Latest / 1-800-1800 / 1-800-1861: Death Becomes Her w/ Jessica DeFino

Transcript

1-800-1861: Death Becomes Her w/ Jessica DeFino · 1-800-1800

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Ring ring.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hello?
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Is this 1861?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: No, it's Jessica.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my god.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hello?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: You've reached 1-800-1800.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: 1-800-1800.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: I have a burning question.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: 1-800-1800.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: 1-800-1800.
• 0:16
  [music]
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I have a burning question.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: So this is 1-800-1800 and we are really excited to be welcoming Jessica Dufino to the podcast.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Jessica, you are an award-winning beauty critic and reporter.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: You've written for the New York Times and Vogue.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: You have, I would say, one of the best substacks out there, Flesh World.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you write a very beautifully titled Thank you so much.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: I should say I'm Mabel.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm Madeline.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: We always forget to say our names.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: And Jessica, we invited you on to talk about a very hard hitting year, 1861.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: And we want to talk about death and beauty.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: And when I think of those two words, I think of you and
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: What I love about your project is that you I was actually just talking about this
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: with Madeline before you jumped on you like remind me of the sort
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: of like muck rocking journalists of the 1970s like people like Ralph Nader
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: and Morton Mintz who are like blowing the lid off of consumer culture
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: and being like, hey, these things are dangerous.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: But what I love about your writing and your podcast is like.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm listening and I'm like, okay, I won't buy the tint that will make my nipples pink.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm also like thinking about why I'm on earth.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why am I here?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking about this sort of like moral, spiritual, historical context from my own existence.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like that hovering between the present and the superficial and the sort
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: of really deep rooted human questions.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: I love.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Beautifully done.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: The greatest compliment.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I need you to tell me why am I here on this earth?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: No, you can tell me later.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: We'll end there.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's to tint your nipples, actually.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: All right, let's do it.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Press order.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Jessica, what did you learn this week?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I learned that you can now get Botox in your clitoris.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's called clit tox.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: And it apparently increases arousal.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not just for a tight looking clit.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's for feeling good.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's comforting, I guess.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: I watch In the City and she was the injector on that show who was talking about doing scrotox.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Which I also wasn't familiar with.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess there's even the final frontier.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_03: Hole talks for your butthole.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: That actually surprises me the least out of all of them.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: It makes the most sense, I think.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious about the sort of like Botox versus, sorry, what is the blue pill called?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like blinking.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: Viagra?
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Viagra.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: That little blue pill.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because they seem to do something similar, I guess.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I guess so.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe clit tox is the female Viagra.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_03: We've been begging for it.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I do have a friend who's on a peptide that makes you tan and hard all the time.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm like, there's some sort of connection there to the skin and the sexual arousal.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's a huge connection, but I had no idea the tanning peptide made you hard.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_03: That's incredible.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: Listen, the things you learn on 4th of July in East Hampton will astound you.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline went to the Hamptons and has literally never been
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: the same.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: She's very disturbed.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was tough, but I've come out stronger, wiser.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: Madeline, did you learn anything this week other than about the peptide?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I learned something.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: No, that's wisdom that I carry with me.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: I learned something that's thematic, which is that maybe you guys know this.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: I was like astounded.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: Have you ever seen a baby's skull?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't think I have.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Does it have a hole in the top?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's not, I mean, probably, but it also has two sets of teeth.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Inside of it?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: Because you're born with your adult teeth in your head.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's horrific.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: So there's like milk teeth and then baby teeth.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: They come down.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's really, really scary.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: You should Google it on your own time.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: I won't horrify everyone right now before we do this.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm going to.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's spectacular.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: My co-worker's nine-month-old baby just bit her tongue really hard.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, how are your teeth even strong enough at nine months?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: She had to get stitches, I think, on her little baby tongue.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: Teeth are powerful.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: Teeth are powerful.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_02: And behind those teeth, she has even more powerful teeth.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: She contains multitude.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: She contains multitude.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she has a wealth of teeth.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: How about you, Mabel?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: What did you learn this week?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I saw The Odyssey yesterday.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I learned something I didn't know, which was the etymology of the word mentor.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Did you know this or remember this?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's a character in The Odyssey.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't his name like Hector Mentor or something?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Telemachus, a.k.a.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Tom Holland, just called him mentor.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: He's so cute.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: I turned to my dad and I was like, wait a minute.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: I actually saw a really funny Twitter thread that was someone being like,
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: they were so lazy naming the characters in this movie.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: They couldn't think of a better name than Mentor.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_03: That's incredible.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: I really hope his name is Hector Mentor,
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_03: though, because Hector is my father's name and he will love that.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: I've got to look it up immediately.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: Tell him it is.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Tell him not to see the movie.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was pretty intense.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Don't really recommend.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I think we all understand that.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: You don't recommend it?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think so.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I was going to go.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: You should still go.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: I just found out I have access.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't think I had an IMAX theater near me, but I actually do in Albany.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I might head over there.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: If that's your closest IMAX,
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: we're in trouble.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: Worth it.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's an hour away.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, to be part of
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: the culture, it's priceless.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: I actually feel like that's a pretty good travel ratio for the amount
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_03: of time you're going to be spending in the movie.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you wouldn't want it to be too easy.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: Be compressed for an hour on the way home.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot to process.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: OK, well, fabulous.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: So now I will tell us why we're doing 1861.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to go through the year and the sort
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: of last beat will explain why exactly we've chosen this year to do to have
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: the discussion we're having today.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: But everything leading up to it is relevant as well.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: So in 1860,
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: Abraham Lincoln is elected president of the United States and beginning in January
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: of 1861.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: The Carolinas, actually the South Carolina secedes right at the end of December 1860.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: And then the quote caught in states of Mississippi,
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: Florida,
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: Alabama,
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: Georgia, Louisiana and Texas follow suit, seceding in January and February of 1861.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: Thus begins the American Civil War.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: The first shots were fired on April 12th when Confederate forces attacked.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: The Union held Fort Sumter in Charleston.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: The war was expected to be short but continued for four years.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: This leads to very heavy casualties.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: People love to say about basically every war that happened between 1800 and
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like 1950, that it was the first industrialized warfare.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: But I think there's a good case to make for the Civil War.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: And
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: So in the US,
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: you have a fractured and war-torn public that's,
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: you know, the death has a wide reach and is touching families all over the country.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: Meanwhile,
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: in Europe,
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: there is,
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: for the first time,
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: these more coherent nationalist movements and the empires in Europe are firmer
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: than they had been previously.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: So Italy is uniting for the first time.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: There's moves towards German unification and And Napoleon III is leading
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: the Second Empire in France.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: And in Paris, there's this big cultural renaissance.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: And the British Empire is flourishing as well,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: although they will feel the effects of the U.S. Civil War.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: But it leads actually to them clamping down harder on their...
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: Colonies in their cotton producing colonies in India and
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: the Queen Victoria's official position on the US Civil War was neutrality
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: in large part because of their investment in American cotton.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: And then you're in Asia.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: We have China is still struggling in the wake of the opium wars
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: and is heavily affected by the British Empire.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: And Japan is also beginning to bend to the pressure of the British Empire
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: to open its borders to the West.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: And we have spreading railroads, steamships, telegraphs.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: The world is shrinking.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: Information, people,
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: products that once took months to get from place to place are now arriving in days.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: Information that was,
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: you know, you'd have to send a letter in a boat and it would take six months.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: You can now get in hours.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: So things, the world is just shrinking exponentially.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: And with it come the rise of photography, cheap print photography.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Mass consumer culture,
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: these are all coming into being through these technologies at the same time
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: as you have, I mean,
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: and very much related to the spread of empire and the clash about,
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: you know, the labor economy, basically, of the United States.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it is also,
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: according to Wikipedia,
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: statistically,
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: the year that the whale oil industry was replaced by the petroleum industry.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know exactly what the statistic is.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't specify, but I was
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: wondering the same
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_03: thing.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'll take it.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: And just a fun fact,
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: on May 17th,
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: there was a seven-day working men's holiday package to Paris organized from London,
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: which I included because I think it speaks to also a rise in access to...
