Latest / Heavyweight / Presenting Death, Sex & Money | From Brazilian Butt Lifts to Botox: Your Beauty Confessions

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Presenting Death, Sex & Money | From Brazilian Butt Lifts to Botox: Your Beauty Confessions · Heavyweight

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:20
Speaker 2: Hello, Hi, nice to see you. Thank you for doing this.
0:24
Speaker 3: Nice to see you too, Thanks for doing this with this.
0:28
Speaker 2: Hey guys, it's Khalila. The Heavyweight team is hard at
0:31
Speaker 2: work on some episode updates for later this spring, as
0:35
Speaker 2: well as a brand new season which will be coming
0:37
Speaker 2: later this fall. But in the meantime, we wanted to
0:41
Speaker 2: wet your whistles, so to speak, with another show that
0:44
Speaker 2: we really respect and enjoy. It's called Death, Sex and Money.
0:48
Speaker 2: It's a show about difficult and often awkward topics like
0:52
Speaker 2: you know, the stuff and the title Death, Sex and Money.
0:55
Speaker 2: And recently I spoke with the show's host, Anna Sale.
0:59
Speaker 2: I liked talking with Anna. She's a good listener, unlike
1:03
Speaker 2: our show's host, who sometimes when I'm talking to him,
1:05
Speaker 2: gets this gleazed look in his eyes and I know
1:07
Speaker 2: he's just thinking about sandwich the last time I talked
1:11
Speaker 2: to Anna. Both of our shows have been canceled by
1:13
Speaker 2: their longtime networks, but look at us now, both back
1:16
Speaker 2: in action making a victorious return to your podcatcher. You
1:21
Speaker 2: also have recently been repotted to a new home.
1:24
Speaker 3: Repotted.
1:25
Speaker 2: How's that going?
1:27
Speaker 4: You know?
1:28
Speaker 3: I hope it feels for you like it feels for us.
1:31
Speaker 3: It's felt wonderful at our new home at Slate. We
1:35
Speaker 3: were used to be at WNYC. And having that kind
1:39
Speaker 3: of big leap over the question of like do we
1:42
Speaker 3: get to still do this? I think has made us
1:45
Speaker 3: just it feels really fun. It feels more fun, and
1:49
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm a kid making my own zine
1:52
Speaker 3: in my back bedroom. Likely no, but I get to
1:54
Speaker 3: make this and it's my job.
1:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do feel the same. It like really makes
1:59
Speaker 2: me value the good things about this workplace. And then
2:02
Speaker 2: also just to be like, yeah, I can't believe we
2:04
Speaker 2: get to make this show. Yeah, Okay, so we're going
2:08
Speaker 2: to run one of your episodes today. It is about
2:11
Speaker 2: beauty interventions of all levels.
2:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you know, the conversations about what we do
2:19
Speaker 3: to change the way we look, they sort of happen
2:21
Speaker 3: in these silos. There's like the makeup corner, the skincare corner,
2:24
Speaker 3: the GLP one corner, though, like I don't know, orthodontics corner.
2:28
Speaker 3: If you've got kids who are in middle school, and
2:31
Speaker 3: so to just kind of look at it as a
2:33
Speaker 3: whole universe, wrinkles and teeth and balding and nose shape,
2:39
Speaker 3: it churned up a lot for lots of different people.
2:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just really loved it. I was really impressed
2:46
Speaker 2: with the way that you all handled it. I think
2:50
Speaker 2: like often in these conversations it's easy to sort of
2:53
Speaker 2: strip the nuance out of stuff, and I appreciated that
2:56
Speaker 2: you did not do that and sort of just let
2:58
Speaker 2: all the contradictions and complicated feelings exist.
3:02
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean I'm all over the place on this
3:04
Speaker 3: stuff because I I will like be in Wyoming, where
3:07
Speaker 3: I spend time, and there's all these women with these
3:10
Speaker 3: deep grooves in their face and they have long, like
3:13
Speaker 3: white braids, and I'm like, that's how I'm going to age.
3:16
Speaker 3: And then I come back to the Bay Area and
3:18
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, I think that I should make a
3:21
Speaker 3: botox appoint me.
3:23
Speaker 5: To know, I hear you.
3:24
Speaker 3: So I am very I sympathize with the people with
3:28
Speaker 3: mixed feelings because I am not fixed on this stuff.
3:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially because I feel like so much of that
3:34
Speaker 2: stripping down or assumption comes out of like a defensiveness
3:37
Speaker 2: about like your own insecurities, you know.
3:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, Also the way that we identify, Like for me
3:45
Speaker 3: being a woman in my mid forties, like what sort
3:48
Speaker 3: of feminism. Am I gonna like embrace for myself? What
3:54
Speaker 3: do I want to demonstrate for my kids? What are
3:57
Speaker 3: the judgments that I'm bringing to other people's choices? Or
4:00
Speaker 3: what am I withholding from myself because I think it
4:03
Speaker 3: would seem like I was too something if I pursued.
4:08
Speaker 3: I don't know, like if I just got my eyebrows
4:11
Speaker 3: better shaped more regularly, Like why do I have shame
4:16
Speaker 3: about thinking that might be important?
4:18
Speaker 2: You know, as you're saying that, what's ridiculous is I
4:21
Speaker 2: do get my eyebrows done regularly, and I have bangs
4:23
Speaker 2: so like you can't even see them. But still I'm like,
4:26
Speaker 2: I don't know when they look really shaggy. I just
4:28
Speaker 2: don't like it.
4:29
Speaker 3: Well, good for you, it really does open up your
4:32
Speaker 3: face your eyebrows or shape.
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Speaker 2: Yes, it does.
4:36
Speaker 3: Great.
4:37
Speaker 2: Let's listen to the episode and if you like it,
4:40
Speaker 2: which I'm sure you will, then listen to the rest
4:43
Speaker 2: of Death, Sex, and Money anywhere you get your podcasts.
4:49
Speaker 3: How do you feel about the way you look and
4:54
Speaker 3: how do you feel about whether you should do something
4:57
Speaker 3: to change it?
4:59
Speaker 6: Sure?
5:00
Speaker 3: What a question. For the last several months we have
5:04
Speaker 3: been asking you our listeners, to tell us stories about
5:08
Speaker 3: your beauty interventions, what you've decided to invest time and
5:13
Speaker 3: money in, like plastic surgery, elaborate skincare routines, fillers, botox,
5:19
Speaker 3: things to look younger or hotter or quote unquote healthier.
5:25
Speaker 3: Or maybe you are one of those listeners who is
5:27
Speaker 3: clear that big interventions are a bridge too far for you.
5:31
Speaker 3: Plastic surgery no. And also you've decided taking glp ones
5:36
Speaker 3: or using hair dye means participating in cultural ideals that
5:40
Speaker 3: you would rather reject. But what do you feel about
5:45
Speaker 3: teeth straightening or even that nice thick face cream at
5:48
Speaker 3: the drug store. When you're deciding to make an investment
5:53
Speaker 3: for your looks, which part is for you and which
5:57
Speaker 3: part is trying to control how the rest of us
5:59
Speaker 3: treat you. Conventionally, attractive people make more money and are
6:04
Speaker 3: treated better by teachers and law enforcement, and we live
6:08
Speaker 3: in a time where social media's broad reach is narrowing
6:12
Speaker 3: what we consider beautiful. In our Slate Plus episode this week,
6:17
Speaker 3: we get into social media even more. I talked to
6:20
Speaker 3: a researcher who's a dermatologist and a medical anthropologist who
6:24
Speaker 3: is studying the proliferation of skincare routine videos on TikTok,
6:29
Speaker 3: made by and for kids, some as young as seven
6:33
Speaker 3: years old. Let's start with your stories about your appearance
6:39
Speaker 3: and how some of you pay to manipulate it. We've
6:42
Speaker 3: heard from a lot of you about a push and
6:45
Speaker 3: pull of feeling like improving your looks was a frivolous pursuit,
6:49
Speaker 3: and also that looking a certain way felt core to
6:53
Speaker 3: some of the most important things in your life, your
6:56
Speaker 3: romantic relationships, your work, and feeling desired and worthy.
7:01
Speaker 7: I'd like to think of myself as a person with depth,
7:04
Speaker 7: a person who values intelligence and kindness and you know,
7:11
Speaker 7: doing the right thing. And yet sometimes I worry that
7:18
Speaker 7: my appearance in the doors, that my appearance have opened,
7:23
Speaker 7: those are going to close if I don't continue to
7:27
Speaker 7: look this particular way.
7:33
Speaker 3: This is death, Sex and Money, the show from Slate
7:39
Speaker 3: about the things we think about a lot.
7:42
Speaker 8: I need to talk about more iman a sale.
