00:00:00.000this is the culture study podcast and i'm ann helen peterson and i'm arabelle sicardi i write
00:00:13.000oh it's such a long name i need to workshop but it's you've got lipstick on your chin
00:00:17.240on substack and it's all about beauty and power and just beauty gossip i guess so one thing that
00:00:24.340you've written a lot or I've seen you reference a lot is that beauty is terror yeah can you
00:00:30.040explain this a little bit of course um so I have been chanting this probably since I was
00:00:37.600in in college so easily 15 years it's its own teenager by now um and I've always been really
00:00:46.240obsessed with the connection between beauty and capital and crisis and the things that we do to
00:00:54.940ourselves and to each other for just like a little bit more power, a little bit more ease, a little
00:00:59.700bit more comfort in a world that punishes ease and punishes rest. And I've always kept an archive
00:01:08.460of the different ways that beauty is used to punish or demean people or to subjugate and
00:01:14.220create a more carceral world like a crueler landscape so beauty is terror is basically
00:01:21.720shorthand for the fact that we punish each other and ourselves all the time for this ideal that
00:01:30.540we're never ever ever ever ever going to reach or achieve but sometimes we let our fears control us
00:01:38.380right it's just the way that we are as humans and how we're raised and that fear also breeds
00:01:45.300innovation within us like i mean from the very beginning it's like oh we're afraid of the dark
00:01:49.900we bring fire like you know like it's literally built into our dna to find different ways to
00:01:56.480navigate the things that terrify us and the way that we pursue beauty i think has so much to do
00:02:01.440with that basic fear of not belonging of not being seen of not being loved not being cared for
00:02:07.900It's kind of our way to navigate the worst impulses in ourselves.
00:02:13.620That reminds me, too, of like the first time that I was introduced to the Lacanian concept.
00:02:20.800I'm referencing like Lacan, Jacques Lacan, the psychoanalytic thinker.
00:02:25.440I knew 15 years ago, but I have lost much of my understanding.
00:02:29.660But what stuck with me then was this concept of lack.
00:02:33.580There is always this lack that keeps us driving forward as individuals, right? It's very difficult to rid oneself of the pursuit of closing that gap, right? And this can be with accumulation, it can be with sex, it can be with beauty.
00:02:53.560But like there's no point where you ever psychologically reach this like fulfillment, right? Like there is no moment of contentment or happiness. It's just that there has to be something else that you can perfect. And when we're talking about beauty, we're talking about on our bodies.
00:03:11.000And, you know, when you were talking about, like, the pursuit of beauty as terrorizing even, I think about how sometimes people describe, let's say, like, the participants in, like, a Real Housewives franchise and, like, the abject feminine that's going on there, right?0.94
00:03:48.000I mean, Real Housewives, that's its own episode right there.
00:03:50.800It's an incredible psychological event.
00:03:53.560The terror of the pursuit of beauty to me helps me understand myself in terms of, like, what I'm afraid of and who I think is going to punish me.
00:04:09.360it helps me self like psychoanalyze actually yeah understanding my impulses understanding
00:04:15.080trends and like do i actually like this cover or did i just see it 5 000 times on tiktok and so on
00:04:20.120and so forth it's cool that you brought up the con and stuff because i'm also very interested
00:04:25.000in queer theorists as it relates to identity and the body politic 100 would not be the the person
00:04:32.600or the writer i am without understanding the queer theory of psychoanalysis and all that stuff as
00:04:38.360well like if we're going to understand beauty as this so let's say beauty as an ethical ideal
00:04:44.500that we'll never reach and we're always striving for that can make us feel never enough it can make
00:04:50.540it feel like we're in a state of perpetual loss perpetual longing perpetual grief right and I
00:04:56.620think a lot of people are in that state and sometimes they're not in it and those moments
00:05:00.820are glory and relief but for me queerness and my queer identity and queer theory as it relates
00:05:08.340to all of this stuff has given me such relief and grace let's say because yeah okay so jose
00:05:18.440esteban munoz some people will understand that academic and that theory but he basically wrote
00:05:24.400that like the pursuit of of always changing in and being able to iterate upon yourself
00:05:31.560is a kind of queer utopia and obviously there's going to be haters being like you're
00:05:36.280paraphrasing horribly you're right i haven't read that in like a decade let me live 100 but i i
00:05:44.300really absorbed it 100 because it helped me reframe this idea of never being enough and
00:05:51.280perpetual longing into a state of perpetual exploration of perpetual curiosity and finding
00:05:58.500joy in the ability to seek and to find recognition and be able to adjust both what I consider the
00:06:06.860destination and my own bearings to be more accommodating to my own needs right yeah and
00:06:13.720when you're able to reframe the loss into curiosity it it completely reshapes your psyche
00:06:22.380and your brain into a space where the idea of like there being a lack is kind of silly
00:06:28.160because you can just reinterpret every new discovery or change as part of the inevitable
00:06:36.940process of existing and finding joy in that and that has helped me so much of course I'm never
00:06:45.060going to be perfect there's things about myself that perhaps I would change but being able to
00:06:50.640know that I can live long enough to discover what that change might be and tweak and find joy
00:06:58.140and just understanding it as an experiment that I have control over it makes it so much more fun
00:07:04.920and bearable yes so well and just like destabilizing anything that resembles a norm I think this is
00:07:12.960actually a great way to connect to something that I've been thinking about in terms of
00:07:16.760a newsletter that you wrote earlier this year about how beauty is going backwards and a lot
00:07:22.540of what I took from that from your argument in that newsletter is that we are instead of like
00:07:28.320destabilizing norms we are re-inscribing them yeah it's it's looking grim out there we're not okay
00:07:35.220so can you there's four you have four categories and we'll obviously direct people to
00:07:41.340this specific newsletter and the amazing charts that thank you for liking my charts
00:07:47.300But so you talk about fashion's lack of diversity, the pharmaceutical success of Ozempic, conservative affirmative action values, regaining control on bodies and funding, and the rise in media tension on trad wife domesticity.