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: Consumer and like leisure culture from working in middle class
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: that hadn't existed previous to this.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like this is a real moment where people are empowered by their purchase power, basically.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then I had a bunch of stuff about outer space that I will skip,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: but people are curious about there were like a lot of meteors discovered.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like that's not just a coincidence.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: I was like,
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: there must be some technological reason for this,
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: but I didn't dig into it more because I was occupied with other things.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the main event for our discussion is that on December 14th, 1861,
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: Prince Albert died after prolonged illness,
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: which sent the late great Queen Victoria into a period of mourning
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_02: that lasted almost 40 years.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: And he had suffered forever.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: A while from stomach cramps, people now and then his official cause of death was typhoid.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: People now speculate that he had Crohn's disease or some sort of abdominal cancer
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: that was undiagnosed.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: And he had been sick since 1859.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: He had the previous year a couple of weird like accidents that could have killed him.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: There was a horse accident.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: So by 1861, he sort of retreated from public life.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: And then Queen Victoria always blamed this scandal.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: So in June 1851, Prince Albert went to visit the Prince of Wales.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: To confront him about these ongoing rumors that he was involved with
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: an Irish actress and having an affair and going to gentlemen's clubs
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: and being generally considered a rogue.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it was on return from this trip to chastise his son that he fell ill and never recovered.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so for the rest of her life,
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: Queen Victoria blamed her son and heir for the death of her beloved husband.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Is that their oldest son?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would assume.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was just curious.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: They had so many kids.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, is that the one who became?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the Prince of Wales.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Got it.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, my British monarchy timeline is a little funny.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: And the Queen's grief was so overwhelming that she was a prolific journalist,
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: as we've discussed on this podcast before,
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: and she didn't write in her journal for two weeks following his death.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: So from December 14th to January 1st, her journal pages are blank.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: She was distraught.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's like literally worse than hell.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then she,
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: for the rest of his life, also kept his rooms as if he was still there.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: There was hot water brought in every morning and the linen
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: and towels were changed daily,
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: despite the fact that he was obviously not going to be using those things as
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: a pretty big luxury in those rooms.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Days and when Victoria died,
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: eventually she was buried with Albert's dressing gown and a plaster cast
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: of his hand, which she had slept with every night since his death.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: This is amazing.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's dedication.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: And this concludes my summary of 1861.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean,
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think the hand detail speaks to what we're going to get into more in the episode,
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: which is this fascination with death and this enduring link between sex,
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: beauty, death, desire.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: And
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: There's obviously an intimacy and a sexuality bout,
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: sleeping with a plaster cast of your dead husband's hand every night.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: But also there is this very distinctly Victorian sentimentality in that as well.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I feel like The fact that she's maintaining his beauty rituals
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: after his death is just, I mean, Jessica, this has your name written all over it.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_03: And you know what it reminds me of?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: This summer,
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: makeup artist Lisa Eldridge came out with a Marilyn Monroe collection
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_03: to honor her 100th birthday.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: And she did a pop-up in New York,
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: which I went to go visit,
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: and they reconstructed her vanity as if she were still alive,
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_03: like drawers open, blow dryer on the table, her skincare steps laid out.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: Really reminds me of Queen Victoria keeping those rituals going.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's amazing.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: I remember having such fascination also like when I was a teenager on the internet
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: with like the beauty and dire routines of old Hollywood stars like that stuff is
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: so well documented in the kind of tabloids of the day that it's like it is what sort
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: of immortal now.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, completely.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean,
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like Marilyn is the encapsulation of like immortal beauty in
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_03: the beauty industry and actually at that installation.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_03: On the wall, there's, you know, information about the exhibit and Marilyn's beauty routine.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: And it talks about her funeral makeup,
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_03: which I thought was like kind of an odd, morbid twist for what they're doing.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_03: But it talked about how she asked her makeup artist,
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_03: like, if I die before you do, will you do my makeup?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: And he said yes.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_03: And he did.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_03: Well, that's sort of sweet.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: Was it open casket or we don't know?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_03: I actually don't know.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it just reminds me in this interesting way,
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: like Jessica, you have the best sign off ever for your writing.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: You write.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to die someday no matter how young you look.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Every time I read, it sends shivers down my spine.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: My little memento mori.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's so good.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: And what I just keep thinking about is how our current relationship with beauty
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: and death is so different than what Victoria was after.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of trying to preserve herself, she's trying to preserve the memory of somebody else.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: But she's also there for basically putting herself...
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: On the back burner, like freezing herself into Albert's devoted widow.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's such a different relationship with the self.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: But like, how do you like how do you compare it to the contemporary?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: I guess the devotion is different in that the devotion then is to the dead loved one.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: And the devotion today is to beauty itself and one's own beauty, I guess.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_03: I think a lot of like mourning jewelry and mourning customs in 1861 were
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_03: About like keeping somebody close to you.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: And today I feel like the prevalence of death in beauty culture is about like
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_03: a distancing from it,
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: like a dissociation from it, like making sort of like an ironic joke about it.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like omnipresent in the beauty industry when we're talking about it.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: But it's not,
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: I wouldn't say it's like helping our relationship to death
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: or helping us like integrate the inevitability of death into our lives.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: We're like running away from our mortality while we're actually obsessed with it.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: There's also like sort of an interesting trajectory because Victoria,
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: like there is a deathbed photo of Albert.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: Victoria was really savvy about photography and video and like kind
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: of preserving her image in these new technological ways that obviously now manifest
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: so differently because people are using these same technologies to kind
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: of Make themselves appear ever young online and have this image
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: of themselves circulating that has nothing to do with their like physical well-being
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: or reality.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I just there's like she she took so many like amazing morning photos in the same dress.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: she's wearing these same dresses over the course of 40 years
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: and recreating these images.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: And she she did kind of start this like photographic culture that we live in in many ways.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the way that it's showing up today in
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: the beauty industry is people picturing their own funerals and what they're going
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: to look like at those funerals.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: So like a small trend I've been picking up on lately, the beauty brand Tower 28 posted.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_03: An ad that was a review of their concealer being like, this is a must have for my funeral.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody give this to my mortician.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my God.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_03: And somebody was describing their favorite perfume in a questionnaire about beauty
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: as like, I want this sprayed on my casket.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: I want my funeral to smell like this.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: So it's very present and top of mind in beauty culture that like,
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_03: Even in death, we cannot escape
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: the performance of beauty, you know?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there was that.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is not totally death, but it's a brush with death.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: Years ago,
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: that viral review of the Kat Von D eyeliner that was like,
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: I got in a car wreck and my weight stayed perfectly intact.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like,
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: to be thinking about, I mean,
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: to be in like an emergency situation and be like,
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: my eyeliner must be smudged is so unhinged.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: I know it's so bleak, but it's so integrated.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, maybe not for everybody,
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_03: but I think for like beauty enthusiasts,
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: this like self surveillance is so integrated that you can't drop it even in a moment
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: of emergency.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not necessarily like, oh, you're so shallow or vain or whatever.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's just like, no,
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_03: this is embedded in my subconscious and I have no choice but to think
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_03: about it almost.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: Self-policing.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, also,
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: this is just totally anecdotal, but I have 13 people staying at my house right now.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like,
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: there's like five girls and the discussion of like what we needed to do to be able
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: to go into town.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like there was like,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: because two of the girls are going to do a full face of makeup and a whole outfit
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: that they brought.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: And then me and one of the other girls were like,
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: okay, so we'll do half that because we wouldn't normally have done nothing.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: And like,
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: there were just these like negotiations happening of like all of You know,
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: the social situation that I'm not normally in,
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: which is pretty amazing to witness, actually.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_03: I know I'm planning my wedding right now.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_03: And that's a big point of discussion.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: Like I'm not.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's my second wedding.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_03: So the first first one I had hairstylist, I had makeup, I did it all and everyone had makeup.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: Their hair and makeup done in the wedding party and I'm just not doing it this time.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: It feels so good to kind of just let go of that like social pressure
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_03: that everyone involved in the wedding must be.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's also the uncanny,
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: like I have had to have my,
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: I don't normally do a full face of makeup and I've had to,
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: as a bridesmaid, like get my makeup done by these strangers that I didn't pick.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's this uncanny unveiling of myself as like, and I'm like, I don't, Know her.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's like a doppelganger effect.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_03: Completely.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: Completely.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, something that I was just thinking about when we were talking was like,
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: well, Prince Albert became more popular after he died, which is super interesting.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I...
