Last week I was scrolling Instagram when I came across a reel from The Sunday Times Style. Apparently they have a podcast called ‘The Beauty Desk’, and in this reel, two beauty editors were discussing the hype around a new facial treatment. I don’t know what it is, nor do I want to know. But I watched in disbelief as they talked about how they want their faces to look as though they've been vacuum packed as they violently pulled the skin back across their heads. I wanted to hurl my phone across the room, but instead bashed out ‘one step forward for the beauty-industrial-complex, ten thousand steps backwards for women’s body image’.
And to think, this is the same publication that made Just Eat It a cover story in 2019. Le sigh.
Remember when ‘beauty’ meant finding the perfect shade of Barry M Dazzle Dust in Superdrug? And now, we have to think about getting a little tweakment on a Saturday afternoon - seriously, a walk-in place called ‘Tweak East’ just opened near me.
The beauty/diet/anti-ageing-industrial-complex isn’t exactly new. While Just Eat It came in January 2019, by December of that year, Jia Tolentino was writing about Instagram face. And, before she went totally off the rails, Naomi Wolf gave us The Beauty Myth which summed up the way that 80/90s beauty standards were a backlash to 70s feminist progress. We know the deal by now; every time we make any kind of social progress, particularly as it pertains to the freedoms of women and minoritised groups, Newton's third law kicks in and there's an equal pull in the opposite direction.
Over in the Snackcord we’ve been having some conversations about how hard it feels to have a body right now. Especially one that is socialised as female, is fat, ageing, disabled, sick, or some combination of those things. In my nutrition practice I’m having regular conversations about rampant anti-fatness and Ozempic-core. How food companies are pushing high protein this and high fibre that, all of which is code for 'diet'. How we're supposed to 'maxx' every inch of our lives: sleep, food, perimenopause, fitness, skincare, relaxation even. All around us celebrities – and increasingly people IRL – are shrinking and pulling a Benjamin Button. It’s a lot. And, heading into the holiday season, food and body talk are only going to get louder.
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