[SPEAKER_00]: This is old news.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Lena Dunham came out with a new show.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, people have been waiting.

[SPEAKER_00]: They've been into the patient.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's having her Renaissance.

[SPEAKER_00]: People are like, we're so sorry.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not everyone is like, we're so sorry, Lena Dunham.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you see one of her interviews make it to like the wrong part of the internet, you're like, oh no, people are still really horrible about Lena Dunham.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for the most part of the people who matter like her.

[SPEAKER_00]: have been anticipating.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've been anticipating, so the show is called too much, but while you're probably heard of it, and the star is Meg's stulter of hacks, a comedian, and it's hard for me to say it's on the level of girls by any means.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do think that it's like lacking Lena Dunham.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I do think Lena Dunham on top of being an amazing writer is a really great actress for these specific types of roles, and [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard not to have her in there.

[SPEAKER_00]: She just has this kind of naturalism.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she knows how to recite her dialogue in like the exact right way that sometimes I can hear my culture doing it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it kind of sounds like a leaning down an impression of the way she like recites the lines.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not her fault.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think she's still doing it great job.

[SPEAKER_00]: But no, I've been looking at so far.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, that's so interesting because I've only seen the first episode.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've watched it at some friends here.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we were all kind of iffy about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think for me because [SPEAKER_01]: You can hear the voice, like the girl's voice, but it does feel like it's not.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, I think that the genius of girls, or like the strength of it, comes from how ingrained its actors and like creators and everyone were in the world that it was reproducing and commenting on, that it felt like there was so much truth in there that it hit in a much more immediate way.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was the old to them, yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, whereas I've only seen an episode, so I'm probably speaking to you soon, but I think I found that, like, with too much, it wasn't quite doing that for me yet.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think like the pilot of girls is just so hard to compete with.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's such an insane standard to try and live up to.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe, but [SPEAKER_01]: I think you're right.

[SPEAKER_01]: I really enjoy make stulter as a character actress.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think she's great on hacks.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think she's really funny.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's a beautiful speaking voice.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's like a sexy voice.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, she does.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like I watched her videos and like I've watched her interviews and like she cracks me up, but I think that [SPEAKER_01]: in order to like be grounded in the way where like girls are like this is ridiculous but it still has like this emotional resonance I kind of wonder if she necessarily is that kind of performer but again this is based off of one episode so like I could be jumping the gun [SPEAKER_00]: I don't fully disagree.

[SPEAKER_00]: A bunch of my friends were also feeling that she is kind of like overacting.

[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't been that put off by her acting, but I do think there are some scenes that you're like, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: She just feels a bit incongruous with the rest of the cast maybe sometimes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also, I didn't realize that the show is like very much about Lena Dunham's life and her breakup with Jack Anson off and holy fuck she's taking swings.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I won't reveal anything, but you're like, whoa, okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like she's pissed.

[SPEAKER_00]: She wrote it like whether her husband apparently and it's about like how they met.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the characterizations of the Jack Antonylph, Surya character is like pretty crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, maybe really is like that in real life, but I was like, whoa.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I'm excited for that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm also like, I'm, I mean, I'm excited to kind of see this story as someone who also fucking off to London.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think you'll specifically like it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder what you'll think about and British people in general, just to lump you in with the bread, but what they'll think about her characterization of England, because like, [SPEAKER_00]: Part of why I like girls is because I really like consuming media about New York, especially now that I live in New York.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, oh, I can, you know, I can really relate to it.

[SPEAKER_00]: All the books I've been reading recently for some reason are all taking place in New York even if I don't intend them to.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's very strange.

[SPEAKER_00]: I guess I'm all that crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everything takes place here, but [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like it being an England kind of loses me a bit because like part of the draw of British shows for me and like show set in London are the British humor and like the specific way the systems of that and like the pervenous of it whatever whatever that I feel like Lena Dunham doesn't lack weight at all or pervenous but I feel like I don't know maybe there's like a dissonance but like I'm not saying it's inaccurate I'm not in British there's just something like I would almost just rather her be a New York almost but maybe you would like it and you would feel some truth there [SPEAKER_01]: What struck me?

[SPEAKER_01]: At first was just that when she gets to East London [SPEAKER_01]: her reaction to it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I understand it's a sort of like you know her romanticized version of England being challenged immediately by like being in East London but also East London reminds me a lot of New York and and she kind of reacts to it in this way where she's like shocked by like the grittiness of certain things where I'm like are you not coming from New York City like I don't really see how like there's a parallel between those [SPEAKER_01]: two places that I find strange that like the show kind of ignores or it feels like it's not acknowledging when she gets there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that except that her the way that they depict her in New York is also confusing to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I usually hate when people are like, oh, this shows unrealistic because [SPEAKER_00]: It shows these characters who don't make them much money living in these crazy apartments, but like people we use that argument about friends and it's like so clear in friends that she inherited that from her grandmother and that it's rent stabilized and then like Joey and Chandler's apartment is like disgusting and in sex in the city it's like hey this is the nineties and it's also like a studio alcove it's not like it's some massive apartment that Carrie lives in and she clearly acquired it and like the very early nineties as well like I don't know, it's just people being so just willfully [SPEAKER_00]: blind towards the way that price has changed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And also who cares?

[SPEAKER_00]: But with this, I was a little bit like, what?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because they live in a garden apartment, which is like the apartments that are kind of at the foot of like a brownstone.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they're like a first floor apartment.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a bit like a sub-basement in Toronto, except, I mean, obviously kind of a bit nicer.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the show ensinuates that they live in Dumbo, and I could be wrong, but I'm like, this is her and her boyfriend in New York, like her ex-boyfriend.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's supposed to be like a struggling music journalist [SPEAKER_00]: And she's like, she's not a PA.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think she's like a production coordinator, but I am like, okay, I'm struggling to understand how you afford the department.

[SPEAKER_00]: When I feel like Lena Dunham's whole thing is talking about how difficult it is to live in New York.

[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe it is supposed to be aspirational in that like Emily and Paris sex in the city way a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why, you know, she wears those like weird blazer outfits.

[SPEAKER_00]: She also wears this like kind of fancy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she wears fancy clothing a lot.

[SPEAKER_01]: She wears this suit when she like gets off the plane.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, oh, she's wearing a blazer right now.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then she kind of suggests that she has to wear that for a work and I'm like, what?

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I know a lot of people who do that job and that is not what you're wearing.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't care.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying this because it's like this as a knock against the show.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is just genuine confusion.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like very curious to see where it goes because I've heard really great things, but I wasn't.

[SPEAKER_01]: Again, it's like, I feel like you watched the first episode of Girls and you have such a good idea of this world, who these people are.

[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't feel like overly expositionally.

[SPEAKER_01]: It just feels like you've been calm sat down in the middle of this.

[SPEAKER_01]: social circle and this is a different kind of story and like it's not fair to just compare it to girls but it it I didn't feel gripped in the same way I guess immediately but that doesn't I'm not gonna write it off.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'll have growing pains.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've been enjoying it so far.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are some extreme Lena Donomisms like they'll have [SPEAKER_00]: drug, party, slow motion, silly dance, I like that kind of stuff that you're like, oh, she's back on her bullshit, but now I like it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also just want to best for her, so I'm like, yeah, did you see that she identifies as this show?

[SPEAKER_00]: I did see that.

[SPEAKER_00]: She went on the HBO Girls Overwatch podcast, and she said that she identifies as a show.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then she describes things as like, show she, and I was like, okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, that feels like a convenient narrative Lena Dunham, but that's also cute.

[SPEAKER_00]: I too would love to be a show.

[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, I'm a mernie.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think Barney is being reclaimed.

[SPEAKER_01]: Alice and Williams is having this sort of resurgence and she's going around and people are revisiting and re-appraising.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am unfortunately a Hannah, which is like the worst one to be.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are a Hannah, that is not okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: As a morning, I absolutely hate Jessa.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hate Jessa with a passion.

[SPEAKER_00]: I actually find her hard to watch.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I feel the inclination to skip her scenes.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hate that character so much.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I hate her.