7:58
Speaker 3: Over the last several months, we've been asking you to
8:00
Speaker 3: tell us stories about how you think about looking good.
8:05
Speaker 9: It all started with a glycol peel and went downhill
8:11
Speaker 9: from there.
8:13
Speaker 3: Some of you told us you had a hunch that
8:15
Speaker 3: being more attractive would make your life better.
8:19
Speaker 10: I can't help but feel that if everything were exactly
8:22
Speaker 10: the same, but I had a lot of either self
8:25
Speaker 10: confidence about the way I currently look, or if I
8:27
Speaker 10: just looked better that, you know, maybe things would be
8:33
Speaker 10: even better in my life and career.
8:36
Speaker 11: If I'm being very honest with you, I'm worried that
8:39
Speaker 11: I'm ugly again. That sounds so superficial, but I'm worried
8:43
Speaker 11: that I'm society's standards of ugly because I know what
8:48
Speaker 11: it's like when I just do a little bit more
8:53
Speaker 11: and the looks and the notices and the treatment that
8:56
Speaker 11: I get.
8:57
Speaker 3: Some of you said you were actively leaning away from
9:00
Speaker 3: your outward appearance.
9:02
Speaker 12: I'm never going to fit society's ideals, so why try.
9:08
Speaker 12: I'm not a young finn white woman. I never will
9:12
Speaker 12: be that, so trying to fit in anybody's box is
9:18
Speaker 12: it feels futile to me. I've been walking around with
9:21
Speaker 12: ridiculous looking eyebrows for a few weeks now, just because
9:24
Speaker 12: I've been too lazy, and I think there is a
9:27
Speaker 12: freedom in that.
9:29
Speaker 3: And many of you feel caught in the middle wondering
9:32
Speaker 3: about whether to intervene to improve your appearance, what that
9:36
Speaker 3: would say about you and your values.
9:39
Speaker 13: As somebody who's also part of a DIY punk scene.
9:43
Speaker 13: I feel like somebody who's very anti these mainstream demands
9:50
Speaker 13: of people.
9:52
Speaker 1: As they age.
9:53
Speaker 14: So I have this.
9:55
Speaker 13: Kind of dialogue going on in my head of what
9:59
Speaker 13: how to approach aging moving forward, whether I maybe give
10:03
Speaker 13: in a little bit to some of this external pressure
10:06
Speaker 13: or just augment myself in ways I feel comfortab ble
10:10
Speaker 13: versus just.
10:13
Speaker 14: Yeah, shirking it all off and aging naturally.
10:18
Speaker 15: So I typically go to the gym three to five
10:20
Speaker 15: days a week, but it's getting harder to just maintain
10:24
Speaker 15: those levels of strength and you know, my body and
10:28
Speaker 15: tonness and things like that. And one of the things
10:31
Speaker 15: I'm contemplating is going on TRT or testosterone replacement therapy,
10:37
Speaker 15: and essentially it's weighing out the consequences of potentially impacting
10:42
Speaker 15: my ability to have children. You know, It's been something
10:45
Speaker 15: of weighing out, you know, do I want to potentially
10:49
Speaker 15: risk that you know, long term desire of being a
10:52
Speaker 15: father and having a family versus you know, the vanity and.
10:55
Speaker 16: Looks the idea of getting fillers feels like kind of
10:59
Speaker 16: crossing a bridge. I would be embarrassed to tell somebody
11:05
Speaker 16: that I had fillers. It feels very vain, but also
11:11
Speaker 16: I'm curious about how it would impact my appearance, So
11:16
Speaker 16: we'll see. I still I am like very in the
11:19
Speaker 16: moment of deciding that right.
11:20
Speaker 5: Now, but this a little closer. Is the audio better?
11:27
Speaker 17: Now?
11:27
Speaker 3: This is great?
11:28
Speaker 14: Yeah?
11:28
Speaker 5: Okay, perfect. I'm so happy to talk to you.
11:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm so happy to talk to you. Okay, So
11:34
Speaker 3: we are recording, but before we kind of launch, and
11:37
Speaker 3: I just want to talk about a few things about
11:39
Speaker 3: how we're making this episode. Do you how do you
11:42
Speaker 3: want us to identify you? Do you want us to
11:44
Speaker 3: use Asher?
11:46
Speaker 18: Yeah?
11:46
Speaker 3: So as h g R. And can we say where
11:51
Speaker 3: you live? New York City?
11:54
Speaker 5: Yes?
11:54
Speaker 3: And can we say what age you are?
11:57
Speaker 18: Yes?
11:57
Speaker 3: Okay.
11:58
Speaker 5: You can also say that I'm beautiful, which is the
12:00
Speaker 5: truth you are. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
12:05
Speaker 3: Asher lives in Manhattan with two roommates. He works as
12:08
Speaker 3: a datus scientist at a consulting firm, and it's a
12:11
Speaker 3: job that pays pretty well and he can work remotely,
12:15
Speaker 3: which has been important when healing from plastic surgery. When
12:19
Speaker 3: Asher reached out to us, he was three months out
12:22
Speaker 3: from getting work done on his face liposection on his cheeks,
12:26
Speaker 3: and a chin implant.
12:28
Speaker 5: You know, I'm thirty five now. Last couple of years,
12:30
Speaker 5: it was kind of looking like a puffier and puffier,
12:34
Speaker 5: and with the implant, it gives a more angular version
12:37
Speaker 5: of your face. It looks a bit more masculine.
12:40
Speaker 3: Which of those two would you say was the more
12:42
Speaker 3: predominant thing. I don't want to look I want to
12:45
Speaker 3: look more masculine. And I want to look young.
12:50
Speaker 5: I don't. I don't. I wouldn't use the word young.
12:53
Speaker 5: H Actually, men secretly kind of want to look a
12:56
Speaker 5: little bit older.
12:57
Speaker 3: Okay.
12:57
Speaker 5: But I looked at my dad and I looked at
13:03
Speaker 5: him carefully. I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we
13:06
Speaker 5: are we are going to scale at a different direction
13:09
Speaker 5: than this.
13:11
Speaker 3: Asher's father is Indian, his mother is Portuguese, and Asher
13:14
Speaker 3: lived in Trinidad until he was seven years old, and
13:17
Speaker 3: he said that culture was more open about plastic surgery.
13:21
Speaker 3: His mom and stepdad both have had facelifts, but now
13:25
Speaker 3: Asher has had more plastic surgery than anyone in his family.
13:29
Speaker 5: I wrote it all down for you, Anna, Okay. I
13:31
Speaker 5: made sure to go through all of my receipts. I
13:34
Speaker 5: went through all the documents because I have it stored,
13:36
Speaker 5: and I was like, let me see. And I looked
13:38
Speaker 5: at the total. I was like, God, damn. Lasik eye
13:41
Speaker 5: surgery four thousand, rhinoplasty, autoplasty, liposuction all in one, ninety
13:48
Speaker 5: eight point fifty uh huh. Rhinoplastic revision that was free,
13:53
Speaker 5: medically necessary. Brazilian butt lift fourteen thousand, five hundred, face
14:00
Speaker 5: chin implant, jaw, jaw liposuction, fat crafts into the lips
14:06
Speaker 5: and cheeks eleven thousand, two forty eight, eyebrow transplant twenty
14:11
Speaker 5: eight hundred. So in total it's forty about forty three
14:15
Speaker 5: thousand dollars.
14:17
Speaker 3: How have you paid for that on a credit card?
14:19
Speaker 3: Did you finance with the doctor's offices cash?
14:23
Speaker 5: So most of them I saved up unpaid cash. All
14:27
Speaker 5: of these I had wanted for twenty years, since I
14:32
Speaker 5: was a teenager. The reason I decided to do it
14:37
Speaker 5: in my thirties is twofold. One, you don't make any
14:40
Speaker 5: good decision in your twenties ever, ever, And two I
14:45
Speaker 5: didn't have the money for it. So even my tattoos,
14:47
Speaker 5: I've got them after I was thirty, So do you
14:49
Speaker 5: really want them? If you really want them at thirty,
14:54
Speaker 5: you'll be fine at twenty, I don't know. My sister
14:58
Speaker 5: has tattoos on her arms, on her neck. I was like,
15:00
Speaker 5: good luck on the job, honey.
15:01
Speaker 3: Like, but if you wait till thirty, your life philosophy
15:06
Speaker 3: is you won't have any regrets.
15:08
Speaker 5: Yeah, thirties, why not.
15:10
Speaker 3: Asher got his first major plastic surgery outside of the
15:14
Speaker 3: US in Turkey. Then a few years later he got
15:16
Speaker 3: the BBL Brazilian butt left at a Park Avenue doctor
15:20
Speaker 3: in Manhattan with good reviews. It's a notoriously dangerous surgery,
15:25
Speaker 3: but Asher deemed it worth the risk.