00:08:05.180I know. So and again, we'll direct people to it. But how do you see the very visible rise, visible and also like, we have statistics on how many more people are engaging in these procedures? Like, how does plastic surgery fit into that understanding?
00:08:21.660Understanding of child-wiped domesticity and conservatism?
00:08:25.480I mean, just like the reinscribing of norms.
00:08:29.080Okay. So I think that this is a hydra of bullshit. Let's describe it that way. It's a hydra of bullshit. So there's definitely this huge backwind of conservatism in younger generation as well. It's not just like boomers being loud and obnoxious about conservatism and Christian America and all of that stuff.1.00
00:08:54.780It's in young people to disguise as cringe culture. Right. Younger people are so afraid of being earnest and exploring and kind of failing in public that they'd rather not be seen as cringe. They would rather try less and do these things. And it's not just me being like perhaps an aging millennial saying this. I've had these conversations with Gen Z people as well that are very afraid to experiment and stuff.0.52
00:09:22.000But plastic surgery, I think, is so linked to specific kinds of religions as well.
00:09:29.220And Mormonism is like becoming more and more prominent, like on reality television as well.
00:09:34.880And what I'm understanding is that Salt Lake City is like this very specific ecosystem of vanity and God that I find fascinating.
00:09:45.220because yes they have more plastic surgeons than Los Angeles where I'm currently based which I
00:09:55.000didn't know about until prepping for this episode fascinating um but also it's like when I was
00:10:01.220reading different studies about plastic surgery and religion based in Salt Lake City the percentage
00:10:07.540of women there specifically that have it have gotten plastic surgery as opposed to anywhere
00:10:14.080else in the United States is so vastly it's so much stronger and it's so much tied to their how
00:10:20.920they conceive of their religion it's 82 percent of the women studied in this 1500 person study
00:10:26.860had had some sort of plastic surgery and some of them had prayed beforehand to to see like to feel
00:10:34.220it out if God would approve of of them getting something done and the the average statistic in
00:10:40.880the rest of America is 4%. All right. We're going to get more into this when we come back.
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00:13:17.160I love that you like actually anticipated the first question that we have. So this comes from
00:13:22.640Christina and it's about Utah specifically. And I think we can use this to like extrapolate into
00:13:27.640some of these larger conversations. So, okay. Let's hear from Christina.
00:13:32.700I moved to Utah in 2023 and friends and I were shocked to learn that at least according to some
00:13:37.900data, Salt Lake City has the second most plastic surgeons per capita of all US cities, sandwiched
00:13:44.320in between Miami and LA, which make a bit more sense. How does the pressure or desire for plastic
00:13:49.680surgery tie into religion, specifically Mormonism, perfectionism, wealth, and the trad wife trend?0.95
00:13:56.180I also think there's something to do with whiteness here that we have to delve into, right? But if we can connect the dots between a conservative yearning for a particular type of face, like an ageless face, and also heterosexuality, if we're thinking about—I mean, it's complicated because Salt Lake City itself is actually not a locus of Mormonism.
00:14:23.360It's much more in the suburbs. There are a lot of queer people in Salt Lake City itself. So I want to be careful that we're like distinguishing and not like equating all of the state of Utah as Mormon.
00:14:34.060But if these norms are much more accepted, particularly within the church, and I think if anyone wants to see how this shows up, I would suggest watching a couple episodes of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which is about a bunch of moderate to non-practicing or ex-Mormons who were very popular on TikTok and social media and the reality show that's tracking them.
00:15:03.440And they, you know, some of them like understand the doctrine of treating your body like a temple to mean like I will be pissed at you if you drink even a sip of alcohol, but then very much want to modify their bodies accordingly.
00:15:20.880And like there's also like all of these different understandings of how you should practice not just chastity, but also modesty. But how does plastic surgery fit into our understandings of modesty? How does even like a blowout with curls, like the long hair with like beachy waves, like how does that fit into this manufacturing of femininity, which I think they understand is very much sanctioned by the church and by God?
00:15:45.240Yeah, I think ultimately, it's all a matter of interpretation. And that interpretation is defined by your own rigor and studying your own religious texts, and how much of it is influenced by the people around you, and the social capital and aura that you're playing with.
