Podcasts about unpublishable

Today, our guest is an award-winning beauty reporter and critic whom you might have stumbled upon while reading her super popular newsletter, The Unpublishable, which, as HuffPost says, "basically gives the middle finger to the entire beauty industry." Writing about what the beauty industry won't tell you, Jessica DeFino has built an identity as a reporter on a mission to reform it. It all started, however, in a place as opposite as it could be: a few years back, Jessica was a product-obsessed editor for the Kardashian-Jenner Official Apps, embedded in the core of the beauty industry. This exact "behind-the-scenes" angle and her own beauty-product mishaps led her to start bravely and compellingly writing about what she experienced: mass marketing manipulations, pseudoscience, and consumerism that have become endemic to the beauty industry. Her fearless truth-telling on topics such as the politics of appearance in the Barbie movie, or why Madonna's plastic surgery is not as subversive as she claims, makes her one of the most beloved analysts and writers on beauty culture out there. Jessica doesn't reject beauty. Instead, she seeks to reveal the industry and culture built around it. Beauty remains an essential force we all crave as humans, but in order to reveal its roots, we have to dismantle the boring, mass-produced thing that beauty has become. Recommended by Jessica: Disobedient Bodies by Emma Dabiri The Book of Ayn by Lexi Freman Recommended by Caitlin and Ben: Happy Fat by Sofie Hagen Chatter by Ethan Cross Try Blinkist for free for 14 days by going to [https://www.blinkist.com/simplify][2], tapping on Try Blinkist at the top right, and entering the code beauty. Let us know what you thought of this episode, or just come say hi on Twitter! Find Caitlin at @caitlinschiller https://twitter.com/caitlinschiller [2], Ben at @bsto https://twitter.com/bsto [3]. You can write us all an email at podcast@blinkist.com [4]. This episode of Simplify was produced by Caitlin Schiller, Ben Schuman-Stoler, Maria Levacic & Stephane Obadia at Blinkist

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.comIn this bonus episode, writer and beauty-industry critic Jessica Defino returns to discuss the problems with skin products and skincare in general, why acne topicals aren't long-term solutions, how to have compassion for yourself as you navigate through beauty culture and inevitably get sucked in, and more. Jessica DeFino is an award-winning beauty reporter and critic (The New York Times, Vice, Vogue) and author of the newsletter The Unpublishable. She writes the Guardian's beauty advice column, Ask Ugly, and has been called “the woman the beauty industry fears the most” by the Sunday Herald. Find her at jessicadefino.substack.com.This episode is for paid subscribers. Listen to a free preview here, and sign up for a paid subscription to hear the full episode!Get Christy's book The Wellness Trap now for a deeper dive into the topics we cover on the pod, and strategies to support true well-being. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course.

Writer and beauty-industry critic Jessica Defino joins us to discuss the intersections of wellness/diet culture and beauty culture, how she went from child beauty-pageant participant to working at the Kardashian-Jenner apps to eventually becoming an outspoken critic of the beauty industry, how social media is spreading harmful beauty ideals, the ageism of “anti-aging,” how to change your relationship with beauty standards, and more. Jessica DeFino is an award-winning beauty reporter and critic (The New York Times, Vice, Vogue) and author of the newsletter The Unpublishable. She writes the Guardian's beauty advice column, Ask Ugly, and has been called “the woman the beauty industry fears the most” by the Sunday Herald. Find her at jessicadefino.substack.com.If you like this conversation, subscribe to hear lots more like it! Support the podcast by becoming a paid subscriber, and unlock great perks like bonus episodes with our guests, subscriber-only Q&As, full access to our archives, commenting privileges and subscriber threads where you can connect with other listeners, and more. Learn more and sign up at rethinkingwellness.substack.com.Christy's second book, The Wellness Trap, is available wherever books are sold! Order it here, or ask for it in your favorite local bookstore. If you're looking to make peace with food and break free from diet and wellness culture, come check out Christy's Intuitive Eating Fundamentals online course. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rethinkingwellness.substack.com/subscribe

Jessica Defino is a former editor for the Kardashian-Jenner Apps and a freelance beauty journalist for The New York Times, Vogue, WWD, Allure, and more.Jessica's writing has influenced Fluff greatly, being beauty-critical content that publications can't, won't, or don't cover. In this episode we discuss the idea of beauty behaviours as coping mechanisms, the pressure consumers are under being perceived constantly, and the moral obligation of brands to deal with such."If we want to deal with sustainability, we need to address beauty standards, and why we feel compelled to consume so much, and manipulate our bodies so much. If these things are addressed, sustainability will be addressed. There are feelings driving our consumption."  Find Jessica via her Substack, The Unpublishable. 

Today's episode throws it back to a concept I first wrote about several years ago: The Hot Girl Hamster Wheel. It refers to the expensive maintenance that “traditional female beauty ideals” prescribe: haircuts, manis/pedis, spray tans...the list goes on. But why is this never covered in personal finance sector, despite how much these costs add up? We dig into the numbers, the effects beauty has on our self-esteem and the world around us, and how to do a Hot Girl Detox to reclaim your time (and wallet). I'm joined by Jessica DeFino, a beauty culture critic, author of The Unpublishable (https://jessicadefino.substack.com/), and journalist who's been called "the woman the beauty industry fears." Transcripts can be found at podcast.moneywithkatie.com — Mentioned in the Episode How 'Empowerment' Became Something for Women to Buy by Jia Tolentino, from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/magazine/how-empowerment-became-something-for-women-to-buy.html The average American woman spends $3,756 on her beauty and personal care regimen: https://swnsdigital.com/us/2017/06/women-spend-a-quarter-of-a-million-dollars-on-their-appearance-in-a-lifetime/ Self-Care Culture is Making Us Broke, with Chelsea Fagan: https://podcast.moneywithkatie.com/self-care-culture-is-making-us-broke-with-chelsea-fagan/ Studies on "Pretty Privilege": https://scholarworks.smith.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1822&context=theses The Age of Instagram Face by Jia Tolentino in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/decade-in-review/the-age-of-instagram-face — Follow Along at Money with Katie: https://moneywithkatie.com/ Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MoneywithKatie Follow Money with Katie! - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moneywithkatie/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/moneywithkatie   Subscribe to The Money with Katie Newsletter - Sign up for free today: https://www.morningbrew.com/money-with-katie/subscribe/2 Follow the Brew! - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/morningbrew/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/MorningBrew - TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@morningbrew Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a new series within my podcast called Beauty Bites *insert chews*. This is an ode to and a home for the very many thoughts I have on Beauty politics and breaking the colonial Beauty paradigm. In today's episode we discuss an idea I learned from Jessica DeFino's Substack, The Unpublishable. It is the idea that the beauty we are sold (industrialized beauty) is not the beauty we actually yearn for or need as human beings on earth (spiritual beauty). I wanted to discuss Jessica's powerful idea further on the pod, so here it goes.  Sending all my love to you today, sunshine.  Key quote from episode:  “Nothing that makes a person hate themselves should be allowed to be called Beauty”  Time stamps (00:00): Intro to Beauty Bites *insert chews*  (05:35): Intro to The Unpublishable Substack (09:47): The cultural importance of spiritual beauty (11:24): Ask ChatGPT: Beauty industry and religious language (16:56): Reclaiming Beauty (22:44): Democratizing the access to spiritual beauty (29:00): Closing Sources mentioned:  The Unpublishable by Jessica DeFino Essay: Beauty, Appearance, Attraction, & Power The Ugliness of Beauty episode by me (Apple & Spotify)  Moving Towards Ugliness Ft. Mia Mingus episode by me (Apple & Spotify)  Join the community: ayandastood.substack.com please join me here! Follow me at @ayandastood on TikTok and @ayandastood on IG. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ayandastood/support

The Sunday Herald calls today's guest, Jessica DeFino, “the woman the beauty industry fears.” That's because Jessica, a beauty reporter and beauty culture critic, has seen the inner workings of the beauty industry and didn't like it. More than that, Jessica now spends her time dismantling beauty standards, debunking marketing myths, and exploring how beauty culture impacts people — physically, psychologically, and spiritually.Jessica has written for outlets such as The New York Times, Vogue, Teen Vogue, Harper's BAZAAR, Allure, New York Magazine's The Cut, ELLE, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Glamour, SELF, and many others. She now writes her own beauty newsletter called The Unpublishable.In today's episode, Jessica talks about her own experience in the beauty industry and why she decided to opt out, the psychological and spiritual impacts of beauty standards, why beauty standards are so powerful, why she sees today's standard of beauty as dehumanizing, and what the beauty industry doesn't want you to know. Jessica's insights are so needed, speaking powerfully to the media-saturated culture we find ourselves in. This is truly a must-listen episode.

Chelsea is joined by writer and editor Jessica DeFino to talk about the havoc that beauty standards are wreaking on our world, whether or not we want to admit it. Subscribe to Jessica's substack THE UNPUBLISHABLE here: https://jessicadefino.substack.com/ MORE FROM TFD Join our membership program, The Society at TFD to get exclusive bonus content + access to tons of other perks like our members-only book club: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSPYNpQ2fHv9HJ-q6MIMaPw/join The Financial Diet site: http://www.thefinancialdiet.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thefinancialdiet Twitter: https://twitter.com/TFDiet Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefinancialdiet/?hl=en

Jessica DeFino's face literally had to peel off before she gave up on beauty products and turned a critical eye on the beauty industry. As a journalist covering the industry, she had been inundated with free beauty products, which she enthusiastically accepted. Then she developed dermatitis and had a bad reaction to the steroids she was prescribed to treat it.“My skin started peeling off of my face in chunks,” she says. “For months, my skin was just oozing red. I couldn't put makeup on. I couldn't use products. I could barely splash water on my face without being in immense pain.”She fell into a deep depression and had a crisis of self. “It really made me examine who I was when I didn't have this armor of beauty products,” she says, “because when I felt like I was ugly, I felt absolutely worthless.” Today, Jessica writes The Unpublishable, a cult-favorite newsletter with the tagline “What the beauty industry won't tell you, from a reporter on a mission to reform it.” In it, she critiques obsessions with Botox-like injectables, the sleight of hand behind “no-makeup faces,” and the social implications of nose jobs, among other exceptionally hot topics. This unapologetic coverage, unusual in the beauty space, has helped The Unpublishable grow from 2,000 subscribers to more than 50,000 last year, with boosts from a viral Twitter thread in which she exposed what it was like to work for the Kardashians and a shout-out from Dua Lipa. In this episode of The Active Voice, I talk with Jessica about the effect social media is having on how we think about beauty, her struggles with writing a book, and why her death-and-redemption experience with beauty culture is definitely just like Jesus dying on the cross for his followers. If you, too, want to see the light, I encourage you to listen to her testimony. https://jessicadefino.substack.com/Jessica's recommended reads:Back Row by Amy OdellHow To Cure A Ghost by Fariha RóisínHEATED by Emily AtkinShow notesSubscribe to The Unpublishable on SubstackFind Jessica on Twitter and Instagram[04:15] Anti product, pro people [06:12] Participating in beauty pageants [07:30] Working on the Kardashian-Jenner apps [09:34] Developing dermatitis [13:17] Beauty as religion [14:45] Going viral on Twitter [17:52] Working harder than ever before [20:15] The reality of attention [21:18] Getting death threats from nail artists [25:19] Writing a book[29:19] The mind of an online writer [32:08] Instagram face [40:16] Beyond beauty[51:40] The Unpublishable audienceThe Active Voice is a podcast hosted by Hamish McKenzie, featuring weekly conversations with writers about how the internet is affecting the way they live and write. It is produced by Hanne Winarsky, with audio engineering by Seven Morris, content production by Hannah Ray, and production support from Bailey Richardson. All artwork is by Joro Chen, and music is by Phelps & Munro. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit read.substack.com

Beauty standards change with each generation, but today's standards of beauty seem to be more unachievable than ever.Today, we talk about how the beauty industry and its influencers are causing a rise in cosmetic surgeries.Beauty reporter Jessica DeFino joins us. She writes the “Unpublishable," a beauty critical newsletter.Think about the type of beauty products you consume. What influences you?GUESTS: Jessica DeFino - Freelance Beauty Reporter and writer of the Unpublishable Newsletter Alka Menon - Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University Cat Pastor contributed to this show which originally aired June 9, 2022.Support the show: http://wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, beauty journalist + writer of The Unpublishable newsletter, Jessica DeFino (she/her), discusses what she would idealistically want in an ideal world, from nudist hot springs to the creativity of make-up...Hosted by 22-year-old artist + climate justice activist, Tolmeia Gregory (she/her - also known as, Tolly), Idealistically is the podcast where activists, artists, influencers, scientists and more are asked what they would idealistically want, in an ideal world, to inspire more people to start creating radical visions of the future.Thanks to TOGETHERBAND for supporting S2 of Idealistically, making it possible for me to share more ideal worlds with you.Website: togetherband.org/Instagram: instagram.com/togetherbandofficialThings mentioned in this episode:The Unpublishable (jessicadefino.substack.com/)Venetia La Manna (instagram.com/venetialamanna)Doing It Right with Pandora Sykes (open.spotify.com/episode/16beTVBoV7yzdnjtqEPTdR?)NYT SHEIN article (nytimes.com/2022/09/01/style/shein-clothing.html)Intact by Clare ChambersHannah Witton YouTube (youtube.com/HannahWitton)Watch a LIVE episode of the show at Cheltenham Literature Festival on October 16th: instagram.com/p/Cie5s5uAij_/Follow Jessica DeFinoTwitter: twitter.com/jessicadefino_Instagram: instagram.com/jessicadefino_Newsletter: jessicadefino.substack.comFollow the podcast:Twitter: twitter.com/idealisticallyPInstagram: instagram.com/idealisticallypodFollow the host:Twitter: twitter.com/tolmeiaInstagram: instagram.com/tolmeiaTikTok: tiktok.com/@tolmeiaWebsite: www.tolmeiagregory.com/idealisticallyCreated and edited by: Tolmeia GregoryOriginal music by: Stowe Gregory Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jessica DeFino is not your regular beauty journalist. After finding her pieces were regularly rejected from newspapers and magazines for being too incendiary, or dissing beauty brands who advertised, she founded her newsletter, The Unpublishable, where, in her own words she “dismantles beauty standards, debunks marketing myths and explores how beauty culture impacts people”. It now has 40,000 readers.  The Huffington Post once described her as “giving the middle finger to the entire beauty industry”.    Jess and I discuss why clear skin isn't a health objective but an aesthetic one, the evolution of a tan, the explosion of celebrity makeup and skincare lines and why we're at a tipping point in beauty. Subscribe to The Unpublishable Follow Jess on Twitter and IG @jessicadefino_   Hosted & Exec Produced by Pandora Sykes Production by Joel Grove

