces like that where you

(46:01):
feel protected from the like stresses of understanding reality and
understanding some of these systems and like the things that
go on, Like, it's much more pleasant of an experience,
Like it's very tempting to want to stay there.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
It's almost impossible not to.

Speaker 5 (46:15):
Yeah, and that's what we have to fight against, you know,
because we are, at the end of the day, like
just animals. And yeah, it's a constant battle to be like,
I'm going outside of my comfort zone. I'm going outside
of my privilege, I'm going outside of whatever because it's
the right fucking thing to do, even though it's not comfortable.

Speaker 4 (46:38):
And I'm going to just mention some studies I haven't
looked at a long time, so I couldn't tell you
what they already studies, But like I've talked a little
bit about how like there are studies that show that
like wealth can decrease empathy for your fellow man. But
then there are also there's also research that shows that
like that can be mitigated by exposure to other people's circumstances.

(47:02):
Like it isn't this like you are automatically evil if
you are in these spaces or if you have wealth,
but it makes it more likely that you'll be less connected.
And so the work is like, I guess reconnecting or
helping people reconnect if you.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
Are too far down that road. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 (47:21):
It does? And it's also you know, we can see
this in how billionaires spend their money, like McKenzie mackenzie X.
You know, she's doing so much work giving away all
of the money that from her divorce and she's still
richer than she was before. And when you look at
how she's spending her money as a billionaire versus anyone else,

(47:43):
you're like, it's so wild that world hunger could be solved.
There is a number on it, and the un actually
like gave that number to Elon Musk at one point
when he was like, yeah, I can I can spend
the money on it. Give me the number. They gave
him the number and he didn't solve it right, He
was like, I would act. She likes to keep these
billions thank you, right, And getting clean water to Flint,

(48:05):
Michigan is like actually has numbers around it, and that's
still not solved. So wild they would rather buy ultra yachts,
you know, or by twitter exactly. Their whims are at
a different scale, and it's about at a certain points,
about just whatever makes them happy, not about other people.
And that's fundamentally just like a divide that is very

(48:29):
stark and hard to breach. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (48:32):
Yeah, when you were researching the book, were there any
particular I mean, obviously you probably knew a great deal
about a lot of these processes before, but was there
anything in particular you learned about, like the production of
beauty products that was particularly dark Because I'm just going
to set it up for listeners, Like the way that

(48:52):
they write about some of the sourcing of materials and
shipping is all first per from the perspective of like
the material or whoever happens to be there in that
part of the process. I never thought that I would
be engaged in the journey of like an ingredient, Like

(49:14):
I never thought I'd be like, Ooh, what's happening with
this ingredient? It's very literary and engaging, but Yeah, is
there anything in particular that you learned that you were sort.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
Of shocked by?

Speaker 3 (49:26):
I mean, that whole chapter that Choose your Own disaster
chapter was also a learning experience for me. I spent
almost a year just interviewing people from every aspect of
the industry around the world about what they do in
their jobs. And some of it was quite tragic, and
some of it was really cool, and so much of

(49:49):
it was just a cloud of bureaucracy. But what I
really found so interesting and made it into a couple
of pages of that chapter had to do with people
that work on shipping container ships and also the hostage
negotiators that deal with shipping containers being taken by pirates

(50:09):
and modern day piracy, which is kind of mentioned in
the book as like a juicy footnote or as like
one of the pages. But there are still modern pirates today,
and they make a lot of money just by hopping
onto a ship and calling up a conglomerate being like, hey,
do you want your ship back?

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Wow?

Speaker 3 (50:30):
And they may not violently harm anybody, but they are
just going to stop it from going anywhere, and every
single day and every single hour a ship does not
make it support every single conglomerate that has ordered space
on that ship loses money. And these companies are spending
lots and lots of money and more and more every

(50:51):
single year because of climate crisis and global warming and
strikes and this and the other thing to get ships
to move around. The tariff situation that we are experiencing
now is totally like intertwined with the ports and piracy.
And just like these conversations, everything costs a lot of

(51:11):
money because of political decisions, and pirates are great at
taking advantage of that and making every decision really expensive.
So I thought that was really fun.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
I wanted to be a pirate.