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: It does have to do with Victoria's obsession with his image and posing for photos
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: with his photo in her lap or on the pillow next to her or whatever it was.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Something that I can't wrap my head around quite with the current obsession with,
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: please put this on my corpse when I die.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Please give this to my mortician or let me make sure that I look good for the camera.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like something I'm thinking about is like the trendiness of it.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: And even like, right, like you are, you are
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: sort of there's a timestamp on you.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: If like your Instagram photos are like what's displayed at your funeral.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: And in some ways,
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: it's like the evolution of your ability to fit into
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: the trends is actually like what keeps you young.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's like this tragedy, too,
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: of being so interested in how you look in this current moment
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: and making sure you look good before you die.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because like no matter what, the trends will evolve.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll know that the Instagram picture is like the wrong one.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: look dated.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's so fascinating even to think about it in terms of like the dead women who...
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they never, and they never got to go out of fashion.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, that's,
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's the thing about Marilyn is like,
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: if she had just aged,
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: like Catherine Hepburn just aged and is, I mean,
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: she's an icon,
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: but she's not,
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: she doesn't hold the same place in the cultural memory
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: or like Natalie Wood didn't really have a huge acting career,
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: but people are obsessed with her because she had this like mysterious, tragic death.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the death does do something in terms of Putting them forward as these icons.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I was reading,
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Jessica,
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: you did an interview or conversation with,
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: the Retro Report about our obsession with looking like Marilyn
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: or looking like Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and the way that Like
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: the film industry has memorialized and romanticized like the beauty standards
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: of women in films from the 60s and the 50s and things where the quality of
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: the film was just lower.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: So they look a lot better.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And now contemporary actresses have to do all this work to their faces to look good in HD.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: The labor that the camera did just by being like low quality and
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: a little bit blurred is now on actual people to like put that aesthetic labor
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: into their own faces and bodies to blur what the camera does anymore.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: I remember there was like a sort of transitional moment where you would like hear...
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: Stories about actresses having things in their contract about how much CGI was going
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: to be done to their face.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: You don't really hear about that as much anymore.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I wonder if that's actually because the plastic surgery has gotten more refined
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: and they don't need it.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_03: That's a really good theory.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: I would think there's just so much more technology available in cosmetics
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_03: that you don't have to worry about the camera so much.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: Although I do know behind the scenes there are some...
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: Aging pop stars and actresses that have like very strict writers
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_03: about what photos can be released.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, there's a lot.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because we still also have this like public humiliation culture.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: I get it.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: I would be strict too.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and also you, I feel like you talk about too, like Then I was thinking about this.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's this rising obsession with how we look on camera.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's also this surging interest in the 19th century and period pieces.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: So now you have this like weird cyborg situation where you have like women
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: whose faces look of 2026 pretending that it's 1865.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: And like we but we all acknowledge that people did not look at look like that.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: There are markers of what is a cosmetic intervention today
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_03: that simply did not exist, wasn't even fathomable back then.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I think when you're watching TV or movies, it takes you out of it.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: You cannot lose yourself in this fantasy world
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: because there are constant visual reminders that this person is from 2026.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: This person is from 2025.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: Like you can tell.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_03: I kind of felt that way.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_03: I definitely felt that way about Wuthering Heights.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_03: There was so much.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I was going to say.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, not that was dedicated to historical
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: accuracy or
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: anything, but.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: No, but I mean, I obviously my criticism is,
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: you know, Margot Robbie is too old to play a 16 year old girl.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like she just is like, I'm sorry.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not ageist.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think there are plenty of beautiful.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: Lead roles she could play wonderfully.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: But that's supposed to be a 16-year-old girl.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: And the idea that the interventions that she has had are such
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: that she's convincing it at that age is insane to me.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's kind of like you were saying before, Mabel.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_03: The interventions we do to look younger don't make us look younger so much
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_03: as Manipulated or like changed or different.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: And those things are like markers of time.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: So like she doesn't have the wrinkles,
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: but she still looks like a 36 year old woman
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_03: who has undergone cosmetic interventions.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like it doesn't actually look younger.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_03: It just makes you look.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: Change like you've had work done.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: And like fundamentally, do I think that the same person who played Barbie should also play?
• 28:04
  No.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Those are two different.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's a good moment to say.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: So part of the reason that the Victoria morning myth is so enduring is
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: because it spurs this huge consumer movement in which is like very much related to
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: the beauty industry that we're talking about today.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: Where not only do you have a mass mourning culture for the first time
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: that is not just for elites,
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_02: but is being practiced by the working and middle classes.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: But because it coincides with the rise in print culture and with the rise
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: of expendable income,
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: there is a very regimented Like etiquette that emerges around it
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: that people become sort of obsessed with.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so you'll find many,
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: many, many magazine articles from the period about what you should wear.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're going into mourning, how to, you know, what you should buy.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: And if you can't afford to buy certain things,
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: like how to make,
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: you know, dye your current clothes to make them black for the for the custom.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: And What's really fascinating about it for me is that because of this rise
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: of morning culture with this emergence of a real burgeoning consumer class,
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: these things all get entangled in this way where...
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: You have,
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: for example,
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: like there I've read various arguments that the rise of ready to wear is linked
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: with mourning culture because you had to go into mourning very quickly.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: You couldn't leave your house if you were supposed to be in mourning and you didn't have to.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: And similarly, like you have, um,
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: There's you have kind of a distinction between mourning and grief.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: So the grief is your actual like emotional attachment to the person.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: And you're you're like what we would traditionally think of as mourning,
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: the period in which you're lamenting and emotionally processing the loss of
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: the person versus mourning as this like aesthetic period where,
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: for example,
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: Henry James would often describe his characters in mourning,
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: but they wouldn't be sad or acting differently.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: It would just mean that they were in a black And so it becomes actually about a set
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: of social customs and products that you can purchase to put you into this category
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: of mourning that is distinct from the emotional resonances of loss.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I just think, I mean,
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: we just hadn't said that explicitly,
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: but I think there's like,
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: Then that also is linked with all of these beauty standards about kind of like being
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: a sad woman and being like pale and thin and sick.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: There's so much beauty standards from around this time.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: And you want to put mercury on your face so you're pale and appropriate.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: And even some of the materials for...
