Latest / The Curve / Can women afford to not botox?

Transcript

Can women afford to not botox? · The Curve

0:01
In today's episode, we are answering a very provocative question.
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You've got to be with us here.
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Can women afford to not Botox?
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Vogue dubbed 2025 the year of plastic surgery transparency.
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And as more celebrities and people in the public eye have been open about the procedures they've got,
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it has made the conversation around surgery feel increasingly normalized, even aspirational.
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So, of course, we wanted to do a deep dive on how much women are spending on their appearances,
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as well as the personal and professional pressures and the actual cost associated.
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If you, like us, have been haunted by the question to Botox or not Botox
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and then felt guilty about whether that makes you a bad feminist,
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this conversation will resonate so hard.
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This is The Curve Weekly, where we read the finance news so that you don't have to.
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I'm Sophie Hall-Wright, ex-producer of television, radio,
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and I was a bit of a financial mess, so we started this podcast
0:57
so that me and lots of others can understand the economy and investing.
1:01
And my name is Emma-Louise Boynton.
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I am a writer, author, and broadcaster.
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And I'm standing in for Vic, who is building the Curve Investments, newly announced.
1:11
So I'll be filling in for her to discuss today's most pressing financial news.
1:16
But before we dive in, we've got a word from today's sponsor.
1:20
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1:24
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1:26
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1:32
And thank you so much to Generate for sponsoring this episode of the Curve Weekly.
1:36
Coming in for this recording, I was weirdly nervous.
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I don't know why, but this particular conversation we're about to have today is one that I have put off researching in depth and talking about.
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And Vic and I have spoken at length about how we should speak about this.
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and we just haven't.
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I mean, I totally get that
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because I think it feels so,
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I mean, it's so personal
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because it's something that
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as soon as you're 30,
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I'm sure 20 year olds too,
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it's so top of mind.
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I feel like I said this to you recently,
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I think in your 30s,
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there are two existential questions
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which seem to just hang over you daily,
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whether to be a mother
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and to Botox or not to Botox.
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These are the two questions
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that I feel like I cannot move
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without confronting whether that's because of the litany of baby announcements that i continually
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get on my social media feeds and my whatsapps and then botox i feel like you know when you're
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always trying when you're reading stuff online and you're always trying to work out whether it's
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written by chat gpt and it's always quite obvious but then there's like no that's because you're a
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journalist i don't think lots of people are doing oh i'm definitely i don't know a lot of my friends
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who like really are not a lot of authors true i'm friends a lot of writers i'm in a total bubble
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okay so we're always like i just think you can so easily tell when stuff is written by chat gpt
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there's like so many giveaways but I feel like I'm kind of everything I'm reading now I'm reading
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through a lens of like was this written like by AI or by a human in the same way what I'm looking
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at people's faces now I'm looking being like have you Botox or have you not Botox because it's like
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little like small giveaways but this is also coming from someone that hasn't Botox so we're
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going to get to that well well I think I haven't yeah no I know wait pause we have to pause this
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conversation because before we get into this yes we have to talk about are you in the red or are
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you in the green this week have you had a good financial week or a bad financial week listen
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this is my second episode on the curve I haven't been in great heat into the world of financial
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education yet I'm at the beginning of my journey so I thought this is a humiliation ritual which
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the whole point of doing more work with the curve is to educate myself around finances right so
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Every time you ask me this, I'm going to give you the same answer.
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And it feels like this kind of self-flagellation.
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Guess what?
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So I'm in the red.
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I just got back from holiday.
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How was it?
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It was amazing.
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And I just indulged and had the best time with my partner.
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And it was just the most like healing thing, especially post-book.
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I left feeling a bit like kind of just grouchy and just overwhelmed by book promo or whatever.
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And I come back feeling so revived.
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however in order to get that feeling of nourishment and relaxation it meant be a little bit like you
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know not worrying about money so i've come back in the red we actually have an episode coming out
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on the holiday hangover the financial holiday hangover in a few weeks time because it's so
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real it me you come back like it's shot and i hate when you get i know this is a good financial
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thing but when monzo's like you spent x and i'm like didn't want to know yeah i had my head in
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the sand don't give me an overview or yeah no i'm just waiting for the car you know you you
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this is so dumb but when you rent a car you put you have your down payment and then you like pay
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for the actual car it's like 500 pounds is coming back into my account that was like the deposit
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and i'm just kind of waiting that being like that's gonna be great because that's gonna put
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you back in it's like a if you move house and you put your deposit down for rent and you've done a
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month worth it's like free money oh you're like perfect god i'm so good at girl math um so are
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you in the green or the red i i'm really unsure why but i'm massively in the red i've got i looked
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at you just before this morning before you record it i've got 41 pounds in my fun account to last
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me until the 15th so i've basically i'm halfway through the month and i have spent way more and
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I haven't even had a fun month.
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How did I not have a blower?
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I didn't buy any cool clothes.
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I'm like, I'm a bit annoyed.
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All I'm thinking is, at least you have a fun account.
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Yeah.
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So today, the title that I almost feel uncomfortable saying out loud,
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Can Women Afford to Not Botox?
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And before anyone stops listening and thinks this is the most anti-feminist podcast you've ever heard,
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bear with us because there's been a lot of research that's gone into this because I didn't
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want to just get on the microphone and just talk about the emotional side of Botox I really wanted
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to look at the financial side and get lots of different opinions and research to feed into this
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oh my god I feel nervous I can feel it I'm like it's so weird is it because it just feels really
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personal to you I think it's personal I feel embarrassed by this conversation why do you feel
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embarrassed we'll get to that I'll share it but I do feel I feel as though I have the side of myself
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and my personality and the way that I show up in the world that I really try to not lean into
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some parts of uh what I would say has been like beauty standards set by you know it feels to me
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like we're in the Barbie movie and it's the boardroom of white men telling us how we should
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look and I try so hard in lots of areas of my life to give the middle finger to some things
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when it comes to beauty standards I find it so hard um so I think with this particular conversation
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I feel so conflicted with the decisions I've made versus what I wish I had the courage or like
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ability to push back on interesting I hear that entirely and I do think you know you even just
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mentioned there about the feminist piece it can feel so confronting to one's feminism can i be
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a good feminist and still participate in a beauty industrial complex that is run and by men and from
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which men profit and which is still kind of really oriented around the male gaze and obviously we'll
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go into that in more depth later but i think it is something i also thought about in terms of
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i don't have that same level i i just love talking about anything that's like a bit uncomfortable and
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boo so i'm like let's go but i do have that on a personal level it's something i have grappled with
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personally like can i be the feminist i want to be whilst also obsessing over changing my appearance
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and wanting to kind of you know keep up with trends around appearance like how do i grapple
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with that i mean it's you know forever being a guilty feminist well we're gonna go back a second
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so let me frame this in 2019 uh writer and author gia tolentino who writes the new yorker she wrote
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of piece entitled the age of instagram face it was a term that actually originated by beauty
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writer jessica de fino who does some great work in this area she writes a lot about beauty trends
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and it's kind of like a go-to voice in this space uh now tolentino's article went viral arguing that
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social media face tune and plastic surgery had created a single cyborgian look it is one that
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i always associated with that kind of kardashian ideal you know it just became shy yeah big lips
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kind of big butt kind of totally that kind of upward moving face which is a fine gravity it's
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the high eyebrows it's the cat like everything goes this way when for me things are going this
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way that's up versus down for anyone who's just listening to some audio yes it's like everything
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is pulling up to the side yes it is defying gravity in every which way and it also on this
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there is so many filters that do this to your face oh my god i know sometimes it's like wow
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I know.