[SPEAKER_00]: She reminds me of girls I went to school with.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like the eccentric social light, like completely socially oblivious or just like downright awful.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I hate that character.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can all relate to her.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do not feel bad for her.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, I think she's the worst character you can be.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hannah's that everyone, Hannah's like, Carrie, everyone's Hannah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but like, I called my mom out for this recently.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, you've told me to my face multiple times that like, she reminded you so much of me.

[SPEAKER_01]: And my mom was like, I said that, like, I'm so sorry.

[SPEAKER_00]: Probably as a parent, she was like, yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is also teenage me probably my most self-absorbed, like, you know, iteration of myself, but yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, this is really painful and cruel of you, mother.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are all hand-as, it's okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so that everyone ever.

[SPEAKER_00]: And speaking of which, I'm hand-as, and I'm my year.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is a rehash, a podcast about the internet phenomena that strike a nerve in our culture, only to be quickly forgotten, but we think are due for airy visiting.

[SPEAKER_01]: This season is about beauty on the internet.

[SPEAKER_01]: Social media may have snatched our faces, but has it also snatched our souls.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you like our show and want to hear more from us, you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com slash rehash podcast.

[SPEAKER_01]: where we have monthly bonus episodes, weekly mini episodes, and early access to a regular programming.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't want to join the Patreon, you can feel free to rate and reveal us on Spotify and Apple podcasts, because that helps us out a lot.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that's just jump right in.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maya, would you like to explain to listeners what face tune is?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like the app.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's an app I have.

[SPEAKER_00]: I bought it in twenty seventeen I want to say.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was ashamed.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was my Christmas present to myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like three dollars.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't do anything crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not like restructuring my whole face, but if I have like one pimple in a photo, I'm like, well, this pimple does not define me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to take this picture out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I completely acknowledge that that is being insecure and that it goes against a lot of my values.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we are all fallible creatures, you know, like, what can I say?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's an app where in...

[SPEAKER_00]: You're able to kind of like soft Photoshop yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like extremely user-friendly Photoshop.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's like specifically designed for selfies and like pictures of the face, essentially, and pictures of your body.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it has like a restructuring function where you can like actually take the image and like warp it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It has like a smoothing function.

[SPEAKER_00]: It has a teeth whitening function which I abused back in twenty seventeen and it looked really bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is a function where you can like enhance the details of your face, which just kind of like makes your face look crunchy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like you sharpen the image basically.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's like a sharpening feature basically where I would use it on my eyelashes back in the twenty seventeen.

[SPEAKER_00]: It looked bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was that was the era where it was like, oh, putting like a dot of highlighter on the end of your nose.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like the worst fucking era for everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I remember I went to Paris.

[SPEAKER_00]: I like visited my friend and he called me strobe face and I was like, you're not wrong.

[SPEAKER_01]: No.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did not blend my highlighter properly.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was like a big, just like shiny dot on my nose, and that shit looked bad in person, and I hope that we have come to a time where we can acknowledge that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yes, uh...

Facetune kind of dominated popular culture for like the mid to late twenty-tenths.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everywhere people obviously, I think, still use it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it got to the point where you could really tell if someone was using Facetune.

[SPEAKER_00]: But to the extent that women could tell, and I think a lot of men could it, and still can't.

[SPEAKER_01]: and that really kind of shocks me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Not shocks me, it doesn't shock me at all, but it fascinates me, I would say, like this sort of inability to decipher when something has been heavily airbrushed or edited.

[SPEAKER_01]: Concerning, I think I've had you take out pimples of mine on face-toon with your face-toon.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel really bad about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think Hannah's pretty beautiful and everyone should see them and I should see them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just feel bad being the one to do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: When you do it, unto others, it doesn't feel good.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like you're like, I'm taking away my friend's beautiful face.

[SPEAKER_01]: She certainly, like you had my consent and even my wishes to face to my face.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I would say, I forgive you.

[SPEAKER_01]: This feels like therapy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but yeah, like you said, facetuned is a photo editing app.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was a big design for like editing and like beautifying photos out of people like portraits.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was created in, in, two thousand and thirteen and within two years of its launch, it had already made about eighteen million dollars by twenty seventeen when you downloaded it.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was Apple's most popular paid app.

[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't realize, but I guess that makes a lot of sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: What I'm trying to think of like what other app you would pay for that be useful?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I'm New York Times cooking up, I guess.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like what's more useful than FaceTune?

[SPEAKER_01]: That subscription base.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like I think like single pay for apps have also just kind of depopularized over the years.

[SPEAKER_01]: I wonder why.

[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, so obviously like FaceTune though it was like newer in its form as a photo editing app.

[SPEAKER_01]: the concept of, you know, essentially jossifying your image was nothing new by the time it came around.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think for as long as we've been able to render human beings into image form, we've found ways to like make them look better.

[SPEAKER_01]: portrait painters probably edited or not edited.

[SPEAKER_01]: They probably painted their subjects features to look a bit more appealing.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then like photo editors in the pre-digital age wouldn't apply all these different dark room tricks too.

[SPEAKER_01]: retouch their photos like they'd literally airbrush things so then like with the advent of digital photography we got stuff like Adobe Photoshop which opened up like this whole new world of possibilities for people who wanted to edit photos but obviously Photoshop itself [SPEAKER_01]: was something you had to learn to use and especially like earlier on in the computer age.

[SPEAKER_01]: We wasn't something that like most people would be using or like have that kind of access to or literacy with.

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you saying it was not democratized?

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you saying it was gatecapped?

[SPEAKER_00]: I just might be.

[SPEAKER_01]: But with Photoshop, even though obviously people have been editing photos, for as long as there have been images in photo and fashion magazines, Photoshop brought in like a whole new sort of range of things that you could do to an image.

[SPEAKER_01]: And as people were like learning that skill, you can kind of see like throughout the years the trial and error of photo manipulation and like [SPEAKER_01]: editors and photographers seeing what they could get away with with editing.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you remember like any particular instances of a grieges Photoshop, but I'm gonna send you two.

[SPEAKER_01]: The first one is an image of Kate Winslet.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's from two thousand and two.

[SPEAKER_01]: She'd been Photoshopped to look thinner, but whoever edited it forgot to Photoshop her mirror reflection, because in the photo she's like facing a mirror.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she's so sexy in the mirror is the funniest part.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's also just like not what Kate Winslet looks like in two thousand and two.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, she's known for being curvy.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: So that was for GQ.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then the second is a Ralph Lauren ad that like immediately got flack because they had edited the model.

[SPEAKER_01]: This Brooke Shields.

[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's um, I don't know the model's name, but it does look kind of look book shield.

[SPEAKER_01]: But she basically has the proportions of a Disney princess, like the longest and narrowest waist.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even think that that's like biologically like possible for her body to look like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm sure there's someone out there, but it's like extremely rare.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, she looks like a like a wink stall.

[SPEAKER_01]: And like they capture shoulders kind of proportional to, [SPEAKER_01]: Like it's just like very obvious.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a bad way back.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I think a lot of like these kinds of instances definitely from the beginning have kept people like very dubious, very skeptical about Photoshop.

[SPEAKER_01]: And obviously like from its inception there's been a lot of concerns about like how instances like this would impact young women specifically consuming the media that this was included in.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like all we talked about in media class.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I was just about to ask you about.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have such vivid memories of having teachers be like, look at this image.

[SPEAKER_01]: Now, just look like a regular woman to you.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it looks different about this image and then like kind of pointing to all the places where it's like been retouched or like videos where it shows you before and after and all of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was, yeah, it was like earlier times that media literacy, except it was just the same subject every year to the point that like by the last year, but I was like, okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like they could have taught media literacy from a wide array of angles that would have probably benefited a lot of students, reading newspaper headlines, etc.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it was definitely helpful and it also feels like only girls had to do this pretty obviously because all the men we know were absolutely fucking idiotic when it comes to being able to detect any of this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like we said earlier, I just feel like from a young age, I think I had it ingrained in me to be dubious about all these types of images and to just assume that photo editing and manipulation was just a standard step in the art of like editorial images.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so, or commercial images as well, so it does kind of bother my mind that this seems to be kind of a one-sided education like you said.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then yeah, I think that also there's just like so many stories and instances like the ones I've shown you throughout the years that it kind of also feels like maybe we had that discussion so often that it just sort of became less shocking over time and I think [SPEAKER_00]: the idea of photo manipulation just became like so ubiquitous that I don't know it like also stop becoming a thing that like upset me because I feel like it just became that normalized and when school teaches it to you you're just gonna I roll even if you know it's true and even if it actually supposedly bothers you if you're like dare you know what I mean like it's like don't talk to me but you know [SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know it's bad, but you're kind of like, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're just fatigued by it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, if your school teacher's yelling at you about it, you're like, well, okay.

