Everything Is Content - Makeovers - a deep dive

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

Get ready for a glow-up because for the next two weeks on Everything Is Content we’re taking a deep dive into the world of beauty. In today’s episode we’re looking at makeovers - from Andy���s bangs in The Devil Wears Prada to Trinny and Susannah, we grew up in the peak era of makeovers on TV and film. Join Beth, Ruchira and Oenone to discuss the effect that cultural representations of makeovers have had on us - and how makeover and glow up culture is manifesting itself today. We’d love to hear what you think about the - sometimes ugly - world of beauty. Chat to us over on @everythingiscontentpod on Instagram.Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss our second beauty special next week - where we will take a forensic look at the world of ageing. —DAZED: Snog Marry Avoid? The emotional impact of being on the 00s makeover showNEW YORKER: The Age Of Instagram FaceJIA TOLENTINO: Trick Mirror STYLIST: Always chasing happiness but never getting there? You might be on the hedonic treadmillNEW YORK TIMES: Why Do We All Have To Be Beautiful?FILMS DISCUSSED: My Big Fat Greek WeddingThe Devil Wears PradaMiss Congeniality The Parent TrapShe’s The Man TV SHOWS DISCUSSED:: Ugly Betty Snog Marry Avoid?10 Years Younger What Not To Wear How To Look Good Naked Extreme MakeoverThe Swan The Biggest Loser Queer Eye Revenge Body with Khloé KardashianAmerica’s Next Top Model —Follow us on Instagram:@everythingiscontentpod @beth_mccoll @ruchira_sharma@oenone ---Everything Is Content is produced by Faye Lawrence for We Are GrapeExec Producer: James Norman-FyfeMusic: James RichardsonPhotography: Rebecca Need-Meenar Artwork: Joe Gardner  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Okay, it's begun to record. I'm scared. Wait, why are you scared? Special episode. It's cute. Let's just see what happens. I'm Beth. I'm Ruchira.

And I'm Anoni. And this is Everything Is Content. We're three friends who love everything to do with pop culture. Films, TV shows, runways, memes, literature. We're all over it. Every week, we get together to discuss the pop culture stories that have ignited the online discourse. We are the highlighter in your content makeup bag.

Over the next two weeks on the podcast, we're going to be doing deep dives into the world of beauty. Today is all about makeovers. From Anne Hathaway in Princess Diaries to TikTok glow-up challenges, what impact do cultural representations of makeovers have on us and how is that changing? Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss a single episode and chat to us over on at Everything Is Content Pod on Instagram and TikTok. Usually we start the podcast by sharing what we've been loving this week but I want to

do something different. I want all of us to say our favourite makeovers from the pop culture universe. Beth what's yours? Mine is quite an understated makeover that just like warms my heart every time I watch it which is Tula's Makeover in My Big Fat Greek Wedding yes which is a film I absolutely adore and it's probably my one of my top five comfort watches and I think I love it because it's really driven by a lot of joy so she is like a waitress in her family restaurant and she's quite she's so meek and she's kind of like dresses in very drab colors and you know wears big glasses and then she kind of spots this like hunky Ian Miller um which is how they say in the film and she undergoes she like just undergoes this transformation which

is very like internal where she wants to go to school she wants to leave the family restaurant and become I think a travel agent and it's a really organic process like she experiments with makeup she kind of takes the glasses off it's really subtle it's really joyful and she does it all and she just ends up like glowing and she's got blusher on and she is just like transformed in the most understated I've used that word a thousand times but like she just basically had color palette changes and it's like a huge glow up so that's probably mine it's so true that it comes from within with her which is quite different to a lot of other makeovers she's the one who kind of experiments it's quite like a full life glow up exactly it's like driven by like what she wants

to do like her inspiration aspiration it's kind of like a cherry on the top that she gets it's like cute denim jacket to go with it um so it's like a not problematic one so I'm hoping one of you has a really problematic like full body transformation Richie what is yours mine is a classic but a goodie mine is the devil wears prada the fact that Andy goes from not not my words the fashion words drab to just completely chic i don't know chanel wearing glossy woman with bangs strolling in through the vogue offices oh not vogue sorry mode off no wait what what's the scene called what is it called runway runway sorry i got caught up on the parody runway notway, not Vogue. What's made? Is that American, no, American Ferrara's thing?