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: Mourning clothing were toxic in and of themselves.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: The dyes and things that were used could poison the wear.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: And because it was so close to the skin, it was especially potent.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so I wanted to talk about that in conjunction with some of your recent writing
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: about the cadaver stuff and the way that we're literally now taking dead bodies
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: and using them to meet these beauty standards.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_03: Listening to you, I was like, yeah, the elite class is certainly doing death differently now.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: So something that's emerged,
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_03: it really started about 10 years ago,
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: but there was kind of like a breakthrough technology late last year with this,
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: but it's using cadaver fat as injectable filler.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: So people are doing this.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's becoming really popular and The fat is taken
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: from like donated tissue like previously before
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: the technology evolved fat would just sort of be discarded.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: It would be like a medical waste product.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_03: They figured out a way to purify it of genetic material and preserve the matrix of fat cells.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: And now what they're doing is injecting it in people.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_03: There's a type that is a little bit thinner that's used for the face,
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_03: for cheeks, for lips, for cellulite dimples.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: And there's a type that's a little bit thicker that's used for Brazilian butt lifts
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: and boob jobs.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_03: And you're injecting yourself with cadaver fat.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_03: And part of the reason that it's so popular right now is one like quickness
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_03: and convenience, like just like the ready to wear.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_03: You don't have to go through the month of healing from a boob job.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_03: They call it like a 30 minute lunch break boob job.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_03: You go to the doctor,
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_03: you get cadaver fat injected into your breasts and you have a boob job
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_03: by your next afternoon meeting.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_03: So it's this like a constant like Cycle of faster, faster, faster.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's making it popular.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: And the other reason it's really popular is Ozempic.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_03: So one of the ways people would get filler pre-cadaver fat was taking their own fat
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_03: from a part of their body where it's not desirable,
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_03: like the thighs or the stomach,
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_03: and injecting it into other parts,
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_03: like the butt or the boobs, and Patients just have less of their own fat.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_03: They can't afford to lose more fat on their body, but they want the fat of the dead.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: Amazing.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: It also reminds me,
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: the way that we found our way to this episode was because you talked about our book,
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: One or Two,
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: which is a 19th century novel,
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: which is about a woman who is desperate to lose weight,
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: so she channels the spirit world because all of the...
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Human material cures, quote unquote cures for weight gain don't work to help her lose weight.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: So she has to channel the spirit world.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: She has a seance.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: She loses the weight,
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: but unfortunately it takes the form of her younger self who then haunts her.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: And you talked about this in the context of the GLP ones and ghost fat women
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: who are people who have lost a lot of weight,
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: but they still perceive themselves as heavier.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there's like a term that's been going around ghost fat,
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: which is I mean, it's describing a sort of dysmorphia, I think.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_03: So people who have been taking GLP one drugs and have lost a lot
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: of weight are still perceiving themselves,
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_03: like you said, as being bigger than they actually are.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_03: And
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's sort of become this like spectral, like supernatural experience.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: And it reminded me so much of one or two.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, there's Ghost Fat.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's also a new collection of fragrances that came out this year from Heretic.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_03: And the collection is called Spectral Summer.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_03: And they're all inspired by ghosts.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: And it's meant to be like another version of you,
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_03: a doppelganger or spirit lingering behind you and with you.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, perfume really is ghostly.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's so ghostly.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: And well,
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking about one or two because Frances Bethune,
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: who's the main character,
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: she's kind of the like prototypical 19th century quote unquote victim
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: of beauty culture because she's trying these beauty fads.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that when we look back at the weird
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: and dangerous 19th century beauty habits,
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: like Madeline,
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: you said putting mercury on your face or like eating lead or like all these things
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: that were so toxic.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think we have this kind of reflexive response, which We say, oh, they didn't know better.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think generally Madeline and I are really not interested in that as a historical response.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: We actually like to be like, well, they knew a lot.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: They did.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, arsenic was a known toxin and was regularly used in beauty products
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_02: and clothing dyes like that.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: It was known at the time that it was bad for you and they still did it
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: because they wanted to look a certain way.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like that was a tradeoff they decided was worth it.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking about this because I'm like, OK, well,
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: in 2026 versus,
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: 1897 when Francis Bethune is eating toxic chemicals or whatever,
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: like we do know a lot.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I and this was kind of my question.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, do we know better, better, but we just don't care?
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: We can probably guess that putting dead person cadaver fat in our boobs
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: at lunch is maybe not great, but we're just like, whatever.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's so funny because generally this is acknowledged to be a pretty safe type of procedure.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_03: And actually, okay, this is the weirdest part.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_03: When you inject the cadaver fat, it mingles with your own fat cells and your body takes it over.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: And it becomes your own material.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_03: So like death literally becomes you.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why these are so.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: And that's why these are so popular right now is because it turns into your own fat.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_03: Wait, I forgot where I was going with this.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: What was I saying?
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like, do we know better?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we do know better.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_03: We're doing it anyway.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: I can't help but think of,
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_03: there was an article I was interviewed for in the Washington Post,
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_03: I think last year,
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_03: about the rise of tanning,
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_03: which we know,
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_03: beyond a shadow of a doubt,
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_03: is linked to skin cancer and potentially death from skin cancer.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of the quotes from people who had started tanning were things like,
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_03: I'd rather die hot than live ugly.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like, this is a negotiation we're making with ourselves all of the time.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_03: And there's also a lot of,
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_03: I would say,
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_03: like science washing maybe or medicalization of these procedures
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_03: where they are considered to be relatively safe.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: We're getting a lot of.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_03: Information from within the beauty industry that's sort of like working
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_03: on minimizing fears people might have around it.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: And it's been really effective.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's to the point where people think any sort of like procedure
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: or surgery is just totally a non-issue in terms of like risk or safety.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like people are going to get this on their lunch break and not anticipating,
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_03: hey, something might go wrong.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_03: What's interesting about the cadaver fat filler is There's one that's called Renuva.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_03: And this is actually one of the only things that Brian Johnson,
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_03: who's on his like don't die mission, he did Renuva to make his skin look younger.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_03: And he had like a really horrible allergic reaction.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_03: Had to stop doing it.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like horrifying.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_03: It's just so bleak and meta to be like,
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to live forever by injecting these dead people into me.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_03: But that's like that's the one thing out of your experimentation that's made you pretty ill.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would do it.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm having so many thoughts.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: I have so many thoughts.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: I had a Queen Victoria thought.
• 39:09
  You go.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Which seemed relevant.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was reading this book I was telling you guys about called The Work of the Dead
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: by Thomas LaCour, who...
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: Only has three mentions of Queen Victoria in this entire 800 page book,
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: which I'm like, that is sexism.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: I love the book, Thomas, if you're listening, but I'm like, I don't even know if he's alive.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: But still, I just thought that was insane.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway,
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: one of the mentions that he makes of Victoria is interesting because it's in
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: the context of her role as a colonial overlord in the British imperial period,
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: which I think is really important.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like her obsession with her husband's death is set against the background
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: of her execution of mass death around the world.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: Also, not to interrupt you every time you talk,
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: but there is a huge fascination in the British Empire with the
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: the widow burning tradition in India.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's like something that for whatever reason becomes like.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: They were like obsessed with it in Victorian England.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: I actually feel like it's related.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's related into sort of what I'm going to talk about,
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: but it just reminds me I had to write a high school paper in high school
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: where we had to debate.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: We were like talking about like British colonialism in India and we were like,
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: should they have outlawed widow banning?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we had to be like, Pro or con?
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I just like that still cracks me up.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't remember how I answered.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: But so one of her other outside of India,
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: one of her other colonial projects was in I think like in the Sudan region.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was a Sudanese sheikh who the British murdered and they buried him and
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: then they exhumed him and buried his remains somewhere else because and they wrote
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: to Queen Victoria saying we've removed the bones of the Mahdi
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because we don't want people to take them out and then worship them.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: And she wrote to them, like, that was really bad.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: Even for us, that's bad.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: And she said that doing that,
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: the destroying of a man's body was, quote, too much of the Middle Ages.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then her colonial overlord writes back to her and he says,
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: don't worry, we did it really nicely.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we gave him a decent burial somewhere else.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: And she's like, okay, then it's fine.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I just thought like that was reminding me of cadaver fat.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like for her, that would have been too far.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: Probably.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: For a lot of people, it's not.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's this trend has gotten a lot of pushback,
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: obviously,
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_03: of just like this is a disrespectful way to treat dead bodies, exploit the dead.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of people are like super into it and they're like, no, I want to be a BBL.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like I want my body to be used for these purposes.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's kind of wild.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's a very split response to it.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_03: But I talked to a medical ethicist about this when I reported on it for The Guardian.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_03: And basically he was like, our only concern is like, is it hurting anybody?
