Presenting Death, Sex & Money | From Brazilian Butt Lifts to Botox: Your Beauty Confessions

Pushkin.
Hello, Hi, nice to see you. Thank you for doing this.
Nice to see you too, Thanks for doing this with this.
Hey guys, it's Khalila. The Heavyweight team is hard at
work on some episode updates for later this spring, as
well as a brand new season which will be coming
later this fall. But in the meantime, we wanted to
wet your whistles, so to speak, with another show that
we really respect and enjoy. It's called Death, Sex and Money.
It's a show about difficult and often awkward topics like
you know, the stuff and the title Death, Sex and Money.
And recently I spoke with the show's host, Anna Sale.
I liked talking with Anna. She's a good listener, unlike
our show's host, who sometimes when I'm talking to him,
gets this gleazed look in his eyes and I know
he's just thinking about sandwich the last time I talked
to Anna. Both of our shows have been canceled by
their longtime networks, but look at us now, both back
in action making a victorious return to your podcatcher. You
also have recently been repotted to a new home.
Repotted.
How's that going?
You know?
I hope it feels for you like it feels for us.
It's felt wonderful at our new home at Slate. We
were used to be at WNYC. And having that kind
of big leap over the question of like do we
get to still do this? I think has made us
just it feels really fun. It feels more fun, and
I feel like I'm a kid making my own zine
in my back bedroom. Likely no, but I get to
make this and it's my job.
Yeah, I do feel the same. It like really makes
me value the good things about this workplace. And then
also just to be like, yeah, I can't believe we
get to make this show. Yeah, Okay, so we're going
to run one of your episodes today. It is about
beauty interventions of all levels.
Yeah, because you know, the conversations about what we do
to change the way we look, they sort of happen
in these silos. There's like the makeup corner, the skincare corner,
the GLP one corner, though, like I don't know, orthodontics corner.
If you've got kids who are in middle school, and
so to just kind of look at it as a
whole universe, wrinkles and teeth and balding and nose shape,
it churned up a lot for lots of different people.
Yeah, I just really loved it. I was really impressed
with the way that you all handled it. I think
like often in these conversations it's easy to sort of
strip the nuance out of stuff, and I appreciated that
you did not do that and sort of just let
all the contradictions and complicated feelings exist.
Yeah. I mean I'm all over the place on this
stuff because I I will like be in Wyoming, where
I spend time, and there's all these women with these
deep grooves in their face and they have long, like
white braids, and I'm like, that's how I'm going to age.
And then I come back to the Bay Area and
I'm like, oh, I think that I should make a
botox appoint me.
To know, I hear you.
So I am very I sympathize with the people with
mixed feelings because I am not fixed on this stuff.
Yeah, especially because I feel like so much of that
stripping down or assumption comes out of like a defensiveness
about like your own insecurities, you know.
Yeah, Also the way that we identify, Like for me
being a woman in my mid forties, like what sort
of feminism. Am I gonna like embrace for myself? What
do I want to demonstrate for my kids? What are
the judgments that I'm bringing to other people's choices? Or
what am I withholding from myself because I think it
would seem like I was too something if I pursued.
I don't know, like if I just got my eyebrows
better shaped more regularly, Like why do I have shame
about thinking that might be important?
You know, as you're saying that, what's ridiculous is I
do get my eyebrows done regularly, and I have bangs
so like you can't even see them. But still I'm like,
I don't know when they look really shaggy. I just
don't like it.
Well, good for you, it really does open up your
face your eyebrows or shape.
Yes, it does.
Great.
Let's listen to the episode and if you like it,
which I'm sure you will, then listen to the rest
of Death, Sex, and Money anywhere you get your podcasts.
How do you feel about the way you look and
how do you feel about whether you should do something
to change it?
Sure?
What a question. For the last several months we have
been asking you our listeners, to tell us stories about
your beauty interventions, what you've decided to invest time and
money in, like plastic surgery, elaborate skincare routines, fillers, botox,
things to look younger or hotter or quote unquote healthier.
Or maybe you are one of those listeners who is
clear that big interventions are a bridge too far for you.
Plastic surgery no. And also you've decided taking glp ones
or using hair dye means participating in cultural ideals that
you would rather reject. But what do you feel about
teeth straightening or even that nice thick face cream at
the drug store. When you're deciding to make an investment
for your looks, which part is for you and which
part is trying to control how the rest of us
treat you. Conventionally, attractive people make more money and are
treated better by teachers and law enforcement, and we live
in a time where social media's broad reach is narrowing
what we consider beautiful. In our Slate Plus episode this week,
we get into social media even more. I talked to
a researcher who's a dermatologist and a medical anthropologist who
is studying the proliferation of skincare routine videos on TikTok,
made by and for kids, some as young as seven
years old. Let's start with your stories about your appearance
and how some of you pay to manipulate it. We've
heard from a lot of you about a push and
pull of feeling like improving your looks was a frivolous pursuit,
and also that looking a certain way felt core to
some of the most important things in your life, your
romantic relationships, your work, and feeling desired and worthy.
I'd like to think of myself as a person with depth,
a person who values intelligence and kindness and you know,
doing the right thing. And yet sometimes I worry that
my appearance in the doors, that my appearance have opened,
those are going to close if I don't continue to
look this particular way.