Beauty standards change with each generation, but today's standards of beauty seem to be more unachievable than ever. Today, we talk about how the beauty industry and its influencers are causing a rise in cosmetic surgeries. Beauty reporter Jessica DeFino joins us. She writes the “Unpublishable," a beauty critical newsletter. Think about the type of beauty products you consume. What influences you? GUESTS: Jessica DeFino - Freelance Beauty Reporter and writer of the Unpublishable Newsletter Alka Menon - Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yale University Our programming is made possible thanks to listeners like you. Please consider supporting this show and Connecticut Public with a donation today by visiting ctpublic.org/donate. Support the show: http://wnpr.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Because this is what we do to ourselves every day. We put in so much effort to just exist as basic people in the world. Like, we’re not like knockout celebrities. We’re not like stunning anybody. Like, we put in all of this work for a reward that doesn’t actually ever come.You’re listening to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast where we talk about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. Today I’m chatting with Jessica Defino. Jessica is a pro-skin, anti-product beauty reporter who is dismantling beauty standards, debunking marketing myths, and exploring how beauty culture impacts people. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Vogue, Allure, and more. She also writes the beauty-critical newsletter, The Unpublishable. If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe, rate and review us in your podcast player! It’s free and a great way to help more folks find the show.For next month’s bonus ep, I’m trying out a new format: Virginia’s Office Hours. If you have a question about navigating diet culture and anti-fat bias that you’d like to talk through with me, or if you just want to rant about a shitty diet with me, you can submit your question/topic here. I’ll pick one person to join me on the bonus episode so we can hash it out together. Bonus episodes are for paid subscribers only, so join us here so you don’t miss out! Episode 47 TranscriptVirginiaI feel a weird compulsion to tell you that as I contemplated this conversation, my skin broke out very dramatically. And I was like, do I need to disclose this to her? And then I was like, No, it’s fine. It’s fine.JessicaIt’s totally fine. You’re just a normal human being with skin.VirginiaYes, exactly. But it was very funny timing. Why don’t we start by having you tell listeners a little bit about yourself and your work?JessicaI describe myself as a pro-skin, anti-product beauty reporter. I report on beauty and skincare, mostly through the lens of skin first, and then what we put on the skin and the consumerism of it all second, which is pretty rare in the beauty space. It’s also really hard in the beauty space. I was finding all this information about skin and skincare culture and beauty culture and really wanting to report on it, and found that I had a hard time placing these more controversial pitches. My bread and butter is still freelancing. I write for places like the New York Times and Vogue and Allure, but mostly these days, I’m working on my own newsletter The Unpublishable where I can dive a little deeper and explore some of these not industry-friendly topics.VirginiaYou’re speaking to my soul. As my readers know, I started Burnt Toast so that I could write diet culture stories that I can’t write in the outlets that run diet ads next to my work. I spent a long time at women’s magazines and the ethical conundrum of the beauty department is fascinating. And I don’t think people understand the extent to which advertising and beauty content are interwoven. Sketch that out a little bit for us.JessicaIt’s intense. I had no idea until I started reporting on the beauty industry, too. Beauty media is pretty much funded by beauty advertisers, which means it’s not within a publication’s best interest to publish anything that goes against advertisers’ interest—which means a lot of beauty content is very product focused. It’s very sort of light and airy, and not diving deep to question, like, how are these products affecting our skin, our health, our endocrine systems. Beauty media makes money in one of two ways: Through advertising or through affiliate sales. So there’s a big internal incentive to push a lot of products on people, because the publication will get a cut of all those products that are sold online. It’s very interwoven. I have had so many stories killed or completely edited to remove brand names, softened, just really toned down in order to appease advertisers. VirginiaI want to tell you my story of this, which is taking us all the way back to 2007, pre- social media. I did my first big investigative feature piece, which was a deep dive into working conditions in nail salons. I wrote it for Jane magazine, when Jane was the coolest women’s magazine, and also the sort of counterculture women’s magazine. I spent all this time with these nail salon workers, exploring every aspect of this, and they killed it right before we went to press because of nail polish advertisers. And because a big portion of subscribers were nail salons, and they thought they would lose subscribers. That was such a transformative moment for me as a journalist. I was like, Oh, I have to figure out different ways to do this. Because that was a media outlet that I don’t think you would have expected to be as beholden to their advertisers as they were. I can talk about this all now because they folded a million years ago and the piece did end up finally running in The Nation, which obviously has no beauty advertisers. But it also was read by a much smaller audience, not all of whom understood what nail salons were. I mean, the overlap between nail salon customers and The Nation readers is probably not that big.JessicaThat’s the thing! It is a little bit easier to get some harder hitting pieces published in more news-driven outlets, but that’s not where the majority of people who are interested in beauty are getting their beauty information. And so I try really hard to infiltrate those spaces. But it is hard and your story doesn’t surprise me at all. Still, every time I hear something like that, it hurts.VirginiaAnd when you’re trying to publish in the other outlets, you have to convince them that these issues matter. Because now it’s a women’s issue. It’s fluffy. It’s beauty. There’s that whole piece of it. Well, we could rant about that forever, but I feel like we also need to talk about Kim Kardashian. And I probably need to apologize for making you do this, because it’s maybe bringing up some trauma. But we are recording this, it’s a week after the Met Gala when Kim wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress and went on this crazy diet losing a stupid amount of weight in three weeks. You wrote an incredible piece for Vice about your experience working for the Kardashians’ app company. You draw so many smart parallels in that piece between underpaid media work and beauty work. So what is your take on the whole Met Gala thing?JessicaSo Kim was boasting about spending three weeks basically starving herself working out twice a day in a sauna suit. She did an article for Vogue where she said she spent 14 hours the day before getting her hair bleached. Like, that’s so much effort. And my thought was: She looked fine. It was a pretty boring look. It wasn’t a standout moment at the Met Gala. And that makes it such a perfect parallel for mass beauty culture because this is what we do to ourselves every day. We put in so much effort to just exist as basic people in the world. We’re not knockout celebrities. We’re not stunning anybody. We put in all of this work for a reward that doesn’t actually ever come and I thought it was a pretty interesting parallel there.VirginiaYes, it’s an amazing metaphor of what we’re all doing. She just compressed it all into three weeks. My other thought was, this is a woman for whom beauty work is so non-negotiable. If she wants to leave the house without makeup, this is something that’s going to be covered and talked about. So for me, it just kind of felt like why are we even surprised? She’s saying out loud what a lot of other people were also doing to get into their dresses, they just weren’t making a media stunt out of it. It’s not uncommon for a celebrity to spend three weeks before a big event doing insane things to fit into a dress.JessicaIt’s not uncommon for anyone. I had tweeted something to that effect and someone was like, “Please, this is what women do before their wedding day all the time. It’s not that big of a deal.” And I was like, “Just because it happens all the time doesn’t mean it’s not that big of a deal.” That’s a huge deal. That’s a huge deal that so many people are doing it constantly. It’s not just celebrities.VirginiaA line I loved from the Vice piece is: “Beauty standards have always been physical manifestations of systems of oppression.” This, of course, applies to the diet industry just as much as it does to beauty and skincare. So I really want to explore the intersections of these two cultures. How are skincare culture and diet culture really one and the same? “Beauty standards have always been physical manifestations of systems of oppression.” JessicaI always say that skincare culture is dewy diet culture. There are so many parallels. In both instances people have been made to believe that a certain aesthetic signifies health, when that’s not the case. We’re sold products to help us achieve that aesthetic at the expense of our health. We’re sent to doctors who reinforce beauty standards and call it medical care. There are all sorts of doctors who subscribe to BMI as a marker of health, and will tell a patient “just lose weight” when they actually have cancer—and dermatologists are really not that different. I don’t mean this as a slight against dermatologists. This as an indictment of the entire western medical system where beauty standards have been subsumed into medical care. When you’re going to a dermatologist, very often, aside from skin cancer screenings, you are getting treatments to help you look a certain way without ever exploring the root cause of why your skin is reacting the way it’s reacting. The entire thing is “how do we get rid of this as quickly as possible?” And very often achieving that goal goes against your actual skin health.VirginiaAnd they’re often treating things that aren’t even health problems, right? Wrinkles are not a health problem. Even breaking out is normal.JessicaYes. I hate skin types. I hate this idea of “normal” skin because normal skin reacts to the world around it. That is actually the the job your skin is supposed to play. It’s supposed to alert you to any potential imbalances, any internal health issues, any issues in your external environment. So when your skin is reacting in that way, that’s health. That is exactly what it’s supposed to be doing. It’s our job to figure out if is this actually a cue about my health, and if so, what’s going on? Or to say, this isn’t actually about my health. This is just a normal thing that happens to people as they age or as they go through pregnancy or as they go through menopause, whatever. So much of it has nothing to do with health. I think the other parallel is that we’re told that subscribing to this certain standard of beauty, whether it’s your body size or your skin, will increase your confidence and make you feel good. But the data bears out a very different story. Feeling held to this impossible standard of beauty to have like skin like a doll or a model who has been through Photoshop and filters and FaceTune and plastic surgery, increases appearance anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, facial dysmorphia, eating disorder, self harm and even suicide. We’re told that it’s going to be good for us and make us feel better and really makes us feel like s**t.VirginiaThe thing about dermatologists gets me so fired up. We have a history of melanoma in my family so I do go in for my skin checks and one year, I couldn’t get my annual skin check appointment for 18 months. She was booked out that far for the annual cancer screenings, but they could get me in the next week to talk about acne. I just remember thinking, Isn’t making sure I don’t have cancerous moles like more pressing? It said a lot to me. There’s no product she can sell me related to cancerous moles, but there are many products to sell me related to breakouts. JessicaThat’s horrible. And it’s also not surprising. I’ve had so many women tell me specifically that they have gone in for their annual skin cancer screenings and their dermatologist will start talking about Botox or filler and selling them during this health appointment. That messes with your mind because it’s coming from a medical doctor. They’re suggesting alongside a cancer screening, “Hey, maybe you should get your crow’s feet done. Maybe you should get your frown lines done. Maybe you should get your lips filled.” It starts to feel like these things are part of being a healthy human being when they’re not.VirginiaI’m thinking about the intersections, too, with anti-fat bias. I think for a lot of us in bigger bodies, there’s often some added pressure around skincare. Like, if I’m not meeting the size beauty standard, I have to have good skin. There’s a tension between these two things. And we can also talk about the vulnerability of going into these appointments, to any medical appointment when you’re braced for medical weight stigma. Similarly, I think going to the dermatologist is often really anxiety provoking about appearance because you’re expecting to be dissected and told everything about your skin is wrong.JessicaI have a long history of being obsessed with dermatology and taking any pill or prescription that they would give me, starting from probably age 14. I started antibiotics for acne. I was put on birth control pills at 15 for acne. I was on retinoids, tretinoin, Accutane for too long. Then a topical steroid prescription that actually ended up causing something called skin atrophy. This is what kick-started my whole interest in beauty and skincare to begin with, because my skin just stopped working. It was peeling off of my face in chunks. It was a terrible experience at the hands of my dermatologist. I remember after I had pretty much healed my skin myself by learning about how the skin actually works and how unnecessary most products actually are and really paring back, I went to a dermatologist again for my skin cancer screening, and he was like, “Your skin is really dry,” in this very judgmental tone. I was like, “Yeah, it’s dry, because you and your colleagues put me on Accutane for years, which killed my sebaceous gland function and now my skin can’t moisturize itself. That’s not my fault. It’s actually your fault.” It is really frustrating. Especially as somebody who has been through the wringer with dermatology to still get that judgment. Because I’ve actually tried everything you’ve suggested, and it doesn’t work.VirginiaOh, my gosh, that’s so infuriating. I loved the piece you wrote in the newsletter where you talked about Katie Sturino, who is a really great body positive fashion influencer. But she did this whole thing about Botox. It felt like a very weird left turn.JessicaYeah, for sure. I actually see this a lot in the body positive community, especially on Instagram. When it gets to your face, when it gets above the neck, all of that rhetoric goes out the window. In Katie Sturino’s post, she celebrated Botox’s anniversary with a huge cake. So it was like, “eat the cake!” but “freeze your frown lines.” These things really are the same and I see them put together so often, as if they don’t stem from the same exact tenants of oppression. It’s harmful to position yourself as taking a stand against beauty standards, and then use that same platform to feed people another set of beauty standards. People trust you, so it’s really easy for them to internalize that as something that is good and healthy. So what I like to tell people is: Take the beauty content that you consume and swap out certain phrases. For instance, if instead of “frown lines” this Instagram caption had said “fat rolls,” would it feel good to you? If they were like, “get rid of your fat rolls in five minutes?” No, that would obviously be problematic. But for some reason, when we put frown lines in there, it’s like, oh, yeah, no, I have to get rid of this. Or wrinkles and stretch marks, or acne and cellulite, or dull skin and that extra five pounds. It’s a good exercise to insert one for the other and see how empowering it feels to you. I think in the large majority of instances, you’ll see, oh, this is really harmful messaging coming from these these beauty influencers.VirginiaI am so glad you are connecting these dots. I think that ageism hasn’t been touched by the body positive movement, at least not online. I don’t think it’s a conversation we’re having yet. Shout out to my mom, who will be listening to this and saying, “Yes, that’s why I text you every week and say write about ageism.” I’m on it! But she’s right. Even among friends of mine, or folks in this community who would no longer say “I feel fat” in a pejorative way, it’s still very normal and acceptable to say, “I’m so old” or to express remorse about your birthday and about any physical signs of aging. Why do you think we’re still so locked into anti-aging as the goal? Especially since, as you put it in the newsletter piece, it is literally the most unattainable of all beauty standards.JessicaIt’s physically impossible. Never gonna happen. Which is great for the beauty industry. The reason they can push this so hard is because it’s a never-ending goal. There is no point at which you will have bought the right product or gotten the right Botox shot, and think, “I’m done. I’ve anti-aged.” They get you forever once they sell you on anti aging. I also think that this attraction to anti-aging has very spiritual roots. I think that it’s an extension of our fear of death, and our fear of facing our mortality. That’s a very human thing to fear, but we don’t live in a culture where we actually explore those feelings. And then, because we live in a society that also rvalues external appearance, it’s like, okay, well, if I can just look young forever, I won’t actually have to face any of these issues. A big thing I hear from women who are telling me that they need to get Botox, they need to get filler, they need to get the facelift, is: “I look in the mirror, and I don’t look like myself anymore.” And that’s a really scary thing for a lot of people to face. And I get that. But also the point of life is not to look like yourself forever. The point of life is to grow and evolve and change and find a way to be comfortable with that change. If we keep reverting back to former versions of ourselves and calling that progress, that causes a lot of problems.VirginiaPeople say the same thing about weight gain, and particularly postpartum weight gain: “I just don’t feel like myself anymore.” But why is your 16-year-old self or your 26-year-old self the only you that you’re allowed to be? Why did you have to freeze in time with that body? Why can you not change and grow in terms of your physical appearance?JessicaThat’s such a beautiful way to put it. I think with anti-aging, too, there’s a lot of it tied up in productivity culture and also in the way that we treat our elderly community. If we really wanted to address our fear of aging, we would need to start investing in community care and advocating for human rights and health equity and economic security for the elderly and age diversity in the workplace. This idea that once you stop being able to produce output for the economy, that your value as a person diminishes—I think all of that is tied up in what we’re doing to our faces as well. VirginiaI’m thinking this also intersects so heavily with misogyny, right? Because women are held to very different aging standards than men. In the workplace, that plays out in terms of whether you can get a job and whether you can literally financially support yourself. I’ve talked to women who’ve said, “I don’t care about gray hair, but I can’t show up to work with gray hair.” How do you navigate that piece of it?JessicaIt’s really tough. When I get the same question, I do tend to draw a line here between beauty culture and diet culture. Because we’ve gotten to the point in diet culture where we can all agree that life is easier for you in terms of how people treat you, when you’re thin. Is that a good justification to starve yourself and put yourself through these unhealthy practices in order to be thin? I think most people would agree that’s not a good justification. But when it comes to beauty, when it comes to wrinkles, when it comes to gray hair, we allow that. We say okay, yes, this is a good justification. I would like to see us get to the point as a culture where we can agree that giving into these beauty demands is similarly not a sustainable way to exist in the world. Sometimes we feel like we do have to alter our appearance in order to deal with these external judgments. And coping mechanisms aren’t always bad. But you have to understand what is a coping mechanism in your beauty routine and what is truly something you’re doing for your health. What is for “feeling good,” what is a self-expression lipstick and what is actually giving into a really harmful, ageist, sexist standard in order to exist in the world. And then: Where can we divest? Where can we invest in changing those standards instead?VirginiaMaybe a first step is just being honest with yourself. If job security is on the line, you’re not going to stop dying your hair, and I don’t think either one of us is saying you should. You can only challenge what makes sense to challenge. But there’s probably some clarity that comes with being clear and honest with yourself about why you’re choosing these different standards. It can be so interrelated and hard to sort out for yourself why these different things matter.JessicaRight? There’s a great quote that I love to reference from Tressie McMillan Cottom’s book Thick: “‘I like what I like’ is always a capitalist lie.” Oh my gosh, when I first read that it hit me so hard. I repeat it constantly to people because just saying, “Oh, I like doing this,” or “I do this for me,” isn’t really a good enough answer, because there’s always something deeper that informs why you like it and why it makes you feel good. And it normally stems from something in the external culture making you feel really bad first, and that is the thing that we have to address.VirginiaA reader question I answered recently that I think made people the most uncomfortable was someone saying but, what if I just don’t want to be fat? Like, what if that’s just my preference? It’s so hard for us to recognize we didn’t get there in a vacuum. Butter For Your Burnt ToastJessicaI’m working on a post for my newsletter now and I’m trying to create a list of songs, movies, poems, art that reference ugly women—not necessarily ugly, but things you wouldn’t necessarily find attractive. Just to romanticize these features that are often neglected by mainstream beauty media. I was listening to “Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen the other day, and I love that line where he’s like, “You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re alright.” And then it’s just this like bleeding heart love song to this woman who’s like, fine, I guess. I just love that and I want more. I want more art about plain, ugly people.VirginiaYes! That’s a great recommendation. Mine is also music, we’re in sync there. This is actually a double recommendation. So novelist Emma Straub, who I recommend just as a human, as a fashion icon, as a writer, everything. I recommend her, and I recommend her new book This Time Tomorrow, which is the best novel I’ve read all year. So that’s your first recommendation. But, a very cool thing Emma does, that she talked about in her newsletter, is she makes playlists for each of her novels, which you can find on Spotify. And they are so good. Particularly for my peers who were teenagers in the 90’s. The one for This Time Tomorrow was really great. It starts with the Kinks song, which is not a 90s song, but it’s a beautiful song. And the one for her novel Modern Lovers, I’m really obsessed with. It starts with Melissa Etheridge. This is the soundtrack that I’ve been putting on—I talked in a recent podcast about how I’m into puzzles now. So that’s my puzzle soundtrack when I’m working on a puzzle. And my eight-year-old really loves it, too. I was like, “do we need a different soundtrack because we’re starting a new puzzle?” And she was like, “No, we need Modern Lovers again.” So we’re really into it.JessicaI’m gonna go listen to it now. VirginiaIt’s so good. Jessica, thank you for being here! Tell us where we can find more of you and support your work.JessicaThank you so much for having me! Pretty much all my work now is through my newsletter The Unpublishable.Thanks so much for listening to Burnt Toast. If you’d like to support the show, please subscribe for free in your podcast player and tell a friend about this episode. And consider a paid subscription to the Burnt Toast newsletter! You’ll help keep this an ad- and sponsor-free space, and as you know from me and Jessica, that is hard to find. If you subscribe, renew, or gift a subscription to someone this month, you can also enter to win one of 15 books that have been featured on previous Burnt Toast podcasts.The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti-diet journalism. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