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_03: And it's not like the dead body is not a person anymore.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: They aren't harmed by becoming an injectable.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought that was just like a very interesting Western interpretation
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_03: because still around the world today,
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: there's so much like reverence for the dead and dead bodies.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: It didn't seem like so cut and dry to me.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be a BBL.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: People who are signing up to be organ donors, right?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's where the tissue is coming from?
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_03: The tissue comes from donations.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_03: But that's like kind of a murky process.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you like sign up at the DMV.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: So you can be an organ donor.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_03: You can be an organ and tissue donor.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: This comes from tissue donations.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_03: You can make that decision for yourself.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_03: Your loved ones can make it for you after you've passed on.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: In some states,
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_03: there's a place where you can like check whether you want to be part
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_03: of like cosmetic interventions or not.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: But usually that you can't decide.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_03: And you can also like designate.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: I was just going to say that's even like a cosmetic like for a burn victim
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: or something is very different from like a BBL.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_03: Completely.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_03: And you can also designate like, oh,
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_03: I only want my tissue to go to But there are nonprofits who are exclusively focused
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_03: on making cadaver fat fillers.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_03: The companies are nonprofit.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_03: So it's really murky in the U.S.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_03: particularly of like,
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: can you ever get to choose whether or not this happens to your body?
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's like a way to bypass the sort of like Victorian cadaver trade
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_02: where people would like steal corpses.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: Instead, people are signing up.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah,
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: I think the ethical question about having someone donate their body ostensibly for
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: the betterment of life quality of someone else and then having it made into
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: a for-profit system.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: Cosmetic procedure,
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: elective cosmetic procedures,
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_02: like I would think that there would be other ethical issues besides.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_03: There's like the individual versus collective like harm argument where a lot of
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_03: the surgeons that I interviewed for this story were like,
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: well, my patients are more confident afterwards.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_03: This is all good.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just like, well,
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_03: if we're promoting this like zombified beauty standard
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_03: that is literally unattainable without the use of Dead people's fat.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_03: And there's a limit to who can have access to that or who can pay for it or whatever.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_03: Doesn't that cause sort of a collective harm of creating
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_03: an impossible beauty standard that people are nevertheless held to?
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that reminds me of in the 19th century, the relationship with death also changed a lot.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like as a In the sort of like tracking the consumerist journey that Madeline,
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: you were talking about,
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: but also there was a lot of change in how people, where dead bodies ended up.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: In the 19th century,
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: like in the 19th century was the rise of the cemetery opposed to
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: the church graveyard,
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: because traditionally you would pay,
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: your tithes or whatever to the church and then that would guarantee you a spot and
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: in your sort of urban churchyard and they would just sort of toss your body in
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: with everybody else.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then it became a problem with urbanization and industrialization because
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: the bodies were just truly everywhere,
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: like exploded,
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: like the tombs were so packed that people were like,
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: Opening up their basement door and they were like bodies from the next door church
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: in their basement.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: Horrifying.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: But also there becomes a class divide about who can afford to have a funeral and who cannot.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: And Thomas LeCur in this book,
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: he says,
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: The 19th century commercial funeral was built in this fashion
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: and there was almost no limit to accessories that could be had from the stores
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: of funereal consumer goods produced by the new industrial economy.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: As the standards of respectability went up, the opportunity for the poor to meet them declined.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: In this context, the pauper funeral became the final stamp of failure.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: And like this, that was your shame as a person.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you died poor and therefore couldn't afford to have a flashy,
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: beautiful funeral, like That shame was on you for eternity.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting to think about how little you can control about your death,
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: including whether you end up as cadaver filler.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: And there's all these new ways to hate yourself also
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: related to death.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: So many ways to hate yourself.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's like the things I didn't even know I should think I needed.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Or the things I shouldn't even know I should be afraid of.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because now I'm sitting here being like, am I going to be okay if I end up in someone's butt?
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_03: Is that an acceptable resting place for me?
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there's also now beyond the cadaver fat fillers,
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_03: there's cadaver skin that's being like purified and then re-injected
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_03: into people's like facial skin.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_03: So basically, again,
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_03: they like purify of genetic material and keeps the extracellular matrix
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_03: that has like collagen and elastin in it.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_03: And it again merges with your own body.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I've been saying like every, everything is like you, but better.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: And this is you, but deader.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_03: You, but deader.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's It also makes me think of like, again,
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Margot Robbie being the person who plays Catherine and Barbie,
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: but then Jacob Elordi being the person who plays Heathcliff
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: and Frankenstein's monster in the same year.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's so good.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because like, I mean,
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: when you talk about a cadaver skin going on your face,
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_01: obviously I think about Frankenstein creating his creature.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: And like I really I liked the Frankenstein movie way more than I liked
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: the Wuthering Heights movie.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's it's good.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's a bit like Netflixified aesthetically, but it's it's a good watch.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like it gets closer to the heart of that novel,
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: whereas I feel like the heart of Wuthering Heights was.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of lost.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm just like, again,
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: it's this interesting thing where it's like,
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: okay, that was a horror story that Mary Shelley wrote.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: That was a nightmare that you could take.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what Victor Frankenstein does.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: He collects dead bodies and parts and he sticks them all together and he vivifies it.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: But now we're doing that.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think it's still scary.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's scary too.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's really scary.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: Also the fact that it's all being done in the name of like, I guess like sexual desirability.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that is ultimately what it is.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I had included in the notes this because I've like long sort of been obsessed
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: with the Victorian widow as this kind of figure who has because she's touched
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: by death is like freed from the constraint.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_02: She's allowed to be sexually experienced while still being sexually available.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: She's allowed to be financially independent.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: She's allowed to make decisions for herself and her family that would be unusual for
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: a woman to be able to make.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_02: And how that figure,
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_02: because of all of those things,
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_02: then sort of becomes this like sex symbol in the Victorian period.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_02: And that's really in some ways what leads to the rise of the little black dress,
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_02: for example,
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: would be this like longstanding idea that if a woman was wearing black,
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_02: that meant that she was sexually available to you and also knowing.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, that scene in the movie, 10 Things I Hate About You.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: Where they're looking for Julia Stiles underwear.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: And she's like, nobody has black panties, so they don't want them to be seen.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I love that.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_02: But there was this quote from Punch that I included that says,
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_02: some charming new fashions and morning apparel
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_02: for ladies have again made their appearance.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_02: And we agree with the fair writer who declares that grief must be particularly deep,
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_02: which cannot be assuaged by a chic black canvas gown.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_02: So it goes from...
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: like it goes on the smiling face of a lady who has recently suffered a bereavement
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: as it peeps forth from under a smart morning hat meets with many an envious glance
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: from those who are less fortunate.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_02: So it becomes the status symbol to have been touched by death.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_02: And we've just extended that to the greatest logical conclusion,
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_02: which is literally injecting the death like into your face and your body.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_03: I'm As you're talking about the widow as an erotic figure,
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_03: I'm thinking so much of what we're using cadaver materials for
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_03: or even all these other like mentions of death in the beauty industry,
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_03: which like overall I've been referring to as the morgue gaze.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_03: But so much of it is in the name of looking younger.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_03: And looking younger as looking fertile,
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_03: even if we don't necessarily have that like conscious association that is at
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_03: the root of like youthfulness, obviously.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like we're trying to signal this ability to give life in order
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_03: to be more sexually desirable.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_03: And we're we're achieving that through death.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like what a weird contradiction.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's like boobs and butt.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's all secondary sex traits.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't know what the men are doing, but.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_02: They're doing stuff too.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_03: They're also doing this, unfortunately, just different ways.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: Not as much, not as much, but a little bit.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's interesting that death is the only thing that frees a woman in
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: the 19th century is really staying with me in what you're saying.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: The widow is the only free woman.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's really crazy.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_03: And then what I take away from the morgue gaze is not even in death is a woman free
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_03: from the pressure to perform beauty.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_03: There is no escape today.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: Literally.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and it's also interesting, we talk about Victorian values and the trad wife.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing about Victoria is that she was more a widow than a wife.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so the woman who we have uplifted as the ideal woman who...