This is death, Sex and Money, the show from Slate
about the things we think about a lot.
I need to talk about more iman a sale.
Over the last several months, we've been asking you to
tell us stories about how you think about looking good.
It all started with a glycol peel and went downhill
from there.
Some of you told us you had a hunch that
being more attractive would make your life better.
I can't help but feel that if everything were exactly
the same, but I had a lot of either self
confidence about the way I currently look, or if I
just looked better that, you know, maybe things would be
even better in my life and career.
If I'm being very honest with you, I'm worried that
I'm ugly again. That sounds so superficial, but I'm worried
that I'm society's standards of ugly because I know what
it's like when I just do a little bit more
and the looks and the notices and the treatment that
I get.
Some of you said you were actively leaning away from
your outward appearance.
I'm never going to fit society's ideals, so why try.
I'm not a young finn white woman. I never will
be that, so trying to fit in anybody's box is
it feels futile to me. I've been walking around with
ridiculous looking eyebrows for a few weeks now, just because
I've been too lazy, and I think there is a
freedom in that.
And many of you feel caught in the middle wondering
about whether to intervene to improve your appearance, what that
would say about you and your values.
As somebody who's also part of a DIY punk scene.
I feel like somebody who's very anti these mainstream demands
of people.
As they age.
So I have this.
Kind of dialogue going on in my head of what
how to approach aging moving forward, whether I maybe give
in a little bit to some of this external pressure
or just augment myself in ways I feel comfortab ble
versus just.
Yeah, shirking it all off and aging naturally.
So I typically go to the gym three to five
days a week, but it's getting harder to just maintain
those levels of strength and you know, my body and
tonness and things like that. And one of the things
I'm contemplating is going on TRT or testosterone replacement therapy,
and essentially it's weighing out the consequences of potentially impacting
my ability to have children. You know, It's been something
of weighing out, you know, do I want to potentially
risk that you know, long term desire of being a
father and having a family versus you know, the vanity and.
Looks the idea of getting fillers feels like kind of
crossing a bridge. I would be embarrassed to tell somebody
that I had fillers. It feels very vain, but also
I'm curious about how it would impact my appearance, So
we'll see. I still I am like very in the
moment of deciding that right.
Now, but this a little closer. Is the audio better?
Now?
This is great?
Yeah?
Okay, perfect. I'm so happy to talk to you.
Yeah, I'm so happy to talk to you. Okay, So
we are recording, but before we kind of launch, and
I just want to talk about a few things about
how we're making this episode. Do you how do you
want us to identify you? Do you want us to
use Asher?
Yeah?
So as h g R. And can we say where
you live? New York City?
Yes?
And can we say what age you are?
Yes?
Okay.
You can also say that I'm beautiful, which is the
truth you are. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.
Asher lives in Manhattan with two roommates. He works as
a datus scientist at a consulting firm, and it's a
job that pays pretty well and he can work remotely,
which has been important when healing from plastic surgery. When
Asher reached out to us, he was three months out
from getting work done on his face liposection on his cheeks,
and a chin implant.
You know, I'm thirty five now. Last couple of years,
it was kind of looking like a puffier and puffier,
and with the implant, it gives a more angular version
of your face. It looks a bit more masculine.
Which of those two would you say was the more
predominant thing. I don't want to look I want to
look more masculine. And I want to look young.
I don't. I don't. I wouldn't use the word young.
H Actually, men secretly kind of want to look a
little bit older.
Okay.
But I looked at my dad and I looked at
him carefully. I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we
are we are going to scale at a different direction
than this.
Asher's father is Indian, his mother is Portuguese, and Asher
lived in Trinidad until he was seven years old, and
he said that culture was more open about plastic surgery.
His mom and stepdad both have had facelifts, but now
Asher has had more plastic surgery than anyone in his family.
I wrote it all down for you, Anna, Okay. I
made sure to go through all of my receipts. I
went through all the documents because I have it stored,
and I was like, let me see. And I looked
at the total. I was like, God, damn. Lasik eye
surgery four thousand, rhinoplasty, autoplasty, liposuction all in one, ninety
eight point fifty uh huh. Rhinoplastic revision that was free,
medically necessary. Brazilian butt lift fourteen thousand, five hundred, face
chin implant, jaw, jaw liposuction, fat crafts into the lips
and cheeks eleven thousand, two forty eight, eyebrow transplant twenty
eight hundred. So in total it's forty about forty three
thousand dollars.
How have you paid for that on a credit card?
Did you finance with the doctor's offices cash?
So most of them I saved up unpaid cash. All
of these I had wanted for twenty years, since I
was a teenager. The reason I decided to do it
in my thirties is twofold. One, you don't make any
good decision in your twenties ever, ever, And two I
didn't have the money for it. So even my tattoos,
I've got them after I was thirty, So do you
really want them? If you really want them at thirty,
you'll be fine at twenty, I don't know. My sister
has tattoos on her arms, on her neck. I was like,
good luck on the job, honey.
Like, but if you wait till thirty, your life philosophy
is you won't have any regrets.
Yeah, thirties, why not.
Asher got his first major plastic surgery outside of the
US in Turkey. Then a few years later he got
the BBL Brazilian butt left at a Park Avenue doctor
in Manhattan with good reviews. It's a notoriously dangerous surgery,
but Asher deemed it worth the risk.