[SPEAKER_01]: And like, I like these glossy fashion magazines, you know, whatever.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it becomes like uncleal.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, definitely it just feels like redundant.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and redundant, especially if they're teaching it to you every year without any like evolution in the education.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, TDSB.

[SPEAKER_01]: So then we had like this kind of groundwork set for the idea of like Photoshop and photo manipulation.

[SPEAKER_01]: We've been aware of it for ages.

[SPEAKER_01]: When phase two comes around then in twenty thirteen, becoming just basically like the most contemporary addition of this, why do we think that it blew up in such a massive way?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think that Photoshop is hard.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I outsource that labor to Hannah with, you know, every thumbnail I do, Hannah is now running the social media.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you guys have seen the older posts on our social media, but they don't look good.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not good at Photoshop, Hannah's much better at it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh stop it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Graphic design is sort of passion.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, like it's hard, where it's like for lay people such as myself, face tune is so easy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like the user experience is so good.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's so easy to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like that patch function where you just like you just literally put a different piece of skin over top of the pimple.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like that sounds so disgusting.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's so easy.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like it's intuitive in a way that Photoshop isn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's literally ero learning curve really.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I would see that like having that like a little pocket app that costs like three dollars just flat is so convenient.

[SPEAKER_00]: I ate it up right away.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was like perfect.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I also experimented with like making myself look really bad as well because I thought that was fun.

[SPEAKER_01]: No exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: hit the nail on the head.

[SPEAKER_01]: Rebecca Jennings wrote an article for Vox in twenty nineteen on face tune and that's going to be like a source that I used throughout the episode, but she attributes face tunes popularity to its simplicity as well, which yeah, makes a lot of sense.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think Photoshop, I'm still learning new things on Photoshop every time I use it because I didn't take classes or whatever and there are so many things that have no obvious labels or buttons or function.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's not user friendly, it's expensive, it's not something.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've never edited a personal photo on Photoshop to be like put up on social media either.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like the other alternative that was free when we were growing up was pixie mash.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you ever used that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it was not like that is.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was like where I would make the rest of the background black and white, but then myself like in color.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that kind of, or like make one, like my shirt is in color.

[SPEAKER_00]: I did that with picnic.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, sorry, and also picnic.

[SPEAKER_00]: I used pixie match, but uh, picnic was the more popular one.

[SPEAKER_00]: But no, if you wanted something more sophisticated than like to actually photo show something, yeah, the learning curve is crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the kind of thing, like, you know, teaching myself how to edit on like Premiere Pro, for example, having to look up like a YouTube tutorial for every little small task I want to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then you kind of accumulate those skills.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then you have the basic skills, but I still don't have like the art of editing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like you know, I mean like my editing skills are still pretty rudimentary.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I know how to use the most basic aspects of Premiere, but it's not intuitive to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have like a crazy workflow on there that's like the same as the guys I know who are actual editors.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I, the same can be said for Photoshop.

[SPEAKER_01]: yeah well i think like ultimately like these are professional tools which is why like they're expensive and they aren't intuitive and they're often like taught through courses and classes because like they're not actually meant for the everyday person which is fine yeah well that's the thing is that face to sort of [SPEAKER_01]: then took those things and made them for the everyday person.

[SPEAKER_01]: But took the things that they knew that everyday person would want.

[SPEAKER_01]: But also, like, why do we think there would be this increased demand for photo editing technology for the everyday person that, like, face to and provides?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, why do we suddenly want it?

[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, Hannah, that's a really interesting question.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think you've seen it, you have it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's a thinker.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it would be the rise of visual [SPEAKER_00]: social media platforms, photo sharing platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're right.

[SPEAKER_01]: My space, but my space is pretty, and even like honestly Facebook.

[SPEAKER_00]: Wait wait, listen up.

[SPEAKER_00]: The other thing is that, you know, my space, you know, thinking about this with my space, you're thinking about this is like early Facebook albums.

[SPEAKER_00]: The camera quality was shit back then.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was delightfully garbage.

[SPEAKER_00]: pixelated as fuck and like the style of editing was much more exaggerated.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like you could put filters over your photos and no one would love it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas like this was kind of the introduction of the era of much higher quality iPhone cameras much more paired down editing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm not putting my freaking Kelvin filter on my photos anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not putting my white border up anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like this is this is this is the real deal.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not little kid stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're also just like seeing and being seen at like an unprecedented scale like even more than Facebook because like Instagram [SPEAKER_01]: has just opened up this world of possibilities for like we're being seen by strangers, we're being seen by like whole networks of people and like we're being represented by images.

[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah Facebook give your profile picture maybe that's like the most important part of like the pictorial curation of your page, but like obviously Instagram is a whole other game.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it does I think also just increase like a demand for aesthetically pleasing photos obviously.

[SPEAKER_01]: So photo editing was once reserved for celebrities and models because...

[SPEAKER_01]: Photoshop itself as like a program and like as a skill was something that you had to learn.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was like there was a gate keeping aspect to it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so it was mostly used by people who were being photographed professionally for the most part, at least like in the sense of like for vanity purposes.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, regular people, there are photos weren't really being seen by people outside of our immediate circles.

[SPEAKER_01]: So then as that's changed and like as how we present ourselves online is like you know more important than ever and maybe like even more important than as we appear in person a lot of the times these days it just makes sense that there would be more of an incentive [SPEAKER_01]: But still like, just as there was this sort of strong cultural backlash against Photoshop, when we started becoming more cognizant of it, the popularity of Phase II didn't really shield its users from back last either.

[SPEAKER_01]: Are you familiar with a little Instagram account called So Let's Face?

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh, am I?

[SPEAKER_00]: I love that joke.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I got it when um, I mean, it's probably still like this, but you had to request to join.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, me too, back in the day.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, which is always like, oh my god, it's just exposing your own ass.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like, you're like, oh no.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I really do want to see this.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how I even came across it, but it's like same with DuMois.

[SPEAKER_01]: I like requested to follow DuMois the day when it was like private.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you're powerful when you're like a really popular and like growing in popularity, private account.

[SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, I love slut face.

[SPEAKER_00]: If I was a celebrity, but I would hate slut face, but [SPEAKER_01]: So for people who don't know so loveface, it's not clear that it hasn't posted in over a year.

[SPEAKER_01]: So like I would say, it was, it doesn't seem very active right now.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it was an Instagram account dedicated to exposing public figures who edited their Instagram photos or had like undergone cosmetic procedures.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was started in twenty fifteen by a young woman named Anna.

[SPEAKER_01]: and the accounts bio reads, welcome to reality, if you don't want to see the truth leave this page, which got a love with the dramatic of that, truth hurts babe.

[SPEAKER_01]: And basically they would post things like, [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you've Kylie Jenner went to an event and she posted like a photo of herself and had it all edited.

[SPEAKER_01]: So love face might find a different photo of her from that same event, post it in like a slide show form thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: So you'd see the photo that Kylie posted, you'd slide it and you'd see what she actually looks like at the event.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it would be like they'd be really good at finding the exact same angle of photo to show you and like they'd really oom in.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was rude, it was rude.

[SPEAKER_00]: poor galore.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or like they [SPEAKER_01]: post things to just like point out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I post videos of people like they'd be like, here's this person edited up and then here's them like actually moving in this space which also felt the other thing they do is post and there was something you could use like some sort of app that would allow you to actually like Photoshop a video of yourself but it was always really glitchy so like someone's but with like expand and then like deflate within the same video and they would post [SPEAKER_00]: that as well and kind of like oom in on where the video was falsified I guess.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, they do that and then they'd also do something where they post like, let's say four images making up a square and each image would be like this celebrity over the years so you could see how their face had changed over the course.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like I feel like they did that to Duff Cameron all the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you would, they'd show someone so you could see the progression of their plastic surgery, basically.