Ugly Betty, yeah. Ugly Betty, okay. Again. Well, actually, no, she never had a makeover, did she? They just put glasses on a very pretty woman and said she was ugly. She gets her braces off at one point. So she puts, she gets rid of her old glasses

and she wears square glasses. But it is worth mentioning with Ugly Betty, I feel like one of the reasons why she was quote-unquote unattractive in the world of fashion in the show was because she was Mexican and because she was a woman of color and also the fact that everyone around her bizarrely considered her to be plus size or fat which she I think to a very normal eye is not at all um and even if she was that shouldn't make her unattractive and we'll get into it obviously but those kind of elements of

race ethnicity and body size contribute massively to this makeover topic so her glow up is like the my big fat greek wedding where subtly over the series you see her just become like her but chica over time which is really nice quite cute actually yeah whereas andy i feel like has the classic makeover where it's 0 to 180 and she just like goes from andy 1.0 to literally like just a fashion bombshell literally overnight and it's all done with like Stanley Tucci's character behind her just like orchestrating the whole thing my favorite thing about that makeover is it's only gotten better with time to me and I feel like all the looks have only become even more chic and even more fashionable to me as I get older I guess appreciate it all especially because like you said she again

in that one she enjoys it like she thinks she looks great it's like she becomes this whole new person when she has this whole new wardrobe and I love all of the clothes oh and only what's your what's your favorite makeover let's not choose favorites come on because I love them all but one of my favorites is um Miss Congeniality where we have Sandra Bullock Gracie Lou Lou Freebush. Yes. And I think what's so good about this makeover is Sandra Bullock's physical comedy is so funny. So she's obviously gorgeous. But as a child, I remember being like, oh my God, they've made this really like ungainly woman,

really pretty. It's like, again, they just like straightened her hair and put on a dress. But it's funny because she's still this like burping, pulling a wedgie out, kind of like quite masculine presenting woman in this like really sexy beautiful dress and it's just funny watching her be so gorgeous and then act sort of like burpy and farty um and that is just she's just

so hot it's such a good film it's michael cain doing it oh michael cain we always love like a guy in the background orchestrating the makeover but is that the one where she literally falls flat on her face when she comes out and it's like tom jones she's a lady and she just like literally tanks yes and then she has to do i can't remember what her talent is when they do the talent show but it's that quote where the girl's like and what's your favorite day and she's like may 5th because it's cool enough to wear a t-shirt and a light jacket or something do you know the quote yeah yeah yeah what's your ideal date what's your ideal date that's it i actually love mystery dlt i think it's really

and we'll get into this but i think it is one of the more problematic kind of makeover arcs but it is such a fantastic film no one could ever make me hate it and yeah before we start this big episode we want to say that like having this as an entrance i guess is proof of the fact that we can know the problematic but they're just so fucking good they're such a good part of culture what were the importance of those makeover scenes for you both my big fat greek wedding i think i'm going to position it in the point i must have watched it first which would have been like i'd know early teens and i think because it kicked off her love story, because it was the gateway to her, like, basically living a good and gorgeous life where she, like, is able to fall in love. I think I really something clicked in my mind that was like, you do have to go through these transformations or like these transformations can be much deeper than like, you know, skin deep.

They can actually kickstart your whole like adult life yeah so I just loved that side of it I loved I kind of thought that's what my life would be like um what and only did you have like what what did it like mean to you to watch what's the name oh Freebush well do you know what I think this is my it's I don't want to be like traumatic about it but I honestly like lived for the scenes when they became more beautiful because I, as a young teen, especially it was just desperate to be beautiful.

It's all I wanted. I just wanted to be beautiful and thin. So watching makeovers, is this really depressing? Watching makeovers in films and TV, I would like lust off. I'd be like, oh my God, this could happen to me

because they present you that it's like some normal person. They can be I was just obsessed with that I don't know why I always felt like I wanted to have my moment of being made really beautiful which is kind of tragic it's the idea that there's each of us has like a beauty like a world-class beauty like trapped inside of us and obviously these women were beautiful to begin with they were dressed down they were drapped up um but watching as a little girl watching these things i was like oh it's really just a couple of wax strips and a blow dryer and i will be a hollywood star i'll be that beautiful was i blind as a child or like did i have really

bad eyesight or like did we just not did i not understand bone structure because i would watch like the princess diaries makeover when literally all they do is straighten her hair and take her glasses off and like pluck one eyebrow off and i'd be like oh my god she's so pretty now whereas obviously as an adult you watch it and you're like she's absolutely beautiful like before they all are everyone's face is exactly the same but maybe as children like our eye palettes aren't as like evolved or something because like why why couldn't I honestly couldn't see like the beauty of these people until they'd like put them in a Barbie outfit and like straighten the hair I completely agree I thought that about the princess diaries I was thinking about it today just before we jumped on the record and I remember watching