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: Prioritized family and her husband over everyone.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: What she was actually worshiping at the altar of was death, not her husband for 40 years.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like we've all learned what we should be doing from her.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's freaking me out.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think also, I mean,
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_02: both like Victoria and kind of the like,
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_02: The secularization of England in that period and what we're talking about today
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_02: where there's like we have no like taboo left around death
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_02: because we have no religious standards as a culture is like they're related.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know,
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_02: the death and the body were so like in Catholicism,
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_02: you have all of these saint relics.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_02: You have this long history of death and the body being
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: The realm of like holiness and we are just nothing is holy anymore.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_03: Nothing is sacred.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_03: I was thinking about that when you were reading about like the advancement
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_03: of technology in 1861 in the world becoming like smaller and faster and what
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_03: that is today.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like everything is as small and as fast as possible.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's all in the palm of your hand.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like I'll be scrolling on TikTok or Instagram and I'm seeing like Videos
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: of people dying overseas.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_03: I'm seeing stuff about the war in Iran.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm seeing children in Gaza starving to death.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_03: And then I'm seeing buy this mascara, buy this lipstick.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's all so small and so close.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_03: And we're becoming desensitized.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_03: The past six, seven years has been such a time of mass death.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_03: In our culture.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_03: And because death is so close to us and in the palms of our hands,
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_03: it's just becoming sort of like this aesthetic state, I think.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the like aestheticizing it through beauty is just like a consequence
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_03: of it feeling like inescapable, but also not that serious because it's.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think also there's this like COVID was this like mass onboarding event for
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_02: so many people of this like completely online existence.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, obviously, this is like, you know, talked about as one of the great problems of our age.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_02: But as a result, I think that could be viewed as a form of entombment.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like people are no longer actually in circulating in a social world anymore.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_02: They're sort of locked in this environment.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_02: Infinite box and like time you can manipulate.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_02: Have you I mean, I've seen I get like the most fucked up things on TikTok.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what I did, but like I'm being punished.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's unreal.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_02: But one of the things I'll get a lot is like clearly faked,
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_02: but like,
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: dramatic videos of someone being like a really hot influencer in their car doing
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_02: a talk and then like the filter flickers.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_02: The most like meth.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_02: Addict-looking, ragged woman you've ever seen in your life.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because she's supposed to be live.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's a moment of horror because you're watching someone.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's like in old fairy tales when a beautiful woman would actually be an old crone witch.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that is the fear underneath so much beauty is that we will be discovered
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_03: for what we are, which is not beautiful.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it also makes me think,
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: Jessica,
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: you write about this,
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: like the bargain that people have to accept,
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: which is to make yourself look perfect on camera is to also freeze all of the things
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: that make you attractive in interpersonal conversation and relationships.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like you do all this stuff to your face to bring people to you and then they're
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: at your face and they're like, because you can't identify with them at all.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like Botox as a sort of embalmment.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_03: Where what it does is literally like freeze your micro expression.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_03: So you can't express as much.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_03: And so much of like communication through micro expression is subconscious.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_03: You can't like you don't know what you're doing with your face.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's so small that you like can't perceive it.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_03: But this is how we empathize with each other and connect with each other.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_03: Like when someone's telling you a story and their face is making whatever sort
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_03: of expression, your face will mirror that.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_03: And that's how it signals to your brain like What emotion they're feeling,
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_03: what emotion you're feeling, how to relate to that, how to react.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_03: And when you can't mimic microexpressions or make microexpressions in
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_03: the first place,
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_03: like there are studies
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_03: that question like how does this beauty standard affect our capacity for empathy,
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_03: for identifying our own feelings and understanding what we're going through.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's pretty bleak.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like the kids of people who.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_03: There was a TikTok or an Instagram or something.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_03: I wish I had saved it, but I need to look it up.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_03: But it was this debate of like,
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_03: do Botox moms raise psychopaths
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_02: because their children aren't like.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_02: The answer is yes.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_02: Having gone to private school in New York.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_02: I can answer.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember this?
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think all the time about this clip of a young Northwest cuddling up
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: to Kim Kardashian and she's like three and she goes, mommy makeup?
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: And Kim goes, no.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so then North jumps on her and hugs her and like rubs her face with kisses.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's really upsetting.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: That breaks my heart.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't seen that.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's really tough.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's like, at least you can wipe that off at the end of the day.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you are raised looking at that,
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_01: a face that doesn't freeze, I mean, doesn't move, doesn't freeze.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_03: Doesn't freeze.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: It also,
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: like the horror movie where John Krasinski and Emily Blunt exist in a world
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: where like any noise brings the monsters to you, the quiet place.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_01: What my friend,
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_01: my friend once called that the Kinfolk Magazine horror movie,
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: which I always thought it was so funny.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: It does look like that.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm just thinking there could be a good horror movie where it's like you're
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: the last person on Earth whose face moves.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so you have to like pretend that you can't do that.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_03: And people are doing that.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_03: This is my theory about the Gen Z pout.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_03: Have you guys heard of the Gen Z pout?
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not familiar, actually.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_03: What is that?
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's like this really disaffected look, like the way that millennials had like the duck face.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_03: The Gen Z pout is like what people are doing like in real life and in photos.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just sort of like a freezing of the face,
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_03: a widening of the eyes and like a look at that.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_03: I know the look.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_03: You've seen it.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_03: I've seen it.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_03: But my thinking is that this is trying to mimic the effects of Botox and filler,
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_03: sans Botox and filler.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_03: So people are training themselves not to emote as much as we see more people,
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_03: especially online, who are just not emoting as much.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that makes sense to me because in college,
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_02: my party trick was that I could make a good Botox face.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_02: I've actually now had so much Botox that I don't think I can do it anymore.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_02: But I would bust that out all the time and people would like freak out
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_02: because it is really, really uncanny.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uncanny, yeah.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it all began with the mannequin challenge.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_01: It all began with the mannequin challenge.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_01: Have you seen this new ad?
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: It actually played before the Odyssey.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's an ad for Crocs where these two mannequins...
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_01: Have crocs on and then they become human because the crocs like make them human.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: I thought of you because you've been talking about mannequin skin, I think, right?
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_03: No, that's the next phase of glass skin is mannequin skin where it's like
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_03: a little bit more matte, mattified, not as like shiny.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_03: But it's like,
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_03: can we can we come up with one beauty trend that's not named after like
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_03: an undead sort of thing, like an inanimate object?
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_03: I was thinking about that with Margot Robbie,
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_03: too, and like Wuthering Heights and Barbie in both.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_03: She is like this undead woman.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean,
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_02: the scene where Heathcliff goes and like tries to crawl into her grave is very,
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: which I think was cut from the movie.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it was.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's only in the book.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, it wasn't in the movie?
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's because Emerald Fennel has the salt burn scene.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, she couldn't do it twice.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_02: She already did it.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she'd already ripped it from herself.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_03: She's like, I can't make this my thing.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_03: Every Emerald Fennel movie has a grave getting fucked.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's her calling card.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_02: We should all be so lucky as to have a legacy like that.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well...
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_01: Should we talk about hair jewelry?