15:28
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I had what we don't We don't clinically
15:32
Speaker 5: call us, but in common parlance we say you have
15:35
Speaker 5: a long back.
15:37
Speaker 3: So you mean you had a flat butt.
15:42
Speaker 5: Really, I'm really tall, so it's very rare you'll see
15:47
Speaker 5: a guy who is six foot five with a nice butt. Okay,
15:51
Speaker 5: if you look at a guy who's at the gym
15:53
Speaker 5: who's five to nine, it's fucking unfair. Okay, it's just
15:56
Speaker 5: not fair, Like God just just preferred them over me. Okay,
16:01
Speaker 5: Like I had to work for this.
16:03
Speaker 3: So when you say a good butt, tell me what
16:05
Speaker 3: it looks like.
16:06
Speaker 5: So exactly what you would think of It has a
16:08
Speaker 5: little bit of curvature at the top, there's some volume,
16:12
Speaker 5: and it doesn't look outrageous, right.
16:14
Speaker 3: Do you care if it's if it's clear to people
16:17
Speaker 3: who see you that you've had cosmetic procedures.
16:20
Speaker 5: No, this is for me. This is not for anybody else.
16:22
Speaker 3: But you're not self conscious that somebody might know, Like,
16:26
Speaker 3: oh oh, I tell people all the time.
16:27
Speaker 5: I'm like, I've I've got listen, do you have the
16:30
Speaker 5: amount of money I paid for this? You're gonna find
16:32
Speaker 5: out about it. You're gonna know. I am gonna tell
16:35
Speaker 5: you right away. I'm like, I had it done. I
16:38
Speaker 5: saved up a lot of money for it. I nobody listen, Anna,
16:41
Speaker 5: nobody buys a Ferrari to keep it parked in a garage. Okay, Like.
16:53
Speaker 3: Some beauty interventions have made you feel good, you told us.
16:58
Speaker 9: People do say, I can't believe you're the age you are,
17:03
Speaker 9: and I'm very open about about it.
17:06
Speaker 14: In their shock.
17:07
Speaker 19: Lately, I've been getting these These are facials, which are
17:12
Speaker 19: not cheap. They are like two U or thifty bucks
17:16
Speaker 19: up off and you have to get them like every
17:18
Speaker 19: ten days. But I'm like, I think those guys look
17:21
Speaker 19: at better maybe than it ever has.
17:24
Speaker 3: Sometimes changes to your appearance can make you feel closer
17:27
Speaker 3: who you feel you really are.
17:29
Speaker 4: I ended up transitioning and identifying as a non binary
17:33
Speaker 4: gender career person, started presenting more masculine, more androgynous. So
17:40
Speaker 4: I did make some investments and changes and how I
17:45
Speaker 4: looked and how I presented myself. I got tattoos which
17:48
Speaker 4: were very expensive and very beautiful and have me like
17:52
Speaker 4: showing off my body in a completely different way than before.
17:57
Speaker 3: Or these interventions can help you stay close to a
18:00
Speaker 3: part you don't want to change.
18:02
Speaker 20: One of the things that I do is I take
18:05
Speaker 20: the Nasteride, which is meant to help you grow and
18:11
Speaker 20: sustain your hair. I noticed that I was losing some
18:14
Speaker 20: of my hair after I had gotten a really bad
18:16
Speaker 20: haircut and I saw a bald spot on the top
18:18
Speaker 20: of my head and at the behest of my girlfriend.
18:20
Speaker 20: After many days of anxiety and panic, I finally booked
18:24
Speaker 20: a point with a genmatologist and God prescribed medication. I
18:30
Speaker 20: would like to have hair on my head by the
18:32
Speaker 20: time I get married and by the time I have
18:33
Speaker 20: a kid or two, so I'm not really looking to
18:36
Speaker 20: lose it anytime soon. And also I don't want to
18:39
Speaker 20: lose my hair because I do enjoy going to the
18:42
Speaker 20: barber and getting my hair cut. I constantly joke around
18:45
Speaker 20: with my girlfriend and I always tell her that the
18:48
Speaker 20: relationship between a man and his barber is one of
18:51
Speaker 20: the most intimate relationships that a person can have, and
18:55
Speaker 20: I'm not ready to give that up.
18:58
Speaker 21: I got lip filler to, you know, to bring back
19:03
Speaker 21: my old lips, and once I did that, I was like, oh, oh, there,
19:07
Speaker 21: I am.
19:09
Speaker 3: A listener were calling. Caroline first got lip fillers and
19:12
Speaker 3: botox after her marriage ended. She and her ex husband
19:16
Speaker 3: had three kids together and she was in her forties
19:19
Speaker 3: when she asked him for a divorce.
19:21
Speaker 21: I felt like I was dying in my marriage. Like
19:24
Speaker 21: that whole I just felt like I was dying.
19:27
Speaker 14: I felt like a dead person walking.
19:29
Speaker 21: And finally I just was like, Okay, we got to
19:32
Speaker 21: be done so that I can feel I mean, I
19:36
Speaker 21: didn't say exactly this, but.
19:37
Speaker 14: So I can feel alive again.
19:39
Speaker 21: And part of that was that I wanted to feel
19:41
Speaker 21: sexually attractive. I wanted to feel desired. So it's all
19:47
Speaker 21: really connected for me.
19:50
Speaker 3: And so when you started doing fillers and botox, was
19:54
Speaker 3: it something that you would do, you'd wait a few months,
19:59
Speaker 3: you'd go back and do again. Like how long? How
20:02
Speaker 3: many times did you do each of those things?
20:04
Speaker 21: I botox I was doing every four months or so.
20:11
Speaker 14: And Filler.
20:14
Speaker 21: I think I did filler three times over like a
20:20
Speaker 21: two and a half year period or something like that.
20:23
Speaker 21: And then I also did this thing called p doo threads.
20:27
Speaker 21: They numb your face and they basically like somehow funnel
20:34
Speaker 21: in these it looks like fishing line with little barbs
20:39
Speaker 21: on it, so they get it in the.
20:42
Speaker 14: Right place and then they pull and your cheek literally
20:46
Speaker 14: just goes like it just.
20:48
Speaker 3: Pulls up, it lifts.
20:49
Speaker 14: Yeah.
20:50
Speaker 21: Oh oh, and that was the first time I did that.
20:57
Speaker 21: That was amazing.
20:59
Speaker 14: It's been over a year since I've done it.
21:01
Speaker 21: I think the last time I got anything done was
21:03
Speaker 21: in January of twenty twenty five.
21:07
Speaker 14: Yeah, so it's all faded away.
21:09
Speaker 3: Now, what changed.
21:13
Speaker 14: Because I filed for bankruptcy like two weeks ago.
21:17
Speaker 3: Oh uh huh.
21:18
Speaker 14: I can't afford it. And it really makes me very sad.
21:24
Speaker 3: And when you look in the mirror, like what do
21:27
Speaker 3: you do you look at? What what's it like to
21:30
Speaker 3: see these procedures that can really change the way you look,
21:34
Speaker 3: but are temporary come to an end.
21:42
Speaker 14: I've been kind of sad about it, honestly.
21:45
Speaker 21: It's pretty I mean, I knew that eventually I would
21:52
Speaker 21: just sort.
21:52
Speaker 14: Of have to accept time.
21:55
Speaker 18: Mm hmm, but I.
21:58
Speaker 14: Don't know that I was ready.
22:01
Speaker 3: M that's so interesting how you put that. For any
22:12
Speaker 3: aging person, we all know that at some point we're
22:15
Speaker 3: going to have to confront age. And you gave yourself
22:19
Speaker 3: kind of a grace period to sort of go back
22:24
Speaker 3: in time with some interventions.
22:27
Speaker 21: Yeah, I think that that.
22:31
Speaker 22: I haven't thought about it that way, but I think
22:33
Speaker 22: that that really is kind of what I did.
22:36
Speaker 14: I kind of let myself have a.
22:39
Speaker 1: Few years of.
22:43
Speaker 21: I was a little bit resentful and sad that I
22:47
Speaker 21: wasted those years when I was younger and hotter, married
22:52
Speaker 21: to someone who didn't care about that sort of thing,
22:55
Speaker 21: and I felt really invisible, and I wanted that time back.
23:00
Speaker 21: So sorry, I'm such a it's okay, a nose runner,
23:05
Speaker 21: right anyway, I wanted that time back, and so yes,
23:13
Speaker 21: when I got divorced.
23:14
Speaker 22: I think I definitely splurged and gifted myself some of
23:22
Speaker 22: that time. And I think, and it's you know, I'm
23:27
Speaker 22: in a very loving relationship now just for just over
23:31
Speaker 22: a year, and I do feel desired, and I don't
23:33
Speaker 22: think it's contingent on boatocks.