If you asked any of these gentle parenting experts, they would say parenting is the most important work in the world. But they are also perpetually downplaying the hardest parts of it—which means not ever making visible the parts of parenting that we most need to change.Welcome to Burnt Toast! This is the podcast where we talk about diet culture, fatphobia, parenting, and health. Today I am chatting again with Sara Louise Petersen. She’s the Burnt Toast resident momfluencer expert, and you can catch her previous episodes here and here. Sara is also the author of an upcoming book about momfluencers and the awesome new Substack newsletter In Pursuit of Clean Countertops, which is a must-subscribe!Today, Sara and I are chatting about the gentle parenting trend—and how it intersect with our conversations around gender roles, diet culture, and more. If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe, rate and review us in your podcast player! And subscribe to the Burnt Toast newsletter for episode transcripts, reported essays, and more.PS. The Burnt Toast Giving Circle is almost to $9,000! We are so close to our goal and will soon be picking which state election to fund. So if you’ve been thinking about joining, we still need you! Here’s the Burnt Toast episode where I announced it, ICYMI, and the link to donate.Episode 41 TranscriptVirginiaHi Sara! You are the resident Burnt Toast momfluencer expert, which I admit is not a category of expert I knew that I needed when I launched the podcast, but it turns out it very much is. And you just started your own Substack newsletter! So let’s talk about that first.SaraIt’s called In Pursuit of Clean Countertops. It’s not about countertops. It’s not about cleaning. The title is a nod to all of the things that momfluencer culture invites you to pursue and desire and want. I started it a little over a month ago based on an inflammatory post by @BallerinaFarm, Hannah Neeleman. She’s a big one. Her husband Daniel Neeleman started his own Instagram account relatively recently. He posted about the way that Hannah loves to clean and natural light and children like to congregate around her. It just made me feel a lot of a lot of feelings, Virginia. So that was the the post that started it at all.VirginiaI had a lot of feelings about that post, as well. I also love your new Weekly WTF which is so cathartic to read. SaraMy goal is to take the text threads that we all have with our friends, which can be more like, “Holy s**t. Did you see this? This is enraging this is infuriating,” and explore why is it infuriating. Why am I feeling these feelings? To expose the systemic issues at play.VirginiaToday you are coming back on this podcast because we want to dissect a sub-trend of momfluencing culture. We’re talking about “gentle parenting.” I also see it called “positive parenting.” It’s important to say right off the bat, there is no official definition of this concept. Jessica Grose wrote a piece for The New York Times where she described it as “a sort of open-source mélange, interpreted and remixed by moms across the country.” And yes, that is really what it is. Sara, do you want to read this definition that we found in this piece in The New Yorker by Jessica Winter, just so everyone’s on the same page about what we’re talking about here.SaraSo, okay:In its broadest outlines, gentle parenting centers on acknowledging a child’s feelings and the motivations behind challenging behavior, as opposed to correcting the behavior itself. The gentle parent holds firm boundaries, gives a child choices instead of orders, and eschews rewards, punishments, and threats—no sticker charts, no time-outs, no “I will turn this car around right now.” Instead of issuing commands (“Put on your shoes!”), the parent strives to understand why a child is acting out in the first place (“What’s up, honey? You don’t want to put your shoes on?”) or, perhaps, narrates the problem (“You’re playing with your trains because putting on shoes doesn’t feel good”).The gently parented child, the theory goes, learns to recognize and control her emotions because a caregiver is consistently affirming those emotions as real and important. The parent provides a model for keeping one’s cool, but no overt incentives for doing so—the kid becomes a person who is self-regulating, kind, and conscientious because she wants to be, not because it will result in ice cream. VirginiaThat is what I want my children to be, is the thing. This is the goal I think a lot of us have for kids. And yet the path for getting there is so convoluted. Let’s talk about when we each first became aware of this trend and how it’s showing up in our parenting.SaraI became aware of it by way of attachment parenting, which was just everywhere when I had my first kid, who is now almost 10. Attachment parenting is the whole 'if the kid is crying, the kid is not being annoying. It’s expressing needs or desires and it’s your job as the parent to interpret the cries.’ In attachment parenting, you’re not thinking of the kid’s behavior as an impediment to your life, but as the kid expressing his or her or their individuality. I was all about this when I was pregnant. I read all the Dr. Sears books. And then, almost immediately after having my first child, I just felt like I was being gaslit. I remember reading something... Kelly Something?VirginiaOh, yes, KellyMom. Oh, I’m having a trauma response. It’s been a minute.SaraI know. So my kid was not sleeping and I remember reading on KellyMom something like “when cluster feeding happens and baby only wants mom, consider it a compliment.” And I was just like fuuuuuck this. F**k this!!VirginiaIt’s not a compliment. I’m so tired.SaraAttachment parenting kind of feeds into gentle parenting really well in that it’s all about prioritizing the child’s needs. And very rarely are the parent’s needs anywhere in the conversation.VirginiaI had a pretty knee jerk reaction against attachment parenting, although, you know, my oldest is eight, so same time period. It was everywhere. But I was like, this is just code for the woman does everything. And I didn’t sign up for that. It’s not what we’ve agreed upon in my house. We’re not doing it. But then the gentle parenting thing for me, it was discovering Janet Lansbury’s work when my older daughter was a toddler and the toddler tantrums started. (Note from Virginia: I forgot to mention in our conversation that I’ve interviewed Lansbury for parenting articles a few times and think she’s incredibly smart and thoughtful, even if her tantrum advice didn’t always land for me. If you are also a Lansbury fan, this Ariel Levy profile is a must-read.)I was constantly having to negotiate with this person who is totally irrational, according to the way I understand the world. And who is demanding a lot from me in ways that just don’t make sense anymore. At least with a baby, you’re like, well, you’re hungry, or you’re cold or—their needs are just more concrete and not emotional. But suddenly, in the toddler years, you’re sorting through this emotional stuff, as well as—I’m now going to get mail from people saying babies have emotions. I know they do. I know they have emotions. But there’s something about engaging with a tiny verbal child or quasi-verbal child that is just much harder for me. So this whole gentle parenting approach, I sort of clung to it like a life raft. Will someone explain why these children scream so much? And gentle parenting has these '“answers” for you. But what was interesting, even when my older daughter was two or three, was how much it didn’t work with her. All this advice about, like, “What’s up? You don’t want to put your shoes on? Or you’re playing with trains because shoes don’t feel good?” She would just be enraged when I did that. I think it felt like very patronizing to her. She was like, “I am telling you how I feel through my yelling. You putting words to it is not making me better.” SaraWell, one of my challenges that you’re speaking to is: You’ll get this script and the lines that you’re reciting are at odds with your feelings, which are often rage, impatience, annoyance, frustration, despair. So if you’re reciting this script that is like, “I can see you’re having really big feelings right now. And that’s okay. Your big feelings are valid,” kids, I think can tell that you are feeding them a line from a script. Or at least my kids definitely can. It oftentimes in my household has made things worse.VirginiaYes. Because then you’re getting more frustrated while trying to recite the script.SaraAnd then you’re doubly frustrated because the script isn’t working.VirginiaSo, let’s talk more about the scripts because they are one of the most common tropes of the way gentle parenting is performed online. I want to talk about this Dr. Becky post. (Above.) If I have a child screaming, “I hate you! I hope you die!,” which has happened in my life, me responding with calmness is almost denying the feeling. The goal, ostensibly, is to label their feeling, but you’re denying the feeling because you’re responding so stoically to their feelings. Something about it feels so inauthentic.SaraThe other thing that just really stands out to me in this mantra is “the real story is my child’s pain.” There’s no room for the parents’ feelings in this mantra.VirginiaI don’t disagree with the argument here that a small child using that word doesn’t really mean the word the way an adult does. Like, this isn’t them being verbally abusive. I understand that. But that doesn’t stop it from feeling bad when it happens. And we are supposed to so totally center the child’s emotions to the point of having no emotional response to it. It’s just never going to happen, that way.SaraWhat if the kid is saying “I HATE YOU” to the sibling? You have to attend to the kid who’s having feelings and saying I hate you. And you have to attend to the kid who is the target of the “I hate you.” It’s just so much more complicated than any of these scripts would have you believe.VirginiaI think what’s interesting about this movement is there’s a lot of emphasis on not being punitive towards kids when they do bad things. When they hit, when they bite, when they say I hate you. An older model of parenting would have been to punish those behaviors. And their argument is: We’re never going to help kids move past these behaviors if we demonize the kid who’s doing the bad thing. Which I understand. But if you have a dynamic where an older brother has just slapped his little sister in the face, what is that girl learning? That someone who loves you can hurt you like that?SaraWe don’t want our children to internalize our feelings. But I also don’t think it’s terrible if our kids see us have an emotional reaction, such as anger or frustration. It’s natural to have a reaction when somebody says, “I hate you,” or when you get slapped in the face. We need to allow for the parents’ humanity in all of this. If your facial expression becomes angry, that’s okay. You can still value the child’s humanity and individuality and hold space for both things.VirginiaThere’s a lot of talk about how if you tell your child how you feel, you’re making them codependent. I just feel like this is a real big leap because the alternative is you’re teaching your child their emotions should always be centered. That feels like a terrible model for future relationships.SaraIn the Jessica Winter piece, she gives the example of if your kid is having a meltdown and you’re in the middle of vacuuming, you should by all means stop vacuuming and say to the kid, “your feelings are more important than housework.” Winter writes: The housework that [Robin] Einzig says to put off is a synecdoche for everything that the gentle parent—and, perhaps, the gently parented child’s invisible siblings—must push aside in order to complete a transformation into a self-renouncing, perpetually present humanoid who has nothing but time and who is programmed for nothing but calm.”Virginia And when is the vacuuming getting done? Maybe you don’t want to spend your whole day being interrupted during a chore that should take 15 minutes. This feels very much of a piece with what we see in momfleuncer culture. That’s @BallerinaFarm cleaning her house with a smile while the kids are frolicking around. This image of joy and calmness through domestic life doesn’t line up with anything I’ve ever experienced in domestic life. I don’t think it lines up with most people’s experience.SaraNo. I constantly talk to my kids when I’m feeling overwhelmed or how a lot of work goes into keeping a house and raising kids. I’m sure some gentle parenting advocates would tell me I’m burdening my kids with my own suffering or whatever. But it’s true and nobody ever talked to me about this openly, about how being a parent and being a grown up is hard.VirginiaMaking that work visible is so important for so many reasons. We are never going to make progress on our larger cultural gender roles if we are continually downplaying this work. I’m sure if you asked any of these gentle parenting experts, they would say parenting is the most important work in the world. That’s why they’ve devoted their careers to giving us all the scripts! But when you’re perpetually downplaying the hard parts of it, and when you’re needing to perform it in this really controlled way, you’re not actually ever making visible the parts of it that we need to change. SaraI can see a future where kids who are parented perfectly according to the gentle script, turn into parents themselves and say, like, “What the f**k? This is hard as s**t! Why did my parents always present as so calm and pulled together?”VirginiaI mean, that assumes anyone’s able to actually execute gentle parenting. I fhave my doubts that anybody is this parent, even three days a week. The other night, my child who, like I said, screams in fury if I try a gentle parenting script, we were having a thing. I finally said to her, “I am a human being with emotions, and you are hurting my feelings right now.” And one part of my brain was like, You are breaking all the rules. You aren’t supposed to tell her that she’s hurting your feelings. But that was what turned the corner in that particular moment. I’m not saying she was like, “Oh, I’m so sorry, I hurt your feelings.” There was no apology. But it did make her pause for a moment and have this recognition of, Oh, right. I am powerful here. My words have impact. She took a slight step back and we were able to then get on a much better track. A thought I had a lot, especially when I was parenting toddlers was: If an adult treated you like this, it would be an abusive relationship—and yet we are supposed to accept this wholeheartedly from children. It’s one of the things that is so hard about parenting. Because they are children and emotional capabilities are not fully developed, so you literally sign up for accepting abuse for several years. It’s not abuse, but it does not feel great.SaraI’m sure you’ve had this experience, where you are heated, you are furious, you’re having big emotions and the person you’re arguing with is stoic and calm and seemingly unaffected by your big emotions. VirginiaIt’s the worst! SaraIt’s the worst. So I can totally understand why being the kid at the receiving end of these scripts would be infuriating. Like, I’m kicking and screaming and like spitting at you. Why isn’t this having any impact? VirginiaIt feels kind of manipulative in that way, like you’re trying to make them feel powerless. Because kids want a reaction. They’re looking for connection. Often the yelling is an attempt to get your attention and get your connection. So if you’re giving them Robot Mom, you’re not connecting with them authentically. VirginiaOkay, so another big theme, and also m big division point with gentle parenting, is the fact that they frame timeouts as an act of trauma. This is a @biglittlefeelings post. They are big in this space and I have a lot of feelings about that. Because, with both my kids, there are times when timeouts save my family. We all need to step away from each other. I don’t think it is punitive or traumatizing to teach a kid that when your feelings are so big that you can only deliver them in hurtful ways that you need to take some time alone We call them “cool downs” which is totally trying to soften the language. But giving myself permission to use those with my kids has helped so much. SaraI have a kid who, when she’s having her biggest feelings, will remove herself. Like, her instinct is to go and sob sob, sob for 15 minutes. But if I try to go in before 15 minutes, it’s bad. It’s only after that she has that cathartic release that she’s even capable of connecting. VirginiaI am sure there are kids who want to collapse on you and need that sort of experience. But recognizing that, if you yourself are someone who needs to go be alone to think through your big feelings, maybe your kid needs that, too. And maybe it’s okay.SaraAnother thing that I want to highlight that’s giving me some big feelings is the caption. It says:When the parental response is to isolate the child, an instinctual psychological need of the child goes unmet. In fact, brain imaging shows that the experience of relational pain–like that caused by rejection–looks very similar to the experience of physical pain in terms of brain activity. This is not great. VirginiaThere’s no citation, there’s no science. We would need to fact check the heck out of that.SaraIt just feels so manipulative and like playing into parental shame and guilt.VirginiaI bet it’s stemming from the same research used to argue for attachment parenting, about how if you let a baby cry it out, you’re inflicting physical pain on them. And then when we looked at which data they were using, it was children who’d been neglected for months in orphanages. It was not children in loving homes who are being asked to cry for 15 minutes to fall asleep. I’m guessing this is orphanage research again and that research is very important for understanding the impact of true trauma. But it is not helpful to give to parents who are trying really hard to be decent parents. The other trope I wanted to hit on is: Speaking in the child’s voice. This is a post from Robin Einzig’s Facebook page: SaraI just want to describe the image because it’s doing a lot of work. It’s a painting of a very cherubic looking three or four year old, whose eyes are just full of innocent wonder and who has like rosy little pursed lips. She just looks like a blank canvas that you as the parent might be in danger of destroying. So it says, “When you cut it for me, write it for me, open it for me, set it up for me, draw it for me, and make it for me or find it for me. All I learned is that you do it better than I do. So I’ll let you do it. In the textbooks, this is called learned helplessness, but actually I call it clever on the part of the child and less than clever on the part of the adult.”VirginiaSick burn from a gentle parenting expert. SaraAlso the quote says “quote unknown.”VirginiaI mean, obviously the quote is unknown. They just made it up. They’re not quoting a human child because no child has ever said, “You know Mom, when you do this for me, all I learned is that you’re better at things than me.” SaraSo this one’s really thrown me for a loop.VirginiaIt’s another one of those super paralyzing pieces of advice. I remember reading some advice like this. The argument was, if you’re drawing with your child and if they see how you draw a cat, then they’ll never learn how to draw a cat themselves, like in their own vision of a cat. And I remember trying to do that and being like, well, this just sucked all the fun out of drawing. I’m actually kind of good at drawing cats and now I feel like I can’t draw a cat. You’re simultaneously supposed to do nothing for them so they can have all of these learning experiences, yet also be emotionally available to the point you can’t get your vacuuming done.SaraHow the hell are you supposed to get anything done if you’re letting a two-year-old do all these things? You will spend your entire day having the two-year-old cut something. VirginiaThis is just one of those constant tensions of parenting where of course they have to eventually learn to do these things for themselves. But when you’re trying to get out of the door or set them up with an activity, so you can get things done, of course, you’re going to do the hard parts for them. Because life demands it.SaraBecause of life! Like really. Because of life.VirginiaOne more good quote from the Jessica Winter piece: Gentle-parenting advocates are near-unanimous in the view that a child should never be told that she “made Mommy sad”—she should focus on her internal weather rather than peering out the window. “Good job!” is usually not O.K., even if you corroborate why the job is good. “Because I said so” is never O.K., no matter how many times a child asks why she has to go to bed.So Sara, when we were talking about this trend, you really found the mom influencer to end all momfluencers. She’s definitely at the most extreme end of the spectrum. So tell us about @milkgiver, please.SaraSo I’ve been following her for a long time. This type of momfluencer is catnip for me because they present with this very cool hipster, maybe used to live in Brooklyn type of vibe. So I’m initially attracted by their Shaker style fisherman’s sweaters. And then I get lured into the messaging, which often gets into very intense prescriptive nutrition stuff. There’s a lot of beef liver gummy making. VirginiaShe’s in a striped caftan type garment. I mean, I think I have the same mug as her right here because you know, #influenced. I’m pretty sure she has an East Fork pottery mug. So I’m not here to hate on her mug choice.SaraI have yet to pull the trigger, but I’m sure I will, Virginia. I’m sure I will.VirginiaYou will not be sorry. Anyway, she’s basically buried in children while having her morning coffee, is the image.SaraYou know Mary Cassatt paintings? It’s giving me those vibes. Like, you know, adoring children, beatific mother. It’s a long post, the thesis of which is that we, as mothers have so much power over giving our children happy, trauma-free childhoods. She says, …for the most part, I, as a mother, hold the incredible power of creating happy childhoods for my little ones or not so happy childhoods… And this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. there have been so many recurring themes in my life and something I keep hearing in the health and wellness circles is how disease or illness can be caused by past trauma. how interesting is that to think about? So, I’m not loving the direct connection between “I slammed the door or put my kid in timeout or lose my temper” and “down the road my kids might get cancer.” VirginiaIt defies the major thesis of all parenting research, which is that good enough parenting is all you really need. It’s reminding me quite a lot of the shaming that fat moms get. That your unruly body will be the cause of all of this downfall to your children. And again, that’s not borne out by research. SaraI have a therapist friend who is always like, “I actually take a lot of comfort in the fact that like, my kids can talk about whatever parts of their childhood in therapy later down the road. That’s okay.”VirginiaThat’s a great point.SaraIt’s okay if 20 years from now, my kid is like, “Mom always bitched about cleaning and how hard childcare was.” That’s not the end of the world.VirginiaThere are a lot of tools we can give our kids—including future therapy—to make up for our imperfections. I’m just looking at @milkgiver’s grid now and it is many whimsical hats. It is a lot of homemade. A homemade dollhouse, a homemade garland. Oh, and we should talk about the nutrition piece a little more because I definitely want us to hit on the way gentle parenting intersects with diet culture. Did you say she’s into calf liver gummies?SaraThere are so many gummies. So many.VirginiaHow do you even make liver into a gummy? I know she’ll have a tutorial for me. [Note from Virginia: Our post-recording fact-check revealed that @milkgiver actually makes beef gelatin gummies. We regret this error but not too much because calf liver gummies will surely be next.]Wait, can we also talk about the fact this woman doesn’t have a name? She’s just @milkgiver. SaraI do know her first name just because I’ve been following her forever, but yeah the fact that her identity is the giving of milk to children by way of her Instagram handle says a lot. VirginiaEven in the bio line, it’s just wife and mother of three, homeschooling, gentle parenting, Orthodox Christianity, knitting, nutrition, simple living. No name, no identity for you outside of how you serve your family. SaraDo you see the photo on the grid with the dried oranges? VirginiaOkay, so she writes: How did I get here? From being a fast food junkie, to vegan teen, to full out cigarette and alcohol addicted young adult to mama of three religiously wearing her blue blocker glasses in the evenings, taking raw liver shots and avoiding fluoride at all costs. This crunchy mama road isn’t always an easy one, and high five to anyone else desperately trying to keep their kids away from the junk being thrown at them right and left, I see you! It’s not always an easy path, but it is one I enjoy and ultimately follow because I like feeling good, I like keeping my kids healthy, and I like having energy, because that helps me to be a better mom. That’s my top goal in life currently, and being mostly healthy helps A LOT with it. It’d also be cool to live a long time. But who knows 😉🤎 #crunchymama #embracethecrunchOh, Sara. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.SaraI knew you wouldn’t.VirginiaI mean, she’s just combining so many different things. “Fast food junkie” is not the same thing as an alcoholic. Let’s be real clear about that. Addiction is a terrible disease that destroys lives. Eating a lot of fast food is not the same thing.SaraEven even the term junkie in that context.VirginiaYou are not a junkie because you like fast food. And then this, this whole message of, okay, you have to take the hardest road to do everything. Even if you don’t want to eat fast food every day, there’s a big gulf between that and taking raw liver shots and avoiding fluoride. We’re just combining every possible wellness trend. It’s like she needs to check every single box here in a way that’s exhausting and overwhelming, and not at all doable for anybody. And also not necessary. Nobody needs to take raw liver shots in their lives. People have lived to be 100 years old without ever taking raw liver shots.SaraI also don’t like the the use of the word “desperate.” She says, “high five to anyone else desperately trying to keep their kids away from the junk.” How about we desperately try to like give all kids access to food, period?VirginiaThat would be cool.SaraIt just feels like such a classic trope of the self-optimizing white motherhood stuff. “Because I like feeling good. I like keeping my kids healthy.” The implication is that if she were not to follow all these super strict guidelines, she would knowingly be not giving her kids a healthy life. VirginiaAlso this vibe of, “oh well, that’s just me! I like feeling good. I like having healthy kids.” Oh, really? Do you think mothers living in poverty don’t like to feel good? They’re not feeding their kids enough food every day because they don’t like having healthy kids? This isn’t a whimsical choice for you. This is something you can do because you have a ton of privilege. Let’s also talk about if you are a parent desperately trying to keep your kid away from junk food, how fast that’s going backfire and harm your child’s relationship with junk food. I mean, how many letters do I get? (For starters: This one, this one, this one, and this one.) This is probably the number one question I am asked. Sneaking food is just how it plays out every time because your kids know that your raw liver gummies are not as delicious as their friends gummy bears. SaraThe other thing that’s kind of hysterical to me is this is also not in agreement with gentle parenting. We’re supposed to enable our kids to have the tools within themselves to navigate life. So this feels like a direct contradiction. VirginiaThe interesting thing about the way gentle parenting and diet culture intersect is most gentle parenting folks are really big proponents of Division of Responsibility, which is about empowering kids to listen to their bodies and trust their own hunger and fullness. So you’re not counting bites, you’re not requiring them to finish stuff or eat their broccoli before they have the cookie. The problem is, it gets layered in with this idea of, “I have to choose things like calf flavored gummies and green smoothies and all of these perfectly healthy things.” And then I’m frustrated because my kids still is asking for Little Bites muffins and not my homemade spelt muffins or whatever. It’s using Division of Responsibility as a script for diet culture. You’re still trying to control them, but you’ve coopted this other rhetoric to do it. SaraI’m sure you’ve written and talked about this before, but what happens if you are so hyper-controlling the environment that your kid is choosing from? What happens when your kid enters the real world of actual food choice?VirginiaThose are the kids who go on playdates and eat the whole sleeve of Oreos at their friend’s house or eat sugar by the spoonful. I am not shaming those kids, I am not shaming those parents. It’s a totally natural response. You’ve been restricted, these foods have been banned. Forbidden fruit is really powerful and really tempting. Your mom’s not gonna let this stuff in the house. So it’s super understandable. This is another thing where they give us a lot of scripts! Let’s talk about this @biglittlefeelings post (above). SaraMy response as my kid is, “I don’t want either bowl. F**k the bowl, lady!”VirginiaGiving them a choice of the bowls is not going to distract them from the fact that they want cereal. Especially if you’re not offering cereal very often. I’m not saying you should cave in the moment and be a short order cook and just like immediately whisk off the bowl of yogurt and granola and give them the cereal. But you might do better to say, “let me pack cereal for your snack for school,” or “I totally hear you. Let’s make sure we have cereal for breakfast tomorrow.” If we’re gonna give kids permission to have all their big feelings, let’s spend some time on the big feeling about cereal instead of just like moving right past it and trying to distract them with the bowl choices. Again, it runs so counter to the larger message of what they tell us to do. But she doesn’t want to give in on the cereal, so she’s trying to control the food from a diet culture perspective— and then the gentle parenting quickly falls apart in the face of that goal. I also want to say it’s fine if sometimes you do say, “yeah, you know what, I’m gonna grab you the bowl of cereal.” Making a bowl of cereal is not the most time consuming thing. If this allows you to move on with your morning because it’s just been one of those mornings, it’s fine. It happens. We don’t need to feel like we failed because we did that. That’s another piece of this: When you don’t follow the scripts, you have to feel like you got it wrong.SaraTotally.VirginiaLet’s wrap up by talking about some parenting folks we do like. The person that I really liked that I wanted to talk about is Claire Lerner. She is the author of the book, Why Is My Child in Charge. I am going to put in a caveat that her chapter on food is not totally there. There’s definitely some diet culture stuff in it. But this was a really useful book for me to read because she does help parents understand why we end up in those power struggles. And a big thing I like is that she’s pro-timeouts when the kid needs it. She recognizes a place for them. She also really encourages parents to hold boundaries and not feel guilty about it. One line that she uses that I like is “you don’t have to like this.” I’ve started using this when I do say no to my kids about something and they throw a fit. I’m like, “You don’t have to like it, but this is what we’re doing.” And that has been so liberating. Because of course they’re having a tantrum. They don’t like being told TV is done for the day. But they don’t have to like it, we’re just doing it.Sara@Destini.Ann is someone I love. She’s just so approachable and the mother’s emotions are always valued. Her Instagram bio says “sign up for parent coaching below. Peaceful parent, but real AF.” That kind of tells you what you need to know. VirginiaYeah, I like it. I like it a lot. “Gentle is not my default.”SaraYes. Let’s acknowledge that gentleness is not everybody’s default and is labor.Another great one is @EricaMBurrell. I’ll limk to one of her reels where she’s talking about how gentle parenting is not something that white people own.VirginiaThat’s really interesting because that certainly is the impression you get on Instagram. SaraBlack parents have talked a lot about how Black culture plays into parenting mores and how there is a lot of judgment lobbed by white people towards Black parenting, without bothering to engage with Black culture. VirginiaYeah, that’s excellent. And then @supernova_momma?SaraIn her Instagram bio it says “Certified Positive Discipline Parent Educator, Mother of Two, Autism /Neurodiversity Acceptance, Sometimes I twerk.” A lot of her content speaks specifically to neurodiversity, which I can imagine being so so tricky to maneuver in the gentle parenting space.VirginiaI think anytime your kid is dealing with something extra—whether it’s a disability, neurodiversity, or certain life experiences—there is this disconnect. You try to follow the rules they’re laying out and your kid has a completely opposite reaction to it and then you feel like you did something wrong, when in fact, the advice wasn’t inclusive and wasn’t thinking about your kid at all. SaraAlmost all the problems with gentle parenting arise from not respecting both the parent’s individuality and the kid’s individuality. Both you and I have talked about specific parenting experiences where we recognize, we intuit what our kid needs in that moment. We can intuit that this script is not going to work for either of us. So we make a choice based on our knowledge of our kids’ specific needs and specific personalities and our own specific needs and specific personalities.VirginiaI think it speaks to the fact that, as a culture, we don’t really empower parents—we especially don’t empower moms—to have that confidence in ourselves. You’re simultaneously expected to know exactly what to do and to have all this motherly intuition that guides you perfectly. But you’re also not really empowered to feel like you can make the right choices without outside experts, because we have such rigid standards and expectations. I just think it is helpful to start to realize you can make choices for yourself on this stuff. There is not a parenting police. Dr Becky’s not going to come to your house and edit your scripts. Butter For Your Burnt ToastSaraMy new obsession is Jessica Defino’s newsletter. It’s called The Unpublishable and it’s a takedown of the beauty industry. I just find it so, so delicious. She’s so funny. She’s so smart. I interviewed her recently for my newsletterVirginiaIt is so rare to find beauty content that is not tied to advertising—like so, so, so rare. So she’s a great voice. Hopefully she will be on a Burnt Toast episode soon. Stay tuned! It’s in the works. Okay, my recommendation is a recommendation that I feel I’ve been journeying to for a long time, that I was always meant to be this person and now I finally am. I am now someone who does puzzles. I think no one is surprised, if you know me at all, that I am now in the puzzling phase of my life, that I am I am a puzzler. I started it while we were on vacation. We had two days of a sick kid because that’s how family vacations roll. And so we were in our Airbnb and they had a bunch of puzzles. And I was like, I’m gonna do some puzzles while we’re hanging out here. It was so soothing! I think my husband always knew this about me, before I knew it about myself because several years ago for Christmas, he had given me an 1000 piece puzzle and he’d given me this cool felt mat thing (similar to this one). So you can do the puzzle but you can also roll it up if you’re not done. Because I have a dog and kids and you know, I can’t leave the puzzle out all the time. So I came home and dug it out of the closet and now I’m working on this puzzle in the evenings. I’m so happy. I’m just so happy. It was definitely at the point on vacation where my kids were like, “can we have lunch?” And I was like, “No, I’m doing this puzzle.”SaraIt sucks you in. VirginiaYeah, I was like, “I’m not a parent right now. I’m a puzzler. You have to raise yourself.”SaraWhen I will start a puzzle, the kids will be nowhere in sight to do the hard edges or whatever, and then they’ll come in like little vultures as soon as I’m down to like 50 pieces. Like, back off. Don’t steal my thunder.VirginiaYeah, mine did not want to do it at all. My older daughter did sort of like sit and haze me while I was doing it for a while, which was fun for both of us. But I think she’s got a puzzler in her, too. She’s just not there yet. I think it’ll come out, especially now that this is my life. SaraAnd your identity. VirginiaIt’s my identity now. And what it’s really great for is, this week I had a piece getting some pushback on Twitter and I was having a day where looking at Twitter was not going to be helpful to me. That evening, I put the phone down and puzzled away instead of looking at Twitter. I was really proud of myself!All right, Sara. Thank you so much for being here. Tell everyone where we can find you and find your newsletter!SaraDefinitely check out my newsletter, it’s called In Pursuit of Clean Countertops. I’m on Instagram at @SLouisePeterson and I am on Twitter as the same thing. The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by me, Virginia Sole-Smith. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter.Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing.The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe.Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell.Tommy Harron is our audio engineer.Thanks for listening and for supporting independent anti-diet journalism. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit virginiasolesmith.substack.com/subscribe