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because I feel like there's still something uncanny about this,
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: despite all the progression we've made in terms of like touching dead human matter.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, people are going to put fat in their faces, but would think this is gross.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I have a little story.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_03: I'm obsessed with hair jewelry.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_03: I used to work at Alexis Batar in my early 20s.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_03: And every Alexis Batar store has a vintage jewelry thing because Alexis is a huge collector.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_03: So we would get a lot of hair jewelry in.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I've been obsessed with it for so long.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_03: I'm always searching for a good hair piece that's not $1 million.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I...
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_03: Went to a haircut with my mother a couple weeks ago and I like took a big chunk
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_03: of her hair and I was like, I'm going to make this into a ring.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_03: And everyone I've told about it is like so disgusted and grossed out.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm like, I think this is so beautiful and fun.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's so sweet.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_02: I watched Mabel and I were just talking, we want to get one of our hair woven together.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_03: You absolutely should.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's so cool.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, most people have been like, ugh.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why it creeps people out, but I watched a good YouTube video about how to make one.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, please send it to me.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_01: It involved a lot of Elmer's glue.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: Great.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: So Queen Victoria loved hair jewelry and particularly of Albert's hair.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: That was another way that she kept him close to her, right?
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: Wearing a little bit of his hair with her forever.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it also is,
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_01: you know what it's reminding me of right now is actually like,
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: you know how most dust is actually dead skin?
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite facts.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like I work at a museum and during COVID when there was no people
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: in the museum, there was less dust because it's like the dust is just coming off of us.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: We're just shedding constantly.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_03: I think about that with like dead skin cells too.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_03: There was like a Benjamin quote in the notes that I can't recall now,
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_03: but it's just about how we're not paying attention to the dead or we want to get rid
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_03: of it as fast as possible.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I think about that with our dead skin cells all the time
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_03: because they're like enemy number one in skincare.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_03: And it's this layer of death that's literally coating your whole body.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_03: Like the outermost layer of your body is death.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_03: And we want to get rid of it.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_03: And it's actually like you need it.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_03: Your skin can't function without it.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_03: And though we're causing so many issues by not acknowledging
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_03: that death must be integrated into life in that way.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I remember when I was a kid,
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_02: there was a moment where you're like, everything you see is dead.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_02: That was such a schoolyard realization.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_02: Also,
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_02: the Benjamin thing is really interesting because that's actually from his His essay,
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_02: The Storytellers, which is about the loss of narrative in culture.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so he's talking about basically how because people remove death
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_02: from their sight, there's no longer this ending and therefore no moral.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's impossible at that point to...
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_02: Give life meaning, basically.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_02: So by removing all of this stuff from our site,
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_02: we're also sort of participating in what I think is one of the moral flaws
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: of our culture,
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_02: which is that people live so suspended in a present moment and their current desires
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_02: that there is not an awareness of narrative arc and progression in the sense
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_02: of wanting to better yourself beyond looking as good as possible right now.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that just makes me think Madeline,
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_01: you have something beautiful in the introduction to one or two,
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_01: where you talk about like,
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: you asked this question,
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: which has stayed with me since I read it in the first draft of your intro,
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: which is like, when we lose weight, what do we lose?
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I can't remember the science behind it,
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_01: but you talk about like, Like weight becomes air, right?
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's somehow when you lose weight,
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_02: the material is consumed, like it's burned through by the body.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_02: And basically you either like breathe it out or fart it out,
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_02: which I didn't put in the intro, but that is also less poetic.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_01: True.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_01: So we're breathing people's like weight farts,
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_01: even if we're like people were inhaling their exhaled fat.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also just thinking like in the impending apocalypse when everybody has like sort
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_01: of workshopped their natural biology,
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_01: some people are going to struggle when it's like,
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_01: oh, it's actually important that my eyelids like cover my eyes.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_01: like when people like bring back their eyelid or something,
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_01: it's like because it's,
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_01: when we're in this like desert Mad Max world, I'm going to want to be able to blink.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_03: Mm hmm.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_03: Mm hmm.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: And like,
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_01: maybe the clit talks will have some adverse effect during the
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_03: apocalypse.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_03: There is always a potential bargain of like,
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_03: I want to look this way, but it's going to affect my like functionality that way.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_03: And what is more important?
• 1:06:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, even just with like skincare products,
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_03: so many of the products that we put on our faces are like actually inhibiting
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_03: the healthy function of our skin, but it helps it look a certain way.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's worth it.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_02: Or like you can't go in the sun.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like you,
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_02: you see these women walking around in like beekeeper suits
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_02: because they're using retinol and sort of like to
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_03: what end?
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because you look insane still.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure you look really young under there, but
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_02: I can't see it.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, it is what it's for.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_01: In the first episode of the fantasy time travel show Outlander,
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_01: when the woman from the 40s or 30s is transported to Jacobean,
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_01: Scotland,
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_01: she is being undressed by the maids and they're like, what is wrong with your skin?
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have any pockmarks.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I always,
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_01: because I'm the person I am,
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_01: obviously,
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm also recording this in my childhood bedroom,
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_01: I used to spend a lot of time being like, okay,
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_01: so if I get time traveled back,
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to need to bring with me because I have bad eyes.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I'm going to need contacts.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to need like an unlimited supply of contacts.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to need tampons because I'm not going to bleed all over myself.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_01: But just like,
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really obsessed with this sort of like,
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_01: okay, if there's an apocalypse, I can't survive.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_01: And also if I get my wish, which is to go back in time, I'm not going to be able to survive.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm too weak.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_03: I'm too bougie now.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_03: I like seeing.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:08:08
  SPEAKER_03: Curse me.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_03: I kind of got us off track on the hair jewelry.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_03: I took us in a different direction, I feel.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_03: But there's probably more to say about it.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_03: Again, to reference our fave Margot Robbie,
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_03: she wore like a replica of like a hair bracelet to one of the premieres
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_03: of Wuthering Heights.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I was hoping that would set off more of a trend.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_03: But I don't know if it's catching on in that way.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_02: It was a replica of the Bronte.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I like...
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_02: Think people will,
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think that there is going to be a mass return to an interest in like,
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, again, I'm not originating this, but like people are craving contact.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_02: People are craving connection.
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_02: I think hair jewelry is a natural extension of that.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like, okay,
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_02: what if instead of texting and like,
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_02: your long distance boyfriend,
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_02: you made a beautiful ring with his hair in it and you wore it all the time?
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_02: What if?
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_03: I asked my fiance if I could make my wedding band with his hair
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_03: and he was very freaked out by it.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_03: No, thank you.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_02: Don't marry him.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think I'm going to have to
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_01: call it off.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_02: No, I'm sure he has other qualities.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_01: No, he's great in any other way.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_01: You should take his skin.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_01: Just scalp him.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just,
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also just, we haven't really talked about like the materiality of mourning yet.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_01: And like,
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_01: You wear your hair jewelry with your black crepe outfit and your black jet jewelry,
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_01: all of which is designed not to sparkle or reflect light.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_02: There's a point at which you're allowed to start sparkling again.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's designated.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_01: You put this in our notes, the official Victorian mourning periods, which I was cracking up.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_01: For a brother or sister, the longest period of mourning is six months.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_01: The shortest period, four months.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_01: During the longest period,
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_01: black should be worn for five months with a little white after two months.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Half mourning for one month.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_01: After one month, diamonds, pins, and brooches, etc.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Gold after two months.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_01: During the shortest period, black should be worn for two months.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Half mourning, two months.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it goes on and on for a great uncle,
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_01: for a first cousin, for a husband's relation, for a servant's mourning.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_01: It is customary to give servants mourning on the death of the head of the house.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_01: There are rules for everything.