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Stunning when I look like a cat.
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But that's what I ate too.
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Because I'm like, oh, wow, looking good.
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I'm like, no, no, no.
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I know.
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And also, bear in mind, she wrote this piece in 2019.
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This was before the pandemic.
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This is before we were all basically forced to stay in our homes and exist solely online,
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where filters became even more ubiquitous than they were then.
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Anyway, so this article went viral in 2019.
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and it really kind of spoke to the impact that social media was having on how we saw ourselves
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and beauty standards fast forward to 2026 and this aesthetic homogeneity has only intensified
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as we know um and cue another tolentino viral article for the new yorker which just came out
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i believe it's last week titled our plastic surgery nightmare now i want to read just a
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quick section from the beginning of the piece because i think it really encapsulates everything
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the article goes on to discuss and for me was just chilling to read.
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So she writes,
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Today the young inject their faces and look old.
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The old inject their faces and look uncanny.
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A 20-year-old got famous for hitting himself in the jaw with a hammer to become hotter.
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Teenagers ask strangers on the internet if a facelift is their only hope.
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The internet casually
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scrambles basic ideals of personhood, reframing people as commodities and stripping us for parts.
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but only recently has this process been encoded so specifically onto the face traditionally thought
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of as a portal to our humanity the face is separating from the person and the person is
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separating from the soul and this is happening in front of us on our phones in the most banal
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fashion every day sophie what did you make of this piece so many things i i don't really know
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where to go with this what it made me think was I went and basically did a huge deep dive one of the
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sections that gave me like full-on goosebumps and feel quite sick I actually wanted to read a
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tiny um sentence that came out she said a writer for New York magazine observed a deep
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plane facelift do you know what that is oh yeah obviously because I've looked up and getting one
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um moments and moments of deep insecurity that my face hasn't defined gravity yes it's a well
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It's deep and it's a facelift and it makes it go up.
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Basically.
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It was described, the surgeon's fingers sliding under the patient's cheek
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once all the necessary ligaments have been cut.
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The features on top move freely and in one piece like a Halloween mask.
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And I was just like, that is disgusting and so invasive.
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Dystopian.
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Yeah.
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I think the reason I felt confused or like unsure how to respond to this article
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was that on the one hand, I think that I have almost demonized that type of plastic surgery
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in a way that is so different from getting microneedling or Botox or lip filler, because
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those are the more normalized price accessible procedures.
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What is the difference?
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Like,
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obviously it's way more invasive to get rhinoplasty, you know, to get a nose job,
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you know I understand that but actually in my head I think I've really justified a lot of the
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things that are so much more quote-unquote common now I mean the quote that you read out was just
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gave me literal goosebumps the idea of just a surgeon moving someone's face in such a visceral
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kind of grotesque way I think what I felt reading it and generally kind of all the research we did
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for this discussion today i'm struck by one just the normalization where this stuff has no longer
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become a kind of pocket of conversation on the internet it feels so ubiquitous i mean i just
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everyone you know we live in a big city london um hyper exposed to glossy media online on social
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media etc so i appreciate there's a kind of specific bubble in which we both exist but i do
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just feel it's been so normalized when you talk about tweakments and and kind of what's the
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difference between that and there's more kind of extreme invasive surgeries I see those as kind of
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the gateway drug you know because you begin to see every imperfection you dislike about yourself
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as eminently fixable the gateway drug is is an interesting way to put it because if I think about
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I don't know if I think about where I started in terms of buying makeup at 14 to all the different
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layers of beauty that I have done that I tell myself is for my own confidence and for me and
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not for other people is total bullshit and I think unless someone is sitting there having not got
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their nails done not buying makeup not like really behaving in a world like men do in terms of their
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appearance it's kind of unfair to throw judgment on people who are making other decisions about
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where they spend their money whether it's getting their eyelashes curled whether it's getting botox
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whether it's getting lip filler and I know that maybe those seem quite far apart but they're
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actually also coming from the exact same place which is yeah the way you look needs to be
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constantly improved what I'm like dying to share with you later through this episode is how much
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money on average women are spending in their 20s 30s 40s up to the 70s it is disgusting and also
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I did the numbers on how much it would be if we'd invested it and it is shocking and it's really
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interesting because one of the conversations that I've started having with my boyfriend around this
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because we've been talking about things like you know he will pay more for more dinners or for more
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things than I do he said to me once and I it really stuck with me because I see all these people online
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saying like yeah you think you should split evenly what about all this and it's all these women like
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pulling out of their like beauty products and blah blah he was like yeah you spend so much more on
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that stuff than I do so like where does that net out and like kind of makes sense for me to pay
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more if you're paying more on that and I was like thank you what a modern man thought I loved that
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it made me feel really good because I was like yeah thank you for recognizing the fact that I
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do feel the pressure to spend that and him sort of saying you know like we benefit from you spending
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that because we there is this like inherent thing of how we think our partner or how women should
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look on the world and I know you have to spend that much like he knows that I think where my
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mind goes with that is a sort of grief as to how much time women are encouraged or and pressured
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to spend obsessing over the way that we look and you know even when you said before like the
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conversations you've had around with your partner around the um amount of time that you spend and
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the money that you've had that you've had quote unquote because no no totally you know what i
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mean and we've had to spend on your um appearance and on makeup and all that sort of stuff i love
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that he's acknowledging that and you know saying he'll pay more but i just go back to thinking
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kind of how much of our brain space as women has been co-opted by the beauty industrial complex
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there's a brilliant book called the beauty myth um by naomi wolf which was written in the early
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90s which talked about exactly this how as women moved from the domestic setting so typically being
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kind of at home as housewives as women gained more economic social and political power in the
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latter half the 20th century that's when the beauty industry really took off and she basically argues
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that the pressure that was then placed on women to be obsessed with beauty there was a rise in
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cosmetic surgery there was a rise you know the beauty industry just grew massively it was a
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purposeful like movement to distract women away from these new more kind of public pursuits
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that were gaining us kind of economic social political power it was a way of turning us back
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in and on ourselves look at the workplace now look at how incredible women are the fact that
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no one needs to be in a heteronormative relationship with a man paying for anything,
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or we can have babies on our own, we can earn our own money.
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There is this huge fear, I think,
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we're starting to realize how amazing we are and how much we can do.
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And it's funny,
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I was even at a dinner party, there was a whole lot of different ages at it.
