WEBVTT - Born With It 0:00:05.559 --> 0:00:08.280 As an indie musician, trying to score press coverage is 0:00:08.320 --> 0:00:10.880 a huge part of the job, and I remember being 0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:13.720 so stoked and so nervous for one of my band's 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:18.599 first magazine photo shoots, with a professional photographer, proper wardrobe 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:23.599 on set, an actual makeup artist and everything. I usually 0:00:23.640 --> 0:00:26.560 wear a blush an eyeliner, but the makeup treatment for 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:30.600 print photography is intense. Essentially, all of your features are 0:00:30.600 --> 0:00:34.960 painted over lip pencil, brow pencil, eyeshadow, highlighter. It's like 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:39.360 a very thin mask of pastes and pressed powders. You 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:41.920 can't see the makeup artist's handywork while they're at it, 0:00:42.400 --> 0:00:44.360 so you're just sort of left guessing how all of 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:47.520 these colors are combining on your head. The last step 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:51.520 is the false eyelashes. I remember this dude carefully gluing 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:53.720 them to my eyelids. Then it was time for the 0:00:53.720 --> 0:00:56.680 big reveal. I was handed a mirror, but I couldn't 0:00:56.680 --> 0:00:59.840 see myself because he'd accidentally glued my eyes shot, and 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:03.600 so instead of feeling like a movie star, I felt 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:10.919 like a fetal piglet. I'm Dessa, and this is deeply human. 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:15.120 Today is about beauty and ethics. And the intersection between 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:17.640 them stuff. I've personally spent a lot of time thinking 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:23.920 about why is beautification so ethically fraught. Celebrities take heat 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:27.560 for getting botox or lip fillers. Most of us have, 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:30.440 at some time or another been shamed for trying too 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:33.360 hard make up with the jim that's a hot button one, 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:37.119 or for not trying hard enough your teenage self getting 0:01:37.160 --> 0:01:42.360 pestered into a haircut. Maybe plastic surgery is particularly likely 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:47.080 to evoke moral feelings, so let's start there. We begin 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:57.040 with a fire in the nineteen sixties. There was a 0:01:57.040 --> 0:02:00.280 big circus fire where lots of lots of people died, 0:02:00.320 --> 0:02:02.320 and there was a lot of burned victims, hundreds of 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:05.320 burned victims in the city of Nidoi, which across the 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:07.880 bay from me, the Genneiro, And it was just like 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:10.919 a big tragedy. It hit every single news headline. Mbers 0:02:11.520 --> 0:02:14.919 Alvaro Harin is a professor of anthropology at College of 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:18.240 the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. He's also author of The 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:21.920 Biopolitics of Beauty, which includes the story of the circus 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:26.400 fire and a man named Dr Evil Beat. He was 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:28.120 relatively young at the time he had to us return 0:02:28.200 --> 0:02:31.720 from getting his medical degree, he had become specialized in 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:34.760 plastic surgery in Europe. Plastic surgery as we know it 0:02:34.960 --> 0:02:38.040 developed in Europe to treat survivors of the world wars. 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:42.960 Shraplow wounds and trench warfare had created devastating facial injuries. 0:02:43.120 --> 0:02:46.280 Plastic surgery has a deep tie to those victims of war, right, 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:47.640 And there was this sounds of light, we need to 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:51.239 help these people. With his foreign training, Dr Evil Beat 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:54.440 was a godsend. In the wake of the fire, he 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:57.639 treated the burn victims, many of whom were children, pro bono. 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.200 He started a clinic to train others surgeons and his techniques, 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:05.400 and Evil became a national hero. Brazil is now a 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:08.440 beauty capital of the world, performing sky high numbers of 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:11.079 plastic surgeries every year. Right, so if you go to 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:15.200 and you say, almost everybody knows what he is, right, really, 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:22.359 very very f Plastic surgery started as morally unassailable. Surgeons 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:26.840 were healers, treating people disfigured by violence and trauma, which 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:31.960 is not how we think about plastic surgery now. Being 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:35.520 