On this episode: Talking with Guardian “Ask Ugly” columnist and beauty critic Jessica DeFino on why it's hard to challenge the beauty industry, the slick rebranding of skincare as self-care, concerning beauty trends right now and more.
For each episode of the Don’t Pretend We’re Dead podcast, I’ll be talking with women doing really cool work right now in the fields of advocacy, arts, culture, food, journalism, science and technology. Let’s meet them together. Subscribe for free to learn about new episodes.
Mentioned in this episode with Jessica DeFino:
Articles by DeFino:
“Plumpgasm Nudegasm: The small absurdities of Met Gala beauty,” The Review of Beauty, May 9, 2025.
“Are we heading for a beauty burnout?,” Vogue Business, April 14, 2025.
“The Substance Is A Fairy Tale (But So Is Beauty),” The Review of Beauty, March 25, 2025.
“Post-Election, Beware 'Self-Care': Would Audre Lorde recognize "self-care" today? Would we recognize her?”, The Review of Beauty, November 15, 2024.
“EAT ME,” The Review of Beauty, October 8, 2023.
“I Worked My Ass Off for the Kardashian-Jenner Apps. I Couldn’t Afford Gas.”, Vice, April 12, 2022.
Nonprofit groups to donate to:
Transgender Law Center
Slow Factory
The BeautyWell Project
Book recommendations:
Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom
Ugly Feelings by Sianne Ngai
Disobedient Bodies by Emma Dabiri
Ugly by Anita Bhagwandas
Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert
About Jessica DeFino
Jessica DeFino is the award-winning beauty reporter and critic who writes the Guardian US’s beauty advice column, Ask Ugly, and has been called "the woman the beauty industry fears" by the Sunday Herald. In addition to her column in the Guardian, Jessica also writes a newsletter, The Review of Beauty, and has a monthly podcast with fellow fashion critic Emily Kirkpatrick, called The Review of Mess, which takes a critical look at the dregs of pop culture. Jessica started The Review of Beauty “to cover what traditional beauty publications don’t, won’t, or can’t — whether that’s to appease advertisers, preserve brand relationships, or cling to the conventional wisdom, outdated ideals, and marketing myths that keep consumers consuming.” Her freelance reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Sunday Times, Vogue, Allure and more.
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Transcript
Hi there. Welcome to the Don't Pretend We're Dead podcast. I'm Karina Zappian. Every episode, I'll be talking with women who are doing some really cool work today in the fields of advocacy, the arts, culture, food, science, and technology. The way I think of it is women who give me a shred of hope in these dark times.And who doesn't need a little bit more of that these days? Today I'm talking with Jessica DeFino, the award-winning beauty reporter and critic who writes the Guardian Beauty Advice column, Ask Ugly, and has been called the woman the beauty industry fears by the Sunday Herald. In addition to her column in The Guardian,
0:35
Jessica also writes a weekly-ish newsletter, The Review of Beauty, and has a monthly podcast with fellow fashion critic Emily Kirkpatrick called The Review of Mess, which takes a critical look at the dregs of pop culture. In her writing, Jessica takes on everything from the body horror of the wedding industry to the
0:55
double standards we set for gap-toothed celebrities we admire versus our own harsh expectations of teeth perfection. I first fell in love with Jessica's writing when I read a term she coined cosmetic cannibalism. our curious desire to consume beauty products that make us more consumable ourselves.
1:12
And my love for her work only grew when I read her take on the movie The Substance, which she regards as a feminist fairy tale, but that, a quote from her, its reflection of the conditions of women's oppression has been repeatedly mistaken for endorsement.
1:28
And so I really love that explanation for why some people are regarding it as anti-feminist. So Jessica is a bit busy these days, but has kindly accepted our invite to join us on Don't Pretend We're Dead, which we are very excited by. Hello, Jessica, and welcome to the podcast.
1:44
Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here.
1:47
Awesome. I'm just going to get into it. What I often find interesting is some of the absurdist humor that can be pumped from this topic of writing about beauty in which I feel like you're really excellent at leaning into. The Met Gala is always, of course, such a rich source,
2:03
which struck me more than anything with your take on the Met Gala this year was not the writing on Zendaya or Doja Cat, but on Walter Goggins. yeah when you said if sabrina carpenter is an example of effort sold as effortlessness walton goggins is an example of effortlessness sold as effort yeah
2:23
and then you mentioned that his stylist wanted to create an unexpected look for the met gala and so what you mentioned was what's unexpected is not goggins's hairstyle which looks roughly the same as it did when he played a rugged and greasy-haired character on The White Lotus, but the work that went into it,
2:41
and then you go ahead on to proceed and list it, $250 worth of Moroccan oil products, including the shampoo, conditioner, detangler, volumizing mist, volumizing mousse, texture spray, texture clay, and hairspray. So I think of this a lot with some celebrities. I honestly often think about this when I look at Jarvis Cocker.
3:01
This is a man who used to keep journals on the exact brands of coat he wanted to wear in his band Pulp. So I can't imagine that this doesn't somehow extend to his disheveled hair routine that he has now in whatever 60s or 70s celebrity he's clearly modeling after. So I wanted to ask you,
3:17
does this often happen that many celebrities often spend a ton of time and money to look disheveled or something? They do.
3:27
I think so. I think the disheveled look is an aesthetic like any other and it can come from like pure effortlessness, of course, but especially in the celebrity sphere, particularly on a red carpet and especially Especially like at the Met Gala, that sort of disheveled appearance is actually a very studied,
3:47
a studied version of it that's actually meticulously crafted to seem as if it's messy when it's very precisely done.
3:56
Very, very precise. Good to know. Yeah, often kind of one of this because there's such a focus on women. It's the no makeup makeup, but I imagine there is quite the equivalent with men. So I just thought that was pretty amusing. Yeah. You also said something really interesting, and you had a recent article in Vogue Business.
4:13
And I thought this to me was really interesting, that in times of crisis such as today, instead of you would think like the average beauty routine constricting, we're in kind of this time of huge political upheaval. But you said it actually expands in direct proportion to political upheaval, what you called the aesthetic index.
4:32
And I didn't even think about this, but you mentioned during the Great Recession 2007-2008, The financial crisis coincided with the arrival of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which I didn't even put those together. But what also particularly interested me was COVID. I've always thought COVID is this time where we just let the beauty go, couldn't see.
4:52
Everybody talks about, I stopped wearing a bra, I stopped wearing a bra after that, whatever. But you actually mentioned... I was wondering if you could talk about this a little bit, that people were actually pretty focused, fixated on beauty code.
5:05
Yeah. The beauty industry saw a huge growth during COVID. Maybe not the first month of lockdowns and precautions, but after that... Yeah, I think everyone was feeling very out of control. And as I put forth in that Vogue business piece, usually in times of like political upheaval, when everything feels out of control,
5:29
the closest thing we have that makes us feel like we're in control of something is our bodies.…
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