no one asked: internet habits, buccal fat removal, and obsession with youth
04: recent articles, posts, thought-starters, and other stuff I found interesting that no one asked for
Recent articles, posts, thought-starters, and other stuff I found interesting that no one asked for. You may have noticed the format of this is a bit different. By categorizing some of the things I’m sharing, it makes it easier to digest, instead of receiving an email of a bunch of blurbs about random things. Let me know which you prefer, but going to try this out in the meantime. :)
Reading…
I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump lately but recently finished Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which I loved and will share more about on my Recently Read newsletters.
Currently, I’m reading Token Black Girl by Danielle Prescod. It’s a look into a Black woman’s experience in navigating white spaces, more specifically in the fashion industry, and it’s brutally honest, candid, and at times, very relatable. It made me think back to teenage me, who used clothes as a way to belong and admittedly, as a way to feel superior in times I felt less than.
Listening to…
How women are feeling about the internet this year — 21 questions answered, a podcast episode on my other newsletter that I am very proud of. My friend Ford and I worked on a list of 21 questions to ask about your life on the internet this year to serve as a tool to check in with our internet habits and figure out what’s working and what’s not. For the podcast episode, I asked a bunch of women in my community — mothers, a high school student, fellow creators, and more — to answer questions about their social media use and the answers that came back were all so different but all so necessary to hear. Ford did such an incredible job editing it all together. Please take a listen — you’ll hear some of my takes in there, too. ;)
Eating…
No, I’m not about to do one of those “what I eat in a day” things. I want to use this space as an opportunity to share a cool new restaurant or food company I’ve discovered.
Last night, eight of us women got together in celebration of How to be a Woman on the Internet at Woodspoon in Downtown Los Angeles. The food is incredible — you have to try the Moqueca and coconut flan — and it’s Black woman-owned and ran.
Buying…
A ton of books as Christmas gifts, which you can find here, and this Toteme turtleneck sweater in a deep brown. I realized on my recent trip to New York that I don’t have a ton of winter-friendly outfits and I thought this was timeless and versatile enough to wear for LA “winters” and to layer for actual cold weather.
Watching…
The last episode of White Lotus season 2, obviously. I didn’t love the first season (I know, unpopular opinion) but I loooved this season. I’m so sad it’s over. I’m also all caught up on Abbott Elementary, which is SO funny — you have to watch it if you don’t already.
TikTok I’m saving…
One about how “normal people don’t post” and that most people who post on social media are not representative of most people and how this leads into many others who view this content into feeling inadequate. We often hear from the loudest people in society, which creates a skewed view of what the world is really like. This also explains the impossible beauty standards and why it seems that so many of us are forgetting what real people look like.
Article I’m sharing…
One about buccal fat removal and how “for the past couple of years we have been championing this unattainable ideal of beauty in place of diet culture, which set the stage for diet culture to come back and be recast as active empowerment and body autonomy. Now we’re seeing these things collide in the buccal fat removal procedure, which is ultimately glorifying a fatphobic, capitalist ideal of unattainable beauty.” It’s devastating how the beauty industry is encouraging women to remove something that they will only sell back to you in a few years. @morbidlyamy says it well: “I cannot be the only person that finds this beyond bizarre - the beauty industry spends so much energy on telling us to look young, and now younger women are removing important fat from from their faces to look older?!”
Ok, just one more: The Mindfuck of Midlife by a writer whose work I really love, Amil Niazi. She talks about society’s obsession with youth — specifically looking young, which is ironic since the above procedure mentioned makes people look older. She says: “Aging is a privilege, a measure of fullness, a gift of time… Yet we focus our conversations about this inevitable process entirely on the physical. If we made more space for people to age in a generous way, free of the external pressures to wear the right jeans or part our hair in the most youthful way, how much more pleasurable could it be?”