Latest / Soul Salon with Ayandastood / 16: industrialized vs. spiritual beauty (💡: Jessica DeFino)

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16: industrialized vs. spiritual beauty (💡: Jessica DeFino) · Soul Salon with Ayandastood

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  True beauty can't be sold to you. It's something innate to the human experience.
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  Hello darlings and welcome back to paradigm shift with i understood. I'm so excited to have
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  you back with me today and wherever you are. I'm sending you all the love, all the pleasure,
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  all the ease, all the joy, all the you're not behind. You're just living in a machine that
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  literally wants to destroy you and take over your sense of self so that you think that you are
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  your productivity or what you create and so that you constantly feel like you're wrestling between
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  wanting to be easy on yourself and also pushing yourself to reach your goals that were shaped by
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  society. Yes, exactly. So today funny enough despite the intro, my intention is to slow down.
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  My intention is to slow down. So today I want to invite you to a new series that's going to run
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  through my podcast I think because I'm always changing my mind as you may know and that is called
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  Beauty Bites. So what is Beauty Bites? It's going to be a bite sized idea about beauty politics
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  and the colonial beauty paradigm that I think can help us pave the way to breaking this paradigm such
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  that we may all be free of not only beauty standards but the beauty hierarchy that shapes society.
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  And the reason I'm doing this is because I actually went back and forth as to whether I should make
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  my entire podcast about beauty politics and questions around the episode of Moving Towards Ugliness,
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  which is one of my favorite episodes talking about all the different challenges within the colonial
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  beauty paradigm, which is what I'm going to be calling collectively what I used to call the beauty
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  prism, which I still think it is a prism of meaning but the problem is I believe that what you
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  call an idea is almost as important as the idea itself because for it to be salient in people's
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  minds, it needs to have a word or a metaphor that is catchy. That is why I believe things like
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  intersectionality, things like imposter syndrome were very captivating ideas. It's because both
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  the idea itself and the face of the idea are powerful. So the idea of intersectionality is powerful
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  because it gave language to the experience of multiple dimensions of oppression, each of which
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  compound each other. But if you call that compounded oppression, people would be like, okay,
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  but once you call it the metaphor intersectionality, it instantly does something in our brains,
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  which I know some neuroscientists can explain very well and I love and look forward to them,
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  you know, telling me why. But I just know that it is much more salient for us to learn through
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  analogs and through analogies and through metaphors and through imagery. Similarly, imposter syndrome,
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  I've heard a lot of people say that this is actually just self-doubt but what is lost in that
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  renaming is the metaphor of the imposter of someone literally pretending to be someone who they
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  are not but that someone who they are not is themselves. And so it's a very captivating idea
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  even though I dislike the idea of it being a syndrome and I dislike the burden of that phenomenon
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  being placed on the individual rather than the institution and the society that others them.
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  Now suddenly they are the imposter like black people and women and trans people and all the
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  intersections and queer people are not imposters. It is the institution has not cultivated and the
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  world has not cultivated a place where we can ever feel if you're any of these things like we belong.