I always kind of scrolling through Instagram, and it was 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:39.200 just something that I started noticing that a lot of 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:42.560 the women I was seeing on my Explore page and 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:44.480 who are getting a lot of likes and a lot 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:47.040 of hard eye emojis and a lot of praise for 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:52.280 their looks. Kind of all looks the same. That is 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:56.240 Kelly McGuinty, who recently published her masters thesis on what's 0:03:56.240 --> 0:04:00.160 called Instagram face, a term popularized by writer you A. 0:04:00.240 --> 0:04:03.560 Tolentino in an article for The New Yorker. In short, 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:09.280 Instagram face is a small nose with no bumps, full lips, 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:16.080 a sharp jawline, no double chin, high defined cheekbones, uplifted 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:23.160 cat like eyes and uplifted arched eyebrows and taught skin 0:04:23.640 --> 0:04:25.840 like lifted and taught like you walked through a wind 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:29.400 tunnel and got stuck. If you know the platform, you 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:33.200 know the look. I think Bella Hadid, Chrissy Teagan, em Rata, 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:37.440 Kylie Jenner, and Kelly has collected some hard data on 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:41.240 the phenomenon. I took the top fifty most followed models 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:45.599 on Instagram, and I did a coding process where I 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:48.880 said yes or no, do they have this feature that 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:52.520 aligns with Instagram face. Almost all of those top fifty 0:04:52.560 --> 0:04:56.280 female faces had the prized features of Instagram face. There 0:04:56.320 --> 0:04:58.880 was a singular aesthetic to which all of these accounts 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:03.240 seemed magnetized. And this this isn't just a certain sort 0:05:03.279 --> 0:05:06.520 of face being made popular by social media. It's about 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:11.680 social media making new faces. So this specific look Instagram 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:18.160 face is largely only attainable through cosmetic interventions like botox, fillers, 0:05:18.560 --> 0:05:22.960 things of that sort. Some people are, of course born 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:26.640 with it, but it's really hard to tell who. Botox, 0:05:27.040 --> 0:05:29.400 botch a line and toxin A is one of the 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:34.239 most poisonous biological substances known to science. It's sometimes called 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:37.880 the miracle poison, and when injected in really small doses, 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:42.080 it paralyzes facial muscles to smooth out wrinkles. You can 0:05:42.200 --> 0:05:45.320 use it under the tip of your nose to lift it. 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:47.400 If you have kind of a downturn nose. You can 0:05:47.400 --> 0:05:49.960 now get a little bit of botox injected there, and 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:52.479 I think they call it a tinker bell tip lift. 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:57.600 That's what they call it in their advertising. Plastic surgery 0:05:57.600 --> 0:06:01.120 clinics leverage the looks of famous face is a bunch 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:04.159 of them offer Kylie packages, a suite of procedures to 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:07.320 help you look more like Kylie Jenner, who has upwards 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:10.040 of three million followers on Instagram, and for the record, 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:19.080 has publicly discussed getting lip fillers. Kelly herself wasn't immune 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:22.359 to the appeal of all those marketing promises. All of 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:25.160 us have probably wished we saw something different in the mirror. 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:28.720 I got lip fillers a couple of years ago under 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:31.240 the same kind of delusion that I didn't think I 0:06:31.279 --> 0:06:34.320 was pretty. I thought having fullor lips would make me 0:06:34.360 --> 0:06:37.200 pretty and would make me happy and make people like me. 0:06:38.000 --> 0:06:42.680 Um it didn't and actually ended up happening. Is I 0:06:42.720 --> 0:06:44.800 just found something else about myself I didn't like and 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:53.920 wanted to fix that too. There's also a racial subtext 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:59.159 to this entire conversation. It's like if colonization had a 0:06:59.200 --> 0:07:02.680 face that said it would be in Instagram. Power From 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:08.039 a white woman, that is writer and thinker Cecily Bowen, 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:12.520 who goes by Bad Fat Black Girl online, she explains 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:17.200 that our standards of beauty are inherently racialized. Lighter skin, 0:07:17.680 --> 0:07:20.960 certain hair textures as in like looser curls and patterns, 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:25.200 