23:37
Speaker 14: So I don't think.
23:39
Speaker 21: I'm at any risk of losing this relationship if I
23:41
Speaker 21: stop doing these procedures.
23:46
Speaker 1: I just, yeah, I don't want to give.
23:48
Speaker 23: That part of me up.
23:57
Speaker 18: I kind of liken her to like painting your house.
24:00
Speaker 18: You do one room, and then after you're done with
24:02
Speaker 18: one room, it looks all like shiny and new, and
24:05
Speaker 18: then you're going to step into the next room and
24:06
Speaker 18: you're like, oh, this is looking a little shabby. Refresh this,
24:10
Speaker 18: and by the time you're done, you're like back to
24:12
Speaker 18: the first room, and it's like yeah.
24:15
Speaker 3: Jiong lives in the Bay Area and describes herself as
24:18
Speaker 3: middle aged. She works in tech, and unlike Caroline, she
24:23
Speaker 3: can afford to do anything she wants to her face.
24:26
Speaker 3: She sometimes gets weakly expensive facials and regular injectibles, other
24:32
Speaker 3: times she doesn't.
24:33
Speaker 18: I go in cycles, and here's what I mean by that,
24:36
Speaker 18: and this is part of the struggle. I have used
24:40
Speaker 18: like Creme de la Maire and august in this water,
24:43
Speaker 18: which are too crazy expensive like creams and regimens, and
24:48
Speaker 18: then I will start to think more about kind of
24:53
Speaker 18: like the cosmetic industrial complex and like what it's doing
24:58
Speaker 18: to women, and then I will stop all of that
25:01
Speaker 18: and buy like oil of a lay or something at
25:03
Speaker 18: the drug store. So it just depends what cycle where you.
25:08
Speaker 3: Are in shame, the shame, that indulgence.
25:11
Speaker 1: That's exactly right.
25:14
Speaker 3: Jeong's parents moved to the United States shortly before Geong
25:17
Speaker 3: was born from Korea and brought with them clear ideas
25:21
Speaker 3: about how to take care of your skin.
25:24
Speaker 18: My mom, anytime she would go out, even for a walk,
25:28
Speaker 18: she would be like covered head to toe in like
25:30
Speaker 18: a hat. And it didn't matter, you know, if it
25:32
Speaker 18: was eighty degrees outside, right, a hat, you know, kind
25:35
Speaker 18: of like her sleeves. So when I would go out
25:39
Speaker 18: with my friends, she'd be like, take a hat, take
25:43
Speaker 18: a hat?
25:43
Speaker 3: Was it? Was it primarily about protecting your skin from
25:48
Speaker 3: sun damage? Was it also about protecting it keeping it fair?
25:53
Speaker 18: It was more about keeping it fair, quite honestly, more
25:56
Speaker 18: than like, you know, melanoma concerns or anything.
25:59
Speaker 3: I see, So not this.
26:01
Speaker 1: It was just a beauty ideal.
26:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you you work in the tech industry, now
26:06
Speaker 3: I do where what it feel like when you go
26:10
Speaker 3: to work, when you look at your peers, your coworkers.
26:15
Speaker 3: Are you in a sort of tech company where there's
26:18
Speaker 3: a premium on being a young person.
26:22
Speaker 18: I am at a startup, right, So there's kind of
26:25
Speaker 18: I mean there's many kinds of tech. There's like tech tech,
26:28
Speaker 18: big tech, and then there's like startup tech and tech tech.
26:35
Speaker 18: Tech usually tends to have a bigger generation, you know,
26:40
Speaker 18: multi generations, more represented. They're just larger numbers. They're kind
26:43
Speaker 18: of older, established companies, et cetera. Whereas the startup environment
26:49
Speaker 18: is very different, right, I mean you see all these
26:52
Speaker 18: headlines of nineteen year olds, twenty year olds, you know.
26:56
Speaker 18: So I am in the startup world, and I have
27:00
Speaker 18: been for a while. I just keep getting drawn to this,
27:05
Speaker 18: and you know, as I continue to go along in
27:07
Speaker 18: my career, for sure, there's an added sense of you.
27:11
Speaker 18: You look around, and you know, I'm a lot older
27:15
Speaker 18: than a lot of these people. I mean sometimes this
27:18
Speaker 18: is like their first job. They got recruited right out
27:20
Speaker 18: of college. And so I think overall the way startup
27:26
Speaker 18: cultures are kind of like bread and what's championed and
27:29
Speaker 18: what's valued. You know, youth is high on that list.
27:37
Speaker 3: Where are you today as we're talking in the cycle
27:40
Speaker 3: of shame and feeling okay about making appointments to go
27:44
Speaker 3: in and get different services.
27:47
Speaker 18: Yeah, less and less shame, I will say. And that's
27:51
Speaker 18: just like generally about everything as I get older, right,
27:54
Speaker 18: But I do want to say, you know, when you
27:56
Speaker 18: get compliments for how you look like, it's almost like
28:01
Speaker 18: U you want you get that hit, and that becomes
28:06
Speaker 18: very seductive. So I think what fees into that is,
28:10
Speaker 18: oh well, I've got to continue being seen like this, right,
28:14
Speaker 18: And this thing about how women are not seen is
28:17
Speaker 18: there as say get older, right, Like older women are invisible,
28:20
Speaker 18: older people are invisible, but particularly older women are invisible.
28:24
Speaker 18: And so I think that if there's any like little
28:29
Speaker 18: hook that kind of still hangs on me, especially being
28:32
Speaker 18: in tech, is that I don't want to be invisible.
28:38
Speaker 3: The number of people who are doing botox and other
28:41
Speaker 3: injectibles like fillers is growing. It's becoming less common to
28:45
Speaker 3: see wrinkles on TV, not to mention imperfect teeth, ones
28:50
Speaker 3: that aren't totally lined up in bright white, and the
28:53
Speaker 3: narrower and shinier that our dominant esthetic gets, the more
28:59
Speaker 3: certainly perceived imperfections cannote otherness like not having enough money
29:04
Speaker 3: or being left behind.
29:06
Speaker 24: I feel like a lot of my friends are like
29:09
Speaker 24: getting botox and stuff kind of stupin into the anti
29:12
Speaker 24: aging universe, and for me, I'm still struggling with poormonal acne,
29:18
Speaker 24: something that I feel like none of my friends are
29:21
Speaker 24: really concerned about.
29:23
Speaker 17: In the last year, have been told that I need
29:28
Speaker 17: to have severe orthodontics, so braces, when I've previously always
29:35
Speaker 17: been complimented on my teeth and it can't be in
29:39
Speaker 17: visilign and I need elastics in my braces and around
29:43
Speaker 17: ten thousand dollars Australian for that to happen.
29:48
Speaker 14: I should note that I have Ellis Danlos.
29:50
Speaker 17: Syndrome, which is a condition that affects all my collagen.
29:54
Speaker 14: You're born with it.
29:55
Speaker 17: I was only recently diagnosed about two years ago, but
29:59
Speaker 17: the teeth makes sense in regards to that I've also
30:03
Speaker 17: experienced in the last year. I changed my birth control
30:07
Speaker 17: and had the most trendous ACME of all time, but
30:13
Speaker 17: also manifested in basically and I don't know if this
30:16
Speaker 17: was the lasound loss, but like my hair growing within
30:20
Speaker 17: itself on my face, and I have gone from a really.
30:26
Speaker 6: Oh God, I'm gonna crack a really confident, outgoing person.
30:31
Speaker 14: To someone who.
30:34
Speaker 6: Questions if they look okay to go to the supermarket.
30:42
Speaker 6: But it is honestly insane that I, at thirty five,
30:47
Speaker 6: am now experiencing this and I feel like I'm back
30:50
Speaker 6: to below basics of how to accept my body.
30:59
Speaker 3: Coming up? What happens when you take a stand against
31:03
Speaker 3: beauty interventions can get pushed back from your family, And
31:07
Speaker 3: how it feels to be a child who got lots
31:10
Speaker 3: of compliments for how cute and beautiful you are and
31:14
Speaker 3: then you grow up and they go away.
31:17
Speaker 25: I started to really have to reconcile with, oh, you've
31:22
Speaker 25: put a lot of emphasis on looks, and I'm not
31:25
Speaker 25: sure how that's going to serve you or how you're
31:27
Speaker 25: going to untangle that. Good luck, And that's sort of
31:30
Speaker 25: when the addiction to alcohol and drugs kind of really
31:33
Speaker 25: you took off.
31:40
Speaker 3: How do you introduce yourself, misters Dana, and what's the
31:46
Speaker 3: term you use for what you practice? What your work is?