Yeah, so I had what we don't We don't clinically
call us, but in common parlance we say you have
a long back.
So you mean you had a flat butt.
Really, I'm really tall, so it's very rare you'll see
a guy who is six foot five with a nice butt. Okay,
if you look at a guy who's at the gym
who's five to nine, it's fucking unfair. Okay, it's just
not fair, Like God just just preferred them over me. Okay,
Like I had to work for this.
So when you say a good butt, tell me what
it looks like.
So exactly what you would think of It has a
little bit of curvature at the top, there's some volume,
and it doesn't look outrageous, right.
Do you care if it's if it's clear to people
who see you that you've had cosmetic procedures.
No, this is for me. This is not for anybody else.
But you're not self conscious that somebody might know, Like,
oh oh, I tell people all the time.
I'm like, I've I've got listen, do you have the
amount of money I paid for this? You're gonna find
out about it. You're gonna know. I am gonna tell
you right away. I'm like, I had it done. I
saved up a lot of money for it. I nobody listen, Anna,
nobody buys a Ferrari to keep it parked in a garage. Okay, Like.
Some beauty interventions have made you feel good, you told us.
People do say, I can't believe you're the age you are,
and I'm very open about about it.
In their shock.
Lately, I've been getting these These are facials, which are
not cheap. They are like two U or thifty bucks
up off and you have to get them like every
ten days. But I'm like, I think those guys look
at better maybe than it ever has.
Sometimes changes to your appearance can make you feel closer
who you feel you really are.
I ended up transitioning and identifying as a non binary
gender career person, started presenting more masculine, more androgynous. So
I did make some investments and changes and how I
looked and how I presented myself. I got tattoos which
were very expensive and very beautiful and have me like
showing off my body in a completely different way than before.
Or these interventions can help you stay close to a
part you don't want to change.
One of the things that I do is I take
the Nasteride, which is meant to help you grow and
sustain your hair. I noticed that I was losing some
of my hair after I had gotten a really bad
haircut and I saw a bald spot on the top
of my head and at the behest of my girlfriend.
After many days of anxiety and panic, I finally booked
a point with a genmatologist and God prescribed medication. I
would like to have hair on my head by the
time I get married and by the time I have
a kid or two, so I'm not really looking to
lose it anytime soon. And also I don't want to
lose my hair because I do enjoy going to the
barber and getting my hair cut. I constantly joke around
with my girlfriend and I always tell her that the
relationship between a man and his barber is one of
the most intimate relationships that a person can have, and
I'm not ready to give that up.
I got lip filler to, you know, to bring back
my old lips, and once I did that, I was like, oh, oh, there,
I am.
A listener were calling. Caroline first got lip fillers and
botox after her marriage ended. She and her ex husband
had three kids together and she was in her forties
when she asked him for a divorce.
I felt like I was dying in my marriage. Like
that whole I just felt like I was dying.
I felt like a dead person walking.
And finally I just was like, Okay, we got to
be done so that I can feel I mean, I
didn't say exactly this, but.
So I can feel alive again.
And part of that was that I wanted to feel
sexually attractive. I wanted to feel desired. So it's all
really connected for me.
And so when you started doing fillers and botox, was
it something that you would do, you'd wait a few months,
you'd go back and do again. Like how long? How
many times did you do each of those things?
I botox I was doing every four months or so.
And Filler.
I think I did filler three times over like a
two and a half year period or something like that.
And then I also did this thing called p doo threads.
They numb your face and they basically like somehow funnel
in these it looks like fishing line with little barbs
on it, so they get it in the.
Right place and then they pull and your cheek literally
just goes like it just.
Pulls up, it lifts.
Yeah.
Oh oh, and that was the first time I did that.
That was amazing.
It's been over a year since I've done it.
I think the last time I got anything done was
in January of twenty twenty five.
Yeah, so it's all faded away.
Now, what changed.
Because I filed for bankruptcy like two weeks ago.
Oh uh huh.
I can't afford it. And it really makes me very sad.
And when you look in the mirror, like what do
you do you look at? What what's it like to
see these procedures that can really change the way you look,
but are temporary come to an end.
I've been kind of sad about it, honestly.
It's pretty I mean, I knew that eventually I would
just sort.
Of have to accept time.
Mm hmm, but I.
Don't know that I was ready.
M that's so interesting how you put that. For any
aging person, we all know that at some point we're
going to have to confront age. And you gave yourself
kind of a grace period to sort of go back
in time with some interventions.
Yeah, I think that that.
I haven't thought about it that way, but I think
that that really is kind of what I did.
I kind of let myself have a.
Few years of.
I was a little bit resentful and sad that I
wasted those years when I was younger and hotter, married
to someone who didn't care about that sort of thing,
and I felt really invisible, and I wanted that time back.
So sorry, I'm such a it's okay, a nose runner,
right anyway, I wanted that time back, and so yes,
when I got divorced.
I think I definitely splurged and gifted myself some of
that time. And I think, and it's you know, I'm
in a very loving relationship now just for just over
a year, and I do feel desired, and I don't
think it's contingent on boatocks.
So I don't think.
I'm at any risk of losing this relationship if I
stop doing these procedures.
I just, yeah, I don't want to give.
That part of me up.
I kind of liken her to like painting your house.