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And this guy who
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was probably around 68, 70 was saying, you know, and here's one daughter, he was like,
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oh I mean we all know that you know women are the elite sex you know and honestly what what
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is going to happen if guys don't start stepping you know stepping up because yeah and and so that
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distraction piece is like we're starting to realize it so skinny top making a comeback
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all of this like we're going back to you know almost like elevating people that look like
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walking coat hangers and we're trying to reverse that and and turn everyone's attention back on
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appearance when we'd come so far in monetizing our assets outside of our appearance totally
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there's a patriarchal impulse like diminish women's power in whatever way possible and i
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think by making us turn in on ourselves i can't imagine any more insidious way in which it kind
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of dims our light i think that we should uh sake of transparency in this conversation admit to what
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we both have whilst being able to acknowledge the like feminist arguments against it all
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the patriarchal impetus that underlies like the pressure the women have faced around beauty
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we should own up to what we've had no i mean i know that we need to this is why i was nervous
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about this conversation because uh and i will i will but i don't want by talking about it and i'm
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in this weird in between of thinking is transparency helping us or is it actually making it worse
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Because on the one hand, having someone who objectively looks like 20 years younger than their biological age and not saying they've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on that or gone under the knife or whatever is really unhelpful because we're, of course, comparing ourselves to that.
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And it's so gaslighting.
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Yeah.
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Just kind of, wait, sorry, you actually look like that?
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It makes you feel a bit mad.
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On the other hand, talking about this also makes it so much more normalized.
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And then people see or hear someone saying they've done it and think that they should too.
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And it's this kind of copycat effect that I was guilty of and I totally fell into as well.
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So I feel like the reason I'm talking about this is the last thing I would want is someone to hear me saying something I've done and then thinking that's what they should be doing too.
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because I'm actually really embarrassed about how much money I've spent on things that is
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totally coming from insecurity and fear of becoming irrelevant or fear of this or you know
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it's really it's actually so sad and I so that is why I've like not talked about it okay so I have
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spent I would say um probably over my time because I'm so terrible with consistency booking laser
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appointments like holy shit you know they're like do it 10 times and you will have no hair on your
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legs and I'm like cool but then I forget and book it every six months and then it's like I'm like
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it's not working and they're like yeah you're inconsistent so but I would say I've probably
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spent around 3,000 on laser over the last 10 years of my life can I ask where yeah yeah sure
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is it just pubes is it is it leg pube oh I want to know
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I've done everything I've done legs that's the very hairy still so just so everyone knows there's
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still hit everywhere so this has been an unsuccessful investment I would say if what I was going for
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was no hair so I still had hair in all of these places um I've done legs I've done full Brazilian
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I've done underarm I've done are we gonna go there I've done areola I've done where was you
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know like I've around my boobs well I just pluck them I'm just old school I've done I mean I now
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so fun to pluck I'm sorry I know it's a bad mission but oh my god plucking my nipple hair
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is when people try and say they don't have it i'm like this is so annoying everyone shaved them once
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as a teenager and then you could never go normal and if you don't amazing happy for you but like
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let's just you know move right along i've done like chin and like um mustache i've done i'm
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pretty sure i've done my big toe at some point oh yeah quite long hair there um essential again
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but again like all these places still have hair because i haven't done it properly as in properly
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as in whatever like um and then I have had micro-needling but I haven't done it since I was
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probably 20 I mean I think I did it when I was like 27 28 and it was pre-botox it was the most
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painful thing ever like I just had tears streaming down my face I hated it it was so painful and so
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expensive um and then I've spent probably in total I was trying to look up I probably spent around
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8 000 on botox mic drop moment yeah i 8 000 yeah wow yeah i've written a sub stack on this in more
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detail so if anyone does want to read it i've like i've had this moment on the plane i can't
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remember where i was going and i just felt so sorry for myself and so embarrassed about the
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whole thing and i just had it and i got a bruise and i was like this is so sad this is so fucking
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sad and I was like I hate that I'm doing this I think I was 28 yeah how over what period you spent
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about 28 so 28 29 30 31 2 3 about eight seven years okay so yeah what about you what have you
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had spent money on well I don't know if I know all of your things I yeah I couldn't remember either
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um so we're wearing that together I actually haven't had a ton I am literally about to book
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Botox so I should probably just make that I should just put my hands up and say this guilty feminist
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is about book to get Botox can I ask was it from watching yourself on this podcast and seeing how
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much your face I think I'm just being visible like so much of my work is visible whether it's like
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doing live events and they're recorded so many photographs in the past year particularly around
23:15
the book I'm just like seeing my face the whole time well it's interesting you say that and we
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can get some of this research but the rise of Botox between 2020 and 2022 is the largest that
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it's ever seen in a short space of time and that's where most of us pandemic home on zoom for five
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hours a day and i think that that is really unhelpful we look at ourselves far too much far
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too much so that interestingly is literally the when i started getting stuff done so it was after
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the pandemic and by the way during the pandemic i went down research holes of getting a nose job
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of getting various other things because i was so confronted by constantly looking at my face as we
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all were over hours over days whatever so that's when I really began to feel like just too confronted
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by how I looked and wanted to change things so I booked in consultations for a nose job I began
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researching what other things I could get ended up getting I actually did get Botox then I got this
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um this facial with this woman Dr. Awoma which is like the Kardashian facial where they basically
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just put like little bits of Botox over your whole face like only on skin level so it's not
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like getting botox but it was an amazing facial but then i went back to her i think for like a
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small treatment and my friend was getting botox after me and she was just like do you want to
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get botox too and i was like sure so i ended up getting like half a face of botox oh wow all of
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my foot i mean i'm you know i go extreme i didn't realize so i've got a foot but this was like about
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four years ago this is in 2021 yeah five years ago so it's like forehead thing but i didn't like it
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because it froze my eyes so much that my smile kind of ended halfway up my face,
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which didn't work so well.
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I then got my lips done.
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And this was my more, this is where I put a bit more.
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I've had my lips done three times.
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And the first time I had them done, I had one milliliter put in.
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That's quite a lot, right?
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I looked insane.
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And he also put it in.
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Oh my God.
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And that's, I got filler under my eye.
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That's it.
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I got filler under my eye as well after that Botox in the pandemic.
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This was all post-pandemic.