it for the first time and just being like shell-shocked shaken to my core that they were the same two people I was like they can't that that that person is not that person and now when i re-watch the film because you know amazing to do re-watches of princess diaries it just is like so obvious that she i don't know it's just like really superficial changes that they've done to this person it's so obvious that she's like a beautiful person with curly hair and glasses on that's it although we thought like lindsey lohan was two people in the parent trap i don't think we could be trusted as viewers i still do a bit i don't really know if that's not true

i said to my mom i remember asking my mom why is the other one never in any films why is it only my mom was like what and i was like i think i was like 12 i was like why why is the other sister like my mom was like what are you talking about it's like for the parent trap mom was like what and I was like I think I was like 12 I was like why why is the other sister like my mum was like what are you talking about it's like for the parent trap mum was like oh no no that's that's the same one but Ruchira you yours is like Andy which I think is kind of what's the name Andy in the Devil Wears Prada which I think visually it's more about the clothes than it is about okay yes she does ditch her glasses and like get a keratin treatment but I think it's way more about the clothes and the style did that have like a kind of meaning for you yeah so I think with Andy I was always obsessed with fashion when I was young but also similar to you and only had this kind of like vague ugly duckling syndrome

with Andy it's like her transformation gives her access to people's like validation all around her and she also kind of gets closer to a job promotion within the world of fashion so I feel like there's a slight kind of really wanting to be in those circles when I was watching the film and just being like oh she she not only looks amazing, but she's like, she's living the dream. She's like having people all around her validate that she's cool and she's beautiful in the world of fashion, which is notoriously bitchy as the film shows you.

And also she's gonna get promotion and she's gonna do journalism and it's gonna be the thing I wanna do. So I think that was what I felt with that one. It's obviously also problematic because we're literally taught as little girls that if you wear glasses which I did and if your hair is curly and if you're poor or whatever then you're you're bad basically needs to be changed but that's what sucked us in because we're like oh we are like the pre-makeover girl

whereas I guess if you show someone that's already perfect it's like they feel too far away whereas like teenage girls they're literally buying into our insecurities by presenting things that would be which is like spotty messy hair like people's hair is just messy which is completely normal and bad eyesight or tomboys like I was I was a tomboy and I think oh I'm sure there's a better term for it now but that is what I was called that's what I kind of embraced as what I was as a kind of like maybe up to like 12 13 and watching these films like it's very coded as the makeover is discarding tomboy's traits and it's like a feminization process which you know like I was kind of like a little cis girl who like didn't mind wearing dresses so it wasn't like traumatic but it was a very clear message that when you

approach adulthood and like someone like um Sandra Bullock and Miss Congelati what happens is she becomes more feminine she becomes more delicate and like that is quite a punchy message to be getting when you're a little girl who's like oh am I not you know already the world doesn't really like you climbing trees and being like you know the burpy farty self that you are so I think that probably didn't do damage but it was probably quite like a bummer as a kid the other element of this is like once they have the makeovers they get the guy so in Miss Congeniality she suddenly you know irks the interest of a love interest once she's had this massive transformation in My My Big Fat Greek Wedding, she starts falling in love

once she is quote unquote, the beautiful version of herself. And she's the man, you know, the nerdy girl who gets made over by the guy. The guy suddenly realizes, oh shit, she's really good looking. I really like her now that she's beautiful. It's that added element of also,

not only will you have a better life, but you'll also find love if you are beautiful as well in hindsight because obviously these films are all like aimed at teenagers but is this just like big illuminati plans to make sure women are feminine because like what when you actually think about like who in their right mind is thinking this is a good thing to like tell young women come into yourself become more womanly don't burp don't fart don't fall over don't have curly hair that's all we were telling was it just so in the water was it so normal or do you think there was this element of like I don't know the older generations trying to teach

women that the best mode of survival is to present yourself as the most attractive version of yourself and then that seeped into film I think it it's just patriarchy. It is just, it is basically just what is the value to men in a patriarchy of a woman who wants the same kind of freedom, like the same freedom of movement, the same like basically to roll out of bed, roll out the house, go to work. Like we can get into like beauty