You do one room, and then after you're done with
one room, it looks all like shiny and new, and
then you're going to step into the next room and
you're like, oh, this is looking a little shabby. Refresh this,
and by the time you're done, you're like back to
the first room, and it's like yeah.
Jiong lives in the Bay Area and describes herself as
middle aged. She works in tech, and unlike Caroline, she
can afford to do anything she wants to her face.
She sometimes gets weakly expensive facials and regular injectibles, other
times she doesn't.
I go in cycles, and here's what I mean by that,
and this is part of the struggle. I have used
like Creme de la Maire and august in this water,
which are too crazy expensive like creams and regimens, and
then I will start to think more about kind of
like the cosmetic industrial complex and like what it's doing
to women, and then I will stop all of that
and buy like oil of a lay or something at
the drug store. So it just depends what cycle where you.
Are in shame, the shame, that indulgence.
That's exactly right.
Jeong's parents moved to the United States shortly before Geong
was born from Korea and brought with them clear ideas
about how to take care of your skin.
My mom, anytime she would go out, even for a walk,
she would be like covered head to toe in like
a hat. And it didn't matter, you know, if it
was eighty degrees outside, right, a hat, you know, kind
of like her sleeves. So when I would go out
with my friends, she'd be like, take a hat, take
a hat?
Was it? Was it primarily about protecting your skin from
sun damage? Was it also about protecting it keeping it fair?
It was more about keeping it fair, quite honestly, more
than like, you know, melanoma concerns or anything.
I see, So not this.
It was just a beauty ideal.
Yeah, when you you work in the tech industry, now
I do where what it feel like when you go
to work, when you look at your peers, your coworkers.
Are you in a sort of tech company where there's
a premium on being a young person.
I am at a startup, right, So there's kind of
I mean there's many kinds of tech. There's like tech tech,
big tech, and then there's like startup tech and tech tech.
Tech usually tends to have a bigger generation, you know,
multi generations, more represented. They're just larger numbers. They're kind
of older, established companies, et cetera. Whereas the startup environment
is very different, right, I mean you see all these
headlines of nineteen year olds, twenty year olds, you know.
So I am in the startup world, and I have
been for a while. I just keep getting drawn to this,
and you know, as I continue to go along in
my career, for sure, there's an added sense of you.
You look around, and you know, I'm a lot older
than a lot of these people. I mean sometimes this
is like their first job. They got recruited right out
of college. And so I think overall the way startup
cultures are kind of like bread and what's championed and
what's valued. You know, youth is high on that list.
Where are you today as we're talking in the cycle
of shame and feeling okay about making appointments to go
in and get different services.
Yeah, less and less shame, I will say. And that's
just like generally about everything as I get older, right,
But I do want to say, you know, when you
get compliments for how you look like, it's almost like
U you want you get that hit, and that becomes
very seductive. So I think what fees into that is,
oh well, I've got to continue being seen like this, right,
And this thing about how women are not seen is
there as say get older, right, Like older women are invisible,
older people are invisible, but particularly older women are invisible.
And so I think that if there's any like little
hook that kind of still hangs on me, especially being
in tech, is that I don't want to be invisible.
The number of people who are doing botox and other
injectibles like fillers is growing. It's becoming less common to
see wrinkles on TV, not to mention imperfect teeth, ones
that aren't totally lined up in bright white, and the
narrower and shinier that our dominant esthetic gets, the more
certainly perceived imperfections cannote otherness like not having enough money
or being left behind.
I feel like a lot of my friends are like
getting botox and stuff kind of stupin into the anti
aging universe, and for me, I'm still struggling with poormonal acne,
something that I feel like none of my friends are
really concerned about.
In the last year, have been told that I need
to have severe orthodontics, so braces, when I've previously always
been complimented on my teeth and it can't be in
visilign and I need elastics in my braces and around
ten thousand dollars Australian for that to happen.
I should note that I have Ellis Danlos.
Syndrome, which is a condition that affects all my collagen.
You're born with it.
I was only recently diagnosed about two years ago, but
the teeth makes sense in regards to that I've also
experienced in the last year. I changed my birth control
and had the most trendous ACME of all time, but
also manifested in basically and I don't know if this
was the lasound loss, but like my hair growing within
itself on my face, and I have gone from a really.
Oh God, I'm gonna crack a really confident, outgoing person.
To someone who.
Questions if they look okay to go to the supermarket.
But it is honestly insane that I, at thirty five,
am now experiencing this and I feel like I'm back
to below basics of how to accept my body.
Coming up? What happens when you take a stand against
beauty interventions can get pushed back from your family, And
how it feels to be a child who got lots
of compliments for how cute and beautiful you are and
then you grow up and they go away.
I started to really have to reconcile with, oh, you've
put a lot of emphasis on looks, and I'm not
sure how that's going to serve you or how you're
going to untangle that. Good luck, And that's sort of
when the addiction to alcohol and drugs kind of really
you took off.
How do you introduce yourself, misters Dana, and what's the
term you use for what you practice? What your work is?
Professional dominatrix Dana Farrant got into kink in her thirties,
but she always kept it separate from her professional life.
It wasn't until she got divorced and turned fifty that
she decided to pursue a new career. It's always scary
to start a new job, especially when you're a little older.
