Diabolical Lies - July 12, 2026


How 'The Botox Psyop' Broke Our Brains in the Name of Beauty


Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

181.33

Word count

3,406

Sentence count

196

Harmful content

Misogyny

7

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.440 Today's episode of Diabolical Lies is brought to you by Botox, Ozempic, My Blonde Hair Exodus, Your Blonde Hair Return, Alex Earle's poreless face, the media industry's endless thirst for interviewing white 20-year-old women about ageism, Jessica DeFino, Tressie McMillan-Cottom, My Declining Mental Health and Book Tour, and the tyranny of Zoom calls during the pandemic.
00:00:23.020 Okay, let the record reflect that I am not blonde again.
00:00:27.720 You're mid. 0.97
00:00:29.260 You're mid-level.
00:00:30.260 You're cookie butter, Brand.
00:00:31.620 We've talked about this.
00:00:34.580 I'm mid.
00:00:35.900 Thank you.
00:00:36.780 Yeah, just out here floating in the Mediterranean Sea with my mousy brown hair.
00:00:42.340 Meanwhile, I'm at the stage of pregnancy where all of my hairs, like, basically break off
00:00:46.600 an inch out.
00:00:47.260 So I have, like, little baby hairs everywhere and then a few greys. 0.77
00:00:49.980 And that's kind of what I'm working with.
00:00:51.780 So, Katie, it's been two years, if you can believe it, since the episode we did on injectables.
00:00:56.620 That is canon.
00:00:58.520 That is diabolical lies canon.
00:01:00.260 It is.
00:01:00.880 In the world of injectables, that is basically dog years.
00:01:03.560 So it's been like 14 years for our skin.
00:01:06.820 Yeah, what if the update were like,
00:01:08.820 and so we sit here before you today, both freshly Botoxed.
00:01:13.600 I mean, look, look, we're going to go in some interesting directions.
00:01:16.760 This will function as a retraction for the former injectables episode,
00:01:20.700 and we're taking it down.
00:01:22.440 Well, part of what I was thinking about when I was working on this episode
00:01:25.420 is how the fact that you and I talked about injectables at that point
00:01:28.980 when, like, I think I was just 30 and you were in your late 20s, right?
00:01:34.820 Two years ago, I would have been 29, I think.
00:01:39.520 Yeah.
00:01:40.140 I'm, like, bravely, bravely not getting Botox at 29.
00:01:46.500 Well, that's kind of what I'm thinking about.
00:01:48.900 Something I noticed in my research today is that, like, 0.99
00:01:51.140 it really is funny how women in their 20s and 30s
00:01:54.420 are kind of center to this conversation in media
00:01:57.460 when even 10 years ago,
00:01:59.400 it would have been unthinkable 1.00
00:02:00.440 for women in their 20s and 30s to get.
00:02:02.440 So it's like, is it really that brave
00:02:03.880 for you to be denying injectables?
00:02:05.520 So I kind of wanted to check in and talk about it
00:02:07.700 because my feelings have changed insofar
00:02:11.140 as I have felt more insecurity about my skin.
00:02:14.020 But I'm going to put a pin on that
00:02:15.180 because I want to see where you are now,
00:02:17.840 not just with the idea of injectables,
00:02:20.020 but with basically the hot girl hamster wheel all together. 0.97
00:02:22.680 I feel like you and I talk about this privately quite a bit.
00:02:25.980 Okay, well, glad you asked.
00:02:27.900 Thanks for handing me the floor on this one.
00:02:30.300 You know, I always think I'm doing more or less okay with it,
00:02:34.580 and then they release another season of America's Sweethearts.
00:02:38.740 And then I am forced to confront the fact that maybe I'm not as okay with it.
00:02:44.020 There's this trend on TikTok called the SEC glow-up.
00:02:48.380 Are you familiar?
00:02:49.200 Have you seen this?
00:02:50.540 No.
00:02:50.780 Okay, this must be targeting that I'm getting as a former Alabama sorority wench, but it's basically like this trend on TikTok where people will juxtapose two pictures of themselves, one from the year before they, basically when they're seniors in high school, okay, so they are children, and it's like before they go to an SEC school and then when they're graduating from the SEC school.
00:03:14.100 and the transformation is pretty predictable it's like you kind of become a beauty queen so
00:03:20.080 you you essentially come in looking like a normal also though probably like thin white already
00:03:26.980 attractive you know young woman right and you come out with like the big barrel curls and like