and prioritize over other ones than her noses. For example, 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:28.280 I think is one example of a physical feature that 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:32.280 is often associated with whiteness and thus more desirable. It's 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:35.080 like no one is ever getting a nose job to 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:38.800 make their nose fuller or bigger. Our looks can affect 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:42.720 big life outcomes. So beauty isn't just a frivolous concern 0:07:42.960 --> 0:07:47.040 When people talk about, for example, pretty privilege, that is 0:07:47.240 --> 0:07:50.240 a real thing. You know. There's research that shows that 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:55.280 people who are perceived as more you know, traditionally attractive, 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:59.080 are more likely to be hired for jobs, are more 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:03.280 likely to make more money as they go through their lives, 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:06.239 are more likely they have different access to different things. 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:09.280 They're less likely to be profiled at a store or 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:13.440 treat it poorly by a law enforcement officer. Note the 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:18.360 transitivity here. Privilege comes from beauty, and beauty comes from 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:24.760 proximity to white features. On a trip to India in 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:27.000 my twenties, I remember seeing an ad on the side 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:30.360 of a building. The woman with a zipper running down 0:08:30.400 --> 0:08:33.840 the center of her face. She was being unzipped to 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:37.000 reveal a paler version of herself to sell skin bleach. 0:08:37.760 --> 0:08:39.760 My cosmetic brand that made the stuff was a big 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:44.120 name when I probably patronized back home in parts of Asia, 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:48.480 the preference for fair skin predates colonial influence, but this 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:52.120 overt nous and this shamelessness of it felt very new 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:56.840 to me. Some moral objections to cosmetic interventions start here. 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:00.959 People have argued that straightening afro tech stred hair is 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:04.679 a concession to standards of beauty that prize whiteness. The 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:08.000 same goes for double eyelid surgery, which is sometimes given 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:11.280 us a gift to teenagers in South Korea, a surgery 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:14.880 that critics say creates a more western looking eye. Ditto 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:19.360 for laser procedures that turn brown eyes blue. Beauty does 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:22.880 not stay in its lane the cosmetic style. It pervades 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:25.920 all of our conversations. I don't think that we can 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:31.720 detach beauty from any public facing aspect of culture, because 0:09:32.040 --> 0:09:35.360 beauty and desirability politics are always at play in terms 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:38.840 of who we allow to be in the front. People 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:42.480 criticize folks who get plastic surgery right as being like 0:09:42.720 --> 0:09:50.080 vain or you know. The shallow vanity is probably the 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:54.920 most common moral charge leveled against beautification. People are self 0:09:54.960 --> 0:09:57.280 absorbed if they spend too much time or too much 0:09:57.320 --> 0:10:00.400 money on their appearance, and if they're getting surgery, then 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:03.560 they're shouldering real health risks. To proof positive that they 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:05.839 care way too much about how they look, and there 0:10:05.880 --> 0:10:10.000 are risks, particularly with the procedure and vogue known as 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:13.920 the BBL. A Brazilian butt lift is essentially a procedure 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:16.880 where fat light bol is usually done on a different 0:10:16.880 --> 0:10:20.160 area of the body, so it can be either the abdomen, 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:23.000 the back, or even the arms of the thighs, and 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:27.440 then that fat is essentially moved around and placed in 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:30.080 the hip and blood areas, and so it gives you 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:34.080 more of like a coke bottle shape and just you know, 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:38.360 some some cakes back there. So we are back to Brazil. 