[SPEAKER_00]: There were a few favorites for sure, dove Cameron.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was a girl who actually went to our high school who we haven't had some technology.

[SPEAKER_01]: Musically girl?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we didn't know her.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was much younger than us, but like, she would always end up on there.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's like a famous tech chakra.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember that.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so to this day, like Slutface still has over a million followers on Instagram, and it's been praised by a variety of outlets for exposing the many discrepancies between social media and reality.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you're saying like, I definitely enjoyed partaking it at back in the day.

[SPEAKER_00]: The little rad brain in me is like, let's see this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's see this.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's satisfying.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so looking up to that face in that era, you do start to notice certain trends in the ways that celebrities have edited or altered their appearances.

[SPEAKER_01]: Can you think of any of the specific editing trends that were prominent at the time?

[SPEAKER_01]: are like the looks that people were creating on face-toons?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it would be like heavily blurred skin.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's like a smooth feature on face-toons and then there's the double smooth feature and all I got to tell you is don't use double smooth because double smooth does not a human make it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It makes something else.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maryam Cosby abuses that double smooth.

[SPEAKER_01]: Maryam Cosby of the real housewives of Salt Lake City, of course.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well yeah, older women would take it on like kind of shittier phone cameras somehow.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how Maryam calls me as bad ones, but like they'll take it on kind of like bad quality or maybe with bad quality lighting and then apply the smooth filter and they'll have this like weird amorphous face with like really highly defined eyes.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's very frightening.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: The defined eyes is the scariest part.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: They'd be like, because they'd put the sharpening feature, the details feature on the eyes.

[SPEAKER_00]: They would take the like structure feature and they would kind of give themselves like much smaller chance.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is the most revealing of someone's dysmorphia.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it kind of externalizes that dysmorphia and like puts an image to it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, this is what this person would like to see themselves looking like in their head.

[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes it's like shocking.

[SPEAKER_00]: What someone thinks looks good.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, they would like shave down the chin to this tiny little point.

[SPEAKER_00]: They would like make the nose smaller.

[SPEAKER_00]: They would enhance the boobs a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: They would snatch the waist.

[SPEAKER_00]: They would enhance the butt.

[SPEAKER_00]: That kind of thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: They would really whiten the teeth, which was always a dead giveaway.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think they would mostly be that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then obviously like expanding the lips a bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the features that allow you to work it are not [SPEAKER_00]: Good, like if you warp your mouth, let's say it'll shrink your nose because it's an image, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you were to pull up on your mouth like the upper lip, your nose and your like everything above that basically gets smushed and then you have to reorient that too and you just end up looking less than human.

[SPEAKER_01]: and also like if you're not like a master at this something is going to be kind of like pushed out of line and you're going to miss it and I think so many people felt victims of that where they were like in the process of trying to tweak another thing made something else look really weird usually it'd be like a floor board like you know it would be kind of like the more set less fleshy things behind you like a door frame that would get curved in the process [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Or just like sometimes something on the face, just be a little like squiggly, it's suppose.

[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, there was also like, I think a big trend of sort of like enlarging the eyes, making them slightly upturned.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you mean the lateral camphold tilt or whatever?

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like the fox eye.

[SPEAKER_00]: A positive camphold tilt or whatever.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then, especially like on the face, like all of these features came to be known as making up Instagram face.

[SPEAKER_01]: So another major source for this episode was Jia Tolantino's, two thousand and nineteen essay, The Age of Instagram Face, which I'm sure many of the people listening have read.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's been about a really great resource for this episode.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm going to use Tolantino's description of Instagram Face from the piece.

[SPEAKER_01]: She says, it's a young face, of course, with poorless skin and plump high cheekbones.

[SPEAKER_01]: It has cat-like eyes and long cartoonish lashes.

[SPEAKER_01]: It has a small meat nose and full lush lips.

[SPEAKER_01]: It looks at you quietly, but blankly, as if its owner has taken half a clonopin and is considering asking you for a private jet ride to Kushella.

[SPEAKER_01]: The face is distinctly white, but in big, usually ethnic.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just a national geographic composite illustrating what Americans will look like in twenty-fifty.

[SPEAKER_01]: If every American of the future were to be a direct descendant of Kim Kardashian West, Bella Hadid, Emily Radikowski and Kendall Jenner, who looks exactly like Emily Radikowski.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, my friend calls it no face.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a face that you know is pretty because it I've here's to the beauty standards, but like nothing about the face within me like registers as attractive.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like it can be pretty, but it's not attractive because it's like [SPEAKER_00]: So vague like it's a face that you could not you would like if one of these girly's okay, let's say committed arts in upon you You saw her running away, but you didn't get a good They were like they lined a bunch of them out.

[SPEAKER_00]: They lined up these like Kendall Jenner derivatives [SPEAKER_00]: You would not be able to pick her out of a lineup.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was a really long way of saying you would not be able to pick her out of a lineup.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if she robbed your store that you were you sell activated charcoal soap.

[SPEAKER_00]: If she robbed your store, she's a clutch of maniac.

[SPEAKER_00]: You would not be able to pick her out of a lineup.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, you'd be like detective.

[SPEAKER_01]: She had a long dark hair.

[SPEAKER_00]: High cheekbones.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, scary little button nose and like undefined large poofy lips.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, it's no face for sure.

[SPEAKER_01]: No face is very funny.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's almost like someone has so many features that like your brain reads as attractive at once, that like none of them stand out in a way that doesn't register.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like the symmetry is too symmetrical.

[SPEAKER_01]: My mom, I'm really calling her out in this episode.

[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, we're a dear drum.

[SPEAKER_01]: My mom said, I also, that my face is asymmetrical.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a Hannah, I've had asymmetrical face and now I've just very cognizant of that.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have a really great mom, just so.

[SPEAKER_00]: Your mom is amazing.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's sexy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think when someone has [SPEAKER_00]: I just firmly believe that attraction and beauty are not necessarily the same thing or like whatever beauties and I have the beholder.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like I think attraction is so important and like gets lost in a lot of these beauty standard conversations.

[SPEAKER_00]: Something that drives me crazy that I think is so hot is when someone has like a mild over bite and like two front teeth are longer than the rest of their teeth.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that is so hot and beautiful in sexy and like that is not considered a beauty standard, you know what I mean.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think about the growth in the white lotus who like get so much fuck for her teeth.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think her teeth look cool, personally.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like if what I do find someone really good looking, it's because like one thing really stands out a lot of the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: and so I think my brain doesn't get the dopamine fix from just seeing like a very pretty face and like well that's not really doing like that doesn't really trigger anything in me because I'm like when you look at a beautiful bouquet of flowers I'm like okay that's nice I don't know so my other other than photo editing what other technology became cheaper and more widely used in the mid-twenty times [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, going back to our baby Botox episode, I would venture to say that maybe injectables?

[SPEAKER_00]: Filler?

[SPEAKER_00]: Got really popular around this time?

[SPEAKER_00]: That would be correct.

[SPEAKER_01]: Would you say that plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures have become less taboo since our childhood?

[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that when we were growing up, plastic surgery kind of belongs to older women, older female celebrities, typically.

[SPEAKER_00]: It belonged to like the Joan Collins type, you know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like the older women who still had like eighties haircuts and they wore like big blazers and they had like they were kind of botched or it belonged to kind of like what our culture of the two thousands would call bimbos, derogatory, such as Pamela Anderson, et cetera.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was heavily stigmatized mainly because it kind of looked bad also.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was misogyny probably a play but like it also looked bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was conspicuous.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was also like reserved for the wealthy and vain essentially who are like very easy people to demonize in the culture like they're very easy people to kind of point and laugh at when something doesn't look great and when it is conspicuous which yeah for the longest time like [SPEAKER_01]: what you were seeing were these celebrities that we already kind of regard as like superficial then doubling down on that in a way that sometimes or often comes back to bite them so definitely definitely more taboo I think it was like kind of an instant way to make fun of someone like if you were doing like a sketch show or something like you could put on like some prosthetic plastic surgery and like that would be a joke in and of itself [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas, like, as we discovered in our baby boat talks episode, the more that these things should be marketed towards younger demographics, the more it became like an every person thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like you can't really stigmatize something that everyone's doing.