00:16:05.080Because if you are not actually reading, if you're not doing like your liturgical homework, so to speak, and you're just going by vibes and like, oh, the pastor's wife, so and so, or like, I need to do this to keep up with my version of church group.
00:16:19.840Those are totally different motives and engines that are driving you.
00:16:24.300Right. And ultimately, there's like this one billboard I am actually obsessed with when I
00:16:31.020was doing my research for this. And I think it really does summarize the impulses that are
00:16:35.780playing there specifically. And it was like, it said, God's remodeling his temple. Isn't it time
00:16:41.480to remodel yours? I'm like, cursed image, cursed image. And I just think that that was like such
00:16:51.140a perfect summary of the pressures that a lot of of people might actually be dealing with and
00:16:58.540it's like if you are considering your body to be a public space that is being judged by god
00:17:09.160then of course you're going to have some some sort of pressures regarding maintenance and upkeep
00:17:16.860and oh they're commenting on on how the pews are aren't in great shape and that becomes a
00:17:22.940competition for approval and aesthetic nature right as opposed to doing something to honor
00:17:32.080your yourself for your own care and your comfort and if that has anything to do in the equation
00:17:37.500so in my opinion like if you are being driven by the the political machinations of the religious
00:17:48.100space that you're in and who's the most popular person in the crowd and who might get most more
00:17:53.820done in like a sociological experiment type of type of vibe then you're gonna have more
00:17:59.120pressures to conform to ideals that get their approval that's very different than having a
00:18:05.000personal private relationship to your god yeah and that's the thing like the question asker
00:18:09.920points out like oh it would make more sense that there would be such a high per capita in miami
00:18:15.260or in la but if we understand this as in terms of like maintaining norms once this becomes a norm
00:18:23.180within a community then it becomes the thing that like is aspirational like as soon as it like there's
00:18:30.660like a tipping point right like yeah more and more people have it and you feel like you should
00:18:34.660get it and i see this a lot in conversations amongst people my age that are like oh young
00:18:39.840people are getting botox is this something i should be doing right like this sort of like
00:18:45.880not wanting to feel left out yeah yes yes or like is everyone doing this thing and i didn't know
00:18:53.040that i should be doing it kind of thing but again it's to maintain a certain type of face
00:18:58.820I do think that part of this too we can like some of its conservative rich lady face I think0.93
00:19:06.180Nicole Kidman's face is often held up as the paragon of this but it's also like Fox News anchor
00:19:11.540face um yeah do you ever think about how if you know then you know that someone's had work done
00:19:18.880but it shouldn't be obvious like it's this real simultaneous erasure and announcement yeah the
00:19:26.900invisible labor and like the the craftsmanship behind the labor is totally its own competition
00:19:34.120right I've absolutely have been in group chats with various people like either in the beauty
00:19:39.000industry or actresses or whatever where everyone commiserates with like who got what done or should
00:19:44.560I go here what's this person's signature because plastic surgeons they are sculptors of the face
00:19:52.720right some do have signatures you're not going to get the same kind of nose job at every single
00:19:57.200clinic some people are better at noses for people of color some people have their own like very thin
00:20:04.160when you become to get hyper obsessed and you understand these things you understand and you
00:20:08.820can clock the signatures and perhaps like the bad signs of a bad job and yeah that becomes its own
00:20:16.820currency that that knowledge can be weaponized it's very easy to do so because you're you feel
00:20:23.140like you're protecting yourself by knowing these things but also it's a way to disdain other people
00:20:27.340who might have gotten it done it's like oh you were not able to find a way to make this seem
00:20:32.980invisible we gotcha right right and especially someone who like maybe got into uh a technology
00:20:43.380before the technology had stabilized i think about this with madonna specifically she got her0.98
00:20:48.580work done too early before they knew how to do it without getting like the pillow face yeah um
00:20:54.060the cost of innovation yes exactly she is like she is the wreckage of innovation yeah um but
00:21:02.320held up as almost uh the disdain that can be directed your way if you do it wrong yeah i mean
00:21:09.440there are surgeons that are their entire youtube presence is just like hour-long video breakdowns
00:21:15.780of how much money and how much time celebrities have spent on their faces i've watched them
00:21:21.960in anthropological like fascination to just because they'll go back to the deep archives
00:21:28.200like they'll go to the childhood photos and then and compare and dissect is this just you know a
00:21:35.100woman growing up or did she start getting work done here? And then they zoom in. It's like
00:21:40.160Interpol or something. You're just like, oh, now I've seen their nostrils. Like what's going on
00:21:45.240here? Well, it's so weird because I look at pictures of myself from when I was 20 and like
00:21:50.460my face looks different because I'm 20 years younger. You know, like it's not that I got
00:21:56.500work done. It's that like faces change as we grow. And I think our hyper obsession with plastic
00:22:03.660surgery and kind of preventing or slowing down aging as much as possible has made us hyper
00:22:10.320survey ourselves and each other to a point of like the government would be jealous of a like
00:22:17.100of a very jealous insecure woman when it comes to like how much we can hyper analyze ourselves
00:22:21.880they would be like oh I can take notes from you you know what I mean it's it's so real and so
00:22:29.860specific i i think about the loss of what we don't know about like each other and our bodies like
00:22:35.120kind of all the time i would so wonder about what you know kylie jenner or whoever would look like
00:22:42.020had they not gotten stuff done but i only think about it in my head because when i see the plastic