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but how much of our perception of what we perceive as 'beautiful' is being prescribed, moulded, and manipulated through marketing campaigns and products? What if beauty brands were regulated by a set of ethical standards that didn't allow them to prey on our insecurities to sell their products? Let's be real, beauty brands have a vested interest in you not feeling good about yourself, in you wanting to change something about your appearance or enhance your features; It's how they sell their products.      We're exploring all these topics and more today on the podcast, as Tahnee chats with prolific beauty industry journalist and author of The Unpublishable, Jessica DeFino. You may have read some of Jessica's articles in Vogue, Harper's BAZAAR, Allure, The New York Times, Elle, Cosmopolitan, or Marie Claire. Jessica has earned herself a reputation for debunking marketing myths, exposing the ugly truths behind beauty product ingredient lists, and as the HuffPost once put it, "basically giving the middle finger to the entire beauty industry". We love Jess for this and are so excited to share this podcast with you.   In this episode, Tahnee and Jessica deconstruct the beauty industry as we currently know it. The insidious impact patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism have on the industry, how things like colourism, sexism, and ageism are enforced constantly through marketing campaigns, the ethical dilemma of dermatologists offering (and often suggesting) aesthetic cosmetic procedures like Botox and fillers, the role of self-care as we age, and so much more. Most importantly, Jessica talks about the power individual behaviours have when it comes to shaping culture and the future of beauty culture for the better. Jessica also breaks down how and why we need to stop participating in this psychologically damaging industry that is the root cause of so many physiological and psychological disorders. There is so much in this episode; Jessica inspires transparency, truth, and the kind of beauty that can only come from within.     "I want the next generation of humans to feel worthy, to raise their voices, be seen, heard, acknowledged, accepted, and embraced by the people around them without worrying if they're pretty enough to ask for that acknowledgment and acceptance. And I mean, that's my whole motivation. I don't think anybody should feel the way myself and billions of people around the world currently feel. I want that to change. And the only way I know how to do it is to change myself and inspire the change in others".  - Jessica DeFino     Host and Guest discuss:   Botox. Topical steroids. Filter vs. Reality. Psychodermatology. The Skin/Brain connection. How meditation benefits the Skin barrier. The ploy of 'community' used in branding. The problem with the clean beauty industry. Jess's natural skincare routine and suggestions. The culture of consumerism and the beauty industry. Performative beauty masquerading as empowerment. Self Care; What It Means and How It Changes As We Age. Racism, colourism, sexism and ageism in the beauty industry. The Kardashian's, and the beauty standards they perpetuate. The most pressing health issue in beauty is the psychological harm of beauty standards.   Who is Jessica Defino? Jessica DeFino is a beauty reporter working to dismantle beauty standards, debunk marketing myths, and explore how beauty culture impacts people — physically, psychologically, and psychospiritually. Her work can be found in the New York Times, Vogue, Allure, and more. She also writes the beauty newsletter The Unpublishable.    CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: Jessica's website The Unpublishable Jessica's Instagram    Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:00) Hi everyone, and welcome to the SuperFeast Podcast. I'm here today with Jessica DeFino, who is one of my favourite follows on socials. She's also the author of The Unpublishable, which is this amazing newsletter you guys should all sign up to. I've heard you describe yourself as pro-skin/anti-beauty product. I love that. So yeah, thanks for joining us here, Jess. I'm really excited to have you.   Jessica DeFino: (00:23) Thank you so much for having me.   Tahnee: (00:25) Yeah, really, really cool. And you're such a prolific writer. You've been in the New York Times, Vogue, Marie Claire, all over the place, plus all of those amazing online platforms we have access to today. But then you're kind of this punk, which I love. You're sort of in the beauty world, but also tearing it apart from the inside. So would that be fair to say?   Jessica DeFino: (00:45) Yeah, I think that is fair to say. It's definitely a balancing act and a tight line to walk.   Tahnee: (00:56) Yeah. I often say to my husband, because I really respect that line you're walking, and I think any of us in any industry, it's really important to be critical of like the work that we do and the kind of culture and everything, and also to love and enjoy what we do. And I do get a sense that there's that sort of dance there for you. You really love what you do, but then there's also this like.   Jessica DeFino: (01:23) Exactly. I mean, the whole reason that I got into the beauty industry is out of love and out of a passion for it. And yeah, I think we do critique the things that we love the most because we want them to be the best possible version of what they can be and sort of serve the highest good. And currently, I don't think the beauty industry serves the highest good, and I think it can, and I would love to be part of that transition.   Tahnee: (01:47) Well, you're doing a good job of getting us there. So thank you. So how did that sort of manifest for you? You are obviously a writer. Did you sort of always want to get into the beauty space or were you drawn into it for a certain reason or?   Jessica DeFino: (02:01) No. I was always interested in writing. In college, I studied songwriting. I went to the Berkeley College of Music in Boston. And I sang, I played guitar and songwriting was my main passion. After school, I decided I wanted to be more in the music industry. So I pivoted. I moved to Los Angeles and I decided to work for a wardrobe stylist in the music industry. So I was assisting her on shoots and helping to cultivate the look for rock stars like Green Day and Linkin Park and Daughtry.   Jessica DeFino: (02:34) And that was really fun. And eventually I missed writing. And because I sort of had this foothold in the celebrity space, I pivoted it into celebrity lifestyle writing for magazines, which eventually led me to a job working for the Kardashians, which eventually led me into the beauty space. So it was a long winding path.   Tahnee: (02:58) Okay. So I have to stop at the Kardashians because I've never watched that show. But no matter how avoiding the Kardashians you are in life, they seem to be everywhere. What were you doing for them? What was that?   Jessica DeFino: (03:10) I was part of the launch team that created content for their official apps. So in 2015, all the Kardashian and Jenner sisters launched their own individual apps. And they had content that was fashion related, beauty related, lifestyle. I mostly did Khloe's app. I wrote her sex column. I wrote her beauty column.   Jessica DeFino: (03:32) So it was really funny. It was really fun. It was definitely a learning experience for me. And I think looking back that's part of what inspired me to get into the beauty industry. Well, for one, it was a high stress environment and my skin kind of freaked out during the time I was working there. So I started independently researching a lot about skincare and beauty.   Jessica DeFino: (03:57) And then working for these women, you sort of see how beauty standards are created, and how they are consumed, and how that is a very strategic thing in order to get clicks and sell products. And so I started deconstructing that in my head and applying it to different aspects of the beauty industry. And eventually I was like, "You know what? This is super messed up. I want to do something about it."   Tahnee: (04:27) Well, that's kind of what made me start with that, that name in particular because I feel like they've really shaped, I guess ... Again, I'm not sort of someone who's super across all the trends with face things. But people have the skin that's really shiny and the implants and all the injections and all of these things these days. And it's like I really see they were part of that first wave of celebrities that were really, I guess, pushing that. And they're such an interesting family because they have sort of darker skin, but they're not black and they're sort of in this weird world. What sort of has come from that for you? You are obviously, I love how you call it dewy, diet culture. It's one of my favourite things. But where have you landed after this sort of journey from the Kardashians to now?   Jessica DeFino: (05:17) From the Kardashians? Well, when I started, I truly did think that they were great examples of empowered business women. I really thought like, "Wow! These people started out with not much talent to work with, and they've created these huge empires. And how amazing is that?" And that was definitely an early part of my own feminist learning and understanding, and journey.   Jessica DeFino: (05:43) And now where I am is recognising that those things aren't necessarily empowerment because that sort of empowerment within a patriarchal culture, what kind of power is that truly. I'm less interested in those forms of power and beauty as capital, and infiltrating the male business world as capital. And I'm more interested in chasing collective liberation, which I think looks very different.   Tahnee: (06:16) So where does beauty even sit in that, because I think that's such an interesting ... My partner and I talk about this as well. We're both white, fairly attractive people who run a Taoist tonic herb company. And I have to think if I was Chinese, I probably wouldn't be as successful as I am just because of the way our culture reflects back that sort of stereotype. And it's something I sit with a lot and I don't have any answers about yet. But I think it's a really interesting time because beauty does give us leverage and it does give us space in the world to take up.   Jessica DeFino: (06:53) I think an interesting path to go down, if you are interested in learn more about that and learning more about beauty and how these standards evolved, is just getting into the history of beauty standards. And when you do dive into the history, I wrote a pretty long article on that for Teen Vogue, if anybody wants to Google it, about the origins of beauty standards. But basically beauty standards all came about through four particular forces in society, patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism and capitalism. Any beauty standard from the beginning of time can be traced back to one of those things.   Jessica DeFino: (07:35) Beauty standards are how things like racism, colorism, sexism and ageism are enforced. These aren't just fun things, even though we tend to think of them that way now. These standards emerged to support these sort of more nefarious societal forces and to, not to get too conspiracy theorists about it, but convince us to reinforce these social structures. So when we are participating in beauty standards, a lot of the time we are reinforcing the very societal structures that oppress us and we don't even know it.   Tahnee: (08:16) I think that's such an important mic drop moment because we are all co-creating and participating in the ongoing perpetuation of these forms without any awareness around how we're actually contributing to that. And that's what I've loved about your work. You're really trying to bring that to the fore. And for me, it's been a big sort of, I think obviously that's been happening in my life for a while. But then your work has really helped me give words, I guess, to sort of some of the stuff that's been brewing in my thinking, because I did some modelling when I was younger and it was quite toxic for me.   Tahnee: (08:55) I know some people don't have that experience. But I had an eating disorder. I felt like people were constantly looking at me and judging me and just it really turned this kind of cog in me that made me very self aware and very uncomfortable. And I've noticed myself over the last probably 20 years just like I don't by stuff anymore. I barely use anything on my skin. My skin seems to be about the same as when I used all the things. It's really funny. Kind of as I decondition myself, it's like my life becomes a lot simpler.   Jessica DeFino: (09:29) Yeah. What strikes me there is that we often hear in the mainstream media beauty sort of touted as this path to empowerment, and beauty is empowering, and beauty builds confidence. And sometimes those things can be true. But more often what beauty culture does is it disempowers us because studies show that it contributes to things like anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, self harm, and even suicide.   Jessica DeFino: (10:00) So it's really important to examine when we hear this beauty product is empowering or this thing is self care, because the flip side of that is that this disproportionate focus on our physical bodies actually leads to all of those things that I just mentioned. So we sort of have to weigh that and say, "Okay. Is the confidence that I get from getting this injection of Botox worth the anxiety that I get from now constantly worrying about my wrinkles for the rest of my life?"   Tahnee: (10:39) That's a tricky one. I know people in their twenties now getting Botox and I'm like, "Woo." And I think that's ... I mean, you've lived in LA. There's certain pockets where that pressure is really high for people. And I think it's definitely an interesting time to be a human. And that's something I really appreciate about your critique is you talk about this idea of brands and how they perpetuate this idea of community. And again, my brand is probably contributing to that in some way. But I think that's a really interesting conversation again around well, if someone is just getting money out of you and really selling you a narrative, is that actually a community, and is that actually sort of something you want to be a part of? Can you speak a little bit to that sort of, cause I see that as a theme in your work?   Jessica DeFino: (11:27) Yeah. I mean, I think community has become this sort of catch phrase that brands are using now. And it's an attractive one and it's one that really grabs our attention because I think as humans we crave community. Humans are creatures of community. We crave it on a biological, instinctual level. And because we have been so steeped in this culture of consumerism, we can't really see out of it. We don't really see any different. And it's really easy to latch onto this idea that this brand is my community and the other people that buy from this brand are also my community.   Jessica DeFino: (12:08) But it's not a community. There's inherently a power and balance in that relationship in that a brand's main interest is always going to be their financial interest. Brands don't do things unless they further the brand and make the brand money and further their reach. If something that is good for the customer also comes out of it, that's a bonus. But that is never the initial goal. The initial goal is to make a living. And so that inherently creates this power imbalance with brand and customer. And to call that a community is just, I think it's a little bit a psychological mind fuckery. I don't know if I can say that on you podcast.   Tahnee: (12:49) Of course, you can. Feel free. I think that's a really interesting ... So you probably don't know this, but I used to be a yoga teacher full-time and had a studio. And I found that really interesting when I worked in yoga before having my own business that, this is probably not a great thing to say. I won't name names. But people would talk behind students' backs and kind of be quite critical. But then to their faces, do the whole yoga thing.   Tahnee: (13:21) And similarly, within the teaching community, there was a lot of backstabbing and kind of really awful behaviour, and then this front facing kumbaya, look how spiritual we all are kind of stuff. And I found it really challenging and kind of went off and did my own thing. It was financially successful enough for me, but I really notice that when you focus on that community aspect, so much energy, so much time, so much of yourself and you can see why that's not a commercial proposition for most businesses. It's not a way to go and make you millions. But rewarding for other reasons. But I think it's like that word has become so loaded and so misused that it's really tricky now to even know what people mean when they say community, especially.   Jessica DeFino: (14:10) I mean, it's just, especially with beauty, beauty brands have a vested interest in you not feeling good about yourself. They have a vested interest in you wanting to change something about your appearance or not thinking your current appearance is enough as it is. And whether they frame that as "fixing your flaws" or "enhancing your good features", which sort of means the same thing, the baseline has to be there in order for them to be successful. You have to think your good features aren't enhanced enough. You have to think that your flaws aren't fixed.   Jessica DeFino: (14:50) I always like to use the Dove campaign, that everybody is beautiful campaign from years and years ago. That was kind of their first body positive thing. It was founded on this marketing idea of empowerment, and we're going to make everybody feel beautiful. But again, in order for a campaign like that to succeed long term, depends on most customers not feeling beautiful and needing to buy into this message of confidence and empowerment. So your insecurity has to be there in order for these brands to survive even if their marketing message seems positive.   Tahnee: (15:28) I do know. And I don't see that much difference you in the wellness space, if I'm honest. I know I seem to make those comparisons. And I think that's something that I'm aware of in terms of the world we live in, which I guess like you Americans, that sort of we are a version of Moon Juice or those kinds of companies here, obviously with less of a fashion focus than they have. But I think it's a really interesting thing because it's like the premise can be literally there's something wrong with you. You need to buy X, Y and Z to be healthier, or better, or in this perpetual grind toward optimization and stuff, kind of improvement. So can you speak a little bit to that, how you see that overlap up between wellness and beauty in what's happening?   Jessica DeFino: (16:16) Well, I think what has been happening more so is that the shift in messaging is less about outer beauty and physical appearance as it is health. Health has sort of become the beauty standard. And now of course we associate health with having all of these aesthetic markers that are not necessarily signs of health. For instance, beauty brands will use glowing glass skin, healthy skin, and glass skin. That look is not a marker of health. That's not what healthy skin looks like.   Jessica DeFino: (16:57) And I think wellness brands will do the same thing. They'll use health as this marker, but the things that they're positioning as health are not necessarily health, or maybe they are, but it's not going to be fixed by a supplement or a tincture. A lot of the problems that wellness brands are trying to solve are structural societal problems that require collective action and policy change, and not just a stress relieving tincture. So sure, a stress relieving tincture might help. But it's not actually solving the underlying problem. And I think if brands don't acknowledge that, it's pretty disingenuous.   Tahnee: (17:39) So it's really pointing to root cause, which is one of those foundations of neuropathy. And all of these, in theory, wellness things anyway, rather than going at what's the outside symptom.   Jessica DeFino: (17:51) Exactly. Which is so ironic for a lot of wellness brands because they claim to be treating root cause. A lot of the wellness philosophy comes from root cause medicine and holisticism and or holism and and all of that. And still, they're stopping at individual solutions rather than looking wider to systemic solutions. And again, that's not to say you can't do both. As a brand, you can of course say, "Hey, this blend of ashwagandha and whatever might help you feel less stressed throughout the day. And also-   Tahnee: (18:28) So you can go tackle the patriarchy.   Jessica DeFino: (18:31) Here are the systemic reasons why you're feeling stressed, and here is how we as a brand are going to encourage change in those areas too.   Tahnee: (18:41) Well, I think that's such a, not trying to point the finger at America, but that individual pull yourself up by bootstraps. That's such a cultural ... When I was at uni, we studied cultural colonialism. And it's something that really landed for me is how much we've digested that American like, "You can do it." But then it really takes out that we do need to come together as a community and there's this sort of usefulness in us having these conversations to together and sharing them widely. So I noticed that's changing in America slowly, I think, maybe. Are you saying that?   Jessica DeFino: (19:21) I think so. I think, again, it starts with buzzword. And that's not exactly a bad thing. But like just how we set ed brands are starting to use community. Okay, it feels a little disingenuous. But also, okay, it's getting the idea of community out into the collective consciousness and we can start valuing that more. So I am hearing more community, collectivism, collective care. And that feels really good. And I think what needs to happen is just sort of taking that next step from absorbing it as a marketing term and adopting it as a way of life.   Tahnee: (20:00) Yeah. And actually changing culture and letting that filter through. I wanted to step back to self care because you mentioned that before and it's something. I guess we both using Instagram. It's kind of one of those things that always makes me cringe a little bit when I see someone with their bubble bath and their face mask, whatever. And for me, self care has a pretty different definition, especially being a mom. It's usually like my practise and meditation and sleep. They're my pillars. But I'm interested for you obviously having been in the beauty industry and now sort of holding this space of holding up a mirror literally to this strange industry, how has self-care changed or been redefined for you over the last sort of decade or so?   Jessica DeFino: (20:47) I think for sure, I used to definitely give into the brand focused definition of self care as being like, "I'm going to do a face mask, and I'm going to take a bubble bath, and even I'm going to go for a run, or I'm going to exercise." And I mean, those are all valid things. It took me a really long time to realise, or not to realise, but to embody and incorporate the idea that yourself isn't your skin, and yourself isn't your body. Yourself is your values, your purpose, your passions, your deeper wants and needs, your emotions. And all of those things require care too.   Jessica DeFino: (21:33) So if my self-care stops at a face mask, it's literally stopping at the surface, not actually addressing the self. It's just addressing the fleshy coating that encapsulates my spiritual self. So just having that sort of aha moment was huge for me, which is not to say that I'm necessarily great at self-care. I still work too much and don't take time every day to meditate, and don't particularly feel like I'm in a season of my life where I am actively caring for myself the way that I should. But at least I have an awareness about it now. Is that any better? I don't know.   Tahnee: (22:16) I think so. I think that's a step. I mean, my experience is similar of being this, even though I'm a yoga teacher, been practising since I was 15. At the beginning, if I'm really truly honest, I was practising because I didn't want to get fat and I wanted to have a strong body and a healthy body. But it was quite an external motivation. It wasn't to connect to myself or to feel more calm in my existence or whatever. Now it's literally this thing that reminds me of my spaciousness and my connection to life and nature and all of it, and why I'm a mother, and why I'm ... But that took me, I'm 36. I would say in the last 10 years, that's really landed for me. But that's a long time with one discipline really to get to a place of not using it to beat myself up, I suppose. And I think it's a process.   Jessica DeFino: (23:15) Yeah. And it's also fine because I have said many times before that vanity was my entry point to wellness. So the reason I started meditating was because my skin was so inflamed, and I had been through the ringer with dermatologist. I had been on a prescription steroid treatment. It actually really damaged my skin. I went to topical steroid withdrawal and I couldn't put products on my skin.   Jessica DeFino: (23:40) And so I started looking at stress reducing exercises to sort of minimise the impact of stress on my skin because you get stress breakouts, stress can cause acne and rosacea, all of that. So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to clear my skin." So I started meditating. And it was for purely vein reasons. And then once I got into the practice, it expanded and it became so much more. And it became not about my appearance at all. So I think it's fine to have these sort of vein superficial pursuits be your entry point, as long as you are able to cultivate that awareness and allow yourself to expand further and maybe even use it to let go of the original vanity and the original superficial reason why.   Tahnee: (24:33) I think that's so true because that sort of evolution of self has to be honoured and acknowledged. And I think that's probably what I see as so insidious about the kind of those four pillars you were talking about of patriarch and white supremacy and all these things. It's like it's so insidious and it's designed to really trap us in this cycle. And I actually do think it takes quite a lot of strength and self awareness to step out of that. And then I think what you are doing to sort of help raise collective awareness about these things, it's a big task and it's not ... So I think however people get there, it's great.   Jessica DeFino: (25:14) And it's also not easy. So I know like my work and my writing can come off as very harsh. And people will sort of come at me for it and be like, "I don't want to let of this certain beauty procedure or my Botox appointment or my lipstick. And I don't think you should be telling people to let go of these things. And how dare you? And blah, blah, blah." And that's a valid perspective too. And I think what we all need to realise is that so many of us have formed these beauty habit and these beauty behaviours as a coping mechanism. We are coping in a world where we are judged by our beauty. And it has material effects on the quality of our life. "Pretty people" make more money, get better jobs, have better social standings, have better legal outcomes even. There are material benefits to performing beauty.   Jessica DeFino: (26:11) And so when we develop these habits and these behaviours, those are natural and totally understandable reactions to living within a world that judges us based on our outside appearance. And then I also think we need to acknowledge that as we slowly let go of these behaviours, we are changing the culture that instilled them within us. We have that power collectively to change the way things are. And I personally think that it has to start with us individually and collectively deciding to stop participating if and when that is emotionally available to us.   Jessica DeFino: (27:00) If abandoning a beauty behaviour is giving you extreme anxiety and affecting the quality of your life, don't do that. Work on the anxiety thing first. And then maybe later in your life, you will start to let go of the beauty behaviour that prompted it. But there's a balance there where you have to protect your mental wellbeing, while also divesting from this industry and this culture that tells us our appearance is the most important thing about us.   Tahnee: (27:33) So you're still a fairly young woman like me. I often think, I'm not going to speak about other people. But for myself, I've often been like, "When I'm 60, I'll just kick around with my grey hair and not worry about how I look." But that was definitely more so in my 20s. As I'm getting older, I'm sort of integrating more. But how do you personally dance this dance between performative beauty and, I suppose, I guess wanting to present? I love mascara. I have blonde eyelashes. Mascara makes me happy. Those are things that I don't want to give up. Are there things for you that sort of still draw you into this world or?   Jessica DeFino: (28:14) Yeah. I mean, I think the big thing for me is my eyebrows. So I have, it's a mental disorder called trichotillomania, called hair pulling disorder. So when I get really anxious, I actually pick out my eyebrows. And I can't help it. I can't stop it. There is no approved treatment for it. It's just something that I do, and I've done since I was 16. And seeing my bald eyebrows is really traumatising for me. It makes me even more anxious, and then I pick even more.   Jessica DeFino: (28:51) So for me, eyebrow makeup and microblading is something that I'm currently not emotionally able to let go of because it does affect my quality of life if my eyebrows are completely bald, because it triggers the trichotillomania. It makes me remember of like, "Look what you've done to yourself." It starts it all over again. And so I always use that as an example of like this is not a safe beauty behaviour for me to let go of because it harms me to let go of it at this point. I'm working on that emotionally and maybe be someday I will be able to let go of that. And that would be a beautiful thing.   Jessica DeFino: (29:30) And I think I also still have a lot of anxiety around my acne scars. I have had pretty severe cystic acne since I was 14, 15. I've gone through the ringer for treatments of it. And I've done a lot of work to not have to wear a full face of makeup every day. I mean, in my early 20s, I would put on liquid foundation, concealer powder, lipstick, eye line, all of it to go to CVS for toilet paper. I could not be seen without it.   Jessica DeFino: (30:00) And now I pretty much don't wear makeup. But in social situations where I need like a little bit of cushioning to not feel different or weird or ugly, I have gotten down to just tinted moisturiser, a little concealer, blush and eyebrows. Those are my four. And I would love to be at a place where I felt like I didn't need makeup in those situations. But I still do feel like I need it. And so I'm slowly easing my way out of it and being gentle with myself when I do need that sort of skincare security blanket.   Tahnee: (30:42) I think it's such an important thing to talk about because I have a little girl. She's five, or she'll be five in two days. I'm making a rainbow cake right now. It's highly stressful.   Jessica DeFino: (30:53) Oh, so cute.   Tahnee: (30:56) But I watch her. I'm like you. My makeup kit is literally tinted moisturiser, a blush thing, mascara and an eyebrow grooming tool. But I will put that stuff on before we go out for dinner or do some kind of an event of some kind. And I've just watched her, without any encouragement from me, sort of integrate this idea that she now has to ... She doesn't sort of want to put it on every day or whatever. But if she sees my little makeup kit lying there, she'll grab it and she'll start putting on blush. And she'll ask me if she looks pretty, and this part of me dies. I'm like, "Oh my God! What have I done to her?" And then this other part of me is like, "This is life and we kind of have to navigate these things with our kids."   