Speaker 3 (51:27):
Yeah, sorry, this is not pirate apologism, but I did
think it was really cool because the negotiators they have
to know like half a dozen languages, the languages right
on call, Like their schedules are like a.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
Spy maritime law.

Speaker 5 (51:40):
Yeah, I love you said a quote in the book
you said, beauty is only worth keeping if it is
focused on people, not things. Can you tell us kind
of where you were going with that and what that
means for the future of beauty and how we can
keep beauty.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
So I think a lot of conversations that we have
around the beauty industry have to do with the products
we buy in order to look a different way or
to fix something about ourselves. And for me, my favorite
parts of beauty culture have so little to do with
the products involved. But it's more about the connections I'm

(52:19):
making with the other people in the room that might
be teaching me a technique or complimenting me, or doing
something that makes me feel cared for. Those moments are
what make beauty important to me. It's being able to
connect with another person, to share a story, and to
find a way to humanize each other. Right there's no

(52:42):
one who will ride for you harder than a girl
in a bar bathroom, right Like, she will give you everything,
she will give you anything in her bag, she will
give you advice, she will give you a hug, and
she'll give you her lipstick or something. And those moments
of just like plain generosity and knowledge sharing and research
sharing and care that makes beauty worth it to me

(53:06):
because those connections are what life is about. It's like,
how do we find better ways to take care of
one another? Beauty is at its best when it's about that,
not about the products or things to do to you know,
make people like us more. It's like, I want to
know more about you, what you love, what inspires you,

(53:27):
what makes you feel curious or spicy and fulfilled? Like
what about you? Can you tell me that we can share?
And beauty is often that pathway.

Speaker 5 (53:37):
Well as something you just said struck me where it's
like and that connection needs to be me being curious
about you, not me wanting to produce a feeling of
you being impressed by me or you being like I
love that you got your face left, you know what
I mean? Like it has to be a curious conversation

(53:58):
otherwise we'll just get read trapped into the loop of
like comparison and yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
Yeah, I mean curiosity and comparison can be intertwined, like genuinely,
I'm like when one of my friends wants to get
a nose job or whatever, we will go into that
rabbit hole of like what is the best technique or
skill or skilled surgeon who does the type of work
that you like, and it becomes more about craft and
signatures because like some plastic surgeons do things in a

(54:25):
different way, you know, like not every nose job looks
the same, and some jobs are legit like works of art.
You're like, how see this vision? But it's still like
about a conversation and transparency and trust and care. And
I don't like to use the word authentic. I think
it's like kind of a meaningless word at this point.

(54:46):
But it's about knowing what you want and knowing what
you're willing to provide and give to someone else who
might be curious, and having a conversation around that. And
you know, people might keep a bunch of differ things
because like they're protective. And I think the best conversation
about beauty really understand it as a crash and a
tool of storytelling, and the most productive versions of beauty

(55:10):
come from that. It's like, this is a story we're
both involved in. You and I are the main characters
of our lives, but we're part of this bigger story together,
So why don't we talk about it as like a group.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
And then it's not a cult anymore.

Speaker 4 (55:26):
Of course, that made me think of Mary Kay parties
growing up. I was like, what does that make me
think of where I've connected with people a beauty Oh
Mary Kay party.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Broad experience? Cool?

Speaker 3 (55:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (55:40):
Are we missing? Are we messing any of the parallels?

Speaker 3 (55:44):
No? I mean It's good that you mentioned like Mary
Kay parties because like MLMs have been able to frankenstein
community conversations into capitalism in a really exploitative way. So
that's its own, its own Pandora's box and the conversation.
So I never want to shout out MLMs, but they

(56:06):
are a great example of this intertwined connection between community
care and capitalism that we always have to be aware of,
and I think we all need better training on how.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
To avoid one.