00:22:47.900surgeon videos that like actually speculated or use i don't know ai to like deep fake what people
00:22:53.160would look like without plastic surgery I feel such sadness that our bodies are taken out of
00:23:00.680control of ourselves and you know put through this simulacrum of like these technologies
00:23:06.140just for someone else's conversation and then I understand that I am part of the problem
00:23:11.060you're like mourning the ghost self of Kylie Jenner but then you're like but that's weird
00:23:17.400that i'm like imagining this other body evolution for a celebrity exactly like i'm not her mother
00:23:24.300like that's not my responsibility we ultimately are allowed to do whatever we want with our body
00:23:31.060to the detriment of only ourselves and perhaps the influence it has on other people but how much of
00:23:36.880that is our individual responsibility and how much of that is beyond us i think the answer changes
00:23:43.160all the time depending on your visibility right and i mean i think going back to like the salt
00:23:50.180lake city stuff and like mormonism and plastic surgery and conservatism so i do think that there
00:23:55.520is a link between like the whiteness and the wealth and the pressures between those identifying
00:24:00.680factors and the plastic surgery it's all to adhere to a very specific version of white femininity
00:24:08.340yeah right specifically white femininity not femininity kind of when we say femininity we
00:24:14.300kind of also ultimately also assume the white in front of that phrase and we're talking about like
00:24:18.880facial structures yeah 100 well and like we can't disconnect any of this from actual threats to
00:24:27.880white supremacy right like oh is it a coincidence that we're trying to double down on these norms
00:24:34.340of white femininity when white femininity is actually under threat, right?
00:24:58.700So this is a good segue to our next question, which is about costs and how those get alighted. This comes from Lauren.
00:25:07.040As plastic surgery and aesthetic treatments have become more normalized, there seems to have been increased marketing of early intervention plastic surgery.
00:25:14.840For example, minimally invasive facelifts for 30 year olds.
00:25:18.020I noticed the cost associated isn't as readily or specifically discussed by those who are undergoing not only plastic surgery procedures, but aesthetic procedures as a whole.
00:25:25.940How are people paying for these procedures as the cost of living increases?
00:25:29.880How does it fit with the bigger issue of individual debt and how future generations will afford to retire?
00:25:35.360So I love that Lauren tacked on this larger piece at the end that isn't just like, oh, this stuff is expensive.
00:25:40.920It's more like, OK, but let's also talk about like personal debt loads and like the prospect of ever retiring.
00:25:47.020And the notion that part of the reason that we are protecting our faces is because we are going to be expected to, like, function in the marketplace of workers for longer because we can't retire, right?
00:26:00.880Like, we have to be, like, capital actors for so much longer.
00:26:15.420my answer long and short is debt float baby debt float buy now pay later and Klarna are the bullies0.96
00:26:24.220of our society and targeting obviously the younger generations are getting them sooner0.93
00:26:29.240I know more than like say three young people that got into like debt basically illegally
00:26:35.580through using Klarna before they turned 18 right they're going to become adults with a debt burden
00:26:40.920already because of just impulse purchasing and the ease of which that it happens when you're
00:26:46.180buying anything online so people aren't you know becoming more wealthy or attaining things without
00:26:53.240cost like they're just taking on the cost faster with more ease it's awful yeah no and I like I
00:27:01.640think about the first time uh I just graduated from college at this point I was using like
00:27:07.380maybe Clinique moisturizer as my skincare routine. And my best friend's mom treated her
00:27:16.560to a trip to the, the esthetician. There was no insurance. It was like, oh, I'm, this is my way
00:27:22.820of setting you up is giving you one, one visit to the esthetician. But it also like, I was like,
00:27:32.240I can't afford any of those things. There's no way. I can barely afford to buy moisturizer or
00:27:38.840buy makeup. It just was not within my entire conception of self. Then my other story is
00:27:46.020when I was in grad school and trying to fight various late 20s acne, my dermatologist, I thought
00:27:53.880I was just going to a normal, the dermatologist who gives you drugs that are covered by your
00:27:57.560insurance. This dermatologist was also, because this was in Austin, I didn't realize it was a
00:28:01.900fancy lady dermatologist and she's like and you know what will help is the skin peel and I was0.98
00:28:06.980like oh my doctor is telling me to get this thing where they like yeah they they peel all this stuff
00:28:12.200of your face and I so I did it and I didn't realize that it wasn't covered at all by insurance
00:28:17.780and it didn't really help that much but I could see how you like it was so visible to me how you
00:28:23.440get on that slippery slope of treatments right like you owe one thing begets another begets
00:28:28.380another and it comes it's like lifestyle creep those things become not wants but needs yeah
00:28:35.800I mean I was doomed to this curiosity and this and this journey from like the very beginning of
00:28:41.460my brain forming I'm so serious I remember my first science fair project that I can remember
00:28:47.140being like a cross-examination between different shampoos and like if they actually help split
00:28:53.440ends or not and I did get an award for that research by the way you know what first or second
00:28:58.800place what did I think I got like second place or something yeah so it was like acceptable in
00:29:03.400terms of Asian success that I had spent my time doing this I remember like the grudging like okay
00:29:08.620fine for my parents but yeah I've always been obsessed with like what can I use to stop things
00:29:16.000And so this isn't a new impulse for a lot of people, but I do think that it's now unfortunately really easy to get caught up in the cost of it and the ease of attaining things now because the industry of aesthetic adjustments, let's say, has been uberfied.