31:49
Speaker 3: Professional dominatrix Dana Farrant got into kink in her thirties,
31:55
Speaker 3: but she always kept it separate from her professional life.
31:58
Speaker 3: It wasn't until she got divorced and turned fifty that
32:01
Speaker 3: she decided to pursue a new career. It's always scary
32:05
Speaker 3: to start a new job, especially when you're a little older.
32:08
Speaker 3: There's that feeling can I really do this? Both from
32:11
Speaker 3: yourself and reflected back at you from younger peers. But
32:16
Speaker 3: that is not what Dana found.
32:19
Speaker 26: I've been more aware of the age piece in stepping
32:23
Speaker 26: into the dungeon because the age is a bonus, not
32:27
Speaker 26: a negative.
32:29
Speaker 3: What age do you think it is most advantageous that
32:32
Speaker 3: you appear for your clients.
32:34
Speaker 26: Really somewhere, you know, forty five to fifty five. People
32:39
Speaker 26: want to know that there's enough experience that I'm not
32:43
Speaker 26: going to injure them that I know what I'm doing.
32:47
Speaker 26: They want that feeling of I have authority over them.
32:51
Speaker 26: So there's a bit of that power dynamics that comes
32:54
Speaker 26: in automatically, just in if I'm older than them, they
32:58
Speaker 26: feel that immediately. I know professional dominatrix who are still
33:03
Speaker 26: working up into their eighties. It is a profession that
33:07
Speaker 26: you can get into well, clearly, I'm getting into it
33:09
Speaker 26: at an older age, and it's not a negative to
33:13
Speaker 26: be working in your sixties and seventies.
33:16
Speaker 3: And will you just describe for me how you sense that, Like,
33:20
Speaker 3: take me into an initial interaction with a client who's
33:25
Speaker 3: trying to figure out who you are, How what the
33:31
Speaker 3: dynamics going to be like between you? How do you
33:34
Speaker 3: how can you tell what they expect from you, and
33:37
Speaker 3: how you're going to sort of assert that this is this.
33:42
Speaker 26: Is where it's It's a misnomer for most people in
33:46
Speaker 26: this industry. It's not about me trying to make sure
33:49
Speaker 26: that they, you know, have their their wish fulfillment or
33:54
Speaker 26: you know that I'm making sure that they're really happy.
33:57
Speaker 26: It's actually the opposite in the power dynamics, which is
34:01
Speaker 26: what they're actually seeking.
34:02
Speaker 14: They're seeking to.
34:05
Speaker 26: Surrender, to let go of control, and so in order
34:09
Speaker 26: to optimally do that, we need to make sure that
34:12
Speaker 26: they It's not about them the session. It takes into
34:16
Speaker 26: consideration what they like, what they don't like, But when
34:21
Speaker 26: they come in for a session, I'm deciding what's going
34:24
Speaker 26: in charge.
34:25
Speaker 14: I'm in charge.
34:27
Speaker 3: Dana didn't always feel in charge of her own life.
34:30
Speaker 3: She grew up in a religious community where most of
34:33
Speaker 3: her life was mapped out from what she believed to
34:36
Speaker 3: how to spend her free time to how she should look.
34:40
Speaker 26: I wouldn't allow myself to dye my hair because that
34:42
Speaker 26: would be too too much following the world trends and
34:49
Speaker 26: not looking godly enough. I didn't really start dying my
34:53
Speaker 26: hair until late twenties.
34:56
Speaker 3: It's interesting that the way that you described that at
34:59
Speaker 3: a period of when it sounds like you were dealing
35:02
Speaker 3: with a lot figuring out who you were, how to
35:04
Speaker 3: heal from some things, that it was out of that
35:07
Speaker 3: time when you started thinking about how you wanted to
35:11
Speaker 3: take care of your appearance and started putting in more effort.
35:14
Speaker 14: Is that right?
35:15
Speaker 26: Yeah, I think there's a there was a shift of
35:18
Speaker 26: being allowed internally to spend the money, spend the time,
35:25
Speaker 26: do these kinds of things that up until then I had,
35:29
Speaker 26: you know, pushed off as like oh, that's so frivolous, shallow.
35:35
Speaker 26: You know, the person who was who was helping me
35:38
Speaker 26: in the last four or five years, she was she
35:41
Speaker 26: was always encouraging me to, like, you know, where something
35:44
Speaker 26: sexy go out, because that's a way to to push
35:47
Speaker 26: the thoughts out that it's not okay to dress sexy,
35:52
Speaker 26: or that something bad's going to happen if I go
35:56
Speaker 26: like this.
35:56
Speaker 14: So yes, now I have the problem.
35:59
Speaker 26: I you know, can go out in a pair of
36:01
Speaker 26: short shorts and a little tank top and there's really
36:04
Speaker 26: not much left of the imagination and I'm out there
36:07
Speaker 26: struggling around.
36:15
Speaker 1: This topic is very timely for me, as I feel
36:17
Speaker 1: like I'm in the age where people are getting you know,
36:20
Speaker 1: they have enough money now my peers to have plastic
36:23
Speaker 1: surgery or boatox. I don't do any of that. But
36:28
Speaker 1: what I have made the decision, and the reason I'm
36:33
Speaker 1: submitting this voice memo is that I recently decided to
36:36
Speaker 1: stop coloring my hair and that has totally changed the
36:40
Speaker 1: way I perceive myself to move through the world. Yeah,
36:44
Speaker 1: I really want to hold strong with this one.
36:49
Speaker 3: Suits it is. It looks like your hair is gray.
36:52
Speaker 3: I would say on your driver's license, I would say
36:55
Speaker 3: gray if I was picking your hair color. Is that
36:59
Speaker 3: what you say?
37:00
Speaker 1: I mean? I think it's probably If we're going to
37:02
Speaker 1: break it down percentage wise, I'd say I'm probably forty
37:06
Speaker 1: to sixty, Like forty, that's probably generous. I'm probably sixty
37:11
Speaker 1: percent gray, maybe in forty percent brown.
37:14
Speaker 3: Alexandra is thirty eight now. She started going gray in
37:17
Speaker 3: her early twenties. She'd always died her hair, but stopped
37:21
Speaker 3: during pregnancy a few years ago.
37:23
Speaker 1: I paused hair color, and then I resumed for a
37:27
Speaker 1: little bit, and then I paused again when I got
37:30
Speaker 1: pregnant again a couple of years later, and then I
37:32
Speaker 1: just never took it back up. And I've gotten a
37:36
Speaker 1: lot of feedback on that from whom I mean, like everybody,
37:42
Speaker 1: like family members, right, and then also just strangers that
37:48
Speaker 1: like meet you, and after you know, you say an initial,
37:51
Speaker 1: it's never like, oh my gosh, you have gray hair.
37:53
Speaker 1: But after you maybe break the ice with a different conversation,
37:56
Speaker 1: they maybe have a comment on your hair. Always women,
38:00
Speaker 1: never men, And it's usually in the context of like
38:04
Speaker 1: I wish I could do that.
38:06
Speaker 3: Oh, so they look at you and they go, I
38:09
Speaker 3: wish I was that.
38:10
Speaker 1: Brave exactly exactly.
38:15
Speaker 3: I want to know a little bit more about what
38:19
Speaker 3: you are reacting against, and it might not be the case,
38:26
Speaker 3: but I wonder if you could tell me more about
38:29
Speaker 3: the women in your family who are older than you.
38:32
Speaker 3: What was their approach to when their hair and their
38:39
Speaker 3: face and their parents they started to look older.
38:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, to give you an informed answer to that question,
38:46
Speaker 1: let me just back up a titch and say, I
38:49
Speaker 1: have two maternal figures in my life, one of which
38:52
Speaker 1: is thirteen years older than me, that's my stepmother, and
38:56
Speaker 1: then one of which is my maternal mother, and she
38:59
Speaker 1: is thirty years older than my stepmom. Okay, yeah, so
39:06
Speaker 1: there's quite a big age gap between these two people.
39:08
Speaker 1: I probably and more of the ethos of my maternal mother,
39:11
Speaker 1: of like, she's very Berkeley in the seventies, hippie, you know,
39:16
Speaker 1: English teacher.
39:17
Speaker 3: And then I see the linen, the flowing fabric.