Speaker 4 (56:22):
If do you have any like guidelines that you live
by when like choosing a product for how to do
it ethically or.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
You know, just be mindful about our.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
Choices, like the red Flags of beauty. Yeah, sure, So
there's one chapter in the book that's just like red
flags to avoid or best practices, because I want that
to be a chapter people can like flip back into
and refer to. So there's that. But also I think
just doing your research about the kind of values that

(56:56):
you really want to prioritize. Do you super care about
being able to recycle the beauty products? There are certain
brands that really prioritize that and having recyclable packaging or
reusable stuff. You can look that up there are certain
retailers that kind of are built around certain ethos, like

(57:16):
Credo Beauty cares a lot about sustainability and this idea
of clean beauty and clean beauty is its own conversation.
But they make sure that their products that they stock
don't have this and the other thing. And they've done
a lot of the legwork for the consumer, which is
good because honestly, the average consumer shouldn't have to become
a PhD or a beauty reporter to buy something. It

(57:39):
should just be easier for everybody. For me, I think
just asking questions and doing your research on who owns
a brand, what do they stand for? That matters to
me because I don't want to give my money to
someone that actively doesn't want me to have rights.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Right I do have.

Speaker 4 (58:00):
I recommend that chapter in the book In general, one
of the things you mentioned there was this marketing of
natural as good and synthetic as bad and why that
is like a marketing binary basically that is frequently not
reflective of what is actually good to use or not use.

(58:20):
And that's something that I think intersects with cults a lot,
just and the sort of wellness Yeah, yeah, the trust
of anything modern, you know.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
Totally the pipeline between like using beef tallow and only
drinking like thinking like non pasteurized milk is like a
thing that you should do, to becoming a trad wife,
to being like red pilled, and you know, being in
a particular kind of cold, like those are all interconnected. Yeah. Yeah,

(58:54):
it's like this belief that anything that you that you
can't make yourself at home is going to poison you.
I saw a video the other day from someone being like,
you should make your own sunscreen at home and sunstream
causes cancer, and I'm like, you have literally done no
research in your entire life, actually, and you will be
the one that gets sun cancer because you aren't. You

(59:15):
don't believe in science, right, So there's there's definitely a
connection there. But the people that are often the victims
of it would never be open to the science of it.
So it kind of feels doomed sometimes to have these.

Speaker 5 (59:31):
Oh sure, well, And I was just going to add
something in that chapter woke me up a bit where
it's just like these industries lull us to sleep where
I'm like, oh, I'm going to buy this green, you know,
super natural product off Amazon now. I've just got in
it shipped across the ocean, and a box wasted a

(59:53):
shit ton of Like, I just never thought critically enough
about that.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
Not but how it gets to you think, how it
like now has undone.

Speaker 5 (01:00:03):
Any clean, green green whatever, So like my critical thinking
was definitely turned off in that area.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
So yeah, surprise, surprise.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
Now that's why local products are so much more expensive
in comparison, right, because the offset that Amazon can afford
to create makes it seem like convenience is so cheap,
but it's actually very expensive. We're just not paying for
the cost up front. The cost is climate crisis, right,
It's not numerical to us yet, but when you know,

(01:00:35):
systems begin to collapse or people pass out in warehouses,
that is the cost. But we're not paying it as consumers.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
So yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:00:42):
The deforestation stuff also very very vibe. Sorry, yeah, it's
very it's very depressing. But I also beautifully written and
I opening in a way that I think is important.

Speaker 5 (01:00:55):
And yeah, I am hopeful. You said you you thought
the book would be crueler, and it wasn't. You know,
there's some hard stuff to read, but at the end
of the day, I come away hopeful and wanting to
go brush my friend's hair and give each other manicures
and connect with people.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
So thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
Good that was the point. I'm glad that that was
what you took away from it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:21):
Where can people find you? Where can they find your book?

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
You can find the House of Beauty pretty much wherever
books are sold in the US, like Barnes, Noble Bookshop
dot org, your local indie bookstore. There are two bookstores
in the United States that have scented bookmarks and signed
pre orders, and those are Skylight Books in LA and
books are Magic in New York, so you can get

(01:01:46):
fancier copies there. But yeah, you can just google it online,
find it and ideally join me for one of the
book events across the country that are happening in October
and November.