00:29:37.060You can schedule all of these things on your phone without speaking to another human being, whereas even maybe 10 years ago, you actually had to go in for consultations and do all of these things. You don't really need to do that now. And because of the ease of access in that way, and also the material cost has actually gotten cheaper as things have improved, it's made it sickeningly easy to do things.
00:30:04.820and i mean yes in the states everything's still very expensive and awful for sure 100 but it's
00:30:12.440awful in different ways in other countries where it's cheaper i will say that like in the uk you
00:30:17.540can basically learn to give injections within a week if you buy a groupon to learn basically how
00:30:23.240to get certification to give injections and then by the end of the week after taking i don't know
00:30:28.760three like a workshop series you can have botox parties at your house you'd be awful and it's a
00:30:34.720danger to yourself and others to do so but it's very easy there's so many unlicensed and unregulated
00:30:41.840non-medical injectors in the uk it is its own crisis and it's we kind of knew that already
00:30:49.020when we watched like british reality tv and then everyone's like oh everyone looks so old or this
00:30:54.040on the other thing it's because the access to less skilled injectors and medical interventions
00:31:05.120is the the barrier so much lower which is a danger actually yeah and you know in china and
00:31:11.860in brazil think all of these injections and surgeries and stuff so much cheaper it's like
00:31:17.920a fifth of the price i know this because i've i've gone done like medical tourism myself in
00:31:23.940hong kong when i was there visiting family i didn't fly there to to do it specifically but
00:31:28.740you know that i googled and researched all of that stuff and i spent every other day
00:31:33.460going to different med spas and the majority of the people there were were medical tourists
00:31:37.560coming to hong kong specifically to get peels and stuff and it's so so much cheaper it's less than
00:31:44.640a dinner here so yeah people will do people will go out of their way for an opportunity
00:31:52.380Well, and then like, okay, so I'm going to buy a ticket to Hong Kong, right? Or I'm going to buy a ticket to Turkey. No, but like, you know what I mean? Like, there are costs associated with that. And I know how my brain works. Like, my brain's like, oh, well, the procedures are so much cheaper there that like, I'm actually saving money.
00:32:09.620But I also want to like go back to this question of this just being part of so many other components of lifestyle creep, which like for capitalism to continue to grow, we have to continue to want to buy more things.
00:32:30.520right yeah and so when you reach your like excess point of accumulation the next thing to do is like
00:32:37.700instead of modifying your home like it's to continue modifying the self right or if you
00:32:41.780can only afford to rent a crappy apartment in new york like you can still modify the self0.92
00:32:47.140yeah i mean it's it's as i said it's a hydra of garbage it's and i mean my perspective is0.96
00:32:54.780obviously going to be a little bit more warped than perhaps the average listener or something
00:32:58.460because i grew up in the fashion and beauty industry i was a teen fashion blogger before
00:33:02.660instagram existed so i have seen and been part of like the push for influencer culture and how it's
00:33:09.800been part of how we've reshaped our desire and it's just as powerful as like you know
00:33:16.400official businessy collaborations you're way more likely to buy something if someone you have a
00:33:22.680parasocial relationship has said it's cool because you have a parasocial relationship with them and
00:33:26.920You might actually think that they're your friend or looking out for you in some way.
00:33:30.820And the reality is when it comes, especially to plastic surgery stuff and all of these
00:33:34.180injections, is that you don't even actually have to have a lot of followers.
00:33:37.920You can be what's considered like a niche, micro niche influencer, 10,000 or more followers.