and like how much time and money it takes women to maintain standards of beauty and how men are freer because they don't have to do that but basically like it doesn't titillate men for us to be blokey because they don't get to look at us they probably just don't want to share no they definitely don't want to share their spaces with us so it really doesn't serve them and so yeah the dominant message will always be no no you you keep dressing up no you like you look pretty for us just good old patriarchy otherwise known as the illuminati famously

i mean maybe yeah which is so bleak like i do love these films and i hate to be like i'm gonna put on my critical hat and like you know dredge up all my like theory that i learned at university because it's bleak like these films were fun and they are fun but through like a critical theory lens and through a cultural lens it is quite sinister that the overarching message is love prosperity happiness ladies get the tweezers so not to traumatize all of us because we all grew up in probably the most problematic era of television where there were these makeover shows or like full body surgery was involved completely batshit bonkers makeover reality tv shows but i do want to go back in time because i feel like that was very key it was the 2000s there was off the top of my head i'm thinking

snog my air void i'm thinking 10 years younger were maybe the two oh no and um the trinny and susanna what was that called what not to wear those were the ones that my every week when they were on I was sat in my like I was 10 years old plus I was sat and watching I had the what not to wear book and me and my mum used to like go through it and my mum would be like well I'm a Susanna but then I haven't got any boobs and it'd be like so just trying to work out like what shape and I remember us looking and we'd be like okay so belt over the top with a long and actually all the stuff that was in fashion then which was kind of like quite long line tops with a chunky belt and a long skirt which has been out so long it's really back in and I can see the

outfits in my head of like Trini and Susanna standing there like Susanna making a cross face because she's wearing a top that like she shouldn't wear because her boobs are too big and I was just obsessed with them what was your favorite of the makeover shows for Tara so you guys gonna have to tell me what snog maria void was like because I think that's the only one that I didn't watch but the one that I did religiously watch was got kwan's how to look good naked iconic so iconic that was early ish and again ish body positivity in my mind it was he was not cruel so i was like oh well this isn't what i'm used to he wasn't horrid that was his whole vibe i remember he would jump into the changing room with these women he would like grab parts of their body and be like

this is so beautiful you look amazing blah blah which i also feel like maybe not so great to grab somebody's body and like grab their tits and you know yell stuff in their face but it seemed to be the opposite side of the spectrum where he was yeah complimenting the shit out of them yeah if i'm not wrong i think at the end of each episode they would have to do a naked catwalk or in their underwear or something i thought the photo shoot was a catwalk no no no you're right i think it was a photo shoot sorry no it was it was a catwalk wasn't it always through like a suit uh shopping mall i think they'd be in like nude underwear maybe i didn't they were like fully naked since he kind of flaps out in the fucking trafford center i'm sure that how to be naked

or got one show was a direct response like a reinvigoration of what not to wear between his family because they used to put people in like i think they used to call it the box of shame which was like a mirror changing room with mirrors all the way around and then they would just like grab them by the breast lift their breasts up be like you've got to show off this tiny little waist look at your terrible shoulders and just like scream, scream at them. It was the age of harsh truths. That was what it was. It was very much, it was not a gentle touch. It was not a fab five, um, modern reinventing of, you know, the queer eye. It was, here's a harsh truth. You've got to hear it. And we lapped it up. My, my thing was the surgeries i can't believe that we watched these women

undergo you know cosmetic surgery on the tv at the behest of you know whoever the hosts were and whoever the fucking showrunners were the worst was the fact that it would be like they'd be put forward by like family members these clips will come up like my mum really needs to come on the show because she looks shit and then the husband would be like I think she's just way happier and then they come in they have rhinoplasty full set of veneers boob job facelift nose job tummy tuck everything and then makeover hair dyed and then they'd come down to all their family literally looking like a complete different person everyone be crying and clapping I used to love it it's just inhumane in lots of ways but also on the one hand i really miss it it shows that i've obviously not overcome my conditioning

towards it because i think like a gen z person would probably watch one of these shows and be horrified if not coming out in like hives there's still a little bit of me that would love to watch like would love to be in that ignorant frame of mind to be able to watch those shows and derive pleasure probably would find it uncomfortable now which shows were the ones that they had plastic surgery because i feel like the trinny and susanna one wasn't they didn't do surgery did they it was 10 years younger they did surgery i mean maybe that is the one i'm thinking of and extreme makeovers uk and usa and the swan oh the swan was awful i don't know these ones so it's basically a competition where i think each