Tahnee: (31:46) But it's been a really interesting dance because I've sort of, I was raised with a mom who didn't really wear makeup at all. And in many ways, I found her lack of self care and presentation almost a bit confronting. It was like can you at least try? Can you put on some ... So it's this sort of interesting thing. And I haven't got any answers at all. But I think we all have to find a space where we're comfortable with what we're putting out there. And I think the piece that you really have been pointing to and we've been dancing around is it's that conscious awareness and choosing what we engage with and what we don't, as opposed to being unconsciously moulded by an industry that's designed to be very toxic for us.   Jessica DeFino: (32:27) Yeah. I mean, I think the mother daughter pipeline is such a powerful example of how individual behaviours shape culture, and how working on our individual behaviours and changing our individual behaviours can shape the future of beauty culture to be better, to be safer, to not be as stifling and suffocating. I think a lot of times people read my work and they think that I have completely freed myself from the pressure of beauty standards. And that's not true at all. I feel so weighed down by the pressure to be beautiful or to look a certain way or to ... I feel that all the time, that I'm not good enough, I'm not pretty enough, I'm not beautiful enough to use my voice in the particular space. I am not pretty enough to be looked at and to be like a public figure or whatever.   Jessica DeFino: (33:25) And so many people feel that. And that is my main motivation, is like nobody should feel that way. I want the next generation of humans to feel worthy raising of their voice and being seen, and heard, and acknowledged, and accepted, and just embraced by the people around them without worrying about if they're pretty enough to ask for that acknowledgement and acceptance. And I mean, that's my whole motivation. I don't think anybody should feel the way that I know I feel, and it sounds like you have felt and millions and billions of people around the world feel currently. I just want that to change. And the only way I know how to do it is to change myself and inspire it in others.   Tahnee:  (34:15) Yeah. I think that one thing, this is weird. It's sort of a segue, but it's linked. My husband, when I first got with him, I was like, "You don't use anything." Literally, the guy doesn't use shampoo, he doesn't use soap. He doesn't. He literally goes in the shower, kind of maybe every now and then he'll use Dr. Bronner's on his armpits or something. Seriously, his little man bag when we travel is toothbrush, toothpaste, not even a hairbrush, a hair tie. And I'm like, "Hang on a second. This person-   Jessica DeFino: (34:49) And I bet he has fine hair and skin.   Tahnee: (34:52) No, beautiful hair and skin. I'm always like, "What the fuck? How come you have this amazing hair and this amazing skin and you've never used any of the stuff?"   Jessica DeFino: (35:06) That's the secret.   Tahnee: (35:08) I know. So I'm interested in this because my daughter, we've never used shampoo and things on her. We've used some conditioner because she has my hand. It gets really tangled. And she barely uses soap, all of these things. And I guess kind of inspired by my husband. I haven't quite got to his level of self corporation. But I'm really interested in that because I mean, yes, patriarchy. But bodies, they're sort of not these filthy beasts that can't take care of themselves. They have these self cleaning mechanisms. You speak about this a little bit. What's your kind of current deep dive into this world? How is that?   Jessica DeFino: (35:46) Sure. Well, I always like to say human skin survived and thrived for literally millennia before pre-bottled products were invented. So it's fine. It's truly fine to not use almost anything. The skin has built-in mechanisms to self cleanse, self moisturise, self exfoliate, self heal, and self protect. And oftentimes what we do when we apply all of these products, and again, not again, but a reminder, your scalp is skin. So this stuff applies to hair as well. When we add all of these external products, we actually interrupt the skin's inherent functions and we change the signals they get, because sort of the extension of your skin is the environment. It gets a lot of its cues out how much sebum to produce or how many dead skin cells to shed from the environment it's in.   Jessica DeFino: (36:42) So when you sort of cut off the connection to that environment with skincare products, you interrupt these mechanisms and they kind of go haywire. And then you become dependent on the products to keep your skin in that cycle because your skin hasn't needed to interact with its actual environment and figure out how to regulate itself. So oftentimes when you just stop using products, it'll take a week, two weeks, sometimes a month. A skin cycle is 28 days. So that's what I generally recommend. When you stop using these products, you'll find that skin self regulates and you actually don't need many products or sometimes even any products. Of course there are like some modern changes to the environment that we can account for. For instance, pollution levels are a lot higher, sun exposure is a lot more harsh.   Tahnee: (37:37) Air conditioning.   Jessica DeFino: (37:37) Yeah, exactly. So SPF, great. Sometimes your skin will need a little bit more moisture in that case. I love to use Jojoba oil on damp skin. Jojoba oil is like a 97% chemical match to human sebum. So your skin really responds well to it as if it were it's own. And I personally cleanse with Manuka Honey, and really-   Tahnee:  (38:03) I've seen you talk about that.   Jessica DeFino: (38:04) I love Manuka, but-   Tahnee:  (38:05) Well, I love it too. But I mean, I tend to use it on wounds and internally. So what's your take on skincare? I've used as a mask before.   Jessica DeFino: (38:14) Yeah. Well, exactly. It's used in hospitals for wound healing, for burn healing. And that's because it really supports the skin's inherent repair and healing mechanisms. So if your skin is acne prone or eczema prone, or psoriasis, rosacea, any of those big skin issues, Manuka is beautiful. It's so great for it because it supports your skin's inherent healing. It's a prebiotic. So it supports your skin's microbiome. It's food for all of those great beneficial bacteria that live on your skin. It's full of antioxidants. Antioxidants are great for fighting free radicals like pollution particles. There are just so many things. It's also humectant. So it draws moisture into your skin. So your skin is able to stay moisturised on its own. It's just, to me, a perfect product. Of course, if you don't have prevalent skin issues, a normal honey will usually do the trick. It has a lot of the same properties. It's just that Manuka has really special healing properties.   Tahnee: (39:25) Yeah. So you're talking about, they're the ones we use medicinally, they're the ones with the pluses. I can't remember what the compound is right now. I should know.   Jessica DeFino: (39:33) It's called the UMF rating. Unique Manuka Factor. So for skincare, if you're using it topically for its healing properties, you want to look for a UMF plus rating of 15 or higher.   Tahnee: (39:47) Yeah. Because I think it can go quite higher from memory. The New Zealand honey industry is thanking you right now for the plug. Well, I guess on a really practical note, it's very sticky. So how do you get around that?   Jessica DeFino: (40:01) Well, I mean I use it as a cleanser. So I will splash my face with water and then just take like a finger full and massage it onto your face for about a minute, and then wash it off. It's really not sticky at all. If you're doing it as a face mask, yeah, it'll be a little sticky. You're not going to be running around the house in it. But you also can't run around the house in a sheet mask. So take those 15 minutes to just chill. Don't touch your face. You'll be fine.   Tahnee: (40:31) Yeah, great. And I mean, are there other things you've sort of changed in your routine from your little research dives? Or like what else are you looking into?   Jessica DeFino: (40:41) Yeah. I mean, the bulk of my like "skincare routine" is mindfulness practices because one of the most fascinating finds of my skincare research has been the field of psychodermatology, which focuses on the skin brain connection. So the skin, the gut and the brain, it's called the gut brain skin axis, are all connected. They form from the same bit of embryonic tissue in utero, and there they form these pathways and these connections that are there for life. So that's why what you eat can affect your skin. It's the gut skin connection. And even what you think can affect your skin. That's the skin brain connection. And we usually see this in more negative settings. So if you're stressed out, and you get a stress pimple, anxiety acne, or when you're embarrassed and you blush, or when you're scared and the colour drains from your face. These are all everyday examples of the skin brain connection.   Jessica DeFino: (41:39) What I found in my research is that it actually goes the other way. So if you actively cultivate a calmer mindset, it results in calmer skin. So for instance, meditation strengthens the skin barrier. It makes your skin are able to hold in moisture. So it actually does create that, we call it, an inner glow. But it's actually an outer glow. It's actually your skin barrier getting stronger and being better able to hold onto moisture and producing balanced levels of oils. So that has been fascinating to me. So I try to incorporate practices like that in my routine.   Jessica DeFino: (42:15) And then a big thing for me was researching the skin barrier and realising that, it sounds so obvious. But your skin is built from within. Your skin cells come from the deepest layer of your skin, work their way out and then eventually shut off. So you're focusing on putting skincare on your face, you're caring for them at the final stages of their life.   Tahnee: (42:41) It's like palliative care.   Jessica DeFino: (42:45) Exactly. If you focus on consuming the nutrients that your skin needs to create healthy skin cells, you're great and you're actually not irritating your skin barrier with external products. So omega-3s and omega-6s are huge for the skin barrier. They're essential fatty acids. They are integral to skin barrier function and the body can't produce them on its own. It can only get them via diet. So once I started incorporating omega-3s into my diet through a supplement, but also through like salmon, nuts and seeds are huge sources of omegas, my skin saw the results of that very quickly. And that's goes onto your skin.   Tahnee: (43:29) And that's going to be overall. Yeah. I was going to say feel better.   Jessica DeFino: (43:30) Exactly. I mean, it's great for brain function, for hormones, for heart health. They're so important. And also yeah, it makes you glow. So why not?   Tahnee: : (43:40) Win-win.   Jessica DeFino: (43:42) Exactly.   Tahnee: (43:44) And topically, you're sort of just sticking to really simple stuff like you.   Jessica DeFino: (43:47) Yeah. Topically, I don't do much. Honestly, the best thing you can do for your skin is leave it alone. It does so much for you, and it doesn't really want to be bothered. So I really don't wash my face in the mornings. Sometimes I'll spritz it with water if I need to, and I'll put on a little bit of jojoba oil if it's feeling dry. On damp skin and if I'm going outside, mineral SPF. And then at night, I'll wash off the SPF or any makeup that I have on with jojoba oil as an oil cleanser, Manuka honey as a cleanser. And then that's it. I love to leave my skin bare overnight because overnight is when a lot of the skin's repair and renewal processes take place. And again, it needs to interact with your environment in order to do those to the best of its ability. So I just love a skincare free evening.   Tahnee: (44:43) Well, it's so interesting you say all of that because I've landed at a similar place. I basically use jojoba, if I do wear mascara, to get that off and then I wipe my face with a cloth at night, and then I wipe my face with water in the morning. And that's pretty much it. If it's dry, I'll use oil.   Jessica DeFino: (45:02) I love that.   Tahnee: (45:05) Like you said, it took a little while for my skin to sort of, I think probably like a month, just to feel like it was ... It was a bit patchy, I think, or something. I just remember it not being amazing for a little bit. And then it was totally fine.   Jessica DeFino: (45:19) Yeah. And part of that process is also like letting go of these arbitrary aesthetic expectations that we have placed on our skin. Your skin's not going to glow like a piece of freshly polished glass from doing nothing to it. But that's also because your skin is not supposed to glow like a freshly polished piece of glass. Things-   Tahnee: (45:41) Does that basically mean you've taken off, because it sort of seems to me you're taking off that protective ... My understanding is the skin's more mechanical. But it's a protective area and it's meant to be there, and you shouldn't probably be exactly deleting it.   Jessica DeFino: (45:53) Yeah, exactly. Everything that's happening on your skin is happening for a reason. It's meant to have a barrier for a reason. Dead skin cells are there for a reason. They're actually really important to skin functioning. And actually, your dead skin cells are the only skin cells that are equipped to hold external moisture. So when you absorb moisture from the environment rather than drinking it, your dead skin cells are the only cells that can actually do that. So if you're exfoliating them away every day, your skin is going to be dry.   Tahnee: (46:24) Then you need more moisturising things, and vicious cycle.   Jessica DeFino: (46:29) Yeah, it's important. Yes. It's important to just keep everything in place. And the reason that we have, part of the reason that we have come to repeatedly damage our skin through skincare and think that it looks good is because we're actually creating these micro injuries on the surface of our skin every time we do that. So for instance, intense exfoliation will often make you look very smooth and shiny. And we like that. And so we keep chasing that. What that is is your skin's repair process kicking in. When it's injured, your skin, your body, sends all of these healing nutrients and molecules to the surface, collagen, hyaluronic acid, which are supposed to be in the deeper layers of your skin, all of these other things. They flood the injured area with nutrients to sort of heal and repair. And we think that looks good because suddenly we're getting this rush of blood to the surface and all of these good molecules. And what it is is it's a response to injury. And we shouldn't have that happening all the time. [crosstalk 00:47:37].   Tahnee: (47:37) It sounds like a drain on our resources as well.   Jessica DeFino: (47:39) Exactly. Your skin doesn't want to be in repair mode constantly. So I think with glass skin and things like that, we've sort of normalised the look of injury, which again, traces back to capitalism because if you're constantly injuring your skin, you constantly have to repair your skin. And it's just a process that requires product after product, after product with no end in sight. And if you sort of chill and let your skin re-regulate, you can honestly wean yourself off of most of those products.   Tahnee: (48:10) It feels like it's gotten worse since Instagram. I don't know if I'm sort of ... Like I said, I don't really, my one kind of delve into this world, which my husband finds really funny is every now and then I read Into The Gloss Top Shelf, just because I find it incredibly amusing how much shit people have.   Jessica DeFino: (48:27) It is fascinating.   Tahnee: (48:29) Yeah. And I get down into this like, "Wow! This person uses 93 creams in the morning or whatever. And how do they have time? And they must be so rich." And anyway, it's just this funny little reality TV show world of mine. But that, sort of I've noticed. I remember when I first started reading, which would've probably been five or six years ago maybe, there was a lot more sort of, it was quite simple, I feel like, whereas now it feels like people are using a lot of different things. And you see these skin care routines that are 9,000 steps. And I wonder is that because, do you think that's in part because of this filter culture? And I mean, you call everyone dewy dust bunnies, which I love. But there does seem to be, and actually another thing you wrote, which I really loved was like is this fear of dead skin cells related to our fear of death?   Jessica DeFino: (49:21) Oh, yeah.   Tahnee: (49:24) I think it's a really interesting thing because it's like we've suddenly kind of got this platform where people are sharing these kind of quite synthetic versions of themselves. And then we're trying to match our 3D reality to this thing. And it's a bit of a concern.   Jessica DeFino: (49:38) It's so much. I think there are a lot of factors at play there. I think one of them is just that's the nature of consumerism. It's this constant need for more and more and more and more and more. And we've seen that grow in real time through Instagram. I think too, this skincare boom that sort of started with Glossier, beauty has always been messaged as this ethical, moral imperative. It's always been this ethical idea. Beauty historically has been associated with goodness. And so we sort of feel this moral obligation to be as beautiful as possible.   Jessica DeFino: (50:14) Recently, I think through the start of COVID, science has sort of been messaged as this ethical ideal as well, western science. And health has always been an ethical ideal. Of course, these things are not moral, but they have been messaged as such. And so with skincare, you get a lot. You get this sort of moral validation of, "Oh! This is something I'm doing for my health." Even though it's mostly just aesthetic, it's messaged as a healthcare thing and a self care thing. And so that feels really good. And so people are emboldened to share more of it and do more of it.   Jessica DeFino: (50:56) And then there's also this scientific intellectual aspect of skincare where people are just over the top about knowing everything about this particular active ingredient, and whether this ingredient mixes with this ingredient, and what this other ingredient does to your skin. So skincare offers a lot of ways to sort of show off and feel good about yourself. There's the science intellectual aspect, there's the health aspect and there's the beauty aspect. So I think all of those combined into this huge, just overwhelming mass of just skincare bullshit.   Jessica DeFino: (51:29) And then also, as you said, the filter thing is for sure part of it. We're seeing people through filters, and we're seeing less of people in person, especially again through COVID. So we're getting all of our information about what human skin looks like we're seeing through a screen, and we're actually not getting any validation of what real human skin looks like in person, because we're really not seeing people. Most of our interactions are through a screen, through a filter, through lighting, through all of these things that warp our perception of what our skin is supposed to look like.   Jessica DeFino: (52:07) So we're seeing everybody else out there looking "perfect" and we're seeing our actual skin, in an actual mirror, with no filter and we're saying, "Oh my God, what's wrong with me?" And so we start buying and applying all these products to try and match our real life skin to this sort of virtual ideal that doesn't exist in real life. And all of it is just this huge recipe you for, one, consumerism, and two, just skin stress.   Tahnee: (52:34) Insecurity. I think that filter, I'm thinking about the metaverse right now, whatever Facebook. I'm like, "Oh God, this is going to get more interesting." I mean, you've spoken a bit about, I guess we've sort of touched more on what I would say the conventional beauty industry. But clean beauty has become this thing in the last again maybe decade. I'm not really sure on the timelines. And it's sort of the same thing, right? Are you seeing any distinction in this clean beauty space or what's your rate on this trend?   Jessica DeFino: (53:11) I think the ethos behind clean beauty is admirable and necessary. There are a lot of unnecessary ingredients in our beauty products. There are a lot of potentially harmful ingredients in our beauty products and the science bears this out.   Tahnee:  (53:27) Well you also made a note of a dinner you went to where the person was sharing.   Jessica DeFino: (53:31) Oh, my gosh!   Tahnee: (53:31) I was like I wonder if you'd had a few wines when you wrote that?   Jessica DeFino: (53:37) Oh my God. I'm privy to some beauty industry insider information. And it's not good. There are-   Tahnee: (53:47) This particular comment was like, "Yeah, this is not good for people." And they're putting it in this mass produced product.   Jessica DeFino: (53:51) I was talking to a product engineer who was telling me that the ingredient that this cosmetic corporation was using as its star ingredient in a lot of new products was not safe. And they were trying to tell the company, "Hey, we can't use this." And the company was saying, "We're going to use it." So just know behind the scenes there's a lot of stuff going on. There are ingredients that just don't belong in beauty products that are in beauty products. They're not going to kill you, most of the time. They're just ...   Jessica DeFino: (54:22) And I say that talking about extreme examples of a couple of years ago, there was a moisturiser that was contaminated with mercury. That was a counterfeit product. And it actually did put a woman in a coma. Is that going to happen every day with the products you buy at CVS and Target? No. But there are these outlier cases. So I'm not trying to fear longer there. I'm just trying to say like, "Hey, stuff happens." So I do think that the ethos of clean beauty is a necessary one. But it has become this marketing monster and it has gotten so out of control. And a lot of the statistics that clean beauty brands and clean beauty influencers are using are actually scientifically incorrect. And so it undermines the more admirable overall mission of clean beauty.   Jessica DeFino: (55:16) And so I do have a lot of problems with that. I also think that the solution to most of our problems is not cleaner beauty, but just less beauty. We just need to be using less of everything. I see clean beauty products that have 52 natural ingredients in it. And it's like the skin doesn't want 52 ingredients on it. That's going to cause irritation. That's not a better product in any sense of the word.   Jessica DeFino: (55:41) And then finally, I think that in non-toxic beauty, we are focusing on the wrong toxicity. Sure, some of these ingredients can be harmful. But the most toxic thing in the beauty industry are beauty standards. And these products promote unrealistic beauty standards. And these beauty standards that these products are pushing, even clean products, are leading to physical and psychological health issues in humans all around the world, from anxiety, to depression, to eating disorders, to dysmorphia, to self harm and even suicide.   Jessica DeFino: (56:20) And that is what's toxic in the beauty industry more than anything. So I wish that the industry overall could adopt this attitude of clean beauty and apply it to the ideology of the industry and clean up the standards that we're selling people because if you're concerned is a health issue, the most pressing health issue in beauty is the psychological harm of beauty standards.   Tahnee: (56:48) And I mean, I'm just thinking about dermatology, because I know you've mentioned that before, and you've had your own experience with that. And the topical steroid piece you wrote was really interesting because I've not had any experience with it. But I've heard from a lot of people that come through our doors how damaging, and I guess my understanding is it's quite a commonly recommended first step is like, "Use this quite strong product. And I think what I've heard you point to a few times in this podcast is how much that psychological factor is influencing what's showing up on us.   Tahnee: (57:23) And I have a similar, I don't know if your stress was work related mine. I left a partner of 10 years. And it was a big life change for me, and came off the pill at the same time. So it was a combination. Or I'd come off the pill for years earlier. But it was a combination of things going on. But I can really trace my kind of emotional instability at that time to what was reflecting on my face.   Tahnee: (57:49) And I've studied all these practises, Taoist healing and things. And we speak about how these organs and these parts of body, like the emotion, if the body can't hold it, it comes out through these elimination channels. And I think that's a really interesting of an untouched topic. And I don't see dermatology really addressing that. I think what I tend to see as people getting trapped in these loops with prescriptions and kind of appointments. And is that sort of your experience? I mean, I don't know heaps about the dermatology world. But is that your experience?   Jessica DeFino: (58:20) Yeah. I mean, I will say that there are great dermatologists out there, and I do think dermatology is of course necessary for your annual skin cancer screening and anything relating to actual physical health issues that are manifesting specifically on the skin. That being said, in my experience in interviewing thousands of people or over the years and in researching the field of dermatology, the main goal for dermatologists day in day out with their patients is to eliminate the physical symptoms. That doesn't mean treating the root cause, and that doesn't even mean promoting skin health. So a lot of the very powerful drugs that dermatologists are describing will eliminate the physical skin symptoms for a time. And they often do this at the expense of overall skin health and skin functioning.   Jessica DeFino: (59:19) So for example, antibiotics are the number one prescription in skin care. Antibiotics actively kill the bacteria of your gut microbiome and your skin microbiome, which are huge factor in healthy skin long term. And that can lead to more skin issues down the road. Something like Accutane, while it can be very helpful for a lot of people psychologically because it can wipe out acne very quickly, it does this by destroying and damaging your sebaceous glands. And that's a direct quote from a dermatologist. A dermatologist told me in an interview that we damage and destroy sebaceous glands.   Jessica DeFino: (59:58) I was on Accutane in my early twenties before I knew much about it. And my skin still struggles to moisturise itself. I have not regained the sebaceous function at all. So again, this is an example of a prescription that sort of damages the skin long term. Steroids, for sure. I mean, there's a lot of scientific literature on how steroids damage the skin's inherent functions. So dermatology is still very much steeped in this world of aesthetics where it's just trying to create this certain aesthetic as quickly as possible, and that doesn't necessarily serve you or your skin in the long term.   Tahnee:  (01:00:36) So that's sort of making the problem go away without really addressing why it's cropped up in the first place.   Jessica DeFino: (01:00:41) Exactly. I also think there's a huge ethical dilemma to the fact that a lot of aesthetic cosmetic procedures are offered by dermatologists like Botox and fillers. These things are not markers of health. And I do think it's a huge conflict of interest that healthcare providers are not only offering these services, but suggesting them. Offering them is one thing. If people are going to get them, they need to get them in a safe way. But I have heard from dozens and dozens of people who will go into their dermatologist for an annual screening and their dermatologist will say, "Hey. So you recently turned 28. Have you thought about Botox?" And this is your healthcare provider who is now planting this.   Tahnee:  (01:01:25) That's so unethical.   Jessica DeFino: (01:01:26) It's so unethical. And planting the seed of doubt in your brain like, "Oh no, I look old. I need to do something about it. And my healthcare provider is telling me that this is an option. So it must be safe and it must be healthy." And it's equating aesthetic with health again. And it's creating this really, I think, toxic cycle of obsession with our appearance outside of health.   Tahnee: (01:01:56) Is there a long term effect to Botox? Because I've heard about people having preventative Botox, which I'm not ... So my husband's mom is disabled and she has Botox in her leg because it actually is a medical treatment, which was sort of new to me. I knew it had been developed for that, but I sort of figured it had become a beauty thing. But I've sort of been seeing it around that people use it preventatively. Does it actually? It doesn't work long term though, right? It stops after a few months.   Jessica DeFino: (01:02:24) No, it doesn't work long term. It wears off after a while. So you have to keep getting these injections. And just applying common sense, there's no way to know that Botox is preventing anything. You say you're using it preventatively, but what are you preventing? Everybody ages in different ways. Some people get really deep lines and some people get no lines at all. And I mean, there is just no scientific way to prove that you're preventing something. So that is just a, that's marketing. That's nothing more than marketing.   Tahnee: (01:03:01) And kind of we haven't spoken a lot about race. But I'm obviously conscious of time with you. But with things like gua sha, and even I've been seeing face yoga on Instagram recently and these things. I'm interested in, again, from my understanding of yoga, maybe I'm wrong, and of Taoist practices, gua sha, yes, there's the aesthetic, but also it moves Chi, it helps move fluid. It's this really powerful ... I use it on my body because it's this really powerful way of clearing chafe from the meridians and stagnation, these kinds of things. But I'm seeing it a lot now as this really popular trend to get rid of wrinkles and do this and do that. So it's like we've sort of taken, I guess it's the same thing with this whole conversation. It's like we take the real root essence of something and turn it into just an aesthetic kind of.   Jessica DeFino: (01:03:51) Yeah. I mean, to me, that is like the real tragedy of gua sha getting so huge and facial massage getting so huge is that there's been this focus place on it as this is a way to get rid of wrinkles, or it's a way to look younger, when actually these practices offer so many overall health benefits to not only you and your skin, but also your mind. Massage in any form is this huge form of stress relief. It sends a physiological chemical cascade through your whole body that lowers cortisol and promotes skin health and also promotes overall health. And there are just so many benefits to these practices beyond aesthetic.   Jessica DeFino: (01:04:31) And I think we do them a real disservice by focusing on the aesthetic benefits rather than the fact that facial massage supports your skin's inherent cleansing mechanisms, it supports your skin's inherent moisturization and exfoliation mechanisms. It boosts blood circulation. It brings nutrients to your skin cells so that they are healthier and more efficient and better equipped to protect you and to heal you. These are all wonderful reasons to engage in these practices. And I think that should be the focus rather than you're going to look younger.   Tahnee: (01:05:06) Yes, it's funny. I mean, it crossed my mind when my daughter was born. She's got that porcelain baby skin. It's like, "Oh! It's a shame we don't get to keep that." But it's also very vulnerable, right? And so you're always trying to pr