39:21
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly you have the picture. And then my stepmom
39:25
Speaker 1: is a Ploates instructor. She routinely gets like these Dracula
39:30
Speaker 1: facial things where I see her face and it's just
39:32
Speaker 1: like puffy and like what happened? And she's like I
39:35
Speaker 1: had a facial like okay, great, like subscribes to all
39:39
Speaker 1: the things to stay looking young and attractive. And so
39:43
Speaker 1: I guess I've had competing conversations about this topic my
39:47
Speaker 1: whole life. I guess fundamentally at the very core of
39:51
Speaker 1: it is I don't want to have to conform to
39:56
Speaker 1: somebody else's standards. And I think it's we've been sold
40:00
Speaker 1: a bill of goods in this day and age of
40:03
Speaker 1: female appearance, that it needs to keep up with a
40:07
Speaker 1: certain trend or be a certain way, or youth equals
40:10
Speaker 1: beauty like that, like youth equals being wanted, And I
40:15
Speaker 1: guess I just don't want to have to keep up
40:17
Speaker 1: with that thought process.
40:21
Speaker 3: So I'm the idea of feeling wanted. You're in a relationship,
40:27
Speaker 3: you're married to a man.
40:28
Speaker 24: I am.
40:28
Speaker 18: Yeah.
40:30
Speaker 1: Do you all talk about it my hair?
40:32
Speaker 7: Yeah?
40:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, quite a bit.
40:35
Speaker 3: What's how does your husband talk with you about how
40:39
Speaker 3: you feel about your hair and the decisions you're making.
40:41
Speaker 1: He's never been not supportive of my decision And that
40:46
Speaker 1: double negative is intentional, but it's not something I know
40:51
Speaker 1: that he's totally at peace with, because pictures will come
40:54
Speaker 1: up of me, like ten years earlier, and they'll have
40:57
Speaker 1: offsided comments of, God, look how good you look there.
41:01
Speaker 3: And when you notice that, does it like when it registers,
41:08
Speaker 3: do you like does it make you sort of go, huh,
41:14
Speaker 3: what's my game plan here for the next thirty years,
41:17
Speaker 3: forty years, fifty years?
41:18
Speaker 1: Absolutely? Yeah, because it is still so early in the game,
41:24
Speaker 1: and I think it hurts a little bit, I'll be honest.
41:30
Speaker 1: But it also isn't enough to push me the other direction.
41:35
Speaker 1: You know, I'm pretty stubborn, and so it's kind of
41:39
Speaker 1: like that would suck if that was the deal breaker.
41:42
Speaker 1: But I guess this, you know, is a right if
41:46
Speaker 1: that's the case. Yeah. So it's constantly a decision I'm making.
41:52
Speaker 1: It's not like, oh, I've I don't color my hair,
41:55
Speaker 1: period stop blank. It's constantly something that arises in my
41:59
Speaker 1: decision making process, and sometimes I'm swayed to do it
42:05
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, and then I usually well, I always
42:09
Speaker 1: remember kind of and feel at the core that the
42:14
Speaker 1: reasons I don't want to do it, and I'll also
42:16
Speaker 1: add to those reasons that I have two daughters and
42:20
Speaker 1: this is genetic and I want them to see I
42:23
Speaker 1: want them to see this, you know, and to see
42:27
Speaker 1: it be okay. And if they want to make a
42:29
Speaker 1: different choice, that's all right. But at least they have
42:32
Speaker 1: a model.
42:33
Speaker 3: You know, did your mother go gray in her twenties
42:37
Speaker 3: and thirties? Yes, yes, It's interesting to me how you
42:44
Speaker 3: described the maternal figures in your life and how core
42:51
Speaker 3: this decision about how how you wear your hair. It
42:57
Speaker 3: raises this question of what sort of woman am I? Yes,
43:02
Speaker 3: I get very core to identity, Yeah, which is which
43:08
Speaker 3: I get. But it's it's interesting how it feels. It
43:15
Speaker 3: feels like being pushed to color your hair. Feels like
43:20
Speaker 3: they're not seeing you for how you are. Is how
43:23
Speaker 3: it feels.
43:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of like, why do I need to
43:28
Speaker 1: do that? I mean for you?
43:32
Speaker 3: Is it for you?
43:34
Speaker 1: Or because you're embarrassed to have a friend or a
43:39
Speaker 1: spouse with gray hair? I mean, what is the encouragement from?
43:45
Speaker 24: This?
43:45
Speaker 3: Is what I think about a lot too. How I'm
43:48
Speaker 3: being closely watched by two little girls. As I dabble
43:52
Speaker 3: with beauty interventions and investments. They notice for whom or
43:56
Speaker 3: what I put makeup on for when I cover grays.
44:00
Speaker 3: They'll alert me when mom, you need to shave your legs.
44:03
Speaker 3: I want them to find fun and freedom and how
44:07
Speaker 3: they present to the world. Also to be real about
44:11
Speaker 3: what it's like to live in a woman's body that
44:14
Speaker 3: also lives in a society. This is a balance, and
44:18
Speaker 3: you know, comments from grown ups about how you're supposed
44:22
Speaker 3: to look. They can get trapped in memory on a loop.
44:26
Speaker 27: My mother worked for a classic Sergan's office, and when
44:30
Speaker 27: I was sixteen years old, she said to me, Davy
44:33
Speaker 27: wouldn't it be nice if we could just get you
44:35
Speaker 27: a surgery to take out that little bump in the
44:37
Speaker 27: middle of your nose.
44:39
Speaker 11: One of my mom's former friends I remember her saying, Oh,
44:44
Speaker 11: my gosh, look how big your stomach is. Are you pregnant?
44:48
Speaker 11: I literally didn't know where babies came from at the time.
44:51
Speaker 28: I have memories of being told to shave my armpits
44:53
Speaker 28: by my grandmother to help with body odor, and of
44:57
Speaker 28: another patient at a physical therapy clinic talking over my
45:00
Speaker 28: head to my physical therapist about my wolf legs.
45:04
Speaker 3: But family culture can only influence so much, especially when
45:09
Speaker 3: there are so many other ways we are told or
45:12
Speaker 3: shown how you ought.
45:13
Speaker 5: To look to be desired.
45:16
Speaker 3: In this week's Slate Plus episode, I talked to a
45:18
Speaker 3: dermatologist who is also a medical anthropologist, doctor Molly Hales.
45:23
Speaker 3: She recently co authored a study where she pretended to
45:27
Speaker 3: be a thirteen year old girl on TikTok to see
45:29
Speaker 3: what the algorithm would serve her. Turns out, a lot
45:33
Speaker 3: of young kids are doing skincare routines and doing them badly.
45:37
Speaker 23: She's kind of doing this instructional format, so she was
45:40
Speaker 23: like a how to video with her full skincare regimen,
45:43
Speaker 23: and it had just one product after the other that
45:46
Speaker 23: she's holding up and just gushing about how great it
45:48
Speaker 23: is and then putting it on her skin. Her skin
45:51
Speaker 23: is turning dark, you know, pinker and pinker, And by
45:53
Speaker 23: the end she looks into the camera and she says, like,
45:56
Speaker 23: here's how this looks.
45:57
Speaker 1: It's so glowy.
45:58
Speaker 4: I love it.
45:59
Speaker 23: But if anyone can tell me how to get it
46:02
Speaker 23: to stop burning, that would be greatly appreciated, because it
46:05
Speaker 23: actually really hurts a lot.
46:08
Speaker 3: My converse with doctor Molly Hales is in the Slate
46:11
Speaker 3: Plus feed this week. If you are not already getting
46:14
Speaker 3: these special episodes, sign up for Slate Plus on the Death,
46:17
Speaker 3: Sex and Money Show page, on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify,
46:21
Speaker 3: or just go to slate dot com slash DSM plus
46:26
Speaker 3: After the break more of your stories about beauty interventions.
46:40
Speaker 3: Nick Dute lives in Los Angeles, California now, but he
46:44
Speaker 3: grew up in the Bay Area. As a kid, he
46:46
Speaker 3: was told he was beautiful, and he loved it. He
46:50
Speaker 3: set out to be an actor, and at first he
46:53
Speaker 3: was on a glide path that got all the parts
46:55
Speaker 3: he wanted. When he was starting out in shows, near
46:57
Speaker 3: his hometown. Then he moved to New York.
47:01
Speaker 25: I remember it very clearly. It was it was a
47:03
Speaker 25: callback for Jersey Boys on Broadway, which was a huge deal.
47:07
Speaker 5: But I was so entitled and my perspective was so
47:11
Speaker 5: off prior.
47:12
Speaker 25: You know, a big fish in a small pond, coming
47:14
Speaker 25: from you know, the San Francisco Bay area, where I
47:17
Speaker 25: got pretty much all the parts I wanted, and then
47:20
Speaker 25: when I didn't get that, and I thought, oh, the
47:22
Speaker 25: whole plan might not work, like the whole A plus
47:25
Speaker 25: B equal see is maybe debunked. And that was terrifying
47:29
Speaker 25: to me.
47:30
Speaker 3: Uh huh. Do you feel like you went out to
47:34
Speaker 3: somebody who was hotter?
47:37
Speaker 24: Hmm?