There's that feeling can I really do this? Both from
yourself and reflected back at you from younger peers. But
that is not what Dana found.
I've been more aware of the age piece in stepping
into the dungeon because the age is a bonus, not
a negative.
What age do you think it is most advantageous that
you appear for your clients.
Really somewhere, you know, forty five to fifty five. People
want to know that there's enough experience that I'm not
going to injure them that I know what I'm doing.
They want that feeling of I have authority over them.
So there's a bit of that power dynamics that comes
in automatically, just in if I'm older than them, they
feel that immediately. I know professional dominatrix who are still
working up into their eighties. It is a profession that
you can get into well, clearly, I'm getting into it
at an older age, and it's not a negative to
be working in your sixties and seventies.
And will you just describe for me how you sense that, Like,
take me into an initial interaction with a client who's
trying to figure out who you are, How what the
dynamics going to be like between you? How do you
how can you tell what they expect from you, and
how you're going to sort of assert that this is this.
Is where it's It's a misnomer for most people in
this industry. It's not about me trying to make sure
that they, you know, have their their wish fulfillment or
you know that I'm making sure that they're really happy.
It's actually the opposite in the power dynamics, which is
what they're actually seeking.
They're seeking to.
Surrender, to let go of control, and so in order
to optimally do that, we need to make sure that
they It's not about them the session. It takes into
consideration what they like, what they don't like, But when
they come in for a session, I'm deciding what's going
in charge.
I'm in charge.
Dana didn't always feel in charge of her own life.
She grew up in a religious community where most of
her life was mapped out from what she believed to
how to spend her free time to how she should look.
I wouldn't allow myself to dye my hair because that
would be too too much following the world trends and
not looking godly enough. I didn't really start dying my
hair until late twenties.
It's interesting that the way that you described that at
a period of when it sounds like you were dealing
with a lot figuring out who you were, how to
heal from some things, that it was out of that
time when you started thinking about how you wanted to
take care of your appearance and started putting in more effort.
Is that right?
Yeah, I think there's a there was a shift of
being allowed internally to spend the money, spend the time,
do these kinds of things that up until then I had,
you know, pushed off as like oh, that's so frivolous, shallow.
You know, the person who was who was helping me
in the last four or five years, she was she
was always encouraging me to, like, you know, where something
sexy go out, because that's a way to to push
the thoughts out that it's not okay to dress sexy,
or that something bad's going to happen if I go
like this.
So yes, now I have the problem.
I you know, can go out in a pair of
short shorts and a little tank top and there's really
not much left of the imagination and I'm out there
struggling around.
This topic is very timely for me, as I feel
like I'm in the age where people are getting you know,
they have enough money now my peers to have plastic
surgery or boatox. I don't do any of that. But
what I have made the decision, and the reason I'm
submitting this voice memo is that I recently decided to
stop coloring my hair and that has totally changed the
way I perceive myself to move through the world. Yeah,
I really want to hold strong with this one.
Suits it is. It looks like your hair is gray.
I would say on your driver's license, I would say
gray if I was picking your hair color. Is that
what you say?
I mean? I think it's probably If we're going to
break it down percentage wise, I'd say I'm probably forty
to sixty, Like forty, that's probably generous. I'm probably sixty
percent gray, maybe in forty percent brown.
Alexandra is thirty eight now. She started going gray in
her early twenties. She'd always died her hair, but stopped
during pregnancy a few years ago.
I paused hair color, and then I resumed for a
little bit, and then I paused again when I got
pregnant again a couple of years later, and then I
just never took it back up. And I've gotten a
lot of feedback on that from whom I mean, like everybody,
like family members, right, and then also just strangers that
like meet you, and after you know, you say an initial,
it's never like, oh my gosh, you have gray hair.
But after you maybe break the ice with a different conversation,
they maybe have a comment on your hair. Always women,
never men, And it's usually in the context of like
I wish I could do that.
Oh, so they look at you and they go, I
wish I was that.
Brave exactly exactly.
I want to know a little bit more about what
you are reacting against, and it might not be the case,
but I wonder if you could tell me more about
the women in your family who are older than you.
What was their approach to when their hair and their
face and their parents they started to look older.
Yeah, yeah, to give you an informed answer to that question,
let me just back up a titch and say, I
have two maternal figures in my life, one of which
is thirteen years older than me, that's my stepmother, and
then one of which is my maternal mother, and she
is thirty years older than my stepmom. Okay, yeah, so
there's quite a big age gap between these two people.
I probably and more of the ethos of my maternal mother,
of like, she's very Berkeley in the seventies, hippie, you know,
English teacher.
And then I see the linen, the flowing fabric.
Exactly exactly you have the picture. And then my stepmom
is a Ploates instructor. She routinely gets like these Dracula
facial things where I see her face and it's just
like puffy and like what happened? And she's like I
had a facial like okay, great, like subscribes to all
the things to stay looking young and attractive. And so
I guess I've had competing conversations about this topic my
whole life. I guess fundamentally at the very core of
it is I don't want to have to conform to
somebody else's standards. And I think it's we've been sold
a bill of goods in this day and age of
female appearance, that it needs to keep up with a
certain trend or be a certain way, or youth equals
beauty like that, like youth equals being wanted, And I
guess I just don't want to have to keep up
with that thought process.