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  And so we are made to feel like imposters but the syndrome lies in the society. It's not really
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  in us and we're all perhaps it's both because often when we think it's an either or it's a
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  both and so with that being said that's why I'm renaming the prism of beauty and if you haven't
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  listened to the ugliness of beauty part one that's what I'm referring to and essentially in case
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  you don't want to listen to it. It's this idea that there is a multi-dimensional aspect of meaning
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  packed into the concept of beauty that often distorts and confuses us when we talk about what
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  beauty actually is because beauty is both a transcendent experience it is an industry it's a culture
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  it is the standard it's a hierarchy it's many different things in one and it's intentionally
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  an illusion to distract us from the underlying colonialism white supremacy patriarchy capitalism
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  consumerism ableism all the isms packed into this word that we call beauty which is paradoxical
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  right because nothing that makes people feel hate towards themselves should ever be called
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  beauty in a world where meaning actually meant something where like the meaning of a word was
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  what it actually manifests in that society as in a truthful world you would not be able to call
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  what we what we call beauty beauty and remember that white supremacy does this with everything so
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  justice you know the justice system civilization for colonialism all of this language that's
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  wrapped around very very harmful and serious painful processes inflicted upon the black the
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  indigenous the women the all these different groups is often called the opposite of what it is
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  and I think that's a really important idea that kind of runs through my thinking in general is
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  that they're never going to call it what it is because they need to wrap it in language that
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  sounds like they're fighting for the opposite so bringing democracy to the Middle East rather
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  than like invading and terrorizing Middle Eastern people for their oil and resources and to you
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  know impose an imperial Western agenda anyways they're never going to call it what it is so so with
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  that let's go to this beautiful idea that I came to through Jessica DeFino who is an incredible
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  writer and she writes a lot about beauty politics and so her page is called The Unpublishable
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  and she's a she used to be a beauty editor and she kind of like turned to the other side and
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  fighting the good fight against this patriarchal racist white supremacist paradigm of beauty and
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  telling us about how many myths and lies are baked into beauty products beauty marketing the beauty
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  industry and beauty standards and so she does a lot of incredible essays and breakdowns of how
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  the beauty industry lies to us and so she just unpacks a lot of the lies that are unpublishable
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  within a beauty magazine or in if she worked in the beauty industry one of the ideas that I came
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  to through her like she came up with this idea and I want to breathe further life into it because I
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  think it's so important is the difference between industrialized beauty and spiritual beauty
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  and I think this is so so profound I want to read the quote from Jessica DeFino and I'll link to
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  this essay and her sub-stack in the show notes she says as I've said many times before one of the worst
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  things beauty culture has done to us is co-opt the word beauty to describe a standard of physical
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  appearance alone most of us understand the word in the spiritual sense spiritual as in of the
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  human spirit not organized religion the way nature is beautiful the way that sunset are beautiful
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  we want to feel that we want to be seen as that kind of beauty but that type of beauty will never be
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  one achieved with the physical tools the beauty industry offers or two recognized as beautiful
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  by oppressive power structures like beauty culture which is a product of patriarchy white supremacy
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  colonialism and capitalism so that is so beautiful I love that it's the idea that we want to be seen
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  as that kind of deep transcendent spiritual beauty but that type of never that type of beauty will
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  never be achieved by the resources the physical tools the offerings that the beauty industry can
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  make serums eyeliners make up products clothing trends that goal this goal you know vanilla goal
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  ice latte goal whatever number two even if that type of beauty could be given by this industry
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  it would never be recognized as such spiritual beauty cannot be recognized by a system that wants to
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  kill the spirit especially of the black the woman the global south person the fam everything the queer
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  person all the things so what she says is that what we are sold through the beauty industry is not
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  actually beauty so being sold skincare products being sold clothing being sold an image of what
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  beauty looks like that cannot be the actual essence of what we as human spirits mean by the word
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  beauty because that beauty that transcendent feeling the feeling the gush of power you feel when you
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  look at a beautiful sunset she gives an example or the beauty of your mother smile and not because
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  she conforms to any sort of but the beauty of transcendent human experiences that same beauty that
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  people seek in their creations people seek in music that people seek in music and that people seek
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  in prayer and that people seek in if you're wondering my religion I believe in the universe and
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  source not organized religion that I'm spiritual not religious all of those things I'll do another
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  episode on that perhaps but essentially that there is beauty in our human experience and we crave it
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  and we need it we need beauty it's like she says that it's a fundamental need just like we need love
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  just like we need respect like all of these it's a virtue it's a it's a I learned that that word the
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  root of that word is man so I don't love it but anyway so that this deeper spiritual beauty is