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_01: And this period of time when you're not allowed to be human,
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_01: you have to be this place where all light dies.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's also like to the point of the secularization, I mean,
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_02: it's interesting because like the not sparkling or
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_02: the not reflecting like seems like an extension of maybe like covering the mirrors
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_02: in the house or like, you know, like.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_02: Sitting Shiva and like being like not being out for seven days and like kind of all
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_02: of these things that are long standing religious traditions for various reasons.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_02: But then it's turned into this like you can't wear your diamonds and you can't go to a ball.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's turned into kind of the social and consumer culture version
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_02: of protecting yourself from reflections because of spirits and like,
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_02: you know, all of these other things.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_03: Or like not adorning the self,
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_03: not drawing attention to the self in respect of whoever is passed on.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_03: But like paradoxically, it's just it calls so much attention.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Wearing this like big black dress and like jewelry is not not
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_01: getting anyone to not look at you.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that mourning worked?
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like, did it make people think more carefully about death and the meaning of life?
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I What?
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_02: You can't answer that question.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can't.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was also reading about grief talk this week.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_02: Have you read about this
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_01: or seen it?
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't seen it, but I read the New York Times article.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_02: There's a book out, right?
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_02: Or something.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody has a book about mourning out, like a grief memoir that has set off.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know enough about it, but.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's also just like people on TikTok who have gotten really famous
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_01: for talking about their experience of grieving a loved one and talking
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_01: about it constantly in the same format as an influencer,
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_01: like speaking to camera, video, being like, here I am.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I read about this woman who does like get ready with me,
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_01: but she's like, I'm thinking about my mom.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And like the just the I mean,
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_01: all of it to me,
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_01: it's like we don't have a good place still to put our feelings about death
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_01: and our questions about death.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so naturally it's like crawled back into our obsession with our appearance,
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_01: with our social media, like,
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_01: the overexposure to loss while still not being able
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_01: to answer these unanswerable questions about what happens to us after we're gone.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I watched a video the other day of a woman whose husband had passed away
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_03: and she was young, he was young.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_03: And she's like inconsolable,
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_03: like crying and putting on red lipstick and saying like he loved
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_03: when I wore red lipstick.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like putting this on to honor him.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_03: And it was just, yeah, a very macabre beauty tutorial.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because I'm like,
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_02: there's something about like the custom of,
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_02: like alerting people to the fact that you're in distress that like we don't do
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_02: that anymore.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so you like there is a cognitive dissonance if you're in mourning or even
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_02: if you're like going through something difficult that like you have
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_02: to present yourself to the world and they it's you know,
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_02: it's like your burden to bear yourself and there's no way to signal it.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_02: But then alternatively,
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_02: I think the kind of romanticization of like purchasing all of the goods with which
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_02: to signal your grief is like, that ain't right either.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean,
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_01: like we've been talking about how our current moment is surrounded by death and,
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_01: you know, we live in this post-COVID constant war time.
• 1:14:10
  SPEAKER_01: But also the 19th century was defined by a more quotidian type of death
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_01: where not only were people dying in these global conflicts of war,
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_01: but also your children had a very low chance of surviving to adulthood.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_01: You would have a bunch of them.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of them would die.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you got sick, you probably died.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone you know died young.
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_01: So when you read about these prescribed periods of mourning,
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_01: we're also talking about people who would leave one mourning and enter another.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the same thing with Victoria.
• 1:14:39
  SPEAKER_01: The devoted wife is actually a lifelong widow.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_03: In terms of today's beauty connection to death, I mean,
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_03: I haven't figured out exactly how this fits in,
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_03: but I am struck by the fact that we are getting so many more actual deaths
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_03: from beauty procedures being publicized.
• 1:15:02
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like this year,
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_03: more than any other year,
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_03: whether it's just because these treatments have become more democratized
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_03: or there's more...
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_03: Inexperienced doctors performing them or people are not super concerned about
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_03: the potential risks.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's almost like every other week there's
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_03: a new article that's like TikTok influencer dies following cosmetic surgery.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_03: There was someone who died after a BBL recently, a 27 year old.
• 1:15:27
  SPEAKER_03: Passed away because she was getting an NAD plus anti-aging injection at
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_03: an unlicensed clinic in New York.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_03: So there's an, oh,
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_03: someone,
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_03: an executive at Estee Lauder passed away a couple months ago from
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_03: a pulmonary embolism from getting filler in his face.
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, wow.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like the potential of death through beauty and from beauty is,
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_03: I think, more visible than ever before.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it's, yeah, it's very...
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's just very interesting to me that it's coinciding with this cultural moment
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_03: of aestheticizing death and sort of making light of it and turning it into like
• 1:16:05
  SPEAKER_03: an aesthetic product for beauty products.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, speaking, I always think about Donda West.
• 1:16:11
  SPEAKER_02: I was just thinking about Donda.
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_02: And like the sort of Kardashian plastic surgery industrial complex that has emerged.
• 1:16:18
  SPEAKER_02: But Donda is such a like,
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_02: like was such a kind of like Christ figure in the sort of the period
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_02: when Kim was becoming more culturally acceptable because of Kanye.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's just like a fascinating,
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_02: like through Donda's death, Kim was born as this like plastic surgery character.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_03: There's a really interesting passage about that in this new book
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_03: by MJ Corey called Deconstructing the Kardashians.
• 1:16:46
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know if either of you have read it yet,
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_02: but it's really good.
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_03: And she has this whole section on plastic surgery as sort of like a death
• 1:16:53
  SPEAKER_03: and rebirth narrative.
• 1:16:55
  SPEAKER_03: Like you literally like go to sleep, you go under and you're reborn, transformed.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's pretty great.
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, speaking of the Kardashians,
• 1:17:05
  SPEAKER_01: I did just want to acknowledge your work on the Kardashian-Jenner apps.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank you.
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_01: To acknowledge that I did subscribe to the Kylie app.
• 1:17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Just so you know, so I appreciate your work.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh, I'm shocked.
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's incredible.
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you meet that many people who subscribe, but yeah, I was one of them.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't really met anyone, so.
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_02: All right, everyone will
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_01: admit it.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Maple's the only one who's willing to open up and admit to the public.
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_01: I also own the entire season one, one only season of The Life of Kylie on iTunes still.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you guys want to watch that with me anytime.
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_03: Anytime.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_01: So just thank you for your work on that.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I appreciate it.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely huge.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is there any other death beauty thing we simply must acknowledge?
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, gosh.
• 1:17:55
  SPEAKER_02: There's always more.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_03: There's always more.
• 1:17:59
  SPEAKER_03: This is something that I'm tracking.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_03: I'll do a little plug for the newsletter,
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_03: but I'm always I'm on an aesthetic death watch on the newsletter.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_03: So at least once a month,
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_03: I do a roundup of all more gays related news because it's very important to me.
• 1:18:12
  SPEAKER_03: So if there's anything new, you'll know about it.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that.
• 1:18:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you also have Flush World.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've been enjoying
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_03: a lot.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_03: Flush.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_03: Flush World is tracking all of the like butthole beauty products that have emerged
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_03: in the past two years or so.
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_03: You said something before, Madeline.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, about fat becoming farts that I need to use.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_03: I need to use a Flush World update.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_02: Let the people know all that is epic.
• 1:18:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's just it's coming out farts.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_02: You can't beat them, fart them.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Jessica, thank you so much for doing this with us.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_01: I leave very haunted.
• 1:18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Not well, but I'm really glad we did it.
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Same thing.
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Me too.
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Literally, thank you so much.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_01: And people can find you on Substack.
• 1:19:05
  SPEAKER_03: People can find me on Substack, Fleshworld, The Guardian, My Combs Ask Ugly.
• 1:19:10
  SPEAKER_03: And that's it.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_01: You're doing God's work.
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_01: You really are.
• 1:19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hello?
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_00: You've reached 1-800-1800.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_00: 1-800-1800.
• 1:19:20
  SPEAKER_00: I have a burning question.
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_00: 1-800-1800.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_00: 1-800-1800.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_00: I have a burning question.