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:42.760 Let's rejoin Dr Evil Pani, rising star in the wake 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:47.520 of the Circus fire. Voky was very savvy and yeah, 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:49.400 he wrote this book The Right to Beauty that was 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:52.920 incredibly well received and people to this day use the 0:10:53.040 --> 0:10:55.480 term like plastic surgery patients that I talked to the 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:57.280 pop hospans yet they say, yeah, we have the right 0:10:57.320 --> 0:11:00.240 to beauty because of up tank. Right. He told us 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:02.400 that the right to be beautiful, it is important and 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:06.439 we need to offer to everybody. Evil positioned beauty is 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:10.640 a class issue, successfully arguing that public hospitals should offer 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:14.000 plastic surgery for cheap or even free for the Brazilian 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:17.040 working class. They see them as amazing humanitarians that are 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:21.280 offering beauty to the poor and that arelifting entire populations 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:24.600 that would otherwise be downtrodden because they're not beautiful, because 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:28.000 the Brazilians belief that beauty is important. It was unfair, 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:30.800 said Evil, that only the rich could afford his techniques 0:11:31.080 --> 0:11:33.520 a tummy tuck, say, with a scar low enough to 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:37.800 be hidden in a bikini bottom. Plastic surgery wasn't only 0:11:37.840 --> 0:11:41.400 a treatment for people disfigured by accidents or battle. It 0:11:41.480 --> 0:11:45.680 was also, to use his phrase, for those betrayed by nature. 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:48.160 I'm thinking of like some of the conversations that you 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:52.559 had with the recipients of surgical procedures like um. A 0:11:52.600 --> 0:11:57.480 teenage girl who was interested in having breast augmentation felt 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:00.000 a lot better about the green light that she got 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:05.200 from her doctor. If she had like a medicalized diagnosis 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:08.320 of small breastedness. It justified it in her eyes and 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:11.280 particularly the guys of her mom, that this was a 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:15.199 condition right, That she had an abnormality hypotrophy of the 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:18.200 mammary glance, which really just means you have small breasts. 0:12:18.880 --> 0:12:22.600 Medicalizing a condition strengthened the argument that the state should 0:12:22.600 --> 0:12:26.400 pay for it and distanced patients from any suggestion of vanity. 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:32.240 A formal diagnosis clearly warranted intervention. This motive thinking essentially 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:37.440 pathologized ugliness. It blurs the line between reconstructive surgery and 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:40.960 cosmetic procedures, implies that you can be injured not just 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:44.040 by shrapnel, but by your own genes. I talked about 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:47.400 us cosmetic citizenship. They think that they can only belong 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:50.599 in the resilientation if they're beautiful. I had talked to 0:12:50.640 --> 0:12:53.160 a surgeon that had surgery on his own wife and 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:55.760 his own mother. You know, they're they're they're strange creatures 0:12:55.760 --> 0:12:58.600 in the sense that they really normalize it for everybody. 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:02.280 I'm trying to not have a moral reaction in my 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:05.880 investigative conversation about moral reactions, but I'm making a face 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:21.520 that's intense A difficult entanglements of instinct, intellect, and ethics 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:25.839 call for a particular sort of professional. What we need 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:28.679 is a philosopher. My name is Claire Chambers and I'm 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:31.600 a professor of political philosophy at the University of Cambridge. 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:38.520 Isn't beauty like definitionally necessarily non inclusive, that like, not 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:40.720 everybody can be it in the same way that like 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:45.320 the word beautiful functions the way that the word tall functions. 0:13:45.960 --> 0:13:51.160 It's in comparison to a collective average. But then there 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:53.760 should be no shame and not being beautiful, right, So 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:57.120 if beauty was just one way of succeeding or one 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:00.600 way of excelling amongst others, then that might be fine 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:03.240 to say that, you know, not everybody has to be beautiful. 0:14:03.760 --> 0:14:06.040 But that's not generally how we use it. It's a 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:08.680 value that really takes on much more weight than it should. 