So I'm the idea of feeling wanted. You're in a relationship,
you're married to a man.
I am.
Yeah.
Do you all talk about it my hair?
Yeah?
Yeah, quite a bit.
What's how does your husband talk with you about how
you feel about your hair and the decisions you're making.
He's never been not supportive of my decision And that
double negative is intentional, but it's not something I know
that he's totally at peace with, because pictures will come
up of me, like ten years earlier, and they'll have
offsided comments of, God, look how good you look there.
And when you notice that, does it like when it registers,
do you like does it make you sort of go, huh,
what's my game plan here for the next thirty years,
forty years, fifty years?
Absolutely? Yeah, because it is still so early in the game,
and I think it hurts a little bit, I'll be honest.
But it also isn't enough to push me the other direction.
You know, I'm pretty stubborn, and so it's kind of
like that would suck if that was the deal breaker.
But I guess this, you know, is a right if
that's the case. Yeah. So it's constantly a decision I'm making.
It's not like, oh, I've I don't color my hair,
period stop blank. It's constantly something that arises in my
decision making process, and sometimes I'm swayed to do it
for whatever reason, and then I usually well, I always
remember kind of and feel at the core that the
reasons I don't want to do it, and I'll also
add to those reasons that I have two daughters and
this is genetic and I want them to see I
want them to see this, you know, and to see
it be okay. And if they want to make a
different choice, that's all right. But at least they have
a model.
You know, did your mother go gray in her twenties
and thirties? Yes, yes, It's interesting to me how you
described the maternal figures in your life and how core
this decision about how how you wear your hair. It
raises this question of what sort of woman am I? Yes,
I get very core to identity, Yeah, which is which
I get. But it's it's interesting how it feels. It
feels like being pushed to color your hair. Feels like
they're not seeing you for how you are. Is how
it feels.
Yeah, it's kind of like, why do I need to
do that? I mean for you?
Is it for you?
Or because you're embarrassed to have a friend or a
spouse with gray hair? I mean, what is the encouragement from?
This?
Is what I think about a lot too. How I'm
being closely watched by two little girls. As I dabble
with beauty interventions and investments. They notice for whom or
what I put makeup on for when I cover grays.
They'll alert me when mom, you need to shave your legs.
I want them to find fun and freedom and how
they present to the world. Also to be real about
what it's like to live in a woman's body that
also lives in a society. This is a balance, and
you know, comments from grown ups about how you're supposed
to look. They can get trapped in memory on a loop.
My mother worked for a classic Sergan's office, and when
I was sixteen years old, she said to me, Davy
wouldn't it be nice if we could just get you
a surgery to take out that little bump in the
middle of your nose.
One of my mom's former friends I remember her saying, Oh,
my gosh, look how big your stomach is. Are you pregnant?
I literally didn't know where babies came from at the time.
I have memories of being told to shave my armpits
by my grandmother to help with body odor, and of
another patient at a physical therapy clinic talking over my
head to my physical therapist about my wolf legs.
But family culture can only influence so much, especially when
there are so many other ways we are told or
shown how you ought.
To look to be desired.
In this week's Slate Plus episode, I talked to a
dermatologist who is also a medical anthropologist, doctor Molly Hales.
She recently co authored a study where she pretended to
be a thirteen year old girl on TikTok to see
what the algorithm would serve her. Turns out, a lot
of young kids are doing skincare routines and doing them badly.
She's kind of doing this instructional format, so she was
like a how to video with her full skincare regimen,
and it had just one product after the other that
she's holding up and just gushing about how great it
is and then putting it on her skin. Her skin
is turning dark, you know, pinker and pinker, And by
the end she looks into the camera and she says, like,
here's how this looks.
It's so glowy.
I love it.
But if anyone can tell me how to get it
to stop burning, that would be greatly appreciated, because it
actually really hurts a lot.
My converse with doctor Molly Hales is in the Slate
Plus feed this week. If you are not already getting
these special episodes, sign up for Slate Plus on the Death,
Sex and Money Show page, on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify,
or just go to slate dot com slash DSM plus
After the break more of your stories about beauty interventions.
Nick Dute lives in Los Angeles, California now, but he
grew up in the Bay Area. As a kid, he
was told he was beautiful, and he loved it. He
set out to be an actor, and at first he
was on a glide path that got all the parts
he wanted. When he was starting out in shows, near
his hometown. Then he moved to New York.
I remember it very clearly. It was it was a
callback for Jersey Boys on Broadway, which was a huge deal.
But I was so entitled and my perspective was so
off prior.
You know, a big fish in a small pond, coming
from you know, the San Francisco Bay area, where I
got pretty much all the parts I wanted, and then
when I didn't get that, and I thought, oh, the
whole plan might not work, like the whole A plus
B equal see is maybe debunked. And that was terrifying
to me.
Uh huh. Do you feel like you went out to
somebody who was hotter?
Hmm?
Interesting? No, But I think it's really complicated because I
think there's also internalized homophobia with this for men gay
men in theater, especially that when we're playing lead roles
or masculine presenting roles. That And I'm saying all this
because I was a twenty five year old twink right
like a pretty party. So I don't think that he
was hotter. However, he might have been more masculine.
Oh, that's interesting. So it was sort of like I
feel you grew up being told you were a handsome boy,
and then a handsome young man, and then there was
there was a complicating factor of like, but are you
are you a handsome man in the right way to
present and be successful in your chosen field, right?