00:03:32.340 usually you're blonde and you're glossy and you're shinier and your makeup is perfect and your outfit
00:03:36.680 is perfect and you look like a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader basically but after being served
00:03:42.200 enough of those, I was like, you know, there should be a trend that's like the SEC school
00:03:47.480 glow down, where it's like what you look like when you graduate from one of these institutions
00:03:52.740 and then 10 years later, when you've been like bedraggled by the late capitalist state
00:03:58.660 and, you know, you can't afford the highlights anymore and you have a real job and a young 0.99
00:04:03.560 child and like your life is going to shit. 0.99
00:04:06.460 I'm like, that would be the more interesting transformation. 0.99
00:04:09.500 I won't claim to have a young child or have been bedraggled by the late capitalist state,
00:04:13.620 but I definitely feel like, well, we'll just say this.
00:04:18.460 After the latest season of America's Sweethearts,
00:04:20.860 I went to Sephora and I purchased every Charlotte Tilbury product
00:04:24.840 that was used in the makeover episode.
00:04:26.920 So mentally, that's where I am.
00:04:30.100 Oh, yeah.
00:04:30.640 Caroline, I sent you a selfie with the pink pillow talk eyeshadow on.
00:04:34.720 I haven't graduated to the point of like directly embedding these enhancements into my face, but I am back on the grind of spending money on and thinking about my appearance again.
00:04:48.580 And I think that to your point about feeling insecure, I think it's often driven by that sense of floating a little too far away from the norm.
00:04:58.340 That's super interesting.
00:04:59.360 I feel like we have had doppelganger experiences
00:05:01.580 basically this spring where your triggers have happened
00:05:05.300 from looking at other women in popular media
00:05:07.800 and my triggers happened with how often 0.52
00:05:09.960 I had to look at myself.
00:05:11.680 So I had a very difficult time with this this spring,
00:05:16.420 which is in some ways ironic.
00:05:18.040 I was thinking about this
00:05:18.720 because I'm a podcaster and a novelist.
00:05:20.720 Like for all of the industries,
00:05:22.960 my looks are objectively irrelevant.
00:05:25.400 They do not matter to the work that I do.
00:05:27.300 They do not hold value to what I offer. But I had to look at pictures of myself constantly. In the weeks leading up to book release, I was on Zoom calls for like five hours a day doing press, staring at myself.
00:05:43.240 I would have to look at clips that interviews made of me where it was like I wasn't in control
00:05:48.260 with how they clipped me. And I was pregnant. And so it was like my body was changing.
00:05:54.640 I've done my entire book tour in the second and third trimester of my pregnancy. And at the same
00:06:00.780 time, people were talking about my novel, obviously, but they were also talking about me.
00:06:04.540 And they were picking both apart in ways that I was not prepared for. And I have thought about
00:06:09.640 this quite a bit because I feel very confident that if I was not pregnant during this time period,
00:06:15.080 I absolutely would have channeled all of my anxiety into my appearance. I definitely would
00:06:19.960 have gotten Botox. I would have microneedled. I was like, right before I became pregnant,
00:06:25.420 I was already thinking about it quite a bit because like, frankly, the interviews had already
00:06:29.160 started picking up. I would have probably tried to lose weight. There would have been like a huge
00:06:33.540 fixation for me on how I looked and it was a real wake-up call for me about like just how
00:06:40.300 malleable our politics are based off of the context of our environment yeah I mean the personal is
00:06:46.420 political yeah kind of the flip of it where it's like and you are a human having a human experience
00:06:52.200 and like you are susceptible to these feelings whether they are legitimate or not of the danger
00:07:00.660 of being, I think in this case, it's like being excommunicated from the tribe. Like there is like
00:07:05.280 a real sense of wanting to fit in and like gain acceptance. I think this was actually something
00:07:10.480 that they said came up a lot. If I remember correctly, a lot of the increase in plastic
00:07:16.800 surgery and aesthetic intervention following 2020 was something that they kind of blamed on Zoom,
00:07:24.260 that for the first time people were en masse looking at themselves all day long in a way