00:42:39.960we're going to do a hard pivot into this question that i know we're so excited to
00:42:47.460talk about this comes from sarah and it introduced me to something i didn't know existed but i know
00:42:53.540you knew existed okay from sarah i've never had any work done in real life but a few years ago
00:43:00.620i became obsessed with plastic surgery asmr roleplay videos on youtube particularly lip
00:43:06.820filler, and Botox consultation role plays. I don't think it's a coincidence that I found these videos
00:43:12.480relaxing and entertaining during a time when I had lost my healthcare through work and was
00:43:17.340navigating the slow, frustrating process of getting back on Medi-Cal. I know these YouTubers0.98
00:43:23.380aren't real practitioners, but the fantasy they offer of highly personalized, experience-oriented
00:43:30.100care where the patient is allowed full self-determination and all the time in the world
00:43:35.460to ask questions soothes some deep feelings of neglect in me. Is my interest in a virtual plastic
00:43:42.620surgery experience just a weird personal thing? Maybe a trans thing? Or am I just experiencing1.00
00:43:48.360something more broadly related to the allure of plastic surgery culture? Does plastic surgery
00:43:54.040culture in some complicated, privatized way offer a desirable contrast to the general American
00:44:00.780healthcare system? Or patients are able to receive thorough, preference-oriented, gender-affirming,
00:44:07.800and resourced attention from providers? Or is the quality of plastic surgery care in real life just
00:44:14.640as messy as normal medical care? Okay, so Melody followed up with Sarah to get examples of these
00:44:20.540videos. And I know Melody sent these to you and you were like, oh yeah, I've got these. So what,
00:44:29.320like your interest goes back a while or your like awareness i would say we should also say that
00:44:36.680these videos are long yeah they are like documentaries in and of themselves yes they're
00:44:42.740like 42 minutes an hour they involve like a lot like it's the usually the speaker at least in the
00:44:51.000four that i saw the speaker is a woman who is looking directly at the camera pretty close0.99
00:44:55.400proximity. And there's definitely an asthma component in terms of both the timbre of the1.00
00:45:01.040voice and doing various noises. Tapping and screeching. Yeah, the whole nine yards.
00:45:07.700Yes. So let's play a little bit from one of these videos so listeners can get a feel for what we're
00:45:12.100talking about. This one is called your first Botox treatment. And I have to just warn you that when
00:45:17.160I brought this up to play it, to watch it, Charlie was sitting across the room and he was like,
00:45:23.940what is going on. So get ready. Hi there. Welcome. Go ahead and have a seat. Get yourself comfortable.
00:45:35.160So you are my last appointment of the day and my first, first Botox appointment.
00:45:48.520What's going on with them? Why are they popular other than just falling asleep to a particular
00:45:53.160type of voice? Like what's activated here? I mean, I think that was such a deliciously rich
00:45:59.080question that answered itself quite honestly. I do think it has to do with like the cultural
00:46:05.760neglect of healthcare and care in society. And that's coming from a person that's like also
00:46:12.420non-binary is like had the gender dysphoria component and like absolutely has sought those
00:46:17.980videos out myself like very early in my like gender crises to be like oh yeah you actually
00:46:25.300are the only affirming provider i've ever seen in my life thank you complete stranger on the
00:46:30.100internet not certified thank you i i love that we're in space and i can pretend that i'm in the
00:46:34.900fifth element and i'm lilu absolutely you get me um knowing that i also understand and i personally
00:46:42.680conceptualize plastic surgery as gender affirming care no matter if it's given to a cis person or
00:46:48.900not and i think that that is a conversation that cis people are terrified of having because it
00:46:55.340makes them conceptualize gender as as a perhaps a performance that they didn't understand as such
00:47:03.980beforehand but you can't tell me that elon musk does not have gender dysphoria and is terrified
00:47:10.520of gender performance that man oh my god absolutely terrified okay his entire life is
00:47:16.240dedicated to terrorizing other people in regards to gender and how it should be presented like
00:47:22.400his like gender selective family planning stuff come on as soon as we found that out i'm like oh
00:47:28.160that scans that scans right yeah right of course it's like oh you don't like your trans child i
00:47:34.780wonder what's going on here with your own plastic surgery yeah and performance of masculine power0.58
00:47:41.720like it's all connected yeah they understand gender is terrifying and gender is a prison
00:47:47.940they just want to be the prison wardens you know yeah and i think that people really love these
00:47:53.660asmr videos specifically the ones that are very dedicated to like care in some way either
00:47:59.600manicuring or head massages or foot massages or they're like gonna put you into cryo sleep before
00:48:06.620you reach mars or whatever they're understanding your desire for being cared for as an individual
00:48:17.140person without judgment towards what's that what that care means or looks like and that is not
00:48:24.340something that i would say most people are regarded in at least american health care
00:48:31.480you know you are your paperwork you are a bureaucracy and you're not a person you're
00:48:40.760a problem to solve i keep thinking about this experience i recently had in the emergency room
00:48:45.000and i'm totally fine but i was taken to the emergency room and i when i was watching the
00:48:51.860videos this morning, I was actually really reminded of my experience in the emergency room,
00:48:56.620which was at a very high level of care, because they thought I was in crisis, right? So basically,
00:49:01.440I had some chest pains, and they thought that it was like potential cardiac something. But
00:49:07.060it's just muscular, totally fine, again. But the level of attention and like priority that you