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus is joined by freelance beauty reporter, and author of The Unpublishable, Jessica DeFino to talk about why you probably don't need all the lotions and potions in your cupboards. They start out by discussing Jessica's recent Slate piece, “Why Your Skin Doesn't Need Skin Care” and why other outlets turned the piece down. They then go behind the scenes of the beauty industry and talk about the toxicity of celebrity skin-care brands, what it's like being fake Internet Khloe Kardashian, and why the industry keeps targeting women. In Slate Plus, is the upcoming bar-soap trend feminist?  Recommendations: Shannon: Using the Peloton app for exercise (but not buying the equipment)  Jessica: The Angela Caglia vibrating rose quartz facial roller   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus and June Thomas.  Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus is joined by freelance beauty reporter, and author of The Unpublishable, Jessica DeFino to talk about why you probably don't need all the lotions and potions in your cupboards. They start out by discussing Jessica's recent Slate piece, “Why Your Skin Doesn't Need Skin Care” and why other outlets turned the piece down. They then go behind the scenes of the beauty industry and talk about the toxicity of celebrity skin-care brands, what it's like being fake Internet Khloe Kardashian, and why the industry keeps targeting women. In Slate Plus, is the upcoming bar-soap trend feminist?  Recommendations: Shannon: Using the Peloton app for exercise (but not buying the equipment)  Jessica: The Angela Caglia vibrating rose quartz facial roller   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus and June Thomas.  Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus is joined by freelance beauty reporter, and author of The Unpublishable, Jessica DeFino to talk about why you probably don't need all the lotions and potions in your cupboards. They start out by discussing Jessica's recent Slate piece, “Why Your Skin Doesn't Need Skin Care” and why other outlets turned the piece down. They then go behind the scenes of the beauty industry and talk about the toxicity of celebrity skin-care brands, what it's like being fake Internet Khloe Kardashian, and why the industry keeps targeting women. In Slate Plus, is the upcoming bar-soap trend feminist?  Recommendations: Shannon: Using the Peloton app for exercise (but not buying the equipment)  Jessica: The Angela Caglia vibrating rose quartz facial roller   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus and June Thomas.  Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus is joined by freelance beauty reporter, and author of The Unpublishable, Jessica DeFino to talk about why you probably don't need all the lotions and potions in your cupboards. They start out by discussing Jessica's recent Slate piece, “Why Your Skin Doesn't Need Skin Care” and why other outlets turned the piece down. They then go behind the scenes of the beauty industry and talk about the toxicity of celebrity skin-care brands, what it's like being fake Internet Khloe Kardashian, and why the industry keeps targeting women. In Slate Plus, is the upcoming bar-soap trend feminist?  Recommendations: Shannon: Using the Peloton app for exercise (but not buying the equipment)  Jessica: The Angela Caglia vibrating rose quartz facial roller   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus and June Thomas.  Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you don't know Jessica Defino yet, you need to. She is a beauty reporter gone rogue, calling out the industry's BS - from questionable ingredients and marketing (even "clean" skincare is on her target list), to impossible beauty standards rooted in white supremacy, colonialism, and the patriarchy. You will never see skincare quite the same after this episode or reading her thought-provoking weekly newsletter, the Unpublishable. In this episode she shares the tipping point that made her question everything she knew about skincare (hint: after using a dermatologist-prescribed pharmaceutical to solve one skin problem, it created another, perhaps worse problem), what she now sees as skincare (food, thoughts, manuka honey...) and what popular products and trends are doing more harm than good. Love the Show? Subscribe, Share, and Leave A Review to get Glow from Within, a 3-day guide & a delicious meal plan to nourish your body and calm your mind. Join The Glow Life Movement glowbymarlowe.com Instagram: @glowbymarlowe, @mariamarlowe Reverse Acne Naturally: 90-day Clear Skin Plan