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  something critical to human life and we know this because every culture has practices surrounding
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  beauty they may adorn pots they may adorn their ceremonies their rituals they may create beautiful
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  music with sounds of you know blowing with things and and and drums and dance and outfits and
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  every single culture pre-colonialism and now that is like a strong cultural identity
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  you has beauty embedded in the practices of that culture but that type of spiritual beauty
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  can never be sold and packaged and told to you that you have to do x y and z thing in order to
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  conform to this beauty standard that is what she is saying is industrialized beauty because it's
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  this mass production of both the products of beauty and the culture that the products require in
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  order for their sale to be sustained and necessitated so you are producing not only the products
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  not only the culture but also the flaws the idea that you are flawed you are avoid waiting to be
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  filled that can only be produced industrially through mass images through mass production of products
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  through mass media it's not a spiritual beauty and yet the third interesting part of this idea
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  is that it is wrapped in spiritual language it's wrapped in the idea of you are purifying
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  your skin clean beauty have a good skincare routine you know what i mean i wanted to use
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  chaachi bt to learn more about how the beauty industry uses religious language and imagery
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  to market and sell products so i wanted to give more examples and these are the words it came up with
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  purify products that claim to purify the skin often imply a cleansing process that goes beyond
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  just removing dirt and impurities the term purify is associated with religious rituals and practices
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  of cleansing the soul or spirit by using this term the beauty industry suggests that the product
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  can cleanse and refresh the skin on a deeper level similar to a spiritual purification
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  number two brighten when products promise to brighten the skin they are using language associated
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  with enlightenment and spiritual awakening just as spiritual enlightenment brings clarity and
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  illumination to one's life these beauty products suggest they can bring radiance and luminosity
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  to the skin i would add that because this religious or religiosity is tied to white supremacy this
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  idea of brightening the skin is in contrast to the dull native black savage and or indigenous
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  person who is seen as dull in contrast to the luminosity the enlightenment the brightness of the
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  white western figure then the third example is revitalize or rebirth terms like revitalize or
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  rebirth are used to promote aging products or treatments by drawing on the concept of rebirth
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  the beauty industry implies that using their products will lead to a transformation akin to being
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  reborn with younger and fresher looking skin so this idea of ageism is deeply embedded we know
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  in the beauty industries goals because they want us to literally mourn the fact that we're alive
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  so that we can endlessly be profitable because just like the dyed industry does not work and
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  therefore has an endless profit stream by selling people things that like 90% of the time fail
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  similarly anti-aging like it's not it doesn't fully work right and it needs to not work for it to
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  endlessly be profitable the fourth is divine or heavenly i haven't seen this as often but it says
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  that some products are marketed as divine or heavenly connecting them to higher powers and
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  suggesting that using these products will make the consumer feel ethereal and spiritually connected
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  number five is sacred ingredients brands may highlight specific ingredients as sacred or holy
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  to emphasize their rarity exclusivity and potential transformative qualities this language
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  associates the product with ancient remedies or rituals making it seem more appealing and mystical
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  i will add that these sacred ingredients are often ingredients that the west steals from
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  indigenous and global south peoples products that were always used by these peoples within their
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  practices and rituals are then appropriated by the west who then is able to mass produce these
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  ingredients so when i ask chat gpt what they mean by sacred ingredients what it means by sacred
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  ingredients it says that it's often the beauty industry is alluding to natural or exotic
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  quote-unquote components that are considered rare precious or historically associated with
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  ancient healing practices and you see that these ingredients may have cultural significance and are
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  sometimes believed to possess special properties or spiritual beliefs what's completely erased or
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  not here but definitely the subtext is what is meant by exotic is rubbed from the global south from
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  people indigenous people black people brown people Asian people like they're usually the west
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  is appropriating ingredients okay so the sixth example of words that the beauty industry uses
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  that are religious in nature and that are used to market products or industrialize beauty is
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  miracle the term miracle is often used to describe certain beauty products implying that their effects
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  are beyond the ordinary and almost miraculous this language plays on religious connotations of
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  miracles being extraordinary events that defy the laws of nature things that you pray for
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  things that you try to manifest in your life through access to and connection to the divine
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  a miracle product a miracle eye cream a miracle serum we've heard this language often
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  the seventh is apothecary or alchemy or alchemy brands may adopt words like apothecary or alchemy to
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  evoke a sense of ancient wisdom and secret knowledge suggesting that their products are based
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  on ancient healing practices or transformative formulas now when we think of all this language
