Jessica Simpson’s Dessert Treats Body Mist Perfume in Creamsicle

January 3, 2023 8:27 AM

Former beauty editor and cog in the Kardashian machine Jessica DeFino wrote a lot of beauty industry critical content in 2022 (on Substack), including a conversation on fossil fuels in skincare with Emily Atkins of HEATED, a story about skin and serum and sourdough and musings on the appeal of Lensa AI: "Somewhere, in some alternate universe, I am exactly as beautiful as the world says I should be."

Title taken from an essay on becoming palatable:

It’s tempting to pretend that things have changed; that when we reckoned with how we objectified our pop stars, we reckoned with how we objectify ourselves. But they haven’t, and we didn’t. We only updated the menu.

Now it’s glazed donut skin and dumpling skin and jello skin, all preserved in a layer of Saran Wrap skin. It’s strawberry legs (no) and brownie glazed lips (yes) and Velveeta nails.

posted by spamandkimchi (18 comments total)

She can pry the Udderly Smooth container from my cold, dead, shockingly soft and unscaly hands.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:49 AM on January 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Also worth reading: Why skin is the forgotten frontier of the beauty acceptance movement (article in Sydney Morning Herald, includes quotes from DeFino).
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:53 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Jessica Simpson’s Dessert Treats Body Mist Perfume in Creamsicle

Randomly-generated word jumble or activation phrase for Bourne-style sleeper agent?
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:54 AM on January 3, 2023 [27 favorites]

Already she's twice as beautiful as she was before! Voila!
posted by flabdablet at 9:29 AM on January 3, 2023

She can pry the Udderly Smooth container from my cold, dead, shockingly soft and unscaly hands.

I use it as a chamois cream sometimes for long bicycle rides, so, in my case, that's not, uh, where she'd be prying it from.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:38 AM on January 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

The more dangerous environmental issue with the beauty industry is its dependence on palm oil, which is driving unfathomable amounts of deforestation worldwide. See this Bee Wilson piece for more on this.
posted by derrinyet at 9:49 AM on January 3, 2023 [9 favorites]

A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing.
posted by Frowner at 9:55 AM on January 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

I'm going natural for 2023. I realized I have to transition my OWN brain out of thinking I have to budget for hair dye and makeup. My family idolized Dolly P...and while I think she is sweet...I'm tired of thinking that's the female standard.

I wanna wear soft clothes, have soft naturally beautiful hair, however it looks. I no longer want to paint black lines on my eyes, or to rouge my cheeks. I'm over it.
posted by lextex at 9:59 AM on January 3, 2023 [11 favorites]

I really appreciate DeFino's work in general and the points she makes about how beauty culture intersects with race, environment, diet culture, etc. but she loses me on the petroleum jelly thing:

NOW! Let’s dive into some of the most consistent comments and criticisms I get every damn time I talk about petrochemicals in beauty products, shall we?

“Petroleum jelly is safe for skin.”

Yes. Sure. Petroleum is typically purified before it’s incorporated into cosmetics, so topically, this trend doesn’t present much of a threat to the skin. It would be totally fine to slather purified fossil fuel byproducts on your face if your face were the most important thing in the world! But the world is the most important thing in the world, and fossil fuels are currently destroying that.

Am I wrong to understand that the oil industry, Exxon et al, are responsible for driving climate change? It seems that Big Vaseline is much farther down the list?

She generally slams the use of Vaseline as bad simply because it's "fossil fuels on your face." But why is that bad? It's not unsafe for your skin. It's not a primary driver of climate change. As far as I can tell, she brings this up just for the scare factor, and she brings it up a lot. And she seems to be othering Black people who participate in beauty culture by the way she talks about Vaseline in the Black community (so it's fine for Black people but not fine for people like you, Jessica?).

I'd be glad to learn that I'm wrong here. But I'd love to see more emphasis on any other topic from her.
posted by knotty knots at 10:31 AM on January 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

This may be the only time I can make this comment in a remotely relevant context: I'm proud to have known the editor of the Stanstead Journal, a tiny Quebec weekly newspaper (now defunct) when Shania Twain created intense international interest in a locally made product (just across the border in Vermont) created to soothe chafed cow teats, Bag Balm, by saying she used it as a moisturizer.

This created an incredible rush on Bag Balm, with orders flying in internationally, and he broke out the headline "A Whop Bop A Loo-Bop, A Bag Balm Boom". Ross is a national treasure.
posted by Shepherd at 10:53 AM on January 3, 2023 [18 favorites]

That particular article struck me as real weird too, knotty knots. Like:

They were in the news a lot recently for their use of private jets as an environmental issue. But I wonder, is that really their biggest contribution to climate change? Could it be, say, the beauty products they sell, and their perpetuation of beauty standards?