00:07:29.820 that was completely unnatural and like suddenly becoming aware of their looks in a way that maybe
00:07:35.560 had been more in the background before. Totally. And we're going to talk about that today.
00:07:40.580 It was just something I've thought about as I've been doing work on this episode. And I think
00:07:44.420 something that I kind of tried to take to its final conclusion was the idea of like, okay,
00:07:48.340 well, what did I think I was going to get if I did do Botox? And I think the really honest answer
00:07:52.660 is that I probably had some sort of subconscious correlative thing in my head where it's like,
00:07:57.900 well, the prettier I am, the more seriously people will take me, the more they'll like my
00:08:02.140 book, which is, yeah, exactly. But this is essentially the theory of pretty privilege,
00:08:07.660 that the more beautiful you are, the more you conform to certain standards related to youth,
00:08:12.780 to thinness, and to white Western European standards of aesthetics, the more you're going
00:08:17.360 to be rewarded. The part two of this definition that has become more commonplace in recent years
00:08:23.180 with the rise of accessible cosmetic procedures
00:08:25.680 is that if you aren't born with these traits
00:08:28.140 or if, like with youth,
00:08:29.920 you start to lose access to these traits
00:08:31.620 when you get older,
00:08:32.920 you can literally buy your way back
00:08:34.740 into the center of that privilege.
00:08:35.960 That it's the same thing
00:08:37.280 as being born with that privilege.
00:08:39.860 So I have never questioned
00:08:41.360 the legitimacy of pretty privilege.
00:08:42.960 I have always kind of accepted it.
00:08:44.280 I've been like, yeah, we have studies
00:08:45.400 that people like attractive people.
00:08:47.460 But I did start to think about it
00:08:48.980 after I read this essay by Haley Nauman,
00:08:51.260 a substat culture writer
00:08:52.400 that you and I both admire who wrote an essay about her experience being interviewed for a
00:08:56.340 piece in The Cut about Botox. Oh, yeah. This essay is called The Botox Psy-Up, and we're going to
00:09:02.400 spend some time with it today. So Haley Naman is a Brooklyn-based writer in her mid-30s who runs
00:09:08.480 this cult favorite newsletter. And I think because she has written critically about Botox and cosmetic
00:09:13.480 augmentation in the past, she received a reach out from another writer, Emmeline Klein, for a piece
00:09:18.980 Klein was working on for the cut. So I'm going to have you read a few sections from it to start.
00:09:24.980 In early January, the author Emmeline Klein asked if I'd like to talk with her for a story she was
00:09:29.740 working on for the cut. It was, quote, about Botox, anti-aging, in scare quotes, rhetoric,
00:09:36.700 with regards to feminism, end quote. Last year, I'd read and loved her book Deadweight, and since
00:09:42.380 then we'd become friendly online. I also knew we were ideologically aligned regarding the beauty
00:09:48.140 industry. Quote, was just reading your limits of destigmatization of cosmetic surgery essay.
00:09:54.000 She DM'd me after I posted about her book in March of 2025. Also, that essay is a banger.
00:09:59.580 Quote, I'm trying to write something regarding our demented moment's relationship to plastic
00:10:05.180 surgery. When we got on the phone a couple weeks later, she explained the article angle in more
00:10:10.860 detail. As a 31-year-old woman living in New York, she was surrounded by Botox talk, and she wanted
00:10:17.180 to interview some women who were older than her, whose, quote, lives she'd like to emulate,
00:10:22.900 about their relationship with aging, Botox, and beauty. I was again flattered, I'm 36,
00:10:29.420 and grateful she couldn't see I was still in pajamas at 11 a.m. We spoke for about 30 minutes,
00:10:35.500 vehemently agreeing with each other the whole time. Quote, everyone is not getting Botox,
00:10:40.900 I told her, as the media likes to portray. Nearly all my friends, ranging from their early 30s to
00:10:46.500 early 40s, had abstained so far. Most of us were cosmopolitan women who still liked getting dressed
00:10:52.460 and worked in or around media. Ostensibly, we were part of the, quote, everyone cohort.
00:10:57.740 My friends talked about cosmetic work in our group chats, but largely from a critical perspective.
00:11:02.600 When we noted evidence of it on public figures we admired, we considered it a small betrayal,