[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was overheard like a bunch of girls the other day talking about their boat talks, and I was like, surely these girls are twenty-three.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought it was like so fascinating, but it's just like that normal, like they were like talking about it over drinks.

[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, no, back then, it cost time of money.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was mostly invasive procedures that people would be getting.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lisa Ren is lips.

[SPEAKER_01]: That didn't come from filler the way that we know it.

[SPEAKER_01]: She got those back in the like the eighties or nineties in pretty sure.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like those lips, there's something else going on with those.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then, like, as we discussed with the BBL episode, [SPEAKER_01]: It was more dangerous and there was like a much longer healing time associated with these more invasive surgeries.

[SPEAKER_01]: It wouldn't be something you'd like casually consider the way nowadays since like the invention of Botox and like Juvedoram.

[SPEAKER_01]: If you were curious about something, you're like, well, it's supposedly last a few months like I may as well just go to this spa because they're all over the place and like get a few injections and [SPEAKER_01]: worth comes source.

[SPEAKER_01]: It quote unquote goes away or I dissolve it or I don't know, like I've just like done this little tweak and people might not even notice, you know.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's just like a very different phenomenon.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so like became associated with a very different type of person.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I have a person that would obviously make it feel way more out of touch as a behavior because those people themselves were out of touch.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then like you said, like I think for a long time we only ever really talked about these treatments when they were obvious and when they looked bad and when they were attributed to like aging celebrities or you know the hiding montags of the world.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is there a moment that you was so CA or like a specific time with the sort of shift from like taboo to normalized or does it feel gradual?

[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, it felt a bit gradual.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that like when we talk like cosmaceuticals, for example, like I think in that cosmaceutical era, that era of preventative Botox, making it seem like people did it was a big watershed moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think like I had a friend to reach out to me after the baby Botox episode and was like oh my gosh like I would have loved to talk to you about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's like an esthetician and she was talking about how she basically felt pressured into getting preventative Botox and like God it when she was like twenty two.

[SPEAKER_00]: and it was seen as like standard like everyone had to get this and I think that that would I would mark that is like maybe a huge shift in the way that people thought about injectables because like once you hear some things and need like you need to do this or else it becomes different than like oh this is a frivolous cosmetic endeavor [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for sure.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, well, obviously we moisturize twice a day.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's kind of falls into that camp eventually.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that that comes with the like, oh, aging aspect of like, oh, well, aging equals bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we haven't learned that.

[SPEAKER_01]: So precisely.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then also, I think with the filler aspect of things, like a moment I always go back to is in twenty fifteen when [SPEAKER_01]: Kylie Jenner admitted to receiving lip injections.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because leading up to that, she had this whole narrative of, oh, I've just overlined my lips really well.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I've figured out, like, sort of, like, smoke and mirrors way to make it look like my lips are ginormous.

[SPEAKER_00]: Did you see that take talk of someone being like, wow, like Kylie Jenner is a girl's girl.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because she's being transparent.

[SPEAKER_00]: A decade out about her, like, [SPEAKER_00]: Neuriod plastic surgery procedures that she's had done.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, oh my god, what a girl's girl's girl.

[SPEAKER_01]: She's a girl's girl because she told people exactly what she got so they could get the same thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's looking out for the girls who want to get the same thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: So funny also because now she's also in the middle of reversing a bunch of things and saying she regrets it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh god, I just, I simply can't.

[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, when Kylie like admitted, oh, I guess it was on the Kardashians that she'd had the surgery done.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think there had been so much speculation about it, leading up to that moment, and everyone sort of knew that she'd had it done.

[SPEAKER_01]: But until she went on the record and admitted it, it was sort of this dance around it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that moment was sort of somehow constructed to feel more like a brave admission than her sort of like festing up to it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like she was more calming-cleaned because it kind of felt like when Kendall Jenner was like, guys, I've been announcement to make.

[SPEAKER_01]: I have acne or something and did that proactive thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: It kind of felt like that where she was just like admitting to the fact that she had it done in almost like a medical kind of pragmatic [SPEAKER_01]: way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it was coming on the heels also of that era of people being like Kylie Jenner's the ugly sister.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of people forget about that or some people are way too young to remember that, but like that was also a big era of people being like Kylie Jenner's ugly.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think like her admitting to that, like there was some sort of like personal more intimate and like somewhat old tragic angle to what she was saying, which like I think resonated with me even more back then than does now like years I wouldn't it's like, you know.

[SPEAKER_00]: she's barely recognizable and like most people have even forgotten about any of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: But then she's like at this point what I think made this admission something that actually ended up working for Kylie and not against her and sort of rather than having it be something as damaging to her career like actually made like a major kind of shift in how we [SPEAKER_01]: think about and receive the news that people do this kind of stuff and like normalizing injectables.

[SPEAKER_01]: Is that Kylie leading up to this she was a taste maker.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like people followed her in Tumblr.

[SPEAKER_01]: This was like the King Kylie era.

[SPEAKER_01]: This was when she wore the different colored way.

[SPEAKER_01]: She'd be at Coachella.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was [SPEAKER_01]: At that time, considered the cool Kardashian to follow.

[SPEAKER_01]: She felt very different from her older sisters.

[SPEAKER_01]: Kendall's always been boring.

[SPEAKER_01]: Kylie, I mean.

[SPEAKER_01]: But Kylie was like dressing kind of like edgy within the bounds of like how our Kardashian dresses.

[SPEAKER_01]: But she felt different.

[SPEAKER_01]: And there were a lot of people that looked up to her as a taste maker.

[SPEAKER_01]: And also a lot of people generally considered it to look good.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like people wanted lips like hers.

[SPEAKER_01]: It became aspirational.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was selling her lip kits.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I think another thing is just that like, this was one of the first very public examples we had of someone openly having work done and as generally [SPEAKER_01]: As a public agreeing that they look better with the work done and that there was merit or like we were able to understand why she got extra like yeah that looks good like guys thought she was very attractive like it helped her and I think that that changed away [SPEAKER_01]: that like younger women started like viewing that type of thing, which has been very depressing.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it definitely like, yeah, I should in like this era of sort of uncanny beauty standards that dominated the twenty tons.

[SPEAKER_01]: Before her piece, Tolanduno speaks with celebrity makeup artists named Colby Smith.

[SPEAKER_01]: And at one point, she asks him if he thinks that Instagram face is making people look better and he responds [SPEAKER_01]: People are absolutely getting prettier.

[SPEAKER_01]: The world is so visual right now and it's only getting more visual and people want to upgrade the way they relate to it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I found this idea really interesting.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just like this idea of trying to keep up with the visual centric society.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because obviously like we've always been aesthetically driven as human beings and we've always pursued beauty.

[SPEAKER_01]: But do you think that maybe like we were almost saying earlier about when people are [SPEAKER_01]: have these Instagram faces and it doesn't believe register with you.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like do you think that having constant access to beautiful imagery almost lowers our tolerance for it?

[SPEAKER_01]: And drives are like need to keep tweaking?

[SPEAKER_00]: Like yes, I think the more that we're in a data with images.

[SPEAKER_00]: the more that we're going to think that those images are real, especially if those images exist in a phone that we are addicted to and like use twenty four seven, like we start to kind of absorb that phone as our own reality when it is not.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it makes sense that it would start to shape the way that we see things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that we kind of briefly discuss that with the BBL, even like, you know, that does not look good in real life.

[SPEAKER_00]: It does not look real.

[SPEAKER_00]: But because we live in this hyper-reality of the internet, we think that, in our heads, it looks good.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost a mental illness, truly.