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this was really precipitated by the pandemic got filler under my eye where i do actually naturally
25:22
it's quite hollow the filler looked fine it does migrate wouldn't do filler again because i can see
25:27
it sometimes near my eye that's scary sorry i got it twice no but definitely i can just see it
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but i went back to that same guy and got my lips done and you should never use the same person for
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different things because people have a specialism and that's what they're good at he put this lip
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filler in like in large globs so i just had like all these lumps in my lips like they kept their
25:46
outer shape but the inside was just so lumpy so that was my first first get my lips done
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but i did like it generally and then i've got it done twice since but with a smaller amount
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um and haven't had anything done in the past like two two and a half years but now begin
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my botox journey and i'd say a couple i'm obviously speaking in pounds i've spent a couple thousand on
26:07
that yeah i would say and we haven't done botox i haven't done laser that's also on my list it is
26:12
really an admin issue yeah it is purely an admin issue yeah I can so relate the idea of being at
26:17
getting myself looking at once shaving before it not having been in the sun I'm like I just have
26:22
got to the point where I'm lying to them they're like have you been in the sun have you got fake
26:25
tan I'm like no and she's looking at me like I'm you're lying I'm like honestly I'm not coming back
26:30
here so do it and if you give me something that's my own fault like I just cannot deal what do you
26:36
think about talking about it do you feel as though we're now because even just when you said and I'm
26:41
just being honest like one of the things that you said where you were like don't go to someone
26:45
that's that's like you know good at one thing and not the other i'm like oh don't say that because
26:50
i don't want to be like promoting it and it's so i just feel so but also that is a good tip though
26:57
no it is and if you're and you're if people listening are probably getting stuff done
27:00
i don't make my mistake yeah i totally hear you on feeling uncomfortable because i also feel
27:05
uncomfortable with that and i do think there is i mean vogue declared 2025 the year of transparency
27:10
when it comes to plastic surgery.
27:12
And it was a time when suddenly
27:13
there was a very notable shift
27:15
where historically celebrities
27:16
had been a bit kind of coy
27:17
and, you know, about revealing
27:19
anything they'd have done,
27:21
continued denied stuff.
27:22
And then they suddenly began
27:24
to be more open.
27:25
Kylie Jenner very famously
27:27
responded to someone on TikTok
27:28
giving the exact cup size
27:31
and kind of procedure she'd had
27:33
with regards to her boob jobs.
27:33
Wait, who did this?
27:34
Kylie Jenner.
27:35
I thought you said Kendall
27:36
because I was like, I'm sure Kendall
27:37
says she's a baby.
27:37
No, Kendall is gaslighting all of us
27:39
by saying she's had baby Botox and that's it.
27:41
Just absolutely jog on.
27:43
There's no way.
27:44
Okay, but this is a good comparison.
27:46
So you've got Kylie Jenner who is telling us all
27:49
exactly what she's had done,
27:51
kind of the size of the implant she had,
27:53
who the surgeon was, et cetera.
27:55
And she was kind of touted online
27:57
as being this like girl's girl, feminist.
28:00
Like she's kind of, she's being honest.
28:02
She's letting us in.
28:03
She's also giving the gals the good tips.
28:05
By comparison, Kendall Jenner has said
28:07
that she's only had baby botox which is amazing given that her face looks completely different
28:11
to what it looked like when she was younger i feel gaslit by kendall jenner and i also look at her
28:16
being like it for me that is so distorting of beauty standards because i'm looking at her very
28:24
perfect face thinking god like that's such a vision of beauty and i then feel bad about myself
28:30
that i don't look like that and i should have like that smoother skin that more symmetrical nose
28:35
it is such like you I you know I don't know what libel's like this but like she so visibly had lots
28:41
of work done yeah so I think that gaslighting also creates a problem with regards to our beauty
28:46
standards and how we see ourselves versus others and the intensity of the comparison that we can
28:51
make with people on the flip side I also agree I don't know that whether I think Kylie Jenner
28:57
and anyone else like that being so specific about the work they've had done totally normalizes it
29:04
and makes it feel even more aspirational it's also why she's built a beauty business around like lip
29:11
like lip glosses and lip liners like get your lips like mine when her lips are filled with filler
29:16
so there's i think it is such a confusing space particularly for the people consumer at the end
29:24
particularly for everyday women that's an unsatisfying response to your question around
29:29
transparency because i think on the one hand i don't think it does us a favor when they're not
29:34
when people in public eye particularly aren't transparent and we're being missold products
29:38
and ideal of the good life we're constantly bombarded with imagery that's so perfected
29:43
never mind the filters and we're we're led to believe that it's it's there there's been no
29:49
intervention that we too could we should look like that so i think that's problematic but i do think
29:54
that the talking about it as openly as we now do makes it feel not just normalized but aspirational
30:02
accessible and that i do think is a problem there's this one only fans creator who i think
30:08
is just the funniest person ever ari kitsa yeah i'm not gonna say her name properly you know she's
30:14
got three million followers and she does all these videos around like oh my god you're so naturally
30:18
beautiful and she's like and then she puts photos up of what she looked like before and she'll be
30:22
like nose job boob job liposuction had all this and I will say honestly it did make me feel better
30:28
because I thought well I get the choice I don't want to spend time and money in that same way I
30:34
don't want to put my body through that extreme plastic surgery or or any kind of procedure to
30:40
look like that and I really valued that she'd said it and how much she spent because I was like ah
30:46
yeah I've got the choice and I don't choose that and so I know that you don't hope like that so
30:50
So that's, yeah, but I still feel confused about it.
30:53
That for me is a sort of transparency that I think is actually important and valuable.
30:57
So I'm really curious to know the cost involved in the kind of tweakment come surgery space.
31:05
But before the big revelation, I just want to make one final point, which is around the kind of personal cost.
31:11
And I think we've, this kind of conversation has really oriented a lot around the kind of personal cost thus far.