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  and connection to the divine we have to remember that the beauty industry is mostly run by western
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  owned corporations run by white men like uni liver and iste lorda and laurel and so on and
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  even though you might not buy the brand under that title that these smaller brands are often
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  bought by or incubated by these larger ones and so the idea that they have anything any connection
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  to the sacred to the miracle to the divine to the revitalization to the rebirth when these
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  corporations are so deeply implicated in extraction and exploitation in manipulative branding and
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  imagery in false promises in mass media marketing they have nothing to do with the spiritual beauty
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  and yet they're packaging this deeply industrialized beauty as spiritual so just remember that like a
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  lot of these beauty brands are owned by bigger ones okay so think about how powerful this
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  reframe is it's saying that true beauty can't be sold to you you know what I mean it can't be
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  packaged it's something innate to the human experience which means and it's a little bit more
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  nuance in the idea that we're all beautiful which I think is true in the sense that we all have
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  we all are divine we all are sublime we all are the universe you wouldn't say a tree is ugly
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  it's just not in your way that nature has been framed but you would say many of you would say
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  a human being is ugly so there's a separation of the innate divinity that exists within nature
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  that through the colonizer's mindset we're not encouraged to view ourselves as nature the colonizer
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  wants us to view ourselves as separate from nature and also the colonizer separates nature equals
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  the savage equals the indigenous person equals the black person and something higher than nature is
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  man which is the white man the white colonizer right so the separation between nature and man
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  and as well as a separation for example between body and mind it's this very similar way that
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  things are that are innately connected and we spoke about body mind in my last episode of the
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  episode before that are then separated by the white colonial imagination so I love this idea
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  because it lets us keep the good parts of beauty which literally there are so many like the good
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  parts of beauty what I love about this is you know in my videos I've said things like abolish
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  abolish beauty meaning abolish the beauty hierarchy right that was always clear was never abolish
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  the beauty of a sunset it was never abolish the beauty that was always clear but I like that this is
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  it's reclaiming beauty because it's saying you don't get to call this beauty you don't get to call
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  fat shaming beauty you don't get to call colorism beauty you don't get to call white supremacy beauty
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  you don't get to call ageism beauty no not in our name beauty is a transcendent spiritual experience
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  beauty is something spiritual meaning it's of that deeper part of our being so you
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  colonizer you capitalist you beauty brand you don't get to claim beauty no no no no no no you know what
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  I mean like no no no no no no you wouldn't know beauty if it smacked you in the face because
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  beauty is let me tell you about the beauty would be freedom for all black people for all Indigenous
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  people for all people who are suffering in this system beauty would be the feeling of laughter
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  and joy shared between friends beauty is also the artistic works that a community has passed down
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  from generation to generation beauty is a spiritual practice of dance over a round of fire you know
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  and the visual that is created by the structure you know the circularity and the circle within it
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  beauty is a ritual that is practiced in community you know beauty is a mother and child hugging
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  embracing in a photograph beauty is the smile of someone who's genuinely happy
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  beauty is how we would all experience life if all of these systems were to finally end and we were
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  to rebuild a constructive loving healing safe world for all beauty cannot exist where there is
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  pain where well as in human beings are very creative so we can create beautiful experiences even
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  when we're experienced oh my word beauty is freedom songs that black people across the diaspora have
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  used in times of deep pain to bring ourselves beauty and connection through sound that feel that
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  sound who beauty is a poem you know beauty is a speech that speaks to you beauty is a transcendent
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  human experience beauty cannot be packaged beauty cannot be sold beauty cannot be demanded of you
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  so we have been made to settle for a shallow form of beauty that is not spiritual beauty it is industrialized
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  beauty because it can be bought it can be produced it can be packaged it can be sold and it can be
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  demanded rather than called into an experience spiritual beauty is not demanded it comes from the
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  soul it comes from the spirit it's something we cannot help but to both create and also to yearn for
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  and long for so I want you to sit with this feeling of what are the moments of spiritual beauty
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  that you have accessed in your life and what is your dream your vision for what beauty would mean
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  if we got to have a world rooted in love and in community and in safety and in beauty and
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  that's a funniest thing because now I can say that without you thinking I mean the other kind of
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  beauty because I simply refuse to believe in a kind of beauty that others that destroys that
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  diminishes that is anti fat that is anti black that is anti disabled when we are all nature and we
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  are all exactly as we should be and we shouldn't have to be beautiful but we should have full access
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  to experiencing beauty and everyone on the planet should have equal access to that human experience
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  that we need so deeply that is so critical and that we are made to only think we can access
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  through consumerism through a massing wealth through a massing things and unfortunately in this world