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:11.960 Nobody's exempt, but the own is to be beautiful ways 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:15.559 more heavily on some than others. Typically, women and girls 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:17.880 are expected to be beautiful to a higher sort of 0:14:17.960 --> 0:14:22.560 standard of beauty than men and boys. Men conversely, can 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:26.440 be stigmatized for being too image conscious, for preening or 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:30.400 wearing guyliner. I'll note here, though, that these gendered norms 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:33.160 have not always been so. In other times and places, 0:14:33.440 --> 0:14:38.440 beautification was more of the domain of dudes. Claire recently 0:14:38.440 --> 0:14:41.600 wrote a book It's called Intact, A Defense of the 0:14:41.680 --> 0:14:45.280 Unmodified Body. You mentioned a procedure that I've never heard 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:50.400 of in your book. What is a vampire facial? Basically, 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:53.520 a vampire facial is when you have a facial which 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:57.200 injects into your face platelets that are extracted from your 0:14:57.240 --> 0:15:00.560 own blood, hence the vampire idea. And I it's supposed 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:02.840 to do something sort of magical to the texture of 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:05.920 your skin. Because there's all these kinds of really quite 0:15:05.920 --> 0:15:10.280 gruesome proceiegures that have been all the time for beauty. 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:14.680 Japanese women have blackened their teeth, Dino's flattened their foreheads, 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:19.880 Victorian ladies self administered poisons to dilate their eyes. But 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:23.200 there's no need to venture to the extremes for ethical complexities. 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:28.360 Consider the standard issue department store cosmetic counter. In the 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:31.280 nineteen twenties, when makeup really took off in the US, 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:36.040 Revalon was marketing cosmetics as Hope in a jar. Makeup, 0:15:36.120 --> 0:15:38.400 which is a product designed to change the way you look, 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:42.640 is often marketed for its undetectability. People won't know you're 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:45.680 wearing it. It'll seem natural. We'll use the word natural 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:48.080 usually to refer to things that we want to say, 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:51.640 Ah good, it feels like my face is allowed to 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:54.560 look like, it's not wearing makeup, but it's just not 0:15:54.600 --> 0:16:00.440 allowed to look like my face, right, exactly, It's exactly it. Yeah, 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:02.800 and if they're doing it successfully, and that we can't 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:04.800 tell their wearing makeup, right, what the rest of us 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:08.920 looking at them think is Wow, those other women's faces 0:16:09.280 --> 0:16:13.600 naturally don't have whatever it might be, dark circles, red patches, 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:16.200 whatever the thing is that you're you're concerned about. So 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:18.680 other women just look so much better than me, Naturally, 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:26.120 my face must be really bad. I once did a 0:16:26.160 --> 0:16:29.000 photo shoot for a cosmetic line, a pretty awesome one. 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:32.520 I'm out Let's run independently and cruelty free, and helped 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:35.440 to donate proceeds to a charity that supports women's literacy. 0:16:36.120 --> 0:16:40.200 And I remember receiving the first round of images, intensing 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:44.720 they had been noticeably airbrushed since I was a kid. 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:47.360 The tear trops beneath my eyes have been dark, sort 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:50.560 of sunken. But the woman in the picture was smooth 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:55.760 and bright. She looked like me, but well, prettier, fresh faced, 0:16:56.120 --> 0:16:59.520 not so tired. The thing is, I do look tired. 0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:03.720 I am, in fact tired, and I felt guilty about 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:07.840 suggesting otherwise I asked that the effect be dialed back, 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:10.639 but I admit I didn't push to remove it all together. 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:15.399 With daily wear makeup, most of us are cautious not 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:19.520 to overcorrect to the point of conspicuousness. Looking totally fake 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:23.760 would be bad, not just undesirable, but like morally bad. 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:28.000 Consider your own reaction to seeing someone selfie that's been 0:17:28.040 --> 0:17:31.280 obviously processed by a filter. Yeah, that's not even her 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:36.560 real phase. It feels like a deception. But maybe makeup 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:38.880 is just an Instagram filter you wear on the skin, 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:42.960 and botox is just to filter that you were beneath it. 