31:18
but for me what really rammed home the sheer violence of what we're talking about today
31:23
so early this year uh actress denise richards did an interview with allure magazine
31:30
that was honestly like i haven't been able to forget it it was about it was detailing the um
31:37
specificities of her recent facelift and she went in and with allure she basically did this full-on
31:42
interview where she detailed every part of her process of deciding to get the facelift then
31:48
getting the facelift she in the article has included imagery of every part of her recovery so
31:54
and the sophie i cannot the day after the facelift she has this picture of her that i cannot erase
32:01
from my mind it's her all bandaged up i could see it it's all bandaged up eyes all bruised and then
32:06
she has these two you know the draining cups that you have after surgery on top of her head these
32:10
things drain oh my god blood seeing that article for me it's all very well and good me being like
32:17
oh i'm gonna get face if i don't you know i don't want to aid i want to look young i want to look
32:20
gorgeous forever seeing the violence that women go through to attain a specific look to try and
32:29
kind of attain this unattainable eternal youth to me was so confronting because it looked like
32:36
she'd been in a car crash and I had to remind myself she chose to put her face through a car
32:40
crash in order to I mean annoyingly but the before and after pictures she looks really good now she
32:47
looks amazing she looks like she's erased 20 years off her face but at what personal cost let's not
32:55
forget like the trauma of going through something so invasive you know on one's kind of emotional
33:00
state but also on your body you're putting yourself through kind of hours of surgery that
33:05
has an impact so i just wanted to and if anyone is curious go and check out that article alia
33:11
magazine because i do think it really shows that like the dark underbelly of what we're really
33:16
talking about yeah in a very visual way because you're right you can talk about the cost of it
33:21
you can talk about the understanding the reasons why but to book the appointment to go and then
33:26
sit on the operating table and to go through that much pain in the process of actually then coming
33:33
out this other side you know all we're seeing is the poor before and after you're forgetting
33:36
in between and i have to say that in terms of i could do that purely because i'm terrified of
33:42
hospitals and needles and like i have to say the the leaky bag things where they have all the like
33:46
the fluid that gives me like actual he would use but i think when it come when we just to return
33:52
to that transparency piece i actually think that sort of transparency i was like at least we know
33:57
the full picture true because that to me was horrifying and you're right we see before and
34:02
after we see oh bit of sagging and then oh my god gorgeous what we don't see is the absolutely
34:09
violent kind of grotesque in between and the pain and the cost of that like you can't even say what
34:15
that's you know it's so easy I think we're really putting numbers next to it like I did so much
34:19
research around how much people are spending you know what countries are they the most popular what
34:25
are people spending on the different but you it's so easy to forget about that emotional piece
34:30
okay that all being said i want you to now hit me with the numbers so we've talked about the
34:35
personal cost what does this cost financially how much are people spending to try so much money
34:44
a survey found more than a quarter of women aged 30 to 44 said that they would spend
34:49
10 000 to 100 000 on the right procedure if they could like get access to financing which i thought
34:55
was just wild so it's actually for a lot of people the finance is the blocker not necessarily the
35:01
decision to want to get it done which is just like that the this you need to save up to basically
35:08
like crush your face or think about how what you could do with that money you just fucking wait
35:13
so the most common procedures they are the obvious like breast implants tummy tucks butt implants
35:20
like bbls um dangerous removing your buckle fat removal yeah but i think that's the whole cat like
35:27
suck in sort of thing um and obviously those are all procedures that guys don't get but um
35:32
the prices have climbed like between 40 and 90 percent in five years so there's wait what yeah
35:39
that is an extortionate increase well i think the thing is and it's kind of back to what you
35:44
were saying around the accessible procedures of things like filler botox that sort of thing
35:52
those prices have kind of remained not super high in regards to like how inflation's moved
35:57
and the cost of living but what has got really expensive is like more surgical procedures
36:04
it's really if you look into the stats around like the how dangerous some things can be like
36:11
people die from getting butt implants.
36:13
Oh BBRs are so dangerous.
36:15
What I looked into though is it's
36:16
not necessarily just because it's dangerous it's because people are going to a cheaper surgeon
36:20
and it's there that it's really dangerous so yeah anyway and then also things like getting like 3D
36:27
imagery and like seeing what it's going to look like afterwards like those are what the costs
36:31
are like being bumped up by because people are wanting more visibility on what it's going to
36:35
look like after.
36:36
So surgery essentially is getting more complex and I guess what we're what's
36:39
available to us is more um kind of premium and there's a more of a kind of broader variety of
36:45
surgeries and with that the cost is premium essentially a lot of these costs i've looked
36:49
at as well as like not taking into account the like the increase of what you're spending for
36:56
like anesthesia and all of that is kind of like on top of so i'm just going to read out some of the
37:02
stats so this is averages okay so of the top procedures right now 2024 is the most like the
37:07
latest stats that you can get rhinoplasty which is nose is between 7 and 12 so like averaging
37:14
around 10 000 us dollars bbl like basically like fat grafting is between 7 and 11 000 so averaging
37:23
about 9.2 000 which i would have thought would be way more expensive given how how so much more
37:29
expensive same um liposuction average just under 6 000 getting your breasts done is around six but
37:36
I think that also when you're looking at the averages, like there's such a different, like in terms of the spectrum of the surgeons that you can pay for.
37:43
You know, a lot of people go to places like Turkey where it's way cheaper.
37:47
So, I mean, like I think if you were looking at the really expensive surgeons, these would be like five times more.
37:53
This is just averages.
37:55
But I basically then looked into, okay, what is the average that people are spending on beauty?
38:01
And this is so broad, right?
38:03
Because for some people, they're spending on manicures and on makeup.
38:07
For some people, they're doing Botox and needling.
38:09
For some people, they're getting nose jobs.
38:10
So obviously, this is an average.
38:14
It's not just surgery, but it's an average of 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s to 70s.
38:19
What on average are we spending on what we look like as women?
38:23
So in your 20s, average is around $9,300.
38:28
30s, the average is the highest.
38:30
So the most that people are spending on what they look like is in their 30s, which just makes so much sense.
38:37
You can get away with a lot in your 20s.
38:40
I mean, I used to go out and like party.
38:42
I used to stay out until like 4 or 5 a.m.
38:45
And the next day, fresh.
38:47
If I just get seven hours sleep rather than eight.
38:50
People are like, are you okay?
38:52
If you go to the slough, like it's so intense.
38:54
So I can see.
38:55
I think you just catch up with your income, right?
38:59
So it's like you're earning probably like a lot of women peak in their earning in like early 30s.
39:03
So if you're choosing to have kids or not, like you see all these memes of people being like,
39:07
you better be loving your swimming lesson because that's my Botox fund, you know.
39:10
It's just like people are choosing.
39:13
So then 40s, it goes down to around 6,200.
39:17
50s is average of just over 4,000.
39:19
60s and 70s is the lowest, so just over 2,000.
39:23
So it's interesting.
39:23
We're in the age bracket where the average is highest.
39:26
I'm curious about the 40s, why it goes down in your 40s.
39:30
Is that, do you think, just anecdotally, do you think that's because you accept yourself more?
39:36
Probably.
39:37
Or like, you kind of, you kind of also just like, give a shit.
39:39
Like, I've got bigger fish to fry.
39:41
I would say probably.
39:41
Because I think 30s is still, although it's when your income goes up, you've professionally probably gained a bit more ground.
39:47
It's still a kind of quite weird period in which, I mean, you're making decisions oftentimes around family, around partnership.
39:53
like oftentimes I think sometimes you also figure oftentimes sometimes two different things you're
39:59
often then beginning to think kind of what do I want the kind of the bigger piece of my career
40:03
to look like I know a lot of people going through big career transitions it feels to me like it's
40:06
still a time of transition and thus where you're really questioning who you are and how you want
40:11
to be in the world and I think your looks are obviously a really big part of that and with
40:15
the expendable income that comes with potentially not having a family yet by the time one gets to
40:20
one's 40s I hope there's a bit more of a this is who the fuck I am this is what my priorities are
40:28
this is what I care about this is what I'm spending my money and time doing we hope it's like you know
40:32
solving world problems and building big businesses but like do you think that is it is it what is
40:38
I think also 30s you're kind of in that preventative age bracket which is so bullshit you know you're
40:44
in the age where it's like, okay, you can prevent with baby Botox or, you know, you haven't quite
40:50
got, there's a lot of people that talk about the idea of, you know, the older you get, if you try
40:54
and then use Botox, it looks bad.
40:56
Whereas they're trying to sell the idea that you can prevent it
40:59
if you start earlier.