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  that often is true these transcendental experiences who has access to that in our world
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  people who can afford to have access to it because in order to access the human experience of beauty
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  you need peace you know you can't be stressed by society you can't be stressed by structural barriers
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  by poverty by racism you can't experience beauty if you are literally being systemically oppressed
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  by the world by society so that's the other thing if we get the world we want the current barriers
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  that are existing for people to access the experience of beauty will be removed
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  okay because for example in our world for you to access love you need to be desirable often
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  and this happens both in romantic relationships and in friendships you see that people have way
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  more options for friendship if they are the beauty standard so you see that if friendship is beauty
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  if there's beauty shared between friends perhaps they're laughing or perhaps they're creating a puzzle
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  which I'm currently doing by myself and I'm enjoying it so much perhaps they are you know
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  just with each other being existing maybe they're creating maybe they're singing if that is a
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  transcendental experience of beauty but if there are barriers to you accessing the friendship that
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  will let you access the beauty of love then your access to beauty is bad so the other reason it's
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  really important to hang on to spiritual beauty and the idea of accessing that beauty is that
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  I think in our innate beings we know how to access beauty but now there are all these structural
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  barriers that don't enable it so when we think about desirability that needs to end like the idea
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  that certain people certain bodies are desirable that has to end such that we can democratize the
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  access to love the access to connection the access to friendship and beauty and the beauty of those
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  experiences because it's not only that you'll be less accepted by others you are less accepted by
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  others but it's also that your sense of self is rooted in the fear of the rejection that you've
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  experienced so it's the both the psyche that you need to make friends and you need to make lovers is
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  also one of I deserve love and who do you think has access to that psyche so I really think this
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  is such a fulfilling vision for how we could conceive of what beauty really is and would be in the
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  world that we want beauty can be pleasure beauty can be safety beauty can be loving connection beauty
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  can be singing together creating together beauty can be public spaces that we can all access and
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  that we have time to share time in beauty can be reconnecting with and learning about your own heritage
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  especially as black people your own history your own artists your own inventors and also your own
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  fighters warriors you know what I mean and many people wear many different of these hats
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  so because there are so many barriers it's not just we want to be represented as beautiful
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  it's that we want access to a life of beauty we want to reclaim what beauty really is
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  which is an experience so I do dream of a world with beauty I do I do dream of a world where we do
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  want to adorn our lives and decorate our lives you know what I mean but it's not with meaningless
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  industrialized objects it is with truly which could be a loaf of bread beautiful but that is
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  crafted by one person and and bought by another person and they know each other and everything is
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  great and we're not poisoning the earth to make food when there's plenty of abundance on earth you
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  know what I mean beauty is people having their needs met okay and the physical beauty that we've
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  been sold and the limited imagination of it the colonial imagination of it it could never be beauty
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  because it's literally a mechanism to uphold white supremacy it's a mechanism to uphold patriarchy like
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  how if you think of all these systems and how they come to stay in to in existence like why don't
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  they ever leave why aren't they dislodged well because they're embedded in ideals that everyone in
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  the society agrees are important so everyone in our society agrees that beauty is important but
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  they're embedded in the idea of beauty is the white supremacy and the colonialism and the
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  ableism and transphobia and homophobia and anti-fatness and all of those things and the ages
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  them so they become inextricable and now people can't even conceive of a world where beauty could
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  mean something different but they know that they need a world with beauty most people are like but
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  what do you mean they have to be ugly people and they have to be beautiful people and it's like no
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  that's not really the case at all that's something you've been conditioned to believe because you've
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  grown up in a society like that they have to has to be beautiful experiences but they actually
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  could just be people just as they are just trees they also could just be like we could just accept
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  the inner divinity and and and sublime nature of all human beings and we could set up the
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  societies such that we help people become their most divine self which means they're most loving
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  self so I hope you enjoyed today's episode of Beauty Bites and I'm really excited to be doing
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  this more as always please remember to leave a five star rating on Spotify and Apple if you can
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  this really helps the podcast reach everyone it's meant for and it helps my creative dreams for
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  this project to come true second if you would love to hear more from me or support me more directly
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  please join my newsletter it's at i understood dot subs dot com and it's linked in the show notes
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  I would love to see you there because that's where I share community events and also where I
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  send handwritten notes I just share a deeper level of my consciousness love you so much spread
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  love today bye