And so you're going to take this to the bank,
are you going to be able to cash this in?
As Nick struggled as an actor and with how he
presented as a man, he was using drugs and alcohol.
It became a problem and then a full blown addiction.
I landed in rehab, you know, impatient rehab when I
was thirty four. So that whole like the last six months,
you know, my really rock bottom where you know, I
ended up in a meth cabin in the woods and
ended up convincing you know, my parents weren't speaking to me.
I convinced this drug dealer to drive me to la
probably because he was sick of me, and he's like, okay, sure.
And it took a couple more months in this crazy
sort of like you know, using my looks and my
body to get you know, men in the Hollywood Hills
to sort of like uber me from party to party,
and I was always in a blackout. And then I
ended up in the hospital, and then from there they
put me into this government run really like scrappy, ragtag
rehab where the woman who owns it or runs it
rather is just this no nonsense kind of like you know,
thirty five years of sobriety herself just like can see
through it all right. Kathy is her name, and she
she's sort of the reason I'm sober. She would not
allow us. We couldn't work out, We couldn't talk about it.
We couldn't I was begging for a haircut like two
months in, like I still looked the way I did,
like from the hospital, and I was putting on weight
from only eating like donation pastries, like I was disgusting.
And she just knew exactly that that was the issue,
and she would not budge. Yeah, Kathy said, I have
to focus on my insides, not my outsides.
Can you just say to me, I want to make
sure I'm really getting what Kathy identified and what she
helped you identify about the link between your addiction, addictions
and how you look. How do you understand that?
The way I understand it is there's a lot of
things that, as you would say in the program, fix
feelings like how can I fix how I feel, not
be present, you know, whatever it is. And I think
when you take out the really strong, life shattering substances,
you are reaching. And so the way I looked was
another way I was wearing a mask. It was another
way that I was hiding, not being I was people pleasing,
wanting to be who you needed me to be. All
of those things I never would have really dissected had
I not torched my life in that way and met
Kathy and these other addicts that helped me understand the
mirror of how ridiculous it was to be so concerned
here I am. Kathy would say, look where you are.
You're like worried about a haircut, but what about where
your life.
Has taken you?
You know, like obviously looking good didn't work for you.
You know, Oh Katy.
She's like, you're worried about a haircut, right.
So her big thing that she would her cats phrase
would always be like, whatever you were obsessing about, Nick,
if a haircut, if haircuts worked for you, you'd have an
amazing life.
We love Kathy.
So sometimes it's very helpful to lose everything because then
a comment like that really puts it in perspective.
When Nick got out of rehab, he was sober and
rebuilding his life. He got a new job and soon
met a man Walker at an AA meeting. Walker was
ten years younger, twenty five to Nick's thirty five, and
within three months of meeting they moved in together. Then
seven years later they married. Nick wrote about his relationship
with Walker in a recent essay in New York Magazine,
and also about the tensions that have showed up there
because of Nick's relationship to his body. For a while,
Nick felt secure in his relationship. Walker never cared what
size I was, he wrote. He told me I was
handsome when I rolled out of bed, sexy and Jim
Schortz hot even without a tan. For a while I
believed him, he wrote. And then the pandemic.
Kid and I had was heading into my forty, so
the weight wasn't coming off the way that it used to,
and I had to, like maybe like six months in,
I had to Instead of all my medium polo shirts
that I wore to work, I went online to get
some larges, which was felt like daggered to my heart.
When did you have your first conversation with a physician
about some kind of surgical intervention.
Pretty much.
Well, I think because i've I've gone, they're all spaced
out about a year, so probably twenty twenty one. So
I broached the subject with Walker of light bo and
he's you know, he was like, sure, whatever, and then
didn't love those results.
A year endo the pandemic, Nick got LiPo section. It
costs just over twenty thousand dollars. When Nick told Walker playfully,
hey babe, I'm getting my boobs done, Walker's response was cautious.
If it's going to make you feel better, I support you,
he said, but are you sure this is about your chest?
And then the results weren't what Nick wanted. He wrote
the definition I expected never materialized, just a torso that
looked oddly smooth, almost melted. So then Nick went back
for a revision procedure that cost another seven five hundred dollars.
When the results still didn't feel perfect, Nick's doctor suggested
a tummy tuck, and Nick scheduled it, but waited until
two weeks before the surgery to tell his husband. Walker
was furious about all the money and all the surgeries
and asked Nick if he could cancel, but it was
too late.
I had already gone back, same surgeon, had already held
the date, paid a deposit because I knew, come hell
or high water, I had to do it. And then
I just had to have like an honest adult conversation
with Walker, and that was not the right way. And
that's why it was so bad, just in that he's like, well,
you're gonna do it. I mean, you're already doing.
It, so you you'd pay the deposit. You had said,
I am doing this third surgery. And then you're like,
I have to tell my husband, and then he's pang
on sort of ask yeah, ask slash inform.
Yeah, you get it.
Yeah, yeah, I also have a husband who I sometimes
ask slash inform. Yeah. But it was the way that
you came to what is this for? That that conversation
between the two of you and is this worth all
this effort, time, money, pain of recovery. It was the
money that that was the way you had that conversation.