41:00
So I think it's a combination of things, but just this industry in general,
41:05
if you look at the broad spectrum of now, the fact that people in their twenties all the way
41:11
up to their 50s and 60s can use it think about that in terms of marketing you're not even just
41:16
looking at it for like a 10-year period it's like oh you're young you can prevent it oh you're 30
41:21
you can still kind of prevent it oh you're 40 you might look your age but like you can stop it now
41:25
you know there's so many different oh you're 60 wind back the clock yeah and i think actually
41:29
this is a really important point to highlight um and kind of goes back to our own kind of
41:34
internal grappling with this from a kind of feminist perspective none of us live in a vacuum
41:39
We are all hyper exposed to a hell of a lot of marketing around beauty and kind of what we should look like.
41:48
But I think it's a really important thing to be reminded of that the pressure that you're feeling to look a certain way, to get certain procedures, to get certain tweakments, to buy certain products is thanks to very, very good marketing that a lot of money is being put behind.
42:06
so i'm not saying like you know whatever decision someone makes in terms of how they want to look
42:09
what they where they want to put their money that is a decision that people make individually but
42:13
just have in the back of your mind at all times a lot of money is being spent daily to try and get
42:20
you to spend your money on quote unquote fixing how you look and i think just to remind yourself
42:27
you're you're fine how you are you're good you're enough and whatever you look like and if you do
42:32
choose to spend your money in a certain way just remember that the marketing has won in that case
42:38
like well it's interesting you say that because even as we were researching for this i listened
42:42
to podcasts i read articles you know there's actually only three percent of adults in the
42:47
u.s that are using botox i thought it was three so much more than that so on the one hand you
42:53
might be surrounded by media saying that it's you know everyone's spending you know the idea that
42:59
spending on your looks and looking youthful is going to get you a pay rise and all of this
43:03
stuff it's there's so much propaganda that makes you think there is a reason why you should be
43:07
doing it and that it's actually an investment in your career and what blah blah blah you could also
43:12
be in a vacuum like i know i am where i know a lot of people are doing things like this but we are a
43:17
very small percentage of the overarching adult population and when you are digesting a huge
43:23
amount of articles from people that are talking about all of this stuff you think it's way more
43:28
common that it is it's not do you want to hear the numbers of what we wouldn't actually have if
43:34
we invested the money that we're spending on beauty i desperately i don't know i don't know
43:39
i actually i say that i do and i don't but tell me god look how professional my spreadsheet is
43:45
just so you know i would like everyone to be very impressed by that the spreadsheet gives me a bit
43:50
of anxiety but i didn't do it i got my boyfriend to help me with it just so everyone knows so we
43:56
have between the ages of 20 and 69 so these are the averages of what we spend on beauty across
44:03
our life so if we invested so in our 20s we spoke about it's around 9 300 in your 30s it goes up to
44:11
9 7 etc so if every year this money was being invested you'd be rich so you would have invested
44:23
over your life 317 000 yeah and that thinking about cumulative compound interest honestly
44:31
gives me sweaty hands like saying this so this is this is also the best example of how you actually
44:38
can invest not that much like 300 000 is a shitload to invest but guess how much that would be if it
44:44
had been invested and compounded over that time just like make have a guess over what period of
44:48
how many so this is from being 20 to 69 okay so for 50 years how much that I have no idea I mean
44:56
what like double I don't want to reveal my ignorance so just tell me four million no 800,000
45:03
and 21 oh my be a millionaire you would have nearly five million if we invested the money we
45:11
we spend on our face and what we look like and when I wait so can I just ask spread it down for
45:15
is that on beauty products and treatments what is that this is the average like that people are
45:20
spending on beauty each decade of their life so it's you know for me if i so i then broke it down
45:26
for myself so i spend on average around 300 pounds on yeah beauty products shampoo that's
45:34
my record oh wait per month per month oh sorry not conservative not conservative at all it's so
45:41
much money yeah so so if I invested that amount I actually did it from like if I started now
45:49
because obviously I haven't done that I know nearly 35 but if I started now investing that
45:54
money so yearly it's about 3,744 that's that's my you know like beauty spend every year so if I
46:03
invested this from now so from 35 until I was 69 I would have invested 126,000 so it's like half
46:10
really but guess how much less it is in my investments and this is compound interest this
46:16
is the example of how like if you start early it's so important it's only 519 000 compared to
46:24
nearly 5 million the earlier that you invest and the more you invest obviously the more that that
46:28
compounds but i mean it's it's still a shitload of money what i will say is that there is actually
46:34
my that is in um pounds and then the one before was in usd but whatever the point still stands
46:39
It's basically like if we invested that amount, we would all have a shitload more money than if we were spending it on what we look like.
46:45
And what I would say the counter to all of the media that you see around, because we're going to get to this in a second, there's a really fascinating article and story that's come out at the moment around how so many women in their 40s and 50s are disadvantaged by what they look like from an age perspective.
47:00
And it's so sad.
47:02
But there is also so, we're told so much that, you know, there's the pretty privilege.
47:07
and if you look a certain way and pretty people are more confident
47:10
so they get more pay rises and all of this, that does not outweigh.
47:14
So if you think about how much money you're spending on what you look like
47:17
compared to how much more you may be earning from a percentage,
47:21
even if it's 10% more, which is what some studies say,
47:23
that is nothing on if you actually invested that money elsewhere.
47:27
Totally, totally.
47:29
And I was thinking, imagine if we asked men, if you could choose,
47:33
and this is obviously very heteronormative,
47:35
But if you were talking to straight men and you would say to them, how would you feel about your partner not spending money on their hair, makeup, any of the stuff that she does to look the way that she does?
47:47
And she had five million invested.
47:49
What would you think is more valuable?
47:51
Like, would you see value in her spending on beauty?
47:54
And I honestly think, so fucked up to say, but I think a lot of guys would say, I'd rather make the money in her look a certain way.
48:01
Oh.
48:02
Yeah.
48:02
I honestly think.
48:04
I think that if people are doing it anonymously, I think that men don't admit how much they like and appreciate.
48:11
They don't realize how much is like, my eyebrows are 45 pounds.
48:15
And it's because all of us buy into it that they don't have the comparison of someone that doesn't spend on beauty.
48:23
And for as long as the majority or not even majority, for as long as enough people buy into it and look great and participate in like, you know, looking what is kind of socially seen as beautiful.
48:35
It's going to have that ripple effect on the rest of us.
48:38
Coming up after the break, we're going to be talking about whether women can not can afford not to get Botox and treatments when ageism is so rife in the workplace.
48:48
But first, we've got a word from today's sponsor.
48:50
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making this episode possible as i was immersed in doing all this research around the cost both
49:33
kind of personal and financial for women getting uh treatments kind of whatever kind of beauty
49:39
processes we're all obsessed by i came across a story that reminded me about just how much
49:47
pressure women particularly as we get older are to look a certain way in order to just maintain
49:55
our professional lives a few weeks ago Elle editor Stacey Duguid went viral for a video that she
50:01
recorded basically admitting that she has been unemployed for 16 months she has sent more job
50:08
applications than she knows what to do with but cannot even get an interview she then did a
50:17
interview with the times in which she talked about the pressures that are facing not just her
50:22
but so many middle-aged women at work and why looking and seeming young might be more important
50:29
than ever i found this story so confronting so sad it's so sad just a bit of context on her so
50:37
she has basically gone broke she's having to sell a home that was supposed to be her pension
50:41
And a lot of this has followed.