47:38
Speaker 25: Interesting? No, But I think it's really complicated because I
47:43
Speaker 25: think there's also internalized homophobia with this for men gay
47:48
Speaker 25: men in theater, especially that when we're playing lead roles
47:53
Speaker 25: or masculine presenting roles. That And I'm saying all this
47:57
Speaker 25: because I was a twenty five year old twink right
47:59
Speaker 25: like a pretty party. So I don't think that he
48:04
Speaker 25: was hotter. However, he might have been more masculine.
48:09
Speaker 3: Oh, that's interesting. So it was sort of like I
48:12
Speaker 3: feel you grew up being told you were a handsome boy,
48:17
Speaker 3: and then a handsome young man, and then there was
48:22
Speaker 3: there was a complicating factor of like, but are you
48:24
Speaker 3: are you a handsome man in the right way to
48:27
Speaker 3: present and be successful in your chosen field, right?
48:31
Speaker 25: And so you're going to take this to the bank,
48:33
Speaker 25: are you going to be able to cash this in?
48:35
Speaker 3: As Nick struggled as an actor and with how he
48:39
Speaker 3: presented as a man, he was using drugs and alcohol.
48:42
Speaker 3: It became a problem and then a full blown addiction.
48:46
Speaker 25: I landed in rehab, you know, impatient rehab when I
48:50
Speaker 25: was thirty four. So that whole like the last six months,
48:54
Speaker 25: you know, my really rock bottom where you know, I
48:57
Speaker 25: ended up in a meth cabin in the woods and
49:00
Speaker 25: ended up convincing you know, my parents weren't speaking to me.
49:03
Speaker 25: I convinced this drug dealer to drive me to la
49:06
Speaker 25: probably because he was sick of me, and he's like, okay, sure.
49:09
Speaker 25: And it took a couple more months in this crazy
49:12
Speaker 25: sort of like you know, using my looks and my
49:14
Speaker 25: body to get you know, men in the Hollywood Hills
49:17
Speaker 25: to sort of like uber me from party to party,
49:20
Speaker 25: and I was always in a blackout. And then I
49:22
Speaker 25: ended up in the hospital, and then from there they
49:26
Speaker 25: put me into this government run really like scrappy, ragtag
49:32
Speaker 25: rehab where the woman who owns it or runs it
49:35
Speaker 25: rather is just this no nonsense kind of like you know,
49:39
Speaker 25: thirty five years of sobriety herself just like can see
49:42
Speaker 25: through it all right. Kathy is her name, and she
49:45
Speaker 25: she's sort of the reason I'm sober. She would not
49:47
Speaker 25: allow us. We couldn't work out, We couldn't talk about it.
49:52
Speaker 25: We couldn't I was begging for a haircut like two
49:57
Speaker 25: months in, like I still looked the way I did,
50:00
Speaker 25: like from the hospital, and I was putting on weight
50:02
Speaker 25: from only eating like donation pastries, like I was disgusting.
50:07
Speaker 25: And she just knew exactly that that was the issue,
50:10
Speaker 25: and she would not budge. Yeah, Kathy said, I have
50:13
Speaker 25: to focus on my insides, not my outsides.
50:18
Speaker 3: Can you just say to me, I want to make
50:20
Speaker 3: sure I'm really getting what Kathy identified and what she
50:25
Speaker 3: helped you identify about the link between your addiction, addictions
50:33
Speaker 3: and how you look. How do you understand that?
50:40
Speaker 25: The way I understand it is there's a lot of
50:42
Speaker 25: things that, as you would say in the program, fix
50:46
Speaker 25: feelings like how can I fix how I feel, not
50:49
Speaker 25: be present, you know, whatever it is. And I think
50:52
Speaker 25: when you take out the really strong, life shattering substances,
50:58
Speaker 25: you are reaching. And so the way I looked was
51:02
Speaker 25: another way I was wearing a mask. It was another
51:05
Speaker 25: way that I was hiding, not being I was people pleasing,
51:10
Speaker 25: wanting to be who you needed me to be. All
51:14
Speaker 25: of those things I never would have really dissected had
51:17
Speaker 25: I not torched my life in that way and met
51:21
Speaker 25: Kathy and these other addicts that helped me understand the
51:25
Speaker 25: mirror of how ridiculous it was to be so concerned
51:29
Speaker 25: here I am. Kathy would say, look where you are.
51:32
Speaker 25: You're like worried about a haircut, but what about where
51:35
Speaker 25: your life.
51:35
Speaker 1: Has taken you?
51:36
Speaker 25: You know, like obviously looking good didn't work for you.
51:41
Speaker 5: You know, Oh Katy.
51:45
Speaker 2: She's like, you're worried about a haircut, right.
51:48
Speaker 25: So her big thing that she would her cats phrase
51:50
Speaker 25: would always be like, whatever you were obsessing about, Nick,
51:54
Speaker 25: if a haircut, if haircuts worked for you, you'd have an
51:58
Speaker 25: amazing life.
52:03
Speaker 5: We love Kathy.
52:05
Speaker 14: We love Kathy.
52:07
Speaker 25: So sometimes it's very helpful to lose everything because then
52:11
Speaker 25: a comment like that really puts it in perspective.
52:16
Speaker 3: When Nick got out of rehab, he was sober and
52:18
Speaker 3: rebuilding his life. He got a new job and soon
52:21
Speaker 3: met a man Walker at an AA meeting. Walker was
52:25
Speaker 3: ten years younger, twenty five to Nick's thirty five, and
52:29
Speaker 3: within three months of meeting they moved in together. Then
52:32
Speaker 3: seven years later they married. Nick wrote about his relationship
52:36
Speaker 3: with Walker in a recent essay in New York Magazine,
52:40
Speaker 3: and also about the tensions that have showed up there
52:43
Speaker 3: because of Nick's relationship to his body. For a while,
52:47
Speaker 3: Nick felt secure in his relationship. Walker never cared what
52:51
Speaker 3: size I was, he wrote. He told me I was
52:54
Speaker 3: handsome when I rolled out of bed, sexy and Jim
52:56
Speaker 3: Schortz hot even without a tan. For a while I
53:00
Speaker 3: believed him, he wrote. And then the pandemic.
53:03
Speaker 25: Kid and I had was heading into my forty, so
53:07
Speaker 25: the weight wasn't coming off the way that it used to,
53:11
Speaker 25: and I had to, like maybe like six months in,
53:14
Speaker 25: I had to Instead of all my medium polo shirts
53:17
Speaker 25: that I wore to work, I went online to get
53:20
Speaker 25: some larges, which was felt like daggered to my heart.
53:26
Speaker 3: When did you have your first conversation with a physician
53:29
Speaker 3: about some kind of surgical intervention.
53:34
Speaker 21: Pretty much.
53:35
Speaker 25: Well, I think because i've I've gone, they're all spaced
53:39
Speaker 25: out about a year, so probably twenty twenty one. So
53:43
Speaker 25: I broached the subject with Walker of light bo and
53:46
Speaker 25: he's you know, he was like, sure, whatever, and then
53:51
Speaker 25: didn't love those results.
53:54
Speaker 3: A year endo the pandemic, Nick got LiPo section. It
53:58
Speaker 3: costs just over twenty thousand dollars. When Nick told Walker playfully,
54:02
Speaker 3: hey babe, I'm getting my boobs done, Walker's response was cautious.
54:07
Speaker 3: If it's going to make you feel better, I support you,
54:10
Speaker 3: he said, but are you sure this is about your chest?
54:13
Speaker 3: And then the results weren't what Nick wanted. He wrote
54:17
Speaker 3: the definition I expected never materialized, just a torso that
54:22
Speaker 3: looked oddly smooth, almost melted. So then Nick went back
54:26
Speaker 3: for a revision procedure that cost another seven five hundred dollars.
54:32
Speaker 3: When the results still didn't feel perfect, Nick's doctor suggested
54:36
Speaker 3: a tummy tuck, and Nick scheduled it, but waited until
54:41
Speaker 3: two weeks before the surgery to tell his husband. Walker
54:45
Speaker 3: was furious about all the money and all the surgeries
54:49
Speaker 3: and asked Nick if he could cancel, but it was
54:51
Speaker 3: too late.
54:52
Speaker 25: I had already gone back, same surgeon, had already held
54:57
Speaker 25: the date, paid a deposit because I knew, come hell
55:00
Speaker 25: or high water, I had to do it. And then
55:02
Speaker 25: I just had to have like an honest adult conversation
55:06
Speaker 25: with Walker, and that was not the right way. And
55:10
Speaker 25: that's why it was so bad, just in that he's like, well,
55:15
Speaker 25: you're gonna do it. I mean, you're already doing.