Dear Listener, In this episode, I'm joined by the incredible Jessica DeFino for a conversation about the many parallels between skincare culture and diet culture. Jessica also explains what healthy skin can look like, how it functions, and how we can begin to reevaluate our relationships with skincare and beauty products. Jessica is a pro-skin/anti-product beauty reporter whose work focuses on dismantling beauty standards, debunking marketing myths, and exploring how beauty culture impacts people — physically, psychologically, and psychospiritually. You can find her articles in The New York Times, Vogue, WWD, Teen Vogue, Harper's BAZAAR, Allure, New York Magazine's The Cut, and more. She also writes the weekly beauty newsletter: The Unpublishable, as seen in New York Magazine and the UK Sunday Times. If you'd like to learn more about Jessica and her work, you can find her on IG @jessicadefino_. Thanks for listening and don't forget to tap those five stars if you enjoy today's episode! Yours Chewly with gratitude, Claire Oh and P.S. If you're listening to this episode when it airs in November 2021, don't forget that our Attitude of Gratitude giveaway is in full swing! Catch full details on the giveaway and how to enter in the intro of this episode

Facebook's whistleblower is speaking out! The study about about macroaggressions in queer youth and how it impacts mental health. We have an interesting conversation regarding adult friendships; would it be okay to have friend arrangements? Plus, how beauty culture is a public health issue. We go there! Special guests: Michael Scherer - Political reporter at The Washington Post. Dr. Ethan Mereish  - Associate Professor at American University and a licensed psychologist in the Washington, DC area. Jessica DeFino - Beauty reporter whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, Allure, and more / creator of the beauty newsletter The Unpublishable.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jessica DeFino is a freelance beauty journalist living in Los Angeles, California. For the past seven years Jessica has been writing, researching, editing, and publishing about the beauty and wellness industry. Her work has appeared in Vogue, The Cut, Fashionista.com, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Business Insider, SELF, HelloGiggles, Harper's Bazaar, and more.Before starting her career as a freelance journalist, Jessica worked as a beauty writer for The Zoe Report. She was Director of Communications at Fame and Partners, and worked as a ghostwriter for Khloé Kardashian and Kendall Jenner.Jessica earned her bachelor's degree in Music/Business Songwriting from the Berklee College of Music. Jessica's music degree brings a unique perspective to her writing. It infuses each piece with lyrical qualities of storytelling, flow, and connection to her audience.Jessica also publishes a bi-monthly beauty newsletter called The Unpublishable, where she shares “What the beauty industry won't tell you — from a reporter on a mission to reform it.”In this episode, you'll learn about: Making lasting connections with your audience Why understanding music and rhythm makes your writing better Capturing and keeping your readers' attention right from the outset The dangers of cross-posting your content across social media Links & Resources Vogue Magazine Allure Harper's Bazaar Ursula K. Le Guin RhymeZone Ali Abdaal Jessica DeFino's Links Follow Jessica on Twitter The Unpublishable Jessica's Instagram Episode Transcript[00:00:00] Jessica:I started writing as a songwriter. The musicality of something is very important to me. So I'll read my own stuff out loud sometimes. I feel when people can read something and there's a clear flow and rhythm to it, and the words melt into each other sound nice next to each other, it locks them into the content early on. You want to keep reading because if you stop reading it's like you're breaking this rhythm that you've started.[00:00:34] Nathan:In this episode I talk to Jessica DeFino. She's a journalist covering the beauty industry, but she tends to take an approach that's not as popular with sponsors and publishers, because she's anti a lot of their products and a lot of the nonsense that is put into the products and the marketing behind it.She's taking a critical angle and she's well loved by her readers because of it, but maybe not so loved by the big brands. We talk about how that came about. We talk about her writing style, her approach of using her background in song writing and going to school for songwriting to have a better, more interesting writing style.She gives some tips along that angle, talking about how she launched a newsletter last year and growing that to 9,000 subscribers. How that is a backbone for the rest of her work she does in journalism.It's a great conversation. So, let's dive in.Jessica, welcome to the show.[00:01:28] Jessica:Thank you so much for having me.[00:01:29] Nathan:We'll jump around a whole bunch, but I want to start on the launching of your newsletter. What was the moment when you started to think, okay, I want to actually run a newsletter and start to control my own audience?[00:01:44] Jessica:I had been toying with the idea for a while, and then I think it was, April, 2020, right after the pandemic, where I had gotten into a situation where—I'm a freelance reporter—I had four freelance stories out when March happened, and Coronavirus lockdowns happened and everything was up in the air.The company severed ties with all of their freelancers and basically gave these four unpublished stories back to me, and gave me a kill fee. So it was like I had reported out these whole stories. I had spent months on them, and now I had nowhere to put them, and I gave it about a month of pitching it out to other alums.There weren't any takers because media was in such a precarious position at the time. Finally I was like, maybe this is the opportunity I've been waiting for to launch a newsletter. and I decided to call it The Unpublishable because I couldn't get anyone to publish this. And yeah, it's been going, almost like every other week.[00:02:50] Nathan:Nice. Yeah. It's interesting how these unfortunate moments result in something that's like, okay, this is actually either a good thing now, or hopefully going to be a good thing soon, but it starts with difficult times.[00:03:05] Jessica:Yeah, exactly. I wanted these pieces to be big. They were stories that I thought were important to tell, and I really wanted them to be in a major outlet. Sometimes with media, you can't sit on things for very long. It was like, I maybe have two more weeks before they stopped becoming relevant.[00:03:23] Nathan:Yeah. So for context, for anyone listening, what were some of those stories as an example?[00:03:27] Jessica:The first story I published with a piece called “Where are All the Brown Hands?” It was a look into the overwhelming whiteness of the top nailcare companies in beauty. If you would look at their Instagrams or if you would look at their websites, everything was modeled on white hands.As a beauty reporter, when I have to source images for the stories, I don't want to just be showing white hands. If I'm writing about nail trends or whatever, and it would take me hours every week to comb through places and try to find the trend I was speaking to on a person of color. At one point, I was like, why is this happening and how come it's so hard?This should not be hard. So, I wanted to do an investigation into it, and just like that the whole process had already taken six months. I was like, you don't know what's going to happen in this story. It might be scooped. It might be written by somebody else. It might be irrelevant in another month or so.So, I really wanted to get that out there, and that started it.[00:04:31] Nathan:When you publish a story like that, and you're used to publishing for a major beauty publication, but you're publishing it for yourself. What did that look like? What was the process of saying, I have this story that I've worked on for a long time, and I have a brand new newsletter and all at once.How did you bring that to life and pull the audience together?[00:04:52] Jessica:Well, luckily at that point I had a mask, a little bit of a social media following just from my work on work, like major publications. Like I had been writing for Vogue and allure. Harper's bizarre. And I had been pretty diligent about building up a social media audience. So I had a pretty sizable, amount of readers just from Instagram.And a couple of years prior, I had like tried starting my own beauty content platform, but I never really had the time to dedicate to it. But I had a small email list from that, from when I was still doing it. So I kind of like funneled all of that together under this new umbrella of this is going to be like my personal reporting newsletter and I kind of got the word out on Instagram.So it ended up reaching like a surprisingly large audience for something that was like a first-time newsletter.[00:05:44] Nathan:Yeah. So if you don't mind sharing how many subscribers were like to that first article?[00:05:49] Jessica:I think that first article probably went out to like 1500 subscribers[00:05:53] Nathan:Okay. Yeah, but that's you're right. That, that is a surprisingly of like, here's the first thing that we're doing.And I guess it goes to show from right. Spending a whole career being known and, and building it in this space. And then, you know, you're not starting from scratch when you funnel entity.[00:06:10] Jessica:Yeah, it, it had always been important to me to, not as important, but it was something I thought about to collect email addresses and to get social media followers, because my goal had always been to write a book. And I know that when publishers are looking at whether to buy a book from you, it matters what kind of audience you have and how many people you have on an email list.So even though I wasn't sending things out prior to finally launching the newsletter, Collecting emails here and there. Just, just to have for the, for the book pitch one day.[00:06:42] Nathan:Yes. That's something that I've always heard is, you know, from agents and friends who are authors and all of that, as they talked about the, the email as being the thing that the publisher is looking for, they're like, Yeah, that sounds good. First question.[00:06:57] Jessica:Yeah.[00:06:57] Nathan:I mean, they use it as a proxy for how many copies can you sell?[00:07:01] Jessica:Exactly. Yeah. When I was pitching out my book, it was all about, Instagram. I, this was probably like two years ago now. and I couldn't get an agent to talk to me until I had 10,000 Instagram followers. So that's like, all I cared about for maybe a year, I was like, I don't care. I'm not going to put effort into anything else.I just need these Instagram followers.[00:07:23] Nathan:Yeah. So you have 35,000 followers on Instagram now. what were the things that worked for you as far as growing that, that audience on it?[00:07:32] Jessica:Honestly, in the beginning, when I was like, I need to get to 10,000 followers, I was a little scammy about it. I did a lot of the like follow unfollow. So I followed a ton of people who were following accounts that were similar to mine.And kind of, and what you do with that is like, they see that you followed them, they check out your page.Hopefully they follow you back. If they don't follow you back, you can like unfollow that person to keep your ratio looking good.[00:08:00] Nathan:So is that like going through and following like 50 people a day kind of thing or hundreds[00:08:05] Jessica:Yeah. I mean probably 50 to 200 people. Like I would spend probably an hour or two hours a day just doing. Stupid stuff like that, but I didn't really care about, but I was like, I'll do anything to get a book deal. If it's following 200 people a day, that doesn't bother me. And if at the end of the day, they're looking at my profile and saying, Hey, this is somebody whose content I care about.I'm going to follow them. It doesn't feel like bad or wrong to me. So I just did a lot of that[00:08:34] Nathan:Yeah, it's a very small way, like small and non-intrusive way to be like, Hey. Do you want to pay? Like, you're just sort of raising your hand and people either go like no, or they go, oh yeah, I'll look at that for a second.What's interesting is I think that a lot of creators started in that way, but probably now when they tell their story, they're like, yeah. You know, I just, I just put out good content and then the content itself. And before you know it, I was, you know, internet famous, you know,[00:09:01] Jessica:I think that worked, it worked like 10 years ago, maybe even five years ago, but right now there's just so much content out there on every platform. And I don't think it's fair to say that if you have great content, you will be successful on that alone. Like, I think you need more than that today.[00:09:18] Nathan:Yeah. So, so the following, people in the space, which we'd recommend, you know, regardless, what are some of the other things, on that quest to 10, that will.[00:09:27] Jessica:Yeah, I was falling up a storm.I was liking a ton of stuff cause that's kind of the same strategy. Like sometimes Instagram too will phrase your account. If you like too many things or you. follow too many people. So I was getting into that. I did a ton of hashtagging at the time. luckily the, the area that I write to to beauty has like a very big and dedicated community on Instagram.So there are a ton of like beauty community hashtags out there that I was following and getting involved in and commenting and just really making my presence known in this community while at the same time posting my own content. That I thought had a very different point of view that would be intriguing to people.So once they saw that I was engaged, they were like, who is this person? And there was, you know, a lot of content there for them to, to delve into.[00:10:18] Nathan:Yeah, that's good. In the last, episode of this show, I had a YouTuber on his name's Ali doll and he's got, you know, he's built up to 2 million subscribers on YouTube, but he talked about that like back catalog that you have of when someone comes across your work for the first time, like seeing the back catalog and seeing it have a unique point of view.And I feel like. That would be the experience, you know, when you pop up in some little way. Okay. Another, you know, beauty, Instagram account, and then you come in like, oh, this is actually different. Has a unique point of view. So, I'd love for you to share. I don't know what the, the short version of like the different perspective that you're bringing to the beauty industry and what someone would notice when they come to your Instagram or your, newsletter.And they're like, this is different. This is a, you know,[00:11:08] Jessica:Yeah.[00:11:09] Nathan:Challenging.[00:11:10] Jessica:I think the easiest way to put it that most beauty content out there is very fluffy. and very positive and very product heavy. and my stance is very beauty industry critical. and I, I say that I'm pro skin anti product. So I'm much more interested in how beauty applies to like your actual skin and your actual body and like the human itself, rather than this external product, you can apply some very focused on the science of how human beings work rather than the science of like a skincare and.[00:11:44] Nathan:Right. Okay. Is there an example that comes to mind of something where you're like, do this? Not that.[00:11:50] Jessica:Yeah. I mean, probably the biggest example is just, I mostly tell people to stop using skincare, you know, period. End of story. Just, you don't have to, our skin does all of that for us. You know, humans have survived millennia without pre bottled products, and there's no reason why. In the past 30 years, our skin has suddenly evolved to need a 10 step routine.It doesn't so, yeah, I just tell people, stop using it. And they're shocked at the results all the time.[00:12:20] Nathan:I like that. I could see a conflict in. Message and business model in the industry. and your interaction in this. there's a lot of money in the industry of obviously selling, I mean, any product, but especially a product that you need to buy every month or every three months or something like that.Like that's a very good business. So have you had any, any conflict of publications not wanting to pick up your stories or any of those things as the publication is. You tell your people to not buy our sponsor's products, you know, or something like that.[00:12:55] Jessica:Oh yeah. I mean, there's been a ton of pushback and depending on what platform I'm writing for, I. See my work being edited in a certain way or softened in a certain way or a brand name being taken out. I've had articles be published and then the platform takes them down almost immediately because an advertiser has complained.I've had legal action threatened against me while I'm reporting for a story just for asking questions. yeah. Yeah. It's that kind of stuff happens all the time because in beauty journalism, there is a huge. Conflict between what you're supposed to be writing about and who's footing the bill for that content, which is products and advertisers.And I think in the beauty industry in particular, there's this extreme lack of objectivity where, you know, editors and journalists and influencers are all gifted product or taken on press trips. And. And given money to review products in a way that in any other industry, you wouldn't be able to call that journalism.You know, there's always gotta be some sort of separation there. Like a typical journalist is not allowed to accept gifts in the beauty industry. It's the complete opposite. It's like, well, how can you write about our product if we don't gift it to you? So it's, it's a very weird space that is very reliant on gifts and money and advertising.[00:14:18] Nathan:So how has that changed as well as you've launched your own newsletter? I imagine you're still doing plenty of freelance writing. Is that.[00:14:27] Jessica:Yeah. Yeah. I'm still, my, my thing is, is I try if I have a story I want to tell, I obviously want to tell it to the biggest platform possible. And then if I can't get the story placed somewhere else, I will, I will tackle it for the news.[00:14:43] Nathan:Okay. So yeah. How has like, has the news that are helped? Like, for example, you're trying to get us started placed and they're like, sure, we'll place it. But could we do this version of it instead? And, and you know, maybe you're saying that like, no that's okay. Whereas before the paycheck might've mattered more or how's That. relationship?[00:15:01] Jessica:Yeah, that's pretty much spot on. I, I didn't really push back too much before, but now that I have. platform that like actually brings in, okay. Money for me. It's not like if I say no, I don't want that story published this way. It's really not like I'm losing out on a paycheck anymore because I will make that up from my own subscribers.So, I think since I've launched the newsletter, there have been two instances of that where I've written a story for a platform have been uncomfortable with the edits and actually. And was like, no, I don't, I don't want to publish it this way. And that feels really good to have a little bit more control over, over what I want to say and the information I want to put out there.[00:15:45] Nathan:Yeah. I mean, you have even more, I mean, you, you always had agency, right. But now it's like, you have an alternative instead of like, I'll keep pitching it to someone else who might have the same objections or, or that kind of thing. On the business side what's well, actually, maybe if we dive into the newsletter today, right?So that we talked about where I was at a year ago when we launched to, I just said, we, when you launched, I had nothing to do with my launch. There's no Royal we in that are taking credit later. when you launched, you know, a year and a half ago, there was at 1500 subscribers. where's it at today,[00:16:24] Jessica:I'm at 9,000 subscribers now.[00:16:26] Nathan:Right?[00:16:28] Jessica:But, I mean, I have a model where some of it is free and some of it is paid, so there are like different cohorts within the subscriber-based too. But like, I'm, I'm pretty happy with how it's grown on the free side so far.[00:16:41] Nathan:Yeah. And so on the paid side, you're charging $7 a month, or 77 a year. What was the thinking on the pricing there? Was that something that you like agonized over a lot or was that a, like, we'll just go with something and see how it works.[00:16:54] Jessica:Yeah, I didn't agonize over it too much. I started out at $5 a month and, after I got maybe my first hundred or 200 paid subscribers and I felt really good about like, wow, that feels like a lot. That's like a good chunk of change I didn't have before. And then when I was looking into the fees that were taken from like Stripe processing, from sub staff, I was taking home like closer to $3 per subscriber.And I was like for the time and attention that I want to give this project, I'm just not going to be making it. At $5 a month until I hit a certain number of paid subscribers. so I decided to bump it up to seven, just to sort of motivate myself to put the time and attention into it that I wanted to give it because if I wasn't going to be bringing in like, actually $5 to me, it didn't feel worth it.So by pricing it at seven, I get more like $5, which felt like a, okay, I'm happy with that number. now that I do have more paid subscribers, I am toying with the idea of, of lowering it because I feel like I feel like from, at least from my perspective, when I am subscribing to a newsletter,I subscribe to a ton of them.I'm much more interested to click. I'm much more likely to click pay and subscribe if it's $5.And if it's like six or seven or eight,[00:18:21] Nathan:You think about[00:18:22] Jessica:Eh, that's kind of a lot. Do I care enough about this content to pay that much? But personally for me, $5 is like a whatever I'll I'll subscribe kind of thing. So I, I think I'm getting closer to the point where I feel like I have enough of a base that I can do that and hopefully reach more people.[00:18:42] Nathan:Right. Okay. I have so many questions here, but diving into the psychology side of when you're deciding to subscribe to something, right? Cause everyone listening is Ryan newsletter and asking these same questions. Like, should it be $5? Should it be $20? Should it be free? Shouldn't be $2. You know, like any of these things.And then they're analyzing their own buying habits. And they're like, but what if it's a business versus a fitness versus, you know, any of these, like what category I'm in and what are those other things that you notice beyond price? When you as a newsletter consumer, I go to like instant subscribe versus like, well, think about this.How many articles have I enjoyed from the recent layer? Like that, tips it over to the other side.[00:19:25] Jessica:Right. Oh, I don't know that there are that, like my personal revelations will be. relevant to people. I personally, just because I run a newsletter, I love to support. So if it's anything that I'm like vaguely interested in and it's like $5 a month or less, I don't know why $5 is my cutoff, but also subscribe.And I'll just see what it's like for a couple of months. And if I don't like it, Whatever I can always unsubscribe, but I just really love the idea of putting that abundance out there into the universe and just being like, I'm a little bit interested in this and I want to support this creator because I know what a, like a hustle it is.I'm sure the average, like newsletter consumer doesn't really doesn't really think that way. but for me, I don't know. I love a good headline if it's like a good quippy, funny headline, like I want to be reading. fun, critical content. There's a lot of like heavy, critical content out there. and I love something that's like fun and critical, so that'll get my[00:20:27] Nathan:Yeah. There are things wrong with the world and we could get depressed about them, but that doesn't[00:20:32] Jessica:Yeah,[00:20:34] Nathan:About fixing the things that are wrong with the world,[00:20:36] Jessica:yeah, exactly. Like turn it into a little bit of a, like the state of the world I feel is so bizarre.[00:20:43] Nathan:Right.[00:20:44] Jessica:Just so wild that we have set up the world the way we've set it up. Like everything that, that exists is just something that like some guy made up one day and we were like, okay, we're going to go along with it.And I feel like there is a lot of humor in that. so yeah, I, I love looking at the depressing state of the world for like a bit of a jokey lens. So if I find anything like that, I'm like immediate.[00:21:09] Nathan:Yeah, that makes sense. And I think that's where for anyone writing their content, like having that voice really matters. So it's not just, you know, this is what you're teaching or this is, the educational side. Or present the entertaining side. It's like, okay. But how can you, how are you gonna make me feel as I read and consume this.[00:21:29] Jessica:That's a great way to think about it. I think the difference, when I'm consuming like a newsletter versus the news is I don't really know. I don't concern myself with like tone or voice when I'm reading an article from like the New York times or the Washington post. but a newsletter is so much more personal.It's like you're getting into people's personal inbox, it's more of a one-on-one relationship. and I think it's a great opportunity to play with your voice in a way that you really sometimes can not when you're writing for a media plan.[00:22:04] Nathan:Yeah. So what are the things that you've done to practice that obviously you've had a whole career as a writer. And so, you know, as you've found your voice and the things that you play with, are there yeah. Little exercises or things that you play with or try on, or anything like that? Any, any tips for someone who's also looking to like craft their own way?[00:22:26] Jessica:It's as much of a tip, but I started writing as a songwriter. I went to school for songwriting. So I feel like a lot of my writing takes that into account. Like that's the musicality of something is very important to me. So I'll like read my own stuff out loud. Sometimes like flow of a sentence is very important to me, the rhythm of a sentence, the like intonation, the, Continence and assonance and all of that alliteration, I, I feel like when people can read something and there's a clear flow and rhythm to it, and the words like melt into each other sound nice next to each other.I personally feel like it locks them into the content early on. Like you want to keep reading because if you stop reading, it's like you're breaking this rhythm that you've started. So, yeah, I would say rhythm is very important to me and reading things out loud helps me make sure that what I've written is what I'd like envisioned and felt[00:23:35] Nathan:Yeah.[00:23:36] Jessica:Mind and my heart when I was conceptualizing the thing.[00:23:39] Nathan:Yeah, reading out loud is a really good tip because there's so many things where I'll find myself starting to read what I wrote and then like finishing it in a much more like in my head in a much more conversational way, and then realizing the sentences or the following sentences that I had. We're not conversational.They were like stilted. The version that I wanted to auto finish in my head is like, oh, that's better. Let's let's say that instead.[00:24:05] Jessica:I love that. And I think, I think newsletter subscribers are like ready for more. Conversational writing. Like I don't, I think you can be like professional and say something that has weight and has merit and has value and still be kind of, you know, casual about it.[00:24:23] Nathan:Yeah.[00:24:23] Jessica:As a strategy to connect with people.[00:24:26] Nathan:Is there a poster or a piece that you've written that you felt like. Maybe you struggled to find that balance of like, it was a, maybe a weighty piece or something like that. And you're like, oh, maybe this one I shouldn't be playful with or, you know, finding[00:24:41] Jessica:Yeah, there are definitely times when I take a break from the jokey conversationality I think the last big piece that I wrote, was about, anti-Asian racism when like all the news came out that like anti-Asian hate crimes were at an all time high. there's a lot of the beauty industry tends to take a lot of its concepts from Eastern culture, from Asian cultures.So, there was a lot to say there about racism within the beauty industry that, you know, happens in ways that you may not even realize. So for a piece like that, I think there were some moments of, of humor within it, like a dark humor within it, but for the most part, for, for things like that, I take that very seriously.I think my readers take that very seriously and I. It's less conversational then, because it's like, no, I have something that's like very important and clear that I want to get through to you. And I don't want it to be muddled with any sort of, uh jokingness.[00:25:46] Nathan:Yeah, that makes sense. So let's say you were a writing coach, coaching someone,Ryan newsletter, that sort of thing. You don't have to become a writing coach after this. Just.[00:25:59] Jessica:Thank God.[00:26:00] Nathan:But like, you know, you have a friend, maybe they're writing the newsletter, they've got a couple of thousand subscribers they're getting going in.And they're saying like, you know, they, they hear what you're talking about of the, the musicality and the, the flow of, of writing. And they're like, okay. Short of going to songwriting school, like, what's the, what, you know, is there, a book or another thing that you would recommend of where to start to, to sort of dive into the flow of what you write?[00:26:29] Jessica:There is a great essay, by Ursula K Le, is that how you say her last name?[00:26:37] Nathan:I'm not sure.[00:26:37] Jessica:Read it and I've never said it out loud before.[00:26:41] Nathan:Yep. I have so many things like that in my life where I'm like, I don't know how to pronounce this word.[00:26:46] Jessica:It's so embarrassing writing about skincare, because there are these huge, like long skincare ingredients that I write all the time. I can spell them for you off the top of my head, but then I tried to like say them out loud on a podcast, for example. And I'm like, I don't know how to say this at all. I'm looking for this, this essay it's from her book.No, no time to spare[00:27:10] Nathan:Okay.[00:27:10] Jessica:And there's this. And she writes a lot about right. but she has this beautiful essay about rhythm, and how it's different in poetry and how it's different in pros and how to kind of like sort out the rhythm of your piece. and I would say that was hugely helpful to me when I, when I first read it.So I would recommend doing that and. Yeah, I don't know. I use things like, I mean, I, I use it the sores all the time, but I use rhyme zone a lot for like fun phrasing and plays on words. It's just rhyme zone.com and you type in the word that you're you're playing with. And it'll kind of like, you know,[00:27:50] Nathan:Oh, interesting. Yeah.That's exactly the kind of, kind of that's good. Yeah. A lot of people, you know, they come to newsletters from kind of two different sides, either from the journalist, professional writer side or the, you know, hobbyist, maybe even, I never thought I'd be a writer, but I have this skill or something to teach or behind the scenes in this industry.And like writing maybe as a slog or a chore. And so it was always interesting when these two worlds meet and either, you know, one group might be really good at marketing because they knew they came from that world and another group.[00:28:27] Jessica:Yeah.[00:28:27] Nathan:Really good at writing and they each hate the other's job, but[00:28:31] Jessica:Yeah,[00:28:31] Nathan:Like they pick the job.That's the intersection of both of those worlds.[00:28:35] Jessica:Yeah, no, you're so right. I think there is this like sort of misconception in the journalism and reporting space that any reporter who is on sub stack has decided to go in all in on the newsletter. Because there have been some very high profile journalists who are no longer writing for like the times or the posts and they're just doing their newsletter.But I think for the large majority of, of reporters and journalists who have, who have started newsletters as well, it's like a both and kind of thing.[00:29:06] Nathan:Yeah.[00:29:06] Jessica:Sill freelancing and we have this, this sort of personal platform.[00:29:11] Nathan:Yeah. So how do you think about your career developing over the next couple of years? Is it, is there a specific milestone in mind, where you're trying to grow the newsletter to, to do that full-time or is it always trying to place a piece to the biggest possible audience?What's that like?[00:29:29] Jessica:Yeah, I would say my goal, like I very much, this is kind of earnest and nerdy, but like, I very much want to change the beauty industry. I see so much that is wrong with it and I see how it like emotionally impacts people. in terms of anxiety, depression, mental disorders, eating disorders, like there's a lot of heavy stuff that comes out of the beauty industry.And I like, I'm very passionate about actually measurably changing it. So for me, the number one thing is always, I want to reach the largest audience possible with an unadulterated message. So if I can do that in a place like the New York times, of course, I'd rather place it there than my own news. if I can do that through a book, of course, I'd rather write it in a book then in my own newsletter.So the newsletter has been sort of like a nice foundation for me to have and a nice fallback for me to have. And I, I truly love fostering it as its own little separate entity, but I would, I would say I almost try harder to place things elsewhere because I wantAs many people as possible to be able to, to read the things that I'm writing. the newsletter I'm I am writing my first book right now, and it's definitely been hard to juggle book writing with like reporting for other platforms and deadlines. So I will say like juggling a book and my own personal newsletter has been much easier than trying to juggle a book and reporting. So I think, I think there will be times in my writing career while I'll lean a little bit more heavily on the newsletter.And times where I'll lighten up on the newsletter. I'm always seeing it as sort of like a supplemental tool to my like greater mission.[00:31:13] Nathan:I think, I don't know what publication they were writing for. but someone was telling me about, was that in each of these publications, they're watching the view counts, you know, for every story. And they had gotten the newsletter. I think they were maybe at 20, 25,000 subscribers. And they would, when they placed a piece with a fairly major publication, they would email it out.And they, it was enough direct traffic to that individual piece that they could get it to move on. Some of these internally watched leaderboards and stuff like that. And so editors were paying attention to that of like, they didn't necessarily know like making things up that, you know, Jessica was the one who drove a bunch of traffic to this, but they're just like, wow, Jessica's stories are consistently resonating.And so they were wanting to pick up more pieces in that. and so I was always wondering about that, of how you can, it's not gaming an algorithm or anything like that.[00:32:08] Jessica:Hmm.[00:32:08] Nathan:Just saying like, look, here's my story. And I bring an audiences.[00:32:12] Jessica:Oh, I love that. I might try to do that. I always do. Like I do these little roundups every other week for my paid subscribers.And if I have something that comes out, I'll always put, drop the link in there, but I've never done like a strategized push like[00:32:28] Nathan:Right.[00:32:29] Jessica:Be interesting to experiment for sure.[00:32:31] Nathan:Well, cause it's like, if someone is following you that they're following you for. Your content and your ideas and your perspective. And they probably don't really care if it's, you know, in your sub stack, you know, on your Instagram or, you know,[00:32:48] Jessica:Right.[00:32:48] Nathan:Major publication, there's like, look, I want to read your, your content.And you're like, oh, today's article is[00:32:54] Jessica:Yeah.[00:32:55] Nathan:Here on Vogue. Or, you know,[00:32:57] Jessica:Kind of nice to hear, because I think that's something that I do worry about pretty often with my newsletter is I feel like a ton of my newsletter readership has come from social media. And so I'm like very conscious of cross posting. Like I don't, I don't want someone to get my newsletter and say, I already saw this on your Instagram, so I don't need to subscribe.I don't need another email in my inbox because I'm seeing it on Insta, you know? And I don't know if that's like a legitimate concern or how much people see when they subscribe to you on different platforms. but that has been. You know, something that I'm very mindful of, where if it's like a meme that I'm posting on social media, or just like a one-off Instagram post, I'm probably not going to repeat that content, even if I think it's good or important on the newsletter. Just because I don't know, I'm aware of like how precious it is to allow someone into your email inbox, because at least for me, like email is very annoying. The worst part of my day is trying to like go through my inbox and file it away into folders. And I never want my newsletter to be like, oh, I've seen this already. I've seen something very similar from her already.[00:34:09] Nathan:Right. Yeah. I don't know that I have a perspective on that. I'm just thinking about it. I don't have the same concern. but I don't know that. You know whether I should or not. I think probably my approach would be that if you've already seen something, let's say there's five or six things in the newsletter and I've already seen one of them on Instagram, but I just skipped past that one.[00:34:30] Jessica:Yeah.[00:34:31] Nathan:And so my focus would be on making sure that everything is high quality, more than making sure that everything is, completely a unique[00:34:40] Jessica:Yeah. That's I mean, that's encouraging to hear, and I think that that might, change how I approach my like every other week[00:34:49] Nathan:Yeah,[00:34:49] Jessica:Maybe I'll experiment and I'll see, I'll see if people are like, Hey,I saw that.[00:34:54] Nathan:The other thing that I would do is I would ask, one of my favorite things to do is to ask for replies to my newsletter, which has a downside of that you get a whole bunch of emails, but they can often be really fun cause they're, No, the people who are reading every day and like they're following your stuff.And, and so they're usually not pitching you things. They're just saying, like, here's the thing that I, and so in that case, just say, Hey, you know, if I share something on Instagram, would you also like it here? Or do you feel like, keep those worlds more separate? Like don't I want everything to be unique.And then I would just like, say hit reply and let me know.[00:35:34] Jessica:Yeah.[00:35:34] Nathan:And it's. Yeah, but you know, out of 9,000 subscribers, I'd bet you'd get at least, I dunno, 20, 30, 40 replies or something.[00:35:42] Jessica:Yeah, that's a good point. Okay. Oh, you're inspiring me. I have so many ideas now.[00:35:48] Nathan:Perfect. I love it. okay. One thing that I want to know more about is growing that. That newsletter from the pieces that you're, I assume subscribers are coming from Instagram. And then also from the pieces that you're publishing,[00:36:04] Jessica:Yeah.[00:36:04] Nathan:Seen like spikes? when it came from an Instagram post that did really well or some other promotion to drive subscribers,[00:36:13] Jessica:I mean, I definitely get new subscribers every time I post about it on Instagram or Instagram stories. So I would say that's been like a main driver for me, but my two biggest, like surges of subscribers came from, All of the newsletter press that's been happening lately. Cause you know, like the newsletter revolution is here.So, I got a little write up in New York magazine and then one in the UK Sunday style magazine and both of those were amazing and totally unexpected. I had no idea they were coming. so now I'm like, damn, how do I, how do I facilitate some more press for myself? Because this is where that.[00:36:55] Nathan:Like what would a spike like that look like? Cause that a couple of hundred subscribers, 500 a thousand from one of those[00:37:01] Jessica:I would say from New York magazine, it was probably close to a thousand. And then from the UK, Sunday times was probably between like 500, 600.[00:37:11] Nathan:Yeah. That that's substantial.[00:37:14] Jessica:Yeah. It was, it was really exciting. and it definitely goes to show like the power that these publications have. It's interesting to see that power as applied to like inherently, anti large publication platform, like a personal newsletter, you know?[00:37:35] Nathan:Yeah. So how do you, how do you think about it when it's like. More press would be nice. You're like, Hey, this, this is a big boost, you know? I'd 10% lift in total subscribers or something from a single thing. And then knowing what you know about journalism and being in the space, like, is that something that you craft a strategy around and say, okay, I'm going to intentionally pursue, placements in these publication.[00:38:02] Jessica:No, in terms of just the newsletter, I, I don't think I'll ever like strategize and try to do that. I think, I mean, the, the reason that I got those two placements is just because I. In the beauty space, my newsletter does offer something that's really different that you're not getting anywhere else. and so it becomes inherently interesting to write about or call out because this is the only place you can get that kind of thing if that's what you're looking for.So I think it's just more of like striving to figure out, like, how can I create more, very original content that actually. Gives value to the reader in a way that's going to create that kind of buzz. I don't want to like manufacture the buzz so much as I want. Like my condoms would be good enough for people to actually talk about it.But that being said, when my book comes out eventually like, hell yes, I plan to like strategize and try to get the shit written about me everywhere, which will hopefully we get to the newsletter as well. But yeah, I feel like I'm going to save all of that, like smarmy, you know, networking for book launch.[00:39:14] Nathan:Yeah, that makes sense to me. I want to push back on it a little bit, because so much of the success of the book is going to be dependent on a lot on a lot of things, but a big factor is going to be the size of your platform. When that book comes out.[00:39:29] Jessica:Yeah.[00:39:29] Nathan:And so if you wait to be self promotional until the book comes out, then like, that'll get this far, but let's say you were self promotional in a tasteful way.We're going to be tasteful about all of this. you know, but along the way, and that 9,000 subscribers turned into 25,000.Right. And it's that much bigger of a platform to launch from. So I'll say that with the caveat that I think the same thing.[00:39:51] Jessica:Yeah.[00:39:52] Nathan:We have, I've lots of friends who have big platforms and I'm like, oh, I could guest post on them.You know, with them, or like ask, Hey, can I come on your podcast or something like that? And I'm like 90% sure that they would say yes, but then I think, oh, I should save that for when my book comes out. Right.Cause you know, you have that, maybe that, just that one ask.So I think it's something that a lot of creators struggle with of like when to promote.And so intellectually I'm like promote early enough.[00:40:21] Jessica:Yeah.[00:40:22] Nathan:And then emotionally, what I'm actually doing is I think exactly what you're doing, but I'll save that for when I really need it.[00:40:28] Jessica:Yeah, I think for me, there's also this, this sort of inherent struggle with what I write about and getting press, because I am pretty critical of beauty media coverage. and I'm aware that I have made some enemies in the beauty media space. Like I'm not the most well-liked person, in some of these circles.So I do feel like I only have like a certain amount of rope that I can, use up like a certain amount of leeway in these spaces. and then also I, yeah, I don't know. I think it's something I have not sat down to really work out my feelings about. But there is some sort of ethical dilemma there where if I'm critiquing the way a certain platform has covered this beauty trend or whatever it is, I'm critiquing.And then I'm sort of like asking for press at the same time, like ethically, what does that say about me and my participation in these systems?You[00:41:30] Nathan:Right.[00:41:31] Jessica:Which is a big question and not one that I'm going to be able to answer here.[00:41:36] Nathan:Yeah. Are there publications outside of the beauty space that would have less of the, maybe sponsored ties or other, you know, issues[00:41:47] Jessica:Yeah,[00:41:48] Nathan:The main publications might have, but that would find your story.[00:41:52] Jessica:I think so. I think the path that I am trying to follow in beauty coverage right now. the path of sustainable fashion coverage, like I feel like fashion and beauty have been so intertwined in their coverage and they're, they're both sort of seen as these like less serious pursuits. They're both seen as like inherently female interests.And they've struggled to be taken seriously, I think. but with like the push towards sustainability content and, you know, the inevitability of climate change, I think. Sustainability and fashion is getting a ton of like serious quality coverage all over the place, even from platforms that wouldn't normally touch fashion.And I see beauty as being very behind that. Like there are still these huge global issues in the beauty industry and beauty production and just the way that we consume and beauty, that hasn't been touched. But I see it starting to be touched by these larger, serious. News organizations. And I feel like there's such an opportunity there.And that those are topics that I'm super passionate about and super interested in. So I'm, I'm trying to carve out a space for myself there to say, look, we're taking fashion seriously for the impact that it has culturally societaly environmentally. Like we have to start taking beauty justice seriously because it's just as big of a person.[00:43:17] Nathan:I like, I like that angle on that. That makes a lot of sense. And just seeing trends in a neighboring industry. I think you're right. I hope that I hope that you're right in, that plays out in there.[00:43:28] Jessica:Me too.[00:43:29] Nathan:One of the things that I'm curious about is kind of the rise of newsletters in the journalism space.I don't come from that world. I very much come from the newsletter world. And so seeing, you know, so many people either make the switch full-time, or get to the point where they're like, Hey, I've been writing these pieces everywhere. And like, my byline has just directed people back to Twitter or Instagram or.And now it's directing people back to my own audience. What are you seeing in like in your friends and colleagues and all of that is, are a lot of people starting newsletters or is there this overwhelming trend of some are starting it, and maybe it's getting hyped more than is actually happening.[00:44:12] Jessica:Yeah, I think that's what I've noticed. I don't think as many people within my like, sort of direct. Community of journalists and reporters are starting newsletters. And I think it's gotten so hyped. Like we're in such a moment of coverage right now that it almost like, seems like a little lame to start a newsletter now.Cause like everyone's doing.But the reality of the situation is that everyone is not doing it. And I think there's still a lot of opportunity and a lot of room to grow and to move into and to create your own kind of thing. like I mentioned, I think there is a big misconception that if you're starting your newsletter, that means you're done with journalism and you're just doing this now.It's like, no, you can very much do both. And you can do your newsletter once a month. You can do it, you know, once a week you can do it. However, often you have time for it. Like you said you could use it as a tool just to send out your journalism, pursuits to a wider audience. but yeah, I think sort of the hype around newsletters has sort of, created this little, Ooh, I don't know if I want to do a newsletter too.Cause I might get to see them. Like, I'm just doing what everybody else is doing.[00:45:23] Nathan:Right. Yeah. The, the newsletter hipster trend is sort of passed and it's gone mainstream. I can't do it[00:45:31] Jessica:Exactly. I mean, for the record, I don't believe that that's true, I think that's how people are perceiving.[00:45:38] Nathan:Well, it's so funny to me because, I've been doing E you know, email and email newsletters and that kind of thing since I guess, 2013. and you know, very excited. They got into all of that. And I was telling people like, email is amazing and friends that have me, who've been doing it since like 2001 were like, yeah, like good job, discovering it.Do you want to go and start? Like what a pat on the back, what are you hoping for here? And watching is, you know, these trends as they come, if you had a friend who, you know, is in the space who comes to you and says like, oh, I'm going to start a new. You know, what are the things, I don't know, the three or four things that you would tell them right away of here's what they should watch out for is strategies that they should employ any of those things.[00:46:25] Jessica:I mean, my number one piece of advice that seems really obvious. Isn't always is just to find your niche. Like I would say hone in on something as specific as you possibly can, within your space so that people have a reason to subscribe. I would say to have, like, especially if you're doing sub stack or a place where you can view past newsletters, like have a healthy backlog before you actually start soliciting people to sign up so that they can see what your content is like.And then this is a big thing that I think is missing from a lot of the journalism to newsletter side, because like he said, there are people who are coming from marketing and people who have never done marketing in their life. something that I do is that when I'm sending something out to my paid subscribers, I send a shorter version out of it to my free subscribers.Click to continue. And then it brings them to the paid subscriber thing. And I convert between 30 and 50 people every time.And when I sign up for free newsletters, which I sign up for a ton of them, I have never once got in that. I've never once gotten an email. That's like the intro of the article. And then it, you know, sort of leads me into that paid funnel.And I used to work in marketing. I used to work in fashion marketing. That was just like a no, duh of course I would do that sort of thing. but I've never seen any other like journalists to newsletter convert, use that very easy tool. so I would say, take advantage of that for sure.[00:48:07] Nathan:Yeah, that's interesting of the things that in one industry, like you're right in the marketing industry, everyone's like, obviously, you know, of course you would do that. And then you get into another space and it is this exciting, new thing. I started in, in design and, like user experience and interface design.And so I brought a lot of design ideas to marketing and then a lot of like direct response marketing ideas into the design world. And it needs to circle. Everyone was like, whoa, this is amazing and new.[00:48:35] Jessica:Yeah,[00:48:36] Nathan:You did it in the original circle, people are just like, obviously there's nothing novel about it.[00:48:41] Jessica:Exactly. I think people really, underestimate. The skills they learn on the way to get to where they've, they've gotten to. Like, I never would have thought the job that I hated in fashion marketing would have served me in, in, any way. Cause I sort of wanted to get away from all of that. Like marketing bullshit, lack of a better word, because at least at the company that I was at, it mostly felt like lying and just like squeezing money out of people.I think you can use those tools for good as well, which is what I'm trying to do.[00:49:15] Nathan:Yeah. So a lot of creators struggle with that transition where they feel like either from a past experience or something that they've seen where they're like, oh, I can never ask for money for this or charge for it or, that kind of thing. Or they're very, very hesitant to sell in any, anything. what would you say to them?Or what's your journey been like in saying like, no, this is what it costs. This is why you should subscribe.[00:49:40] Jessica:Yeah. I mean, I think it's important to have, to have a reason, you know, make it very clear that it's reader funded or user funded. for me, all of my content is very clear that I blame the media advertisement model for so much of the misinformation and bullshit that's out there in beauty. So me saying that my newsletter and this content is completely user funded, so that I'm loyal to you.The reader rather than an advertiser, is very like, you know, quote unquote on brand for me. And I think people who are interested in my content are more than happy to pay for it. It's solving a problem that I am pointing out in my reporting, you know? and then I would just say also like allow yourself to be surprised at how much people want to support you.I have been so pleasantly surprised by people who are just, they just liked my content and they're happy to pay for it. And I think one of the, the biggest, the biggest ways that I've seen that happen is that, on substance. They let you do like the page, so you can do monthly or a yearly rate, or you can do something called a founding member, which is just somebody who pays a little bit more to support and they don't really get any extra benefits at all.And I am shocked at the amount of people who give me 50 more dollars than they need to, just to support, And that's like, every time I get that email, that's like someone signed up for the founding member level. It's heartwarming because it's like, there are a lot of people out there who want to support great creator, led content.[00:51:23] Nathan:Do you have a percentage or numbers on that? Like I'm curious, every time I see that I'm like how many people select that[00:51:29] Jessica:Yeah.[00:51:29] Nathan:Know from doing multiple prices or packages, that it's one of the best ways to increase revenue is to just have a higher price option available.[00:51:38] Jessica:Yeah.[00:51:38] Nathan:confirming that, but I want to know any[00:51:40] Jessica:Yeah. I have not like crunched the numbers on anything, but just from, so I sent out a paid newsletter, on Thursday. So between Thursday and today from like my conversions of free[00:51:55] Nathan:Yep.[00:51:56] Jessica:Sign up, I've gotten, I think 56, new signups. I would say maybe 10 of them were the yearly membership and maybe five of them were the founding member.[00:52:08] Nathan:Okay. Wow. So half of the year, the ones being the like yeah. I'll pay you $50 more just to support your work. Even[00:52:17] Jessica:Yeah,[00:52:18] Nathan:Because the yearly membership is supporting your work, but even just[00:52:21] Jessica:Yeah,[00:52:21] Nathan:Above and beyond.[00:52:23] Jessica:Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's just what, roughly, from what I remember from the email. I'm not like super concerned with, with stats and strategizing right now. I'm just like ecstatic. Every time I get the ding on my phone that says somebody new signed up.[00:52:39] Nathan:Yeah. That's super fun. So, what are the things that you're thinking about next for the newsletter? Is it slow, steady, growth, and maintaining that while working on the book? Is there a big milestone that you're working towards any of those things?[00:52:52] Jessica:There is not a huge milestone, but I think when I first started it, and this is, I think maybe just a personal hangup, but I was very conscious of not bothering people too much, like not being in their inbox constantly. So, it was like one big story a month, and then every other week for paid. Now I'm toying with the idea of doing more, short form content and where weekly content.I'm going to be launching a new feature for paid subscribers that's gonna be, like an advice column, but more like, how do I navigate the industry? How do I divest from these marketing tactics? How do I like stay smart and know what's alive and what's not?So, I'm going to be launching that within the next month.Then, for everybody, I'm going to be launching weekly or even twice a week, just like little, like a little tip newsletter. Because what I do in my newsletter a lot is critique the beauty, and point out what's wrong with it.People are always like, okay, sure, but how do I apply that to my own life? Like how do I get over the fact that I know it's marketing, that I don't need to have big lips to be beautiful, but how do I stop feeling that way?So, it's going to be more practical tips for, I guess, sort of healing from all of the beauty industry shit that they put us through, but it's going to be very short, quick hits, like, you know, five sentences, a paragraph tops. So, I'm going to experiment with a couple of different, forms of writing and a couple of different frequencies and see, see what people.[00:54:38] Nathan:Yeah, that sounds good. Well, if anyone wants to go subscribe to that and follow you on Instagram and other things around the web, where should they go?[00:54:46] Jessica:My sub stack is JessicaDefino.substack.com, and you can sign up for The Unpublishable there. And then on Instagram, I'm @JessicaDeFino_.[00:54:56] Nathan:Sounds good. Well, thanks so much for coming on. This has been fun to[00:54:59] Jessica:Yeah.[00:54:59] Nathan:learn about a whole side of the newsletter industry that I'm less familiar with, and just hear your story, and your writing tips, and everything else.[00:55:08] Jessica:Yeah, thank you so much. I feel inspired. I'm going to go send more newsletters.[00:55:13] Nathan:Sounds good.