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:47.719 It almost feels like like cheating. So there are times 0:17:47.760 --> 0:17:49.919 when we think that what the body needs is it 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:53.160 needs effort, right, what is virtuous is to spend effort 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:56.040 on our bodies, And so maybe it's something like liposuction 0:17:56.119 --> 0:17:58.800 looks like we haven't spent enough effort or the right 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:01.520 kind of effort. It's like, if you get plastic surgery, 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:04.119 you're not earning beauty the way that you're supposed to. 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:07.080 But I mean, it doesn't really best of class greets 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:10.399 me because undergoing surgery right is a huge effort. In 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:13.320 many ways, we should not be creating a society where 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:16.560 what are the huge sources of anxiety for people is 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:19.280 that we don't look good enough, we don't look acceptable. 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:24.080 If you've watched more than like twenty minutes of television, 0:18:24.560 --> 0:18:28.200 you've probably seen beauty products marketed as self esteem builders. 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:31.600 They bring out our best selves, help us walk tall 0:18:31.680 --> 0:18:36.320 while striding into boardrooms in slow motion. Kelly, who researched 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:40.480 Instagram face, isn't convinced. I've gotta say I'm not really either. 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:44.600 For me, I think that feeling empowering and being empowering 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:49.399 are two different things. This equivalence of beauty and power 0:18:50.040 --> 0:18:53.280 is predicated on some pretty garbage ideas. I think it 0:18:53.320 --> 0:18:56.960 has origins to the history of how women have been 0:18:57.000 --> 0:19:00.560 placed as objects of desire for men self. For example, 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:04.760 if we're sitting in a restaurant, we begin to picture 0:19:04.760 --> 0:19:07.080 what we look like sitting in that restaurant. We're taking 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:11.680 on this outside gays and imposing it on ourselves. This 0:19:11.800 --> 0:19:14.879 is what's called the male gaze. But now at the 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:19.840 same time, it's not just men perpetuating it. It's women too. 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:23.400 It's just thinking of yourself as a collection of parts 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:25.679 that you can use. You know, your consumer power to 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:29.760 buy and to change rather than thinking of yourself as 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:33.400 a whole, living person. So if you're gonna go tinkerball 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:36.280 for Instagram if it gives you confidence, like, okay, that's fine, 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:38.720 but just don't claim it as this sort of empowered 0:19:38.760 --> 0:19:42.560 feminist act. We're on some tricky philosophical ground here, so 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:46.199 I'm going to baby step it. If feminism is a 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:49.760 movement that fights for women's rights to lead self determined lives, 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:54.000 to expand their choices, does it necessarily follow that any 0:19:54.119 --> 0:19:57.959 choice a woman makes is an exercise of feminism? Or 0:19:58.400 --> 0:20:01.840 can women make choices that, even if they benefit them personally, 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:07.080 run opposite to feminist values? Does participating in beauty culture 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:11.760 help me as an individual but also perpetuate lousy ideas 0:20:11.840 --> 0:20:15.760 that hamstring women generally? And then on the flip side, 0:20:16.200 --> 0:20:20.280 isn't criticizing a woman's choice, particularly as it relates to 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:25.840 her own body like quintessentially anti feminist? The people you've 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:29.040 heard here don't seem interested in judging women on their 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:32.359 personal choices, but that doesn't mean they're not critical of 0:20:32.359 --> 0:20:37.040 the culture that incentivizes them. Growing older for women is 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:41.320 a particular challenge to borrow a Brazilian phrase men age, 0:20:41.320 --> 0:20:44.880 but women decay, you know or rocked Back to Alvaro 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:50.159 Harim Brazil and the strange story of Dr Evil. He 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:52.919 had kind of a weird eric about it. He argued 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:55.760 that it would somehow if you gave plastic surgery to 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:59.960 people that were criminals. He had this kind of criminological argument, 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:03.959 it would somehow help them become better people. The halo 0:21:04.040 --> 0:21:07.240 effect is our propensity to assume that people with one 0:21:07.280 --> 0:21:10.560 sort of positive trait, like good looks, have all sorts 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:14.080 of other virtues too. And Evil here seems to be 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:17.159 suggesting that a halo can be surgically sown in place. 