00:11:07.360 a grim sign. The only friends of mine who were truly grappling with their abstinence were those
00:11:13.460 who worked as entertainers who were constantly seeing their faces close up in high definition
00:11:18.500 and who often encountered professional peers who casually discussed tweaks like it was part of the
00:11:24.780 work. Still, they'd held off. Okay, question for you. In your own social circle, what is the like
00:11:32.460 uptake rate of this kind of stuff? I have actually a really delightful range. I have friends who
00:11:39.280 get Botox and injectables in ways that I actually relate to. I have friends who don't get Botox,
00:11:46.280 and I have friends who have gotten Botox and then didn't get it ever again, which is something that
00:11:50.820 I was like, oh, I didn't know that you couldn't become addicted to it, who were just like, yeah,
00:11:54.040 I tried it and didn't like it. So I have a pretty significant range.
00:11:58.440 Oh, man.
00:11:59.360 How about you?
00:12:00.320 Well, when I just think about like my closest little two to three women that I would consider
00:12:05.480 like my closest friends.
00:12:06.880 Like do Sam and Felix get Botox?
00:12:09.280 you outing me for not having any friends.
00:12:12.500 You're like, okay, so me and...
00:12:13.640 Does the bedazzled yesteryear behind you get Botox?
00:12:17.380 Hey, hey, it was a gift.
00:12:19.700 It was a gift.
00:12:20.660 And the listener said,
00:12:21.480 you can send this to Caroline.
00:12:22.520 And I said, no.
00:12:23.460 Nope.
00:12:24.040 That's okay.
00:12:25.000 I'm going to put it on my background.
00:12:26.720 Honestly, I love it where it is.
00:12:28.000 I love it where it is.
00:12:28.920 And just vampire the clout right off of it.
00:12:33.720 Yeah, no.
00:12:34.480 Aside from my two close friends,
00:12:36.060 a.k.a. you and Thomas.
00:12:38.860 No, I don't think anyone in my close circle of friends has gotten it yet.
00:12:42.200 But again, like, we are all in our, like, early 30s, like, 30 to 32.
00:12:47.500 And when I think about my sisters-in-law, who are older than me, by, like, 5 to 10 years,
00:12:53.560 I do think they either have before or do consistently.
00:12:58.020 Okay.
00:12:58.380 And we've kind of joked about it.
00:12:59.800 Like, oh, what if we, like, went to the med spa together and, like, asked her what she would change about our faces?
00:13:04.860 I guess for me, if I think about the only reasons that I haven't really are philosophical
00:13:10.780 in nature and not like for lack of resources or time.
00:13:15.060 Okay.
00:13:15.420 So Haley and Klein end up having this long-ranging conversation about injectables, much of which
00:13:22.040 was spiritual and political in nature, as you just kind of implied, and much of which
00:13:26.760 I think has a lot of crossover with our original injectables episode.
00:13:29.940 I want to be very clear.
00:13:30.940 We are not really going to focus on the spiritual and political arguments around Botox today, mostly because we've already covered them.
00:13:37.180 You can always listen to that episode.
00:13:39.060 We'll kind of touch on them from time to time.
00:13:40.940 But I really want to talk about, like, the practical realities of this conversation.
00:13:45.580 So the article that ends up coming out in the cut, as we've alluded, ends up with very different framing.
00:13:51.500 So I'm going to have you read this.
00:13:53.700 This is by Haley.
00:13:55.840 When the piece came out last week, I was surprised by the title.
00:13:59.440 quote, the year all my friends got Botox. As I read on, my surprise continued. In the first
00:14:05.720 2,000 words, Emmeline's many interview subjects were all 33 or younger, and their needle-based
00:14:11.720 cosmetic routines were relayed in detail. While her tone pointed to a dark undercurrent,
00:14:16.940 often connecting these women's pathologies to those with eating disorders, glimmers of the
00:14:22.100 critiques I believe she holds, the overall packaging and shape of the piece painted a
00:14:27.380 picture that's become familiar in women's media. Everyone was doing it, even the women who didn't
00:14:33.160 think they would, especially them. Hmm. Okay. So Haley was quick to clarify that she didn't think 0.99
00:14:40.440 that Emmeline was the one who shifted that framing and that it was probably the end result of
00:14:45.200 editorial oversight in the name of, you know, SEO grabbing and virality. And I think that's