You sign with an agent. They shop your book. Then they drop you. Is your book dead in the water? Are you "unpublishable"? The Gatecrashers discuss this unique listener-submitted situation. Amanda Luedeke is literary agent and Vice President at MacGregor & Luedeke, where she has agented since 2009. Charis Crowe is a marketer and freelancer who spent nearly ten years at the gates of publishing before deciding to launch her own self-publishing career.

You're receiving my Tuesday podcast because you're a paying subscriber of Maybe Baby. Thank you! To listen in your preferred app, click “Listen in podcast app.” Then it should automatically populate there every week.Hey!This week I invited beauty critic Jessica DeFino on the pod to talk about beauty culture. This is a followup to my Sunday newsletter about beauty anxiety. We discuss everything from Botox and the problem with “clean beauty,” to the source of beauty standards and the costs and benefits of divesting from them.Some links to things we mention + Jessica's work:-My own quitting makeup story-Thick by Tracie McMillan Cottom-Adweek's feature on Dove's “campaign for real beauty”-Contrapoints's YouTube essay on beauty-Jessica for Fashionista: “People Are Now Getting Botox & Fillers As Forms of Self-Care”-Jessica for Teen Vogue: “How White Supremacy & Capitalism Influence Beauty Standards”-Jessica for HelloGiggles: “Clean Beauty May Be Non-Toxic, But It Still Sells Toxic Beauty Standards”You can also check out Jessica's newsletter, The Unpublishable, where she writes about this stuff every week, or follow her on Instagram.Thanks for listening!HaleyThis month a portion of subscriber proceeds will be redistributed to Transgender Law Center, a trans-led organization grounded in legal expertise focused on community-driven strategies to liberate transgender and gender-noncomforing people.Give me feedback • Subscribe • Request a free subscription • Ask Dear Baby a question This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit haleynahman.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we have three poetry features: "Pedacitos" by Elizabeth Castillo, "The Bedlam Scribe" by Tuur Verhyde, "Time Has Its Hands on The Fire and The Frost" by Kushal Poddar, "Bare" by Eleanor May Blackburn, "The Nature of This Beast" by Lorelei Bacht, and by Gareth Culshaw. Follow Elizabeth Castillo on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Tuur Verhyde on Twitter. Follow Kushal Poddar on Twitter and Amazon. Follow Eleanor May Blackburn on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Lorelei Bacht on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Gareth Culshaw on Twitter and Instagram. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine, and short stories featured in our short fiction section, The Slush Pile. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we have a short fiction feature from The Slush Pile: "Under the Stars" by Andrea Balingit. Follow Andrea on Instagram @cheeseislyf and on Twitter at @IamBUTTiful. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine, and short stories featured in our short fiction section, The Slush Pile. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter. Happy listening! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we have three poetry features: "Devastated in Swaths of Color" by Ashley Sapp, "Kintsukuroi" by Deborah Akubudike, "Cheap Cider" by FC Malby, "The Axis is Tilted" by Robert Vaughan, and "I Wrote This Poem in a Gas Station Bathroom" by Dean Boskovich. Follow Ashley Sapp on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Deborah Akubudike on Twitter and Instagram. Follow FC Malby on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Robert Vaughan on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Dean Boskovich on Twitter and Instagram. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine, and short stories featured in our short fiction section, The Slush Pile. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we have a short fiction feature from The Slush Pile: "Annabelle The Doll Takes New York" by Bridget Flynn. Follow Bridget on Twitter @bmkflynn. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine, and short stories featured in our short fiction section, The Slush Pile. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we have three poetry features: "Brief Interaction with God and Pizza" by Ashley Pearson, "The Local Cinema Was Recently Purchased by a Serious Man Who Believes a Little Less in Movies Than His Idealistic Predecessor" by Jeremy Jusek, and "semi-verbal" by Lucy Doherty. Follow Ashley Pearson on Twitter and Instagram. Follow Jeremy Jusek on Twitter and on his website. Find Lucy Doherty's social media on http://lucypoetry.carrd.co/. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine, and short stories featured in our short fiction section, The Slush Pile. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we have a short fiction feature from The Slush Pile: "That In-Between Time of the Evening" by Collin McFadyen. Follow Collin on Twitter at @crayonsdontrun and on their website. Note: the original version of this short story uses a word claimed by the lesbian community that I, as a non-lesbian reader, did not find was appropriate to say. In its two instances, the word was omitted. You can read the unedited version of Collin's short story on The Unpublishable Zine. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine, and short stories featured in our short fiction section, The Slush Pile. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we have two poems by Kevin Bonfield and Holly Redshaw. Follow Kevin on Twitter at @bonfield_kevin and on Instagram @kevinswrites Follow Holly on Twitter @hollyredshaw and on Instagram at @hol_red. Read her blog, Can't Be Beaten. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine, and short stories featured in our short fiction section, The Slush Pile. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we have a short fiction feature from The Slush Pile: "It's All Right, Really" by Hannah Beairsto. Follow Hannah on Twitter at @thepalindrome12 and Instagram at @beairstohannah. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine, and short stories featured in our short fiction section, The Slush Pile. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we have three poems by Shine Ballard, Howard Moon, and Kristin Garth. Shine can be found on Twitter at @xShine14. Howard can be found on Twitter at @halfblindpoet and Instagram at @halfblindfloridapoet. Kristin can be found on Twitter at @lolaandjolie. Browse her website: www.kristingarth.com The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine, and short stories featured in our short fiction section, The Slush Pile. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we have a short story from The Slush Pile: "Not Just Any Love Spell" by Alyson Tait. Alyson can be found on Twitter at @Rudexvirus1. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine, and short stories featured in our short fiction section, The Slush Pile. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we are featuring poetry by Molly Andrew, Ash Slade, and Cassandra Finch. Find Ash here and here. Find Cassandra here and here. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine, and short stories featured in our short fiction section, The Slush Pile. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. Happy New Year! We hope you had a lovely holiday season and are facing 2021 with a renewed sense of beginning. To start 2021, we are featuring work by Tina Lamoreux, Sumaiya Sharaf Bidisha, and Luca Massimo Lombardo. Tina can be found here and here. Sumaiya can be found here. Luca can be found here and here. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine, and short stories featured in our short fiction section, The Slush Pile. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we have a special episode: we passed the mic to Highly Poetic to read her beautiful poem, "Flexin in My Complexion," and she did a wonderful job. We are so excited for you to hear it! Highly Poetic can be found here. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine, and short stories featured in our short fiction section, The Slush Pile. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we have a short story from The Slush Pile: "Feats of Strength" by Brittney Uecker. Content warning: this story contains gore and references to severe bodily injuries. Brittney can be found here and here. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine, and short stories featured in our short fiction section, The Slush Pile. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we will be looking at poems by Ceinwen Haydon and Rida Akhtar Ghumman. Ceinwen can be found here. Rida can be found here and here. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. Before we get started on this week's poetry features, I wanted to express my gratitude toward everyone who has been supporting this little zine that could and has helped us surpass 1,000 followers on Twitter. I am truly grateful for each and every one of you, and I hope that you have found a home in Unpublishable as a reader, listener, or writer. This week, we will be looking at poems by Andrew Davis, Allison Whittenberg, and David Hay. Andrew can be found here and here. David can be found here. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we are looking at poems by Eden Taylor and Shannon Frost Greenstein. Eden can be found here. Shannon can be found here. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we are looking at poems by George Owino, Molly Knox, Lucy Frost, and Linda M. Crate George can be found here. Molly can be found here. Lucy can be found here. Linda can be found here. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This episode is a little bit different: we are proud to announce our new short fiction section of the zine, The Slush Pile! To kick off this section, we wanted to feature our inaugural short fiction piece "Where I Was Going Versus Where I Am" by returning Unpublishable author Lars Banquo. Please note that this episode is not safe for work. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems and short fiction published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com ! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. As I am recording this episode, we are in the middle of the holiday of Samhain, a holiday with Gaelic roots celebrating the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the darker half of the year. As we enter this time of darkness and cold, with more isolation on the horizon and the world's hunkering down seeing no end yet, I hope that this week's poems by Caterina Alvarez, Astha Khanduri, Helen Bowie, and Aura Martin give you a bit of light in the emerging darkness. Caterina can be found here. Astha can be found here. Helen can be found here. Aura can be found here. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com ! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable podcast. This week, we are looking at poems by Emma Bider, Aqueb Safwan Jaser, and Olivia Davis. Emma can be found here. Aqueb can be found here. Olivia can be found here and here. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com ! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable podcast. Last week, we looked at poems about love. This week, we are looking at three beautifully constructed poems about pain. It's only fair, I guess, to follow up the joys of life with the hardships of it. This week's poets are Kath G, Rida Akhtar Ghumman, and Kevin Bonfield. Kath can be found here. Rida can be found here and here. Kevin can be found here. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com ! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable podcast. Love poems are often thought of as grand and romantic gestures; sweet rhyming verses about perfect relationships and domestic bliss. While there's nothing wrong with this kind of poem, this week we're looking at three poems that show different sides to love and infatuation: the thrill of infatuation, the all consuming nature of a budding crush, and the fear of feelings being made into words. Beth, Faith Odigbo, and Balogun Abdulmueed bring us their lovely poems about romance and all of its faces. Beth can be found here. Balogun Abdulmueed can be found here. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com ! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable podcast. This week, we have an array of poems focusing on different themes: slices of life, individuality, love, Biblical figures come to life, and mystical, dream-like states. Our poets this week are Caroliena Cabada, Laszlo Aranyi, Lucia Larsen, Andi Talbot, Felicia Buonomo, and Kushal Poddar. Find Caroleina Cabada here. Find Laszlo Aranyi here. Find Lucia Larsen here. Find Andi Talbot here. Find Felicia Buonomo here. Find Kushal Poddar here. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com ! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

In the midst of a global pandemic, mounting injustice, and loss, there is a feeling of sorrow piling upon sorrow; of control over the occurrences of the everyday slipping from our fingers; of helplessness and rage. This week, I wanted to give you poems that speak to this feeling of being out of control, to shift it and tilt it and show you each facet. Sometimes, yes, losing control is a vanquishing feeling, but sometimes, it's in the relinquishing of control that we find clarity. Jason Love, Ivan Ruccione, Carly Dudek, Mia Ochoa, and AR Salandy have given us poems that shed control from its shoulders, that relish in the loss of it, and that mourn in its absence. Jason Love can be found here. Ivan Ruccione can be found here and here. A.R. Salandy can be found here and here. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

Welcome to the Unpublishable Podcast. This week, we're looking at poems that focus on belonging - the feeling of being at home in a place, in a relationship, in one's own body and mind. From the fantastical to the domestic, this week's poems by Meghna Anil Nair, Kristin Garth, and David Centorbi ask to belong, sing the praises of belonging, and examine what unbelonging means. Please note that the second poem includes some language that may be triggering to people who have experienced suicidal ideation, lost someone to suicide, or experienced self-harm. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com ! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Find Meghna Anil Nair here. Find Kristin Garth here and here. Find David Centorbi here. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

This week, we are featuring poems with a wide array of tones and feelings: poignant, raw, and hilarious, from poets Rose Ramsden, Kara Lynn Amiot, Kavan P. Stafford, Linda M. Crate, George Briggs, and Shawn Berman. Please note that the first poem includes some language that may be triggering to people who have experienced self harm. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com ! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Find Rose Ramsden here and here. Find Shawn Berman here. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

This week, we have a bite-sized episode featuring returning poet Kushal Poddar and The Unpublishable Zine's founder and contributing poet, Kristen Greenwood. We figured that one poem per poet would make too short of an episode, so we have included two poems from each author this episode! :) The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com ! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Find Kushal Poddar here. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

The Unpublishable Podcast, Episode 6 - Fizza Abbas, Mac Goodwin, Jaachi Anyatonwu, Aura Martin, and Stephen J. Golds. This week on the Unpublishable Podcast, we are featuring five poets who explore memory, loss, and recollections: Fizza Abbas, Mac Goodwin, Jaachi Anyatonwu, Aura Martin, and Stephen J. Golds. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com ! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Find Fizza Abbas here. Find Aura Martin here. Find Mac Goodwin here and here. Find Jaachi Anyatonwu here. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

This week on the Unpublishable Podcast, we are featuring one returning "unpublishable" poet, Kaustuv Ghosh, with the quaint "Clarke Quay, 2020" as well as three newly-featured poets: Chiara Cozzilino, with their romantic "Long Nights on Your Porch," Robin Ouzman Hislop with the imagery-rich "About Aboutness", and Eve Gore with the ferocious "Towers of Time." The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com ! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Find Kaustuv Ghosh here. Find Chiara Cozzolino here. Find Robin Ouzman Hislop here. Find Eve Gore here. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

This week on the Unpublishable Podcast, we are featuring four new poets: Aqueb Safwan Jaser's tragic yet touching "PAPER BOATS, SANDCASTLES, AND PILLOW HOUSE," Fizza Abbas' exploration into poetic form "A POEM ABOUT A POEM," little bee's critique of censorship, Linda M. Crate's rallying cry, "sometimes sweet," and Miles Coombe's hauntingly beautiful "FALLEN." The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com ! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Find Aqueb Safwan Jaser here. Find Fizza Abbas here. Find Miles Coombe here and here. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

This week on the Unpublishable Podcast, we are featuring one returning "unpublishable" poet, Kushal Poddar, with the COVID-inspired "The Battle of the Masks," as well as two newly-featured poets: Alicia Cara, with the serenely wild "Communion," and Alexis Arrowsmith, with the classical romantic-tinged "A Prayer for Darkness". The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com ! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! Find Kushal Poddar here. Find Alicia Cara here and here. Find Alexis Arrowsmith here and here. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

This week on the Unpublishable Podcast, we are featuring three of our newly-featured poets: Samuel Strathman, with an adventurous and fantastical poem "Excommunicator"; Sierra Edwards, with her raw and tragic poem "Voodoo Doll"; and Kaustuv Ghosh, who brings us the frantic and descriptive "Missing the Last Flight Out." Please note that there is a trigger warning on this episode, as the poem "Voodoo Doll" may be triggering to listeners who have previously struggled or are currently struggling with eating disorders. If this triggers you, you may skip the audio from 3:18 - 4:34. The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com ! The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

On the very first episode of the Unpublishable Podcast, we feature the very first poets that were published in our zine - Ryan Jones, with "Fresh Out," an unconventional but sweet love poem; Kushal Poddar with a haunting and longing-filled "Riddles," and Kristen Greenwood, with a quarantine-inspired prose poem, "On the First Day That All of This is Over." The Unpublishable Podcast features poems published in our zine, the Unpublishable Zine. If you would like to submit to Unpublishable for the chance to be published and have your poetry read on the podcast, please visit our site at http://www.theunpublishablezine.wordpress.com ! Kushal Poddar can be found on Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter. The Unpublishable Zine can be found on Twitter and Instagram. Happy listening, poets and poetry enthusiasts! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-unpublishable-zine/support

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After a little technical dificulties, Berk and Daniel prove that they can push the limits of what can and should be said in a podcast...