We could use this money for something else.
I think it was layered because it was also the
first time I had heard I loved your body. Before
the first time I had heard what are you do?
You know you're batching the things I love, like these
sort of like things that come out in a heated
conversation that yeah, it just was. It's like I overstayed
my welcome of just positive cheer from the sidelines and
got the tough love of like do you think this
is looking better? Like do you think this is fixing anything?
Kind of a thing. And it was too late. It
was I wanted to get The night before, I thought
I should cancel. This is gonna this, He's gonna ask
me for a divorce, like this is gonna be bad.
And he said no, you know, he drove me like
we patched it up for as best we could. The
night before, he drove me to the hospital, you know,
the surgery place, and yeah, and then I went to
aftercare and ended up in aftercare for like five days,
and he saw me there once. But I knew that
he was over it. I knew that it was I
had done something. I had crossed the line.
Mm hm.
M hm.
And looking back, when you were scheduling that third surgery,
you described kind of like I want I want the
result that I've been after. You described that as your motivation,
But do you do you link it to that those
what we were talking about before, about what you were
kind of confronting and recovery about, like your worth is
connected to yes, how you look.
For sure, because I thought, you know, it's funny or ironically,
the most stress that's ever been put on our relationship
is this. But here I am probably three years prior
and when I went to ask for the last surgery,
thinking this would be in the category of saving my marriage,
when it was doing the opposite, you know, because I
did feel like he chose me because of the way
I looked at thirty five, He chose me because of
the way others saw me, the way others complimented me.
I had that narrative going. So this really shook all
of that because it was the first time I knew
that he liked my body, but I didn't realize. Yeah,
I just thought it was all improvement that there was
no risk of, you know, like the scar from the
tummy duck. It's like neither of us really understood how
intense that would look.
You know.
He described it as a C section scar, which it's
not far off. And yeah, I was a little shocked too,
Like I was so tom vision that I thought, oh,
oh wait, so it never really goes wait, it never
goes away, like, yeah, dude.
I remember I wished I'd had a warning before my
c section. Just look at your stomach before, because it'll
never look like that again, right, yeah.
Yeah, and just and I remember my surgeon saying something like,
well even if he said something like because I said,
I'm uncomfortable even with my partner with my shirt off
and I definitely don't want to go to the pool
and blah.
Blah, and he said, well, even.
If you're still uncomfortable, you know, with like the results
of a tummy tuck at least like you're silhouette, you know,
in clothing. And I'm thinking like, well, yeah, but with
my shirt off too. And I now realize that what
he meant was you might not like the scar if
your pants go below that, and you also might not
like the fact that it's not the belly button you
were born with.
Uh huh.
You still might not like the way you look when
you're naked or with your shirt off, huh huh. I
want to understand how you think about if you could
go back and make different decisions, where you might make
different decisions when it comes to these the interventions, the
surgical interventions, Like, how do you think about that choice?
The truth is that had I known all of the
different things, like not just the physical medical, but the emotional,
the mental, I probably wouldn't have started down the path.
And I think, even though I'm satisfied and glad in
a way, it part of it's almost not worth it,
do you know what I mean?
And in your relationship now with your husband, like if
there's a day where you're just like not feeling hot, like,
is that something you'll say to him or do you
keep that inside?
Yeah, we're gay men in LA and there isn't a
day that goes by where we don't kind of get
down on ourselves about it.
And it's it's sad. It is, you know, it is sad.
And I think that our job, especially in sobriety, is
to take that inventory, you know, and really look at
maybe I have to go do something for somebody else,
Maybe I need to volunteer, Like how do I get
out of myself?
Right?
I think I ask you because I think it's so
interesting that the moment of real sort of rupture was
you thinking I'm doing this to stay attractive in this
marriage and him saying you're changing in ways that I
feel uncomfortable with that I don't really like, and so
I wonder if, like, that's if now you can get
to that part of the conversation faster.
Yeah, well, I definitely think the positives of those hard
conversations is that we can skip that part. For me,
I was so far gone when I was deciding about
the surgeries. Nobody could have said to me, this isn't
this isn't a problem, and this isn't the way to
fix it. No one but they could now. I think
they could now, and I would listen.
That's Nick dte. His essay in New York Magazine is
called What Plastic Surgery Couldn't Fix. There's a link to
it in our show notes. Thank you to everyone whom
we talked to for this episode and everyone who's sent
in voice memos. This episode was produced by Zoe Ajulet.
The rest of the Death, Sex and Money Show team
includes Andrew Dunn and Cameron Drews. Dais of Rosario is
our senior supervising producer. Neia Lobel is the head of
Slate Podcast. Hillary Frye is Slate's editor in chief. You
can support the production of our show. By joining our
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love hearing from you. One more thing Asher told me.
He says when he got that Brazilian butt lift, he
noticed increased attention on hookup, but he also got attention
from unexpected sources.
I live on a street where it's kind of common
to see the same people who lived here fourteen years
and this lady that lives two floors above me, she
saw me. I usually opened the door for her because
she's older and she carries she walks with her grandma cart.
And she told me that during her recent dominoes game,
because they you know, Dominicans love to play dominoes.
On the street.
She's like, everybody was talking about you, but looks so good.
I could I was so I could not believe it.
I'm in a sale and this is death, sex and
money from sleet