55:17
Speaker 3: It, so you you'd pay the deposit. You had said,
55:22
Speaker 3: I am doing this third surgery. And then you're like,
55:25
Speaker 3: I have to tell my husband, and then he's pang
55:28
Speaker 3: on sort of ask yeah, ask slash inform.
55:33
Speaker 25: Yeah, you get it.
55:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I also have a husband who I sometimes
55:38
Speaker 3: ask slash inform. Yeah. But it was the way that
55:44
Speaker 3: you came to what is this for? That that conversation
55:47
Speaker 3: between the two of you and is this worth all
55:50
Speaker 3: this effort, time, money, pain of recovery. It was the
55:56
Speaker 3: money that that was the way you had that conversation.
56:00
Speaker 3: We could use this money for something else.
56:04
Speaker 25: I think it was layered because it was also the
56:08
Speaker 25: first time I had heard I loved your body. Before
56:12
Speaker 25: the first time I had heard what are you do?
56:16
Speaker 25: You know you're batching the things I love, like these
56:19
Speaker 25: sort of like things that come out in a heated
56:22
Speaker 25: conversation that yeah, it just was. It's like I overstayed
56:30
Speaker 25: my welcome of just positive cheer from the sidelines and
56:34
Speaker 25: got the tough love of like do you think this
56:37
Speaker 25: is looking better? Like do you think this is fixing anything?
56:41
Speaker 25: Kind of a thing. And it was too late. It
56:44
Speaker 25: was I wanted to get The night before, I thought
56:48
Speaker 25: I should cancel. This is gonna this, He's gonna ask
56:51
Speaker 25: me for a divorce, like this is gonna be bad.
56:54
Speaker 25: And he said no, you know, he drove me like
56:58
Speaker 25: we patched it up for as best we could. The
57:01
Speaker 25: night before, he drove me to the hospital, you know,
57:05
Speaker 25: the surgery place, and yeah, and then I went to
57:10
Speaker 25: aftercare and ended up in aftercare for like five days,
57:14
Speaker 25: and he saw me there once. But I knew that
57:18
Speaker 25: he was over it. I knew that it was I
57:22
Speaker 25: had done something. I had crossed the line.
57:25
Speaker 3: Mm hm.
57:27
Speaker 10: M hm.
57:29
Speaker 3: And looking back, when you were scheduling that third surgery,
57:33
Speaker 3: you described kind of like I want I want the
57:36
Speaker 3: result that I've been after. You described that as your motivation,
57:42
Speaker 3: But do you do you link it to that those
57:46
Speaker 3: what we were talking about before, about what you were
57:48
Speaker 3: kind of confronting and recovery about, like your worth is
57:53
Speaker 3: connected to yes, how you look.
57:55
Speaker 25: For sure, because I thought, you know, it's funny or ironically,
58:00
Speaker 25: the most stress that's ever been put on our relationship
58:05
Speaker 25: is this. But here I am probably three years prior
58:08
Speaker 25: and when I went to ask for the last surgery,
58:12
Speaker 25: thinking this would be in the category of saving my marriage,
58:16
Speaker 25: when it was doing the opposite, you know, because I
58:20
Speaker 25: did feel like he chose me because of the way
58:23
Speaker 25: I looked at thirty five, He chose me because of
58:28
Speaker 25: the way others saw me, the way others complimented me.
58:33
Speaker 25: I had that narrative going. So this really shook all
58:39
Speaker 25: of that because it was the first time I knew
58:41
Speaker 25: that he liked my body, but I didn't realize. Yeah,
58:47
Speaker 25: I just thought it was all improvement that there was
58:49
Speaker 25: no risk of, you know, like the scar from the
58:53
Speaker 25: tummy duck. It's like neither of us really understood how
58:59
Speaker 25: intense that would look.
59:01
Speaker 17: You know.
59:02
Speaker 25: He described it as a C section scar, which it's
59:04
Speaker 25: not far off. And yeah, I was a little shocked too,
59:08
Speaker 25: Like I was so tom vision that I thought, oh,
59:11
Speaker 25: oh wait, so it never really goes wait, it never
59:14
Speaker 25: goes away, like, yeah, dude.
59:19
Speaker 3: I remember I wished I'd had a warning before my
59:21
Speaker 3: c section. Just look at your stomach before, because it'll
59:24
Speaker 3: never look like that again, right, yeah.
59:28
Speaker 25: Yeah, and just and I remember my surgeon saying something like,
59:32
Speaker 25: well even if he said something like because I said,
59:36
Speaker 25: I'm uncomfortable even with my partner with my shirt off
59:39
Speaker 25: and I definitely don't want to go to the pool
59:41
Speaker 25: and blah.
59:41
Speaker 5: Blah, and he said, well, even.
59:44
Speaker 25: If you're still uncomfortable, you know, with like the results
59:47
Speaker 25: of a tummy tuck at least like you're silhouette, you know,
59:50
Speaker 25: in clothing. And I'm thinking like, well, yeah, but with
59:53
Speaker 25: my shirt off too. And I now realize that what
59:55
Speaker 25: he meant was you might not like the scar if
1:00:00
Speaker 25: your pants go below that, and you also might not
1:00:03
Speaker 25: like the fact that it's not the belly button you
1:00:05
Speaker 25: were born with.
1:00:07
Speaker 18: Uh huh.
1:00:08
Speaker 3: You still might not like the way you look when
1:00:10
Speaker 3: you're naked or with your shirt off, huh huh. I
1:00:16
Speaker 3: want to understand how you think about if you could
1:00:20
Speaker 3: go back and make different decisions, where you might make
1:00:26
Speaker 3: different decisions when it comes to these the interventions, the
1:00:31
Speaker 3: surgical interventions, Like, how do you think about that choice?
1:00:35
Speaker 25: The truth is that had I known all of the
1:00:38
Speaker 25: different things, like not just the physical medical, but the emotional,
1:00:42
Speaker 25: the mental, I probably wouldn't have started down the path.
1:00:46
Speaker 25: And I think, even though I'm satisfied and glad in
1:00:50
Speaker 25: a way, it part of it's almost not worth it,
1:00:55
Speaker 25: do you know what I mean?
1:00:57
Speaker 3: And in your relationship now with your husband, like if
1:01:00
Speaker 3: there's a day where you're just like not feeling hot, like,
1:01:04
Speaker 3: is that something you'll say to him or do you
1:01:07
Speaker 3: keep that inside?
1:01:09
Speaker 25: Yeah, we're gay men in LA and there isn't a
1:01:12
Speaker 25: day that goes by where we don't kind of get
1:01:14
Speaker 25: down on ourselves about it.
1:01:15
Speaker 5: And it's it's sad. It is, you know, it is sad.
1:01:20
Speaker 25: And I think that our job, especially in sobriety, is
1:01:24
Speaker 25: to take that inventory, you know, and really look at
1:01:29
Speaker 25: maybe I have to go do something for somebody else,
1:01:31
Speaker 25: Maybe I need to volunteer, Like how do I get
1:01:34
Speaker 25: out of myself?
1:01:35
Speaker 13: Right?
1:01:36
Speaker 3: I think I ask you because I think it's so
1:01:38
Speaker 3: interesting that the moment of real sort of rupture was
1:01:43
Speaker 3: you thinking I'm doing this to stay attractive in this
1:01:47
Speaker 3: marriage and him saying you're changing in ways that I
1:01:50
Speaker 3: feel uncomfortable with that I don't really like, and so
1:01:54
Speaker 3: I wonder if, like, that's if now you can get
1:01:57
Speaker 3: to that part of the conversation faster.
1:02:00
Speaker 25: Yeah, well, I definitely think the positives of those hard
1:02:06
Speaker 25: conversations is that we can skip that part. For me,
1:02:11
Speaker 25: I was so far gone when I was deciding about
1:02:13
Speaker 25: the surgeries. Nobody could have said to me, this isn't
1:02:17
Speaker 25: this isn't a problem, and this isn't the way to
1:02:20
Speaker 25: fix it. No one but they could now. I think
1:02:23
Speaker 25: they could now, and I would listen.
1:02:33
Speaker 3: That's Nick dte. His essay in New York Magazine is
1:02:37
Speaker 3: called What Plastic Surgery Couldn't Fix. There's a link to
1:02:40
Speaker 3: it in our show notes. Thank you to everyone whom
1:02:44
Speaker 3: we talked to for this episode and everyone who's sent
1:02:47
Speaker 3: in voice memos. This episode was produced by Zoe Ajulet.
1:02:53
Speaker 3: The rest of the Death, Sex and Money Show team
1:02:55
Speaker 3: includes Andrew Dunn and Cameron Drews. Dais of Rosario is
1:02:59
Speaker 3: our senior supervising producer. Neia Lobel is the head of
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1:04:00
Speaker 3: love hearing from you. One more thing Asher told me.
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