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:21.840 Brazil also conceives of plastic surgery is self care. It 0:21:22.000 --> 0:21:25.280 sort of understood us upkeep of the body right. People 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:27.720 told me it's like, I mean, brushing your teeth. You know, 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:30.960 it's a hygiene. Why wouldn't you get a facelift after 0:21:31.000 --> 0:21:36.560 you turn fifty? The legacy of Dr Evil is complicated. 0:21:36.920 --> 0:21:39.760 Remember talking to a nurse at the Evil Patanie Institute, 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:42.159 and she was very upset because she said, when I 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:45.320 began working here twenty years ago, it was mostly reconstructive, 0:21:45.440 --> 0:21:48.560 was mostly reparative, and now it's mostly aesthetic and I 0:21:48.560 --> 0:21:51.520 don't understand. And she was upset that the fact that 0:21:51.600 --> 0:21:53.600 like a job that she really was proud to be 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:56.280 part of has become something very different. It can be 0:21:56.359 --> 0:22:00.359 easy to judge the culture of invasive, painful, Sir Trees, 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:03.200 but I think any of us in that position would 0:22:03.200 --> 0:22:05.320 probably say yes to it. We get to say no 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:07.720 because we have certain privileges to say no to those 0:22:07.800 --> 0:22:10.280 kind of things and to be more critical of it. 0:22:10.600 --> 0:22:13.760 So patients saw it as It's interesting they were so 0:22:13.840 --> 0:22:17.040 critical of what they called the dictatorship of beauty. Some 0:22:17.040 --> 0:22:19.719 people use that term at the same time that they 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:26.120 were acquiescing to participate in it. In my twenties, back 0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:30.000 from India, I wanted to reject beauty culture, feminine ideals, 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:34.960 to go hardline aesthetic, explaining it's my mom. I told her, 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:37.879 beauty has nothing to do with a person's character and 0:22:37.920 --> 0:22:43.320 it's fleeting anyway. It's foolish to get too attached. Your 0:22:43.400 --> 0:22:46.879 voice is beautiful, my mom said, you don't get to 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:53.120 keep that forever, either, So what you shouldn't sing. As 0:22:53.160 --> 0:22:57.600 my musical career progressed, photo shoots became commonplace, and I've 0:22:57.600 --> 0:23:02.119 walked an uneasy line. It's fun to the glamorous, but 0:23:02.160 --> 0:23:04.480 it's also like a drug that's too good to use 0:23:04.520 --> 0:23:07.760 too often. And I've made these little rules, like I'm 0:23:07.760 --> 0:23:10.560 allowed to wear blush every day, but not foundation. If 0:23:10.600 --> 0:23:13.560 I post a flattering, dulled up picture, I've got to 0:23:13.600 --> 0:23:16.199 post another planer one just to keep one foot on 0:23:16.240 --> 0:23:20.600 solid ground. These rules are getting harder to follow as 0:23:20.640 --> 0:23:26.000 I grow older. I asked cecily A k a bad 0:23:26.040 --> 0:23:29.800 fat black girl about her regimen. I absolutely like I 0:23:29.840 --> 0:23:33.240 wear makeup. I give myself a little bit of contour, 0:23:34.160 --> 0:23:37.160 do my eyebrows almost religiously every day so that they 0:23:37.200 --> 0:23:42.080 look more neat. I wear about a hundred different hairstyles 0:23:42.200 --> 0:23:48.000 per year. I hey, whether they're wigs, whether their extensions, 0:23:48.000 --> 0:23:50.800 whether they're you know, whether they're crochet. You know. So 0:23:50.880 --> 0:23:55.760 like I'm a hundred percent participating a man, Is there 0:23:55.800 --> 0:23:59.880 any part of you that resonates with people who would 0:23:59.880 --> 0:24:04.240 have the concern that's like, um man, we are feeding 0:24:04.320 --> 0:24:08.680 into a capitalist system that just asked us to spend 0:24:08.680 --> 0:24:11.320 a lot of money on doing this right that like 0:24:11.400 --> 0:24:15.480 thrives off a hundred percent. I just dropped five hundred 0:24:15.520 --> 0:24:20.240 dollars during the safora sale. Part of me thinks about like, um, 0:24:20.280 --> 0:24:23.840 like traffic, that's something that we all complain about, but 0:24:23.880 --> 0:24:26.680 we all are it too, And I feel like culture 0:24:26.720 --> 0:24:31.280 is sometimes it's like it's very difficult to completely divorce 0:24:31.320 --> 0:24:34.760 from personal choices because it's personal choices and mass that 0:24:34.800 --> 0:24:39.239 help create culture. Yes, everyone hates traffic, but everyone is 0:24:39.320 --> 0:24:45.280 Traffic is a h true, but we are also talking 0:24:45.320 --> 0:24:48.640 about people still having to get where they need to go, 0:24:50.000 --> 0:24:52.440 and so who built the road to only have three 0:24:52.520 --> 0:24:56.199 lines instead of seven which created a floor traffic that 0:24:56.280 --> 0:24:58.520 is now terrible for everyone. You get what I'm saying. 0:24:58.720 --> 0:25:00.919 Who decides what is view full and what is not 0:25:01.400 --> 0:25:04.520 and what people deserve who are beautiful and what people 0:25:04.560 --> 0:25:08.080 who are beautiful don't deserve. It will always come back 0:25:08.080 --> 0:25:14.400 to that. For me, we love beauty, but we dried vanity. 0:25:15.520 --> 0:25:18.359 Many of us think that beauty is over indexed, but 0:25:18.440 --> 0:25:21.719 you're still not supposed to cheat that broken game, like 0:25:21.840 --> 0:25:25.960