Speaker 5 (01:01:58):
Amazing And did you did you give your Instagram handle
or do you have a handle you want to give?

Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
I do? Yeah, so I'm parentally online and my handle
is the same everywhere. So you could find me on
Instagram our Belscarti or on Substackarbelsacardi substack dot com. You know,
say hi, send me a pick of the book if
you buy it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
Sick awesome. Thank you so much.

Speaker 5 (01:02:20):
Yes, thank you for joining us, thank you for having me.
So that was a fascinating episode. I think we both
know that we are in the culs of beauty for
the long run. Yeah, it's just kind of what it is,
we reflected. At least we're aware of it, aware, we're
aware about it. It's there for sure, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
So uh.

Speaker 5 (01:02:42):
One of the things that really struck me about beauty
being a cult that haddn't before I read this book
is just the moving goalpost of beauty and how you
said it in the episode, like some of the most
beautiful women you've ever met still don't feel beautiful because
it's like you, you can never actually achieve it. It

(01:03:04):
has to be like an inner knowing beyond physicality, because
the goalpost does always move every second, and you never
reach your destination.

Speaker 4 (01:03:15):
Maybe you do for like a year, but and even
then though, like there's there's so many types of beauty.
So yeah, even if we're like, even if you achieve
maximum beauty as one type of beauty, then you're still
going to meet someone who's maximum beauty a different type
of beauty.

Speaker 5 (01:03:30):
And that's going to make you feel insecure. If you
are insecure, correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So it's.

Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
Like I'm definitely going, like, my type of beauty is
like goth, like right, you know, girl who gets cast
as the bitchy friend all the time. Like that's my
particular type of beauty. And sometimes I'm like, but I
should have maximum beauty as you know, someone with long.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Blonde hair and like atoned abs and I was not.

Speaker 5 (01:03:58):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it definitely opens so many paths
to like I'm just gonna call what you're saying envy.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
I relate.

Speaker 5 (01:04:09):
I have it as well, you know, but like it
opens so many paths for women to.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
Be pitted against each other.

Speaker 5 (01:04:14):
It gives the voliabilities and it totally undermines a big
part of how we could be coming together.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
So I love her point that beauty.

Speaker 4 (01:04:22):
Should be in the connection and like and yeah, and
our connection to ourselves. And it's okay if other people
are beautiful, that's so we're all people, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Yeah, Like I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:04:34):
That's something that I think growing older has become easier
and easier to acknowledge and like it's such a better
place to be. Yeah, like, yeah, you're all so beautiful
and that's great.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
I love that for for you, for all of us,
and the end.

Speaker 5 (01:04:51):
If you don't care about beauty, well then that's great too.
Is that something normal to say?

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
Also, beauty is not the most important thing. Yeah, exactly.
It's like a cherry on top. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:05:04):
One time I was at a party and a famous
woman who was much older than me, I walked up
and she was like, Wow, you're so beautiful, which was
very nice. And she was like, but I'm sure it's
just the cherry on top. Oh, And I was like, oh, okay,
and I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
Yeah, now I want to know who it is. I'll
tell you later. Okay.

Speaker 5 (01:05:23):
Thank you so much for listening to another episode of
Trust Me. We can't wait to see you again next week,
and as always, remember to follow your gut, watch out
for red flags, and never.

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
Ever trust me I mine.

Speaker 4 (01:05:39):
This has been an exactly right production hosted by.

Speaker 5 (01:05:42):
Me Lola Blanc and Me Megan Elizabeth. Our senior producer
is Gee Holly. This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker
is Patrick Kottner.

Speaker 4 (01:05:53):
Our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.

Speaker 5 (01:05:56):
Trust Me as Executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia hart Stark,
and Danielle Kramer.

Speaker 4 (01:06:01):
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me Podcast
or on TikTok at trust Me Cult Podcast.

Speaker 5 (01:06:06):
Got your own story about cults, extreme belief, our manipulation,
Shoot us an email at trustmepodat gmail dot com.

Speaker 4 (01:06:12):
Listen to trust Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.