[SPEAKER_00]: You see some of the plastic surgery that some people gather, the way that they face junior photos, and you're like, wow, that's like not well, like some things up there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the most extreme versions of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I do think it's absolutely shaping the way that we see things in the same way that it was being shaped by magazines of the two thousands, just in a more extreme way, because it lives with us twenty-four-seven.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I also just wonder if because things are feeling more and more constructed to appeal to like some of our like more instinctual.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, like some of our visual like an aesthetic instincts that when we get to see them all the time, like they don't excite us in the same way.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we're like, yeah, we like need like a better fix of beauty.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like we want to be wowed by beauty and it feels so hard to be struck by beauty.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I think that that's something that we get in genuine like positive [SPEAKER_01]: brain reaction too, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I see what you're saying, yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Just the idea that there's like becoming a higher higher standard for things to be visually appealing because our culture is so dominated by visuals.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it stops looking anything like resembling reality.

[SPEAKER_01]: But and then like because we still want things that are visually interesting and engaging.

[SPEAKER_01]: Once things start reaching a higher standard of how they should look to appease us, we're not going to get that same [SPEAKER_00]: experience but we see them so things need to become more and more I guess like the ceiling for looking good is just constantly being raised to the point that like it actually almost comes around looking bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean it feels almost similar to the way that we talked about porn and like the Sasha Grey episode and the idea of you know like I think it's the harder and harder hypothesis but yeah you start to seek out more kinky porn essentially in order to like [SPEAKER_00]: get that dopamine head and it feels almost similar.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, to that in some ways.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think the age of information just across the board has like really fucked up our dopamine receptors to the extent that like you don't need to travel somewhere to see what it would look like.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like you don't need to be somewhere to experience beauty like things are just so accessible to us that like I don't think our friends get us excited by them.

[SPEAKER_01]: So freaking true.

[SPEAKER_01]: So for her article, Tolentino speaks to a few plastic surgeons and Beverly Hills and during a consultation that she does with one of them, he pulls up a photo of her on face-toon so that he can illustrate what the results of different procedures will look like on her.

[SPEAKER_01]: And to me, this is like obviously just such a good representation of this symbiotic relationship between face-toon and these cosmetic procedures.

[SPEAKER_01]: because they do keep raising the stakes for each other or like raising the bar.

[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people seems like they were faced tuning or like looking at themselves through filters before they decided to get certain work done because it allowed them to like see what they looked like with these different features and then like grow custom to that and like prefer that over what they look like in real life.

[SPEAKER_01]: And after speaking to the surgeons, Tondino finds herself struck by the practical and frank way that they discussed yoga, men getting cosmetic work done.

[SPEAKER_01]: And she says there was a sort of cleansing, crystalline honesty to this high end intersection of superficiality and pragmatism.

[SPEAKER_01]: And pragmatism is sort of like a recurring theme throughout the season.

[SPEAKER_01]: I would say because like obviously there are a lot of reasons why choosing to enhance your appearance would be seen as a very practical decision.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess I never really know how to talk about like the specific individuals who participate in face tuning or getting injectables because [SPEAKER_01]: From like a feminist perspective a lot of this does upset me or like doesn't necessarily align with my values But then I also like don't think that the girls and like the meds ball waiting room like getting preventative Botox or injectables because they think they need it like I don't think they're the villain here for the girls even like face-tuning themselves [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the going logic has just been to criticize like the system and all the people.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of regular people who use their plastic surgery to make money on TikTok and Instagram and like promote it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like even no one influencers people are like, I just got this procedure.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you how it went.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like here are all the steps.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's where I'm like fuck you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't have any sympathy or like I feel completely fine criticizing people who do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Promoting their plastic surgery.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I mean, no, I don't think that they should be like [SPEAKER_00]: necessarily demonized for it, but I do think that argument has also been kind of weaponized to make sure that no one critiques it at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think you can do both.

[SPEAKER_01]: I guess it's just because I can empathize with why people would get it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously people who are promoting it are a different camp, but like [SPEAKER_01]: with just everyday people.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I also know it's feel bad about criticizing the activate because I think it may be like eludes to this idea that I think that I'm above those insecurities.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think you can critique the activate.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that our fewer critiquing the activate is actually enabling it to continue.

[SPEAKER_00]: The people who say like, oh, we're a dumb bimbo for going to get that and you're so vain.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, obviously, that's bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I think most people are like, no, injectables are bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think plastic surgeons are bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that the fact that we've convinced ourselves that this is going to make us feel better is bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that's okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think you can critique the act of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: The act of it is harmful.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of this stuff is some of his reversible some of it's not reversible and like it is contributing to a larger societal problem of Raising this beauty standard that is extremely unattainable and like also Eurocentric and also it's XYZ like you know, I mean upholding this patriarchal ideal of beauty No, I don't think that you need to critique the individuals to do it, but I do think I'm like almost tired of the fear of not critiquing the act of it like I think that [SPEAKER_00]: That fear is what has led it to becoming so normalized.

[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of that is done by women, normalizing it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I do think that there needs to be some internal critique there as well.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I think that it benefits people who [SPEAKER_01]: do decide to partake in these activities, to have it become due to stigmatize and normalize and like something that we like that's accepted because then they can continue to do it more smoothly I suppose I guess like I think a lot of people like can identify a part of ourselves that like want to or like has like thought about [SPEAKER_01]: participating in these kinds of things even if you wouldn't actually but then I also think yeah like for a myriad of reasons we individually but also like we as a culture are upset by people face-to-date by people getting injections like by all of this culture [SPEAKER_01]: But I think that that anger then like it sets up people who do participate to be on the receiving end of what can be like very vicious backlash.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because I want to return to Celeb Face and like the Instagram call out culture.

[SPEAKER_01]: So obviously like a lot of the people who would get featured on Celeb Face were public figures with rather large followings.

[SPEAKER_01]: So like the Kardashians and Haley Bieber and Tena Mojo are some today, but occasionally a model or live a content creator [SPEAKER_01]: with a significantly smaller following and much less influence or power would still find themselves a target on the page.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this is what happened to a former model named Sarah McDangels.

[SPEAKER_01]: McDangels did not have a particularly large following when she ended up on the cover of Playboy in twenty sixteen.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think she might have been the first or at least was one of the first models to go on the cover during Playboy's major rebrand.

[SPEAKER_01]: which is when they stopped publishing fully nude images.

[SPEAKER_01]: They said they stopped using Photoshop.

[SPEAKER_01]: They started casting models that were outside of the sort of like blonde, bombshell, playboy bunny look that had dominated the magazine during Hugh Haffner's reign.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so like this incentive to go in a new artistic direction.

[SPEAKER_01]: led them to cast McDonald's because she was a model with heterochromia, which means each of her eyes are different colors.

[SPEAKER_01]: After her playboy photoshoot, McDonald's fell on the radar of Slubface and they accused her of faking her heterochromia.

[SPEAKER_01]: using photo editing software and then also different colored contact lenses in order to, like, as, like, stand out in the modeling industry.

[SPEAKER_01]: She was reposted on the page at the time of, like, the article that I'm citing here at least, like, over a dozen times.

[SPEAKER_01]: But that was, like, many years ago, so it could have been more since then.

[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, she was repeatedly posted on the page.

[SPEAKER_01]: including childhood photos that had been sent in by her dad, who I'm just going to assume she had some kind of estranged relationship with.

[SPEAKER_01]: So following this, McDaniel says that she experienced really bad abuse online, obviously, and that from that she began experiencing panic attacks and depression as a result, I think she left modeling [SPEAKER_01]: I'm getting this information from an article by Emma Goldberg for El magazine and she spoke to Celebface about the incident and Anna, the anonymous owner of Celebface told her that her page isn't meant to enable harassment that its purpose is to help followers with the complexes they develop, comparing themselves to touched up photos of already thin attractive celebrities.

[SPEAKER_01]: But like, I'm kind of going to call bullshit here.

[SPEAKER_01]: having been a former follower of Celeb Face, and especially in a case like this one where she was being targeted for faking a cork, not for like trying to like uphold a beauty standard.