00:49:14.720receive when you are, and I want to like very clearly underline this, because this was emphasized
00:49:20.420when i was in the emergency room when you need like a high level of care that is very legible
00:49:26.400as like crisis but also when you have insurance and you're a 40 something white lady right who
00:49:34.120is also cisgendered and not as you pointed out like not problematizing anything for them
00:49:39.460i was next to in the emergency room they just have like curtains you know that divide you from
00:49:46.160the other people so you are up you can hear everything that's happening and like the person
00:49:50.180next to me didn't speak english as their first language and was really struggling to articulate
00:49:54.500what they needed through their daughter on the phone the person on the other side was as he
00:50:01.560proclaimed 95 years old and was struggling with memory and didn't know what was happening to him
00:50:07.000and didn't have an advocate and there were other people in like the hallway who were unhoused and
00:50:11.920weren't receiving the same level of care and like the experience that I had was what people aspire
00:50:18.560to and want these all of their medical experiences to be like yeah and so I understand why you would
00:50:25.240seek essentially like these are like exposure therapy almost like what if you if you could
00:50:31.120find someone who is gender affirming who is affirming of like also people I think who are
00:50:36.780who have diseases that aren't totally legible, right? And women who like, people don't believe0.62
00:50:43.340their pain or their suffering. Like, what if you had someone who really listened to you?0.95
00:50:47.020It changes your life. It shatters you in the moment. It's so painful. I mean, for me,
00:50:53.500when I'm chronically ill too, my family has lots of disability within it. And so I've been within
00:51:00.960medical spaces advocating for myself or other people my entire life I am unfortunately um an
00:51:07.400expert in having to be a difficult person in a medical environment and what is so frustrating
00:51:16.820is that you expect the worst all the time and when you sometimes when you when you you're treated
00:51:25.180like as human that actually it's excruciating how much you're you're not prepared for it sometimes
00:51:31.900like I went to get like my IUD taken out at like a Planned Parenthood shout out we love you Planned
00:51:39.260Parenthood um after having really really not affirming experiences at like the gynecologist
00:51:47.080that was in my medical network that I had like driven to and fought to see and like I ended up
00:51:53.120crying and raging out of that appointment and being like I'm just gonna go back to Planned
00:51:56.860Parenthood that's the only option um yeah and when I had gone I started crying I think like as soon
00:52:03.320as as like the provider opened the door because like I knew I would be a little bit more likely
00:52:09.540to be seen as like a human being worth talking to there and they had asked me my pronouns and
00:52:15.660all these things during intake and just were more careful of me right yes and they held my hand when
00:52:24.380I was crying and they didn't say anything because it seemed so normal and like that the tragedy of
00:52:30.740that experience being normal for them like I can't imagine the burden that a provider that actually
00:52:36.180cares about you must feel every time someone breaks down in front of them because they know
00:52:40.620like this might be the first positive experience they've ever had in a medical environment that
00:52:45.040that must be so heavy. It's a lot of loss everywhere. It's a lot of grief. And so I
00:52:53.260understand us turning to literal fantasy scenarios to try and find recognition because where else
00:53:00.820would we find it? And to underline it even in a bolder pen, I think that it also explains this
00:53:08.540desire to turn to privatized service, like to concierge providers just generally, right?
00:53:15.540Like if you have this sort of experience with an esthetician or like, I don't know,
00:53:20.460my physical therapist who's not in network, I'm like, oh, what if I could have that experience
00:53:25.740with my doctor as well? But that pushes us towards a model that is, you know, it's like
00:53:30.900private school, right? Like it drops the bottom out.
00:53:33.860But it's a perfectly curated disaster right now. You know what I mean? Because
00:53:37.780we we turn to woo woo and alternative treatments and perhaps holistic therapies because we're not
00:53:44.340we're not getting this treatments we're not getting the care and stuff in traditional
00:53:48.160medical environments some of those are absolutely legitimate services i think western medicine is
00:53:53.220not the only authentic version of care or science or treatment ever available but at the same time
00:53:59.720You know, that's how the lack of true accommodation and understanding and empathy found in the U.S. health care system is also why like people are putting beef tallow on their face and like drinking like unpasteurized milk and stuff.
00:54:16.780It's it's all part of the same conversation about who's taken seriously for their fears and concerns and who's dismissed and when and why.
00:54:25.700For our last question, we're going to get a little deeper into questions of gender affirming care. This one comes from E.K.
00:54:32.940I used to be anti-plastic surgery. When I got top surgery, it really challenged my notion of elective plastic surgery as an unequivocally bad thing.
00:54:42.900Here I was benefiting from its advancement and relative accessibility, plus the surgery itself changed my life.
00:54:48.840On the topic of modern elective plastic surgery, I often find myself tongue-tied and unable to articulate a clear stance.
00:54:56.460When I look at Madonna or Nicole Kidman, my knee-jerk reaction is, that is bad.
00:55:01.580But when I frame all elective plastic surgery as gender-affirming care, why do I feel guilt-shaming these women now?
00:55:09.000How do we get all of these people commenting on plastic surgery trends to start talking about gender performance, gender constructs, and plastic surgery as gender-affirming care?