00:14:50.200 probably true. It's like, no, no, no. I would make a joke about rage bait, but then I would
00:14:56.400 have a stroke. So I'm going to move forward. So now we're going to pause with Haley's perspective
00:15:00.320 and we're going to spend time with the actual article in the cut. So Katie, I'm going to send
00:15:03.580 it to you and I want you to read the subhead. So the title is The Year All My Friends Got Botox
00:15:09.200 and I want you to start with the subhead. Okie dokie. More young women than ever are getting 0.70
00:15:14.540 injectables. We never thought we'd be among them. Oh, all right. Yeah, that's an interesting,
00:15:21.880 I don't know, not sleight of hand, but it does kind of prime you to be like,
00:15:26.100 it's unavoidable.
00:15:27.440 Like, resistance is futile.
00:15:29.640 All right, do you want me to read the first paragraph?
00:15:31.980 Yeah.
00:15:32.620 All right.
00:15:33.800 Let me describe a beautiful friend of mine. 0.99
00:15:36.780 Blonde waves to her waist, strong jawline, an astounding talent for holding eye contact, 1.00
00:15:42.080 and an equally astounding ability to pull off whole and eccentric headwear.
00:15:47.840 Last summer, I was running early to meet her, and she arrived apologizing. We hadn't seen each
00:15:52.700 other in months, so we had a lot to catch up on, and she didn't want me to think she wasn't
00:15:56.940 invested in whatever drama I was about to regale her with. She was coming from a Botox injection,
00:16:02.020 so she wouldn't be able to emote much, she said. She laughed, and her smile almost reached her
00:16:07.760 eyes. Okay, that does sound claustrophobic. All right. A few months later, I was home for
00:16:14.160 Thanksgiving when a friend from childhood who was in her early 30s like me made a similar
00:16:18.000 pronouncement, apologizing for her Botox-limited range of expression, which she worried might be
00:16:23.480 mistaken for emotional stoniness. And when soon after that my 28-year-old sister accused her 0.97
00:16:28.700 best friend of seeming apathetic at her birthday dinner, the friend replied with surprise,
00:16:33.300 evident in her voice, if not her face. Didn't my sister remember that they'd been on FaceTime
00:16:38.540 earlier that day literally during her Botox appointment? That night, I anxiously searched
00:16:43.520 my face for burgeoning lines. In the past decade, Botox had gone from an expensive practice mostly
00:16:49.340 embraced by people also interested in invasive plastic surgery to a routinized and subtle
00:16:54.040 intervention, marketed to anyone with a skincare regimen. It's cast not as a precursor to the
00:17:00.080 operating table, but as another part of normalized beauty maintenance, as low stakes as a blowout or
00:17:05.360 a wax. Injectables are, according to this magazine, a seemingly inevitable part of aging for women. 0.95
00:17:11.800 quote, in the New York City metro area with any, quote, disposable income.
00:17:16.680 Stroll downtown Manhattan and you might pass a trinity of Tweely-named chains specializing in
00:17:21.980 facial injectables, home to Ject, Peachy, and Plump outposts. Medical spas where you can book,
00:17:29.280 get injected, and pay in the span of your lunch break, not to mention return to your desk without
00:17:34.080 even a Band-Aid. In 2024, more than 9 million doses of Botox and neuromodulators under other
00:17:40.760 brand names, Dysport, Juveau, were injected in the U.S., and the debut of ostensibly preventative
00:17:46.620 baby Botox coincided with a 71% uptick in patients injecting it in their 20s, alongside a 75%
00:17:54.980 increase in patients 19 and younger. Botox's manufacturer, Allergan, is explicitly positioning
00:18:01.020 preventative baby Botox, regular doses of the chemical preemptively injected in areas where
00:18:06.220 wrinkles are expected to develop, most commonly to avoid, quote, laugh lines and, quote, angry
00:18:11.260 11s between the eyes, as the future of the drug in a campaign that frames the chemical as, quote,
00:18:16.560 a champion of authenticity. That's good. Okay. My mother's friends injecting Botox in their 40s
00:18:24.320 and 50s were trying to reverse aging. My own friends were attempting to prevent the process
00:18:29.140 from ever getting started, engaging in a practice of self-preservation that once sounded science
00:18:35.700 fictional, but is now seen as not only realistic, but requisite for women who don't want to quote
00:18:42.240 let themselves go. Any thoughts? Well.