[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think is the actual motivation behind people following pages like this and like this type of like a content market?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, no part of it is shame.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we talked about like the rat brain earlier.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will admit like in his episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't feel good about using face tune.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's bad.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's bad that I use it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that it's good that I follow his love face.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I think it was fun for a bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like when the Kardashians because they're so ridiculously powerful like when they're the subject of it I can't I don't I I'll be honest like I I don't really care [SPEAKER_00]: But like, when it's other celebrities, it is like, okay, well, I do firmly believe in people's right to privacy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think this job is made me feel that way more than ever.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do think that this is like a multi-valent issue of like, there are many things floating about here, you know, like there's like the desire not to villainize the everyday woman sitting in the medsball waiting room.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there's the desire to be like, [SPEAKER_00]: We all need to stop doing this like can we stop participating in this and then there's the desire to critique the system and then there's also this other element to it with the select base which is like surveillance culture Because recently that whole scandal happened with the CEO the cheating scandal at the Coldplay Concert and his like head of HR or whatever and someone that I followed hate him hunter who is a journalist for the Washington Post described it as like a decentralized surveillance tape basically or decentralized surveillance which is like [SPEAKER_00]: everyone coming together almost as like populist means of calling out bad behavior but like the bad behavior and question is always like kind of strange usually pretty like normal human bad behavior but the punishment doesn't always fit the crime the punishment to like public ridicule and I think like in this case it's like the punishment so vastly always the crime it's so clearly some sort of like surveillance system happening [SPEAKER_00]: And it's always in the name of moral righteousness.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's always done with this morally righteous hand that is just a way of shrouding what is actually happening, which is like middle school bullying and like tomato throwing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like public square humiliation.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we don't want to admit to that, so it feels better to have the moral high ground.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's like obviously what's happening here with sledface.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I can see how that would intersect with the desire to laugh at celebrities, poke fun at them.

[SPEAKER_00]: be like, why do you look like this?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure, like, I have certainly played into that when it comes to the Kardashians.

[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I strongly believe that if you have like a very large platform blowing up another platform or like making them accidentally go viral or like invoking them at all, there's a lot of responsibility on your hands.

[SPEAKER_00]: This happens a lot with like YouTube video essays too and like the call-o culture that happened there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like you do have a responsibility as someone with a larger following than the person you're talking about.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're gonna be invoking them in that way and so [SPEAKER_00]: This is my really long-winded way of saying.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so that's bad.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, I think, I mean, in the case of Celeb Face, there was, like, protection was not even, like, a part of the equation.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was quite literally the opposite.

[SPEAKER_01]: It was, like, let's bring everything to light that someone, like, I didn't realize that Anna de Armas had had, like, so much plastic surgery done until that she started getting posted on Celeb Face all the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: She kind of done a good job at, like, showing up and, like, not having, like, she was an unknown, and then she became famous, and she had this different face.

[SPEAKER_00]: It did really show the kind of Hollywood funnel of getting this like face constructed for you before you actually blow up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like that's that's a huge thing in Hollywood that no one talks about because it's so subtly done.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like on an armistice transformation has been crazy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she is the beauty standard right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like one of the prevailing sex symbols of Hollywood right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, okay, well, this is good to know.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well that's a thing and I think like when I followed Slavface I think that was my mentality it was like well I like every woman on social media feel like shit about myself and seeing some of the like kind of dominant images and like beauty symbols of this time is making me feel worse and I think you do get a satisfaction out of knowing like oh it's not that I'm ugly it's that I'm broke [SPEAKER_00]: This came into being at the same time that, like, a lot of top models were also just, like, Bella had deep types who just had, like, extensive plastic surgery done.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, okay, the whole point of modeling is that you're exceptionally beautiful.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then all of a sudden, you can, like, buy your way into being exceptionally beautiful.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, like, that is validated by the industry.

[SPEAKER_00]: And, like, we get to say whatever we want about, like, the harms of the beauty industry and modeling, et cetera, to begin with.

[SPEAKER_00]: But, like, the fact that now that that beauty standard isn't even, like, [SPEAKER_00]: Natural beauty.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was so confusing at the time and now it's completely normal like it's everywhere.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think we had this like idea of a lot of industries like modeling but also Hollywood as sort of being meritocracies which they've never been.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean modeling maybe a bit more so but still it's I think like moving out of those industries though like when everyday people do it I think [SPEAKER_01]: we like to poke fun at the vanity of Hollywood because that is very easy to do and it needs to be a poke fun at a lot of the time but I think that what social media has obviously done is like made us more vain generally as a culture and made the individual person more vain and so I think that it becomes more complicated when like the people perpetuating this are people who are just unprepared for that kind of [SPEAKER_01]: part of their brain to be opened up in such an extreme way and maybe like some people who choose to participate in these things it's like the idea that like we as a culture have developed blood thirst for people who are like I guess conspicuously vain as the way I would put it just makes me think a lot about like maybe there's just ingrained notion that vanity itself is just inherently bad [SPEAKER_01]: even though we still exist in a society that views beauty as a virtue.

[SPEAKER_01]: This idea of like, we're, we love beauty, but it has to be authentic, it has to be natural.

[SPEAKER_01]: Otherwise, we get so angry by it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's a feeling of cheating your way into something like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like, feeling short change because someone cheated their way into doing that thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, going back to the concept of surveillance, like, [SPEAKER_00]: It could have made us more sympathetic to the idea that celebrities are subjected to the camera apparatus to like a significantly higher degree than anyone else in photograph from every angle.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will once again, I don't know if I've already said it on the season, but like I once again believe that like we are just meant to look at ourselves in the reflection of a pond and like nowhere else, mirrors should not exist.

[SPEAKER_00]: I should not see every angle of my face the reason everyone hates their side profiles because [SPEAKER_00]: It's not because it's inherently ugly.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's because you're not supposed to see yourself from that angle.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't, I'm not supposed to see myself from that angle.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't be on the side of myself seeing myself like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why am I able to do that?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that social media has made that possible in every way, shape or form.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's made us photographed like we are celebrities, you know, social media makes a little celebrity of us all, they call it the demonic turn, but like demonic more like.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that that maybe could have made us more empathetic towards the celebrities we throw tomatoes at, to an extent, obviously I once again have a caveat for the Kardashians and the way that they've promoted this to such a pervasive extent.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like, instead it's made us kind of be like, we still hate those people.

[SPEAKER_00]: And also, let's get filler ourselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's fascinating.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the season really just has maybe think of a vanity a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: And why are culture so vain?

[SPEAKER_00]: And part of it is because we have more leisure time than ever.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because AI is doing our grocery list phase and writing our emails.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, this is hard to say, because the middle class is shrunk.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's hard to say that necessarily everyone is like a leisure class.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are a culture where most people have an iPhone, lower upper middle class, middle class, like everyone has an iPhone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everything has become more democratic, more available.

[SPEAKER_00]: Being fashionable has become more democratic and available, like et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, by virtue of all these, like different changes with an industry.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just keep thinking about how we have so much time to think about ourselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like we focus so much on the self, we don't really feel like we don't focus on the things very much.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're so absorbed with the self in every way of shape and form, whether that's through wellness, whether that's through like therapy, speed, you know, whether that's through beauty.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just like, wow, I just wish we could focus on anything else and like experience the world not so internally.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like I say this is someone who was also focused on myself.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've had like a very inward facing year because I've been kind of on my own for so much while I was traveling.

[SPEAKER_01]: I've spent the most time alone in my entire life this past year and it has maybe like almost like way to inward focus to at a point where I feel like a teenager again and I'm like [SPEAKER_01]: craving external engagement and like I'm craving external stimuli I guess something other than like thinking about how I look at thinking about how I'm feeling I don't want to think about how I feel [SPEAKER_00]: Totally I think that I think that part of this is like the collapse of community and like the collapse of you know what humans I think were meant to be and which was like a village yeah we were meant to live among people that we know and I think that being alienated being shut up in our rooms this like introversion culture which I am a huge advocate against my is like anti introvert it's fascinating [SPEAKER_00]: Because I think it's anti-social.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a social behavior.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that it plays into a very capitalist mindset and no one wants to admit that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Totally everyone likes to recharge and be alone sometimes.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think being alone is important.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I also think that this like, oh, I just stay in my battle the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's healthy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that it's feeding into something that is actually a larger force at hand.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think that it's people's fault.

[SPEAKER_00]: it concerns me greatly and I think that having more time to just sit on our bed scrolling on our phones and looking at our selfie cameras is like unhealthy both to us and also like so unproductive.