00:55:18.840all right well what's your first reaction to this arabelle if if we could have them all
00:55:25.980get into that conversation i would love that but i also don't
00:55:30.860just because they begin having that conversation doesn't mean that their takeaways are going to be
00:55:36.120yours they might actually radicalize themselves further into transphobia i'm going to be totally
00:55:41.340real with you yeah yeah so i'm like uh no i don't right because it's like the norm should be that
00:55:51.140we should only use plastic surgery as a way of accentuating very like traditional understandings
00:55:59.020of cisgendered femininity or masculinity i don't even know if there needs to be like barometers of
00:56:05.000this is good, this is bad in terms of ethics and obligation to culture. I think that, yes,0.98
00:56:13.680I think the healthiest way for at least me to frame my relationship to plastic surgery is that
00:56:18.940whoever's doing it, it's gender affirming in some way, even if their version of gender performance
00:56:24.600is unhealthy or toxic in my perception. That's the most accurate version of my relationship0.83
00:56:31.360to it that I can provide I think when we consider gender as a test that we're getting graded on
00:56:39.560that is very dangerous and troubling and I also think that that's how most people conceive of it
00:56:45.900like it's it's a test you're getting graded on you'll be punished excessively if you fail and so
00:56:52.840when we have them open up this conversation about gender performance that becomes a conversation
00:56:59.740about self-surveillance community surveillance and who is performing correctly or not that may
00:57:04.500actually make them more punishing it might make them have a conversation about oh safety in
00:57:11.300bathrooms and all of these things it's not an easy it's not an it's not gonna be an easy
00:57:18.100conversation to have with someone that is already so fundamentally different from you in terms of
00:57:25.400your gender experience yeah i you know i like the part of ek's question where they
00:57:32.080say basically i find it really difficult to articulate my stance right because i think
00:57:38.980that that that's true right and maybe when you see nicole kidman or madonna or whatever like
00:57:45.460this is a moment for self-reflection and i always think that like that's the value of celebrities
00:57:50.960right is they allow us to talk about things and to figure out how we feel about things and so
00:57:56.380your reaction to that is also a way to think like this is this is complicated here's a conversation
00:58:01.500I could have with someone else about like here are all these different contradictory ways to
00:58:06.940think about something like this yeah I don't think that it has to be black and white I don't think
00:58:11.280that it has to be so rigid your relationship to the question or what might you might conceive of
00:58:18.180as the problem ultimately we don't know any of these women you know who are we to make judgment
00:58:24.500calls on them and also like what would be considered good if their work was invisible
00:58:28.640are we only going to congratulate them when we can't see what's going on or we think that they've
00:58:35.240achieved something or like they've had their body tweaked in a way that we find palatable
00:58:41.640who are we to make that judgment call like that is a matter of taste and that does prove and
00:58:47.580underlying the fact that beauty is subjective and what they would they would get things revised if
00:58:54.740they didn't like it they can afford that right i i also like i think that expanding the umbrella
00:59:00.960though to think of plastic surgery as more not just as gender affirming care but also including
00:59:06.620a lot of different procedures that we don't necessarily yeah understand like melody this
00:59:11.720morning was like putting together the numbers on the increases in plastic surgery and realized that
00:59:17.120she's like, I forget that I'm a statistic in this. Do you want to talk about that, Melody?
00:59:21.960Yeah. So I had a breast reduction in 2021. And so I go back and forth in my head of like,
00:59:27.080well, that doesn't count. But like, yes, it does count. But also, why do I care if it counts or
00:59:31.940not? Right, right. I did modify my body to make it more comfortable to live in. So yeah.
00:59:40.760I mean, I think the conversation when we have it about modification, I, the umbrella term that I
00:59:46.560use isn't like plastic surgery. It's just body hacking. We all hack our bodies. We are all
00:59:51.420hacking our bodies all the time. You could consider like wearing a seatbelt, body hacking
00:59:56.280in an environment, you know, that's certainly saving your life and it's attaching you to like
01:00:01.020these death vehicles, right? You're now part of it. Congratulations. You know, so when I conceive
01:00:06.940of these conversations, my umbrella term is that because ultimately people, some people start using
01:00:13.600botox or like getting getting shots because it helps with migraines or like tmj and stuff like
01:00:19.240that so and plenty of people they initially got on ozempic because of things not related to the
01:00:26.080weight loss but diabetes and all of these things and it's because these things don't have very
01:00:31.280present borders and they leak out into these other factors of how we live our lives and the ease that
01:00:37.040they provide our lives in these other ways that's what makes them so alluring and kind of so you
01:00:41.840know quote-unquote dangerous and seductive because it's not just like an aesthetic difference it's a
01:00:48.300material quality of life change I also just think about how people used to be so panicky about people
01:00:54.460having pierced ears talk about body hacking and like just an incredible amount of stigma
01:01:01.320and shame and like that somehow you were modifying your body permanently
01:01:06.860and how that conversation has changed about ear piercing even over the course of I would say 50
01:01:13.100years yeah now there's bougie ear piercing places we're going to that's where I got my ears re-pierced
01:01:18.860when I was like 35 years old yeah but just to show how these discourses they are not stable
01:01:24.660like the way we are talking about different body modifications right now is going to be very
01:01:29.920different than how we're talking about them in 50 years sorry my dog agrees with you ardently