I mean...no! I think if the Kardashian/Jenners had literally invented the concept of makeup and skincare and beauty standards, then yeah, it might be their biggest contribution.

But their use of private-and-otherwise jets, the energy used to transport crew and equipment for all of their shows, and to maintain their elaborate, excessive households...like, that is almost certainly contributing more to climate change than whether they use moisturizers, what the actual shit? I get that she has a particular animus (justified no doubt) against the Kardashian/Jenners, and I'm definitely not writing off her work, at all, but that interview goes off several rails.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:40 PM on January 3, 2023 [7 favorites]

I hope she'll speak to someone else (you know with slightly different skin needs and practices) instead of just mentioning at subjects like decolonialism. Either that or the editing was really choppy and made these 2 sound a bit ignorant.

FYI: I've had chemical burns multiple times and been told by multiple, white doctors to top off moisturizer with petroleum jelly. I've also been given RX lighteners (in tiny amounts) to speed up the dark bruise healing process.

The author seems to conflate her tastes and experiences with what everyone should easily do, which is YIKES. Especially when we talk about the class and racial differences in "taking care of" skin.
posted by Freecola at 1:45 PM on January 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

Hard to pick up even a marshmallow with Velveeta nails. And I am sure from the comment just above the comment just above that someone else in this thread is of one mind with me on that point.
posted by y2karl at 1:46 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Not mad just a little disappointed how they jump from complex topic to topic ("it's dumb to listen to Dr Tiktok, but also black people are giggling at the whites catching up to Vaseline"). I will keep reading her.
posted by Freecola at 1:52 PM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Minor derail, One of the things she mentioned is that she blasted out 400 (!) Articles in her last year as a freelancer. Like how is that even possible?
posted by Dr. Twist at 7:47 PM on January 3, 2023

This is really interesting to read as a beauty enthusiast while also simultaneously reading How to Blow Up A Pipeline by Andreas Malm.

I feel like Defino's article emphasis makes more sense in the context of high stakes established in Andreas Malm's book on climate crisis. Malm establishes a logic that we must do everything at our disposal to avert the climate disaster and justifies a variety of small to large acts within our remit that will facilitate those endeavors as activists.

Defino's article assumes or wants to cultivate in readers an active role in rethinking the radical possibilities in rejecting strangling beauty standards and finding alternatives to petroleum products as part of a larger climate action.

This article is interesting because this is usually beyond the pale of what I usually read about in beauty. I vaguely remember people being against microplastics in skincare products, but this is much more provocative.

I'm open to clean products but I also have product lethargy where I don't especially want to rethink my staple moisturizers and sunscreens. There is no misery like finding acceptable sunscreens. But it might realistically push me to replace my petroleum based lip products to a candelilla wax based product.
posted by limbicdigest at 12:45 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

Minor derail, One of the things she mentioned is that she blasted out 400 (!) Articles in her last year as a freelancer. Like how is that even possible?

If you're working full-time hours and writing a lot of short-form commentary-type stuff, light on investigative research and heavy on familiar themes, it's entirely possible. My partner writes 2 articles per day as a staff writer, so that's 520 per year right there. He'd be the first to tell you they sure aren't all golden, but they exist.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 6:46 AM on January 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Having dug more into her stuff now I think it's a case of someone with whom I largely agree, but whose approach is so scattershot that I just can't buy in. Half her work is How to Blow up a Pipeline and the other half is this straight-up Gwyneth Goop nonsense:

After a 28-day cycle sans products, your microbiome will repopulate, your skin’s inherent functions will reregulate, and you’ll likely find you never needed 10 steps, or five, or even two. Self-sufficient amalgam of oil and water and squalene and ceramides that it is, the skin can’t help but glow.

Well, friendo, that's nice for you but actively bullshit as a universal directive. My skin WILL help but glow, thank you very much. I have skin conditions that are not just socially unacceptable but actively painful. I spent two decades putting nothing but water and sunscreen on my face, and I only started using skincare in my late 20s, because my skin absolutely refused to self-regulate.

Additionally (and pettily, I acknowledge), having spun through her sosh meeds, I feel she falls into the trap of someone who has no serious health conditions and meets about ~80% of beauty culture expectations without intervention blithely assuring us all that we will be completely fine if we just stop using soap or bothering with moisturizer, because look at her! Her directives seem so reasonable to her because they represent a very small sacrifice in her ability to move through the world without repercussion; she is young, healthy, with a fantastic head of hair and features right out of the Instagram Face Lookbook. For many of us, giving up all elements of beauty culture would mean taking a very real, substantial hit to our professional and personal presentation, and I don't think she recognizes that at all.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:18 AM on January 4, 2023 [5 favorites]