[SPEAKER_00]: not to the economy, but to the world at large, you know.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that, and this is something I was thinking about a lot, like researching this episode is that I just think there's something inherently anti-social about face-tune, because what it's doing is it's making the primary representation of yourself, your digital avatar, and your image online.

[SPEAKER_01]: And so even if the way you look in real life doesn't align with how you look online, [SPEAKER_01]: you're choosing to prioritize the way you look online and you're like kind of accepting the fact that that is the truer version of yourself which I think does expose the way that we like lean on technology to maybe like fulfill these needs that aren't supposed to be met like we're not supposed [SPEAKER_01]: to be able to look like every one.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because that's not really part of the human experience I suppose.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I just think that the internet and technology has made everything so easy to us or just like brought things so much closer to us.

[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, I just think it makes sense then like why they're in kind of in generation to prefer that life to like an external life.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because, yeah, if you're insecure about the size of your lips or your nose or something, wouldn't you rather exist in a world where you don't have to face as insecurities, where you can fix them?

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's like this very addictive, like, very seductive.

[SPEAKER_01]: possibility to people as far as.

[SPEAKER_00]: But then ultimately that world is locked between like the four corners of your phone.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: And the four corners of like a frame of an image on your Instagram grid.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is anti-social and it is sad.

[SPEAKER_00]: The season has been like generally quite depressing.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've definitely taken away from this season this question of vanity and like what it means who gets to be vain if vanity isn't necessarily bad like all these questions I think that's been kind of the prevailing question for me this season.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: What does come up for you?

[SPEAKER_01]: I just think like funnily enough.

[SPEAKER_01]: because I have a wrap brain.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's like for as much as we've been like dissecting and breaking down and challenging certain vein notions.

[SPEAKER_01]: The wrap part of my brain is also then starting to think about these things.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like I just find that like vanity is the snowball.

[SPEAKER_01]: It really is.

[SPEAKER_01]: It is something that we can all outwardly acknowledge [SPEAKER_01]: can be bad, can be damaging is maybe consuming so much of our time.

[SPEAKER_01]: The endless pursuit of beauty is fruitless and also just oppressive for women and yet I guess there is just like something conditioned like so deeply within us that makes it so difficult to actually reject it.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know, like part of it, I think is tied to like womanhood, but then I think we're drawn to beautiful things.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that human beings are drawn to beautiful things.

[SPEAKER_01]: That's why when things are ugly, it's a statement.

[SPEAKER_01]: Because like, how do you like separate that desire that's like inside of you from, I guess, you know, also taking a stance?

[SPEAKER_01]: against the ways that that, like, intrude on your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: We still live in it, though.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like, it's hard to formulate another idea of beauty when, like, we live in this Western world.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the same as, like, oh, you critique capitalism, get you have an iPhone, and it's like, well, we are set up.

[SPEAKER_00]: And to be honest, the boldest bravest thing I could do is go get a flip phone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm not because I think convenience is the most important thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I do think a lot of what these pursuits of beauty are pursuing convenience.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it is more convenient to be beautiful.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's more convenient to feel beautiful.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, if I just look this way, the belief is like, well, I don't have to think about it anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, that's never the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you're like, if I just attained this body, if I just attained this face, like, I won't have to think about this all the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: I could think about other things.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's, you know, the hamster world.

[SPEAKER_00]: I do think we're attracted to beautiful things.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, [SPEAKER_00]: Do you remember that era where we grew at our armpit hair?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And dyed it?

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I was growing on my armpit hair for a while.

[SPEAKER_00]: I felt like when I lived in Montreal, I felt actually really comfortable with being a little more natural like us, like a little more free.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I felt like the beauty standards there felt significantly less oppressive.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've already liberated there honestly and then I moved to Toronto which is like fucking Spandex, filler capital of the world and like immediately my beauty standard shifted again and I started wearing like for makeup I ever since have been shaving my armpits you know what I mean I got laser hair removal which is a completely permanent procedure [SPEAKER_00]: Essentially, if you do it right, error if it works on you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that was with the presumption that, like, I'm pretty sure that this beauty standard isn't going to change in fifty years.

[SPEAKER_00]: So whatever, I'll just like never have to think about this again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I tell everyone that I, I'm really glad I did it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that was feeding into a beauty standard.

[SPEAKER_00]: And like, I like to imagine a world where that thing didn't exist.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think a lot of people have trouble doing that.

[SPEAKER_01]: The months ago, I was packing up stuff at my parents house and I found like an old journal of mine from when I was eighteen.

[SPEAKER_01]: And the stuff that I wrote in there, I was like, oh, this girl, like, had it way more together.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, she was way more confident in those types of things.

[SPEAKER_01]: I was, I hate to say it, like, a better feminist, I guess, or like, I lived more to those values at that age in a way that, like, if you tried to challenge me on that, I'd bite your head off.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I used to, like, get hair styles because I thought they looked sick, not because I thought I looked pretty with them.

[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, [SPEAKER_01]: I think I looked quite bad with some of my hair styles from that era.

[SPEAKER_00]: You did it and I thought you looked good at all.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_01]: I and Micropa used to cut my hair myself to my chin and then I had, it was like bleach blonde Mike.

[SPEAKER_01]: It just like didn't look, yeah, it looked cool.

[SPEAKER_00]: I liked it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, that's your brain now telling you that it's not pretty.

[SPEAKER_01]: I just like prioritized things that I thought were cool or interesting over Beauty and I, like, I don't really know when that changed.

[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I actually can't really trace it and I don't know if it adds them to the studio with like getting older or with like the environments I was in changing because obviously I was coming straight out of art school [SPEAKER_01]: But I do kind of feel, I felt embarrassed when I was reading those old, because I expected to read stuff I wrote when I was a teen and cringing because I was like, oh god, how delusional I was.

[SPEAKER_01]: But I kind of feel like it was the opposite.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I knew what was going on at that age in a way that I really lost sight of.

[SPEAKER_00]: Totally I think that I think the same way and that also having more money than I had at that age like over the past few years you know what I mean the ability to kind of like buy into certain things that like I just couldn't I could not afford a haircut I was thinking about like I'm trying to get a nice haircut soon [SPEAKER_00]: And I was thinking about how, like, I, yeah, you should just like absolutely hack at my own bangs in Montreal.

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't really give a fuck.

[SPEAKER_00]: Also, what I looked like, I was pretty confident as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: But also, like, I have more money.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I have money to, like, not run out.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like, you know, generally I have money to be able to buy an extra haircut and like, make sure it looks good.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that once you enter the adult world and you have to interface with people in different ways, you know, I'm in a very like visual job.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I recently asked people if I should get micro bangs and they were like, no, you shouldn't because sponsors like a pretty face and like sponsors like a middle parted haircut.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, that is kind of somewhat the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's, I don't know, I think it's just harder to be against the grain as an adult.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I think that that's cowardly of myself to say.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I do think that there is some cowardice going on in general.

[SPEAKER_00]: I say that's on behalf of myself as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that it extremely brave it takes like extreme amounts of bravery.

[SPEAKER_00]: to push against those beauty standards.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I really value the women online who do that and have made kind of like curvy or sort of, you know, like promoting different body types, promoting, being hairy, promoting, having a lot of acne.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like all this stuff is not promoting it, but you know, just being like normalizing it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I find with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's really brave.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I feel like superficial technology that I think that those things are brave.

[SPEAKER_01]: but it's like it is true because I think we're lying to ourselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: If we tried to say that a significant amount of our like time on this earth isn't dedicated to obsessing with how we look and how we like present ourselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think that the season's been illuminating.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've two bonus episodes coming up for you guys.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of them is about Sabrina Carpenter.

[SPEAKER_00]: So stay tuned for the eye.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be on Patreon.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the other is also a Patreon episode.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be a follow-up on this season, which will be about AI and beauty, which we're also really excited about.

[SPEAKER_00]: So stay tuned for those.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be posting about them when they come out.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to follow us on Instagram, et cetera.

[SPEAKER_00]: Next season, we hope to get to you guys.

[SPEAKER_00]: Much sooner than last time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Much sooner.

[SPEAKER_01]: So we'll see you soon.

[UNKNOWN]: you