50:43
She got divorced a few years ago.
50:45
You know, she's been, I think, in a different, difficult place kind of financially for a while.
50:51
But has a really good CV.
50:53
Like she was, you know, a very successful journalist.
50:55
She's a published author.
50:57
She's done podcasts.
50:58
Like she's got a glittering CV.
51:00
She's worked with some of the biggest fashion brands, you know, in the world.
51:04
It's not like she's got some kind of, you know, crappy CV that makes her sort of unemployable.
51:09
but what she what I think is more interesting than the fact that she personally is struggling
51:13
to get employment is the response that she got to this viral video so she put it on Instagram
51:20
and it very quickly went viral and got over a thousand comments was re-shared just as many times
51:28
and her inbox was filled with women basically saying me too relaying their own stories of
51:35
struggling to get work being middle-aged and you know being really having a lot of degrees being
51:41
really successful in their in their career to date and then suddenly being at this impasse in their
51:47
middle age not being able to get employment there was one so she did it after this this piece went
51:53
viral she did an interview with the times in which she detailed the sort of response that she's got
51:58
from people and one of them really stood out for me it was a 49 year old former businesswoman
52:04
who has recently taken a badly paid entry-level job
52:09
that can be done remotely and is using a filter
52:12
to make herself look younger in virtual meetings.
52:15
So far, they haven't noticed, she said to The Times.
52:18
This just broke my heart.
52:20
What did you make of this piece?
52:21
The main thing that it made me think is
52:24
I don't ever want to be in a position
52:26
where I'm trying to be employed by anybody at that age.
52:30
It made me think I need to own my own business.
52:34
before I'm 40 to be able to solidify my skills, myself as an asset and my earning capacity,
52:41
and that I can't rely on the bias of what is inevitable when I submit a CV for a job.
52:48
I think
52:48
that's the biggest thing that came out for me.
52:50
Totally.
52:51
I just 100% echo exactly what you said.
52:54
I felt this immediate fear and that fear went to, I never want to be at the mercy of some
53:02
fucking idiot deciding that I'm too old and too experienced for a job like that just does not and
53:08
that by the end that's not to say that I judge any of the women who in their you know tens and
53:15
in their hundreds message Stacey saying that they are struggling you know there were women who'd
53:18
worked in the NHS as consultants for years who have very specific skill set which they'd worked
53:23
for years training up getting all the necessary degrees in order to pursue um as a profession
53:28
so I don't say that with any judgment on any of those people I think it is shocking
53:31
that we do have workplace ageism that is so rife um and you know particularly as it pertains to
53:38
women but similarly i felt i kind of took a step back and i thought okay how do i make sure that i
53:44
am never in a position whereby my age is an issue precluding me from doing good work and that is i
53:51
think it's so much around entrepreneurship building your own businesses building your own
53:56
Own ownership.
53:57
Owning your own profession.
53:58
Being in charge of what you own.
54:00
Totally.
54:01
There was one, just given the context of this conversation,
54:03
there was one line as well that really struck me
54:07
in that one of Stacey's friends had suggested to her
54:10
that she needed to Botox her CV,
54:13
saying that you can only have seven to eight years of experience,
54:15
so remove your age and basically be less,
54:18
is what the friend had said to her,
54:19
which again I think reinforces what we're saying.
54:21
I don't ever want to be in a position where I'm having to Botox my CV
54:25
to seem less impressive and younger in order to be able to get a job in someone else's company,
54:33
probably being paid less than what I would want.
54:35
I think the other thing it made me think about is,
54:37
you know, we speak a lot about the idea of the motherhood penalty.
54:40
And when you take time off
54:41
work and, you know, your earning capacity plummets and it takes 10 years to get back to what you were
54:45
earning before kids.
54:46
And there's so many stats around that.
54:49
And yet we've had these conversations
54:52
about how to stay relevant and to stay employable.
54:54
You should keep your skills up
54:56
and you should be constantly investing in,
54:58
you know, like making sure that your CV's up to date.
55:00
Maybe it's doing courses while you've got kids at home,
55:02
you know, like making an effort to stay relevant.
55:04
So for example, if you've taken time off pre-AI,
55:07
making an effort to stay on top of that
55:10
and involved in what's happening in the workplace
55:12
so that you can still be relevant.
55:13
But to me, it also just made me think like,
55:15
is that going to help though?
55:17
Because maybe it's actually just not.
55:20
And I also think it's a wider question around ageism that we all have inherently.
55:25
It's almost like this deep embedded, like if I think about even just, you know, really subconscious systemic racism that exists.
55:34
I think that almost an adjacent is the way that we don't even realize how ageist all of us are to people that are older.
55:41
there's almost this like cute or like oh so sweet or like I notice it in the way that I think about
55:48
like how much value is that person going to add and are they up to speed with what's happening
55:52
with technological changes and I think so many of those things are coming into play when someone is
55:57
then like applying for a job yeah actually I was looking at um the times piece actually that so the
56:03
interview they did with Stacey they had some really interesting data in there in terms of the
56:06
prevalence of of ageism in the workplace and they found that the economic inactivity rate for women
56:10
age 50 to 64 is higher than that for men at the same age so it's 30 in 2025 compared with 22
56:16
and then they go on to talk about the number of women so the number of women in the uk is
56:22
60 000 women are out of work due to the menopause costing the economy 1.5 billion and these stats
56:28
were kind of there as part of a broader picture around the um disequilibrium really between men
56:34
versus women in terms of how they're represented in the workplace as we get older you see there's
56:39
numerous factors contributing to that that's motherhood also menopause there's so many things
56:43
that are potentially affecting women's capacity to work in the way that's expected from them
56:49
because we don't adjust our workplaces sufficiently um that's then having a kind of really
56:55
deleterious effect when i first read this i felt that it was a perfect example of the pressure
57:02
placed on women to stay young now you cannot stay young it is not biologically possible to stay
57:09
young also one only gets better professionally by more years doing the thing like think about
57:14
yourself at 20 i was so annoying useless i was so insecure i was i was honestly not much of an asset
57:22
to the world i have changed in so many ways for the better the older i've got and you know you
57:28
speak about this in your book in terms of sex getting better with age everything in my experience
57:33
so far has gotten better with age so it seems insane to think that that is then the complete
57:39
counter of what we're seeing with women's earning capacity as they get older totally
57:43
can i say anecdotally so this is anecdotally this is not database but a very good friend of mine
57:47
has raised capital a couple times for her business and she has always said to me you do not want to
57:54
turn up in an investor investment meeting looking like a 10 looking like a 10 you're doubted you're
58:00
like your team is too pretty like there's it's i undermine she's like you want to arrive looking
58:04
like a seven you want to look like you're the person who stays in the office till midnight
58:08
you're not too glam you're not too pretty you're a you're a six or a seven you're someone who's like
58:14
not got pretty privilege so they are their unconscious bias is assuming you're gonna work
58:18
have to work doubly as hard because to be successful this is i'm not condoning this
58:26
i'm not quoting a baton and i'm not but i thought it was an interesting perspective of like it kind
58:32
of flies in the face of what we're taught like you need to look hot because that's gonna the
58:36
pretty privilege is gonna count in your favor and her view was you don't want to look too what you
58:40
can't you want to look someone like someone who's always had to work for it because they want to see
58:46
which is also toxic in its own way because again it's it's reducing women's um you know success
58:51
rate in in investment meeting stuff to how we look i mean that was part of it but we shouldn't
58:56
get too over focused on that but i did find an interesting point that actually like you know
59:02
your looks can also stand against you and almost it was kind of a mind just like focus on the
59:07
freaking work you're damned if you do you're damned if you don't exactly so you found some
59:11
really interesting data with regards to people's kind of perception of them needing to look good
59:17
to do well professionally that kind of shocked me because i'm really interested in in what the data
59:23
says about whether pretty privilege is true or not whether what we're saying is actually true
59:28
people's perception of whether it's true is going to dictate behavior so i think it's the perception
59:34
that makes us spend totem i was looking at some different stats on this and what i found was 15
59:41
15% would consider plastic surgery to get a job or promotion.
59:45
20% would consider Botox or fillers.
59:47
And 41% would consider dyeing their hair if it helped their career.
59:51
I think the interesting thing about this is that so much of it is subconscious.
59:55
Yeah.
59:56
And if I'm being completely honest, my spend on beauty, I don't think has to do with my career.
1:00:02
I don't think I'm spending money thinking it's helping my career.
1:00:04
Maybe I am without realizing it.
1:00:06
I definitely am.
1:00:07
But I'm not.
1:00:08
I would say it's more about, and particularly in my twenties, I would say as much as I want to be
1:00:14
like, I'm dressing for a woman, I'm dressing for a woman.
1:00:17
Like I always wanted to be in a healthy,
1:00:19
happy relationship.
1:00:20
And so I wanted to sort of feel like I looked my best more in a dating sense,
1:00:25
I think, than a professional sense.
1:00:27
If I'm being really honest.
1:00:29
And I first was like,
1:00:30
it's because I'm on camera.
1:00:31
It's because I have to look at myself all the time.
1:00:34
And I was like,
1:00:34
that's such a cop-out that's me using that because it's a less vain less embarrassing in my head
1:00:41
reason to be spending i i agree but i also do that we have never seen ourselves so frequently
1:00:47
in any part of history i was reading something on a site that was saying how
1:00:51
actually really great new york times opinion piece yesterday on how we social media has basically
1:00:56
meant that we increasingly just live in this hall of mirrors and it was only in the 18th century
1:01:01
that we began to see our reflection as humans.
1:01:04
So for the kind of long expanse of human history,
1:01:06
we have not been able to see ourselves.
1:01:09
And now suddenly we're seeing ourselves all the time.
1:01:12
We are not meant to look at our own faces
1:01:15
as much as we do today.
1:01:17
So I do just think that like, you know,
1:01:19
especially when you're going through
1:01:20
having to edit your, you know,
1:01:21
constant reels, videos, podcasts of your face.
1:01:25
It is so confronting.
1:01:26
It's inescapable.
1:01:27
It's that hall of mirrors.
1:01:28
But I think it's then just asking kind of
1:01:31
what how can we kind of do that work but also not become totally obsessed with the image and
1:01:37
kind of create some sort of separation but then also you know if you're not in this type of work
1:01:41
you still feel the same pressure because you're still seeing because you're on instagram and
1:01:45
you're seeing it all so i think actually probably a practical tip would be to do things like whether
1:01:51
it's deleting instagram whether it's not taking photos for a while and actually see if it impacts
1:01:56
the spend in terms of what you then deem is necessary to spend on what you look like because
1:02:02
i do think that if you pull back on the external pressures and you adjust in your little ecosystem
1:02:08
of being around friends and people who love you and don't and not around you because of what you
1:02:12
look like yeah well my two takeaways from this conversation which i'm going to attempt to action
1:02:17
is one this is something i've just started doing not like disconnect from the fact of all this
1:02:21
reading we've done for this podcast episode which freaked me out um but it's delighting
1:02:25
halloween oh i was like i am gonna vomit deleting instagram on the weekend i just it is it takes
1:02:31
over my life i spend so much time scrolling thinking it's research and i do get a lot of
1:02:35
research out of it but at what cost you've got to make those decisions and two i'm actually going to
1:02:42
pick something in my beauty uh regime per month that i can get rid of and put that money aside
1:02:50
to invest yes that's actually so good that even if it's a small amount even if it's like 60 quid
1:02:56
a month no that's that's not nothing there's not nothing it's that compound so i'm gonna do that
1:03:01
actually a really good idea yeah so if anyone's do that with me okay that's really slide into my
1:03:04
dms we can do it together so before we finish we want to tease a future conversation future episode
1:03:10
in which we're going to be discussing another very i don't say it's a virally topical book
1:03:17
which is Margot's Got Money Troubles.
1:03:19
It is a wonderful book.
1:03:21
It's so entertaining.
1:03:21
It's also been made into a TV show
1:03:23
with Elle Fanning as a star on Apple TV.
1:03:26
So if you don't have time to read it,
1:03:27
you could also watch it.
1:03:28
But I really would love,
1:03:29
we'd both love for everyone to read or watch before,
1:03:33
when are we going to do it?
1:03:33
It's next, it's a week?
1:03:35
You've got a few weeks.
1:03:35
You've got a few weeks, okay.
1:03:36
Buy it and read it.
1:03:37
It's really good.
1:03:38
I'm only like 90 pages through
1:03:40
and I'm the slowest reader of all time.
1:03:41
And the fact that I've made it through that far
1:03:43
is like kind of amazing.
1:03:44
So, but it's really good.
1:03:46
I mean, it's entertaining, but the subtext and the conversation around money is really fascinating.
1:03:51
So I think you can listen to the episode whether or not you've read it, but kind of fun if you wanted to.
1:03:55
It's, I mean, unofficial book club.
1:03:57
Unofficial book club or TV club.
1:03:59
The show is really, really good.
1:04:00
So if you don't have time, watch the show.
1:04:02
It's so fun.
1:04:03
Thank you so much, Emma.
1:04:04
Loved this conversation.
1:04:05
And for anyone that wants to read the sub stack that I wrote on this, which is kind of, I was going to say embarrassing, I need to stop using that word, but like.
1:04:13
Honest.
1:04:13
Yeah, honest.
1:04:14
we'll link it in the podcast show notes but um thank you so much for listening thank you so much
1:04:18
for filling in for the book it's been so fun thanks sophie thank you so much for listening
1:04:22
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1:04:47
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1:04:59
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1:05:01
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