episode two women would go head to head they had three months to get surgery work with the personal trainer and get hotter they whoever the hottest one was voted would then take part in a beauty pageant at the end of the series so it was like loads of women that got surgery and like all the contestants have since been like yeah it was fucking horrible for my mental health i honestly think this might be our tiny age gap which is literally i think it's that few years you must have just missed them because i used to watch those shows with my older sisters and i was probably a bit young for them when i watched them but yeah the surgery was the most shocking bit why do you think that there was a period of time

of tv where these were just everywhere i think it was the kind of the newness of cosmetic surgery it was like a little bit more it was so shocking in a way that it's not anymore but it was kind of like the everyman was sort of able to get it we had a bit of money and you really saved up and you really wanted it you could have these invasive procedures but no one really saw them I think whereas now like it's a lot less invasive and it's a lot more commonplace at the time I think early 2000s was when it was like new and shocking and would get bums in seats do you also think there's something to do with it being like pre-recession when everyone was a bit credit card happy and thought that they kind of had loads of money and everything was booming a bit.

And suddenly like maybe women that were previously been thought of as like middle-aged were coming into this kind of new era where they were like spending on themselves. And there was like maybe a bigger class of, not to blame it on women, but women spending. I'm sure there must be something to do with like the wealth of that period

that was like bringing out this kind of... There's there's an economic element which I don't think I've ever considered when thinking about why there were so many makeover shows but you're right it must have been a perfect storm for these shows and just for the fact that women were getting probably boob jobs I feel like boob job and liposuction thinking of like women my friends mums knew that was the one that like we'd overhear them talking about in the kitchen that was the that was the kind of mother i guess it's like a mummy makeover early doors there was definitely an economic element to it and i also think there was this projection culturally of the frumpy woman that was like you know she lets her husband down

because she looks frumpy she hasn't bounced back from having a baby she's not like the beautiful women who are like having a great career who are like moving forward in society it was like the two kind of the two genders of women where it was like you don't want to be the frumpy person and you have these women who are probably feeling shame culturally and feeling like they're not looking like i don't know pamela anderson or like any of these celebrities like victoria beckham out in the public eye so i think these shows kind of isolate that insecurity shame women for not feeling the way they feel like they should be and then just like offer them a solution which is to like sign away their rights and go on these shows and like do all manner of things to push them into a category

that the media has told them they shouldn't be. I think you're so right. Actually, when you think about it, it's amazing how far we've come because like we did used to watch those shows. I'd sit down with my taller sisters, my mum, and we would just watch that as if like that was fine. And then there were shows like The Biggest Loser.

Do you remember that one? That was like the weight loss show, yeah. You sometimes think nothing's changed you're like oh nothing's changed but actually there would be outrage art people would be disgusted like it's funny on the one hand but on the other hand to think that like that was i just looked it up on extreme mocha for it started in like 2002 actually that is quite a long time okay 22 years ago that's quite a long time i was about to be like in only in the short 22 years well thank god though because that was so cruel like and all the shows surrounding that wasn't just the makeover shows although they were cruel even if they kind of had a facade of like a veneer

of empowerment they weren't it was like the Jeremy Kyle era the kind of like uh broken Britain fat families like all of that was symptomatic of like just Britain at that time this kind of like uh broken britain fat families like all of that was symptomatic of like just britain at that time this kind of amoral like quite nasty media scene um and i think it just springs from that and it just takes advantage of the fact that women will feel yeah there's one thing you can be sure of there'll be a woman who's feeling shit because we've got these egregious beauty standards it's just like and yeah to me it was just like pure entertainment as a kid I didn't see because it's that thing of you know that scene in um Devil Wears Prada which you think this has nothing to do with you and I as a young woman obviously didn't think oh my god if these women this is all symptomatic of

the world that I have to live in I went brilliant I've got my turkey twizzlers I'm gonna just like be entertained whereas now I'm like fuck what grim world that was like showing us I completely agree with you I think it was so down to the media because also that was when the tabloids were the most powerful in British cultural history more powerful than they are now you know fat shaming calling out celebrity women for being frumpy and kind of setting setting this standard of shame but then these were also the magazines and the tabloids that women would consume i guess like breeding the insecurity in themselves and consuming it and kind of laying that shame onto other women so it was like we're all dishing it out and consuming it and just like creating the environment for these shows to happen as well

I guess I'm thinking now like it was like middle class a lot of these shows were kind of middle class women and then you get to so it was kind of like we were viewing maybe the women that we would have seen in normal life and then you've got something like Snog My Air Void which kind of just took like more outliers it It was a lot of young people who like obviously were not in need of, you know, they were kind of discovering their style. They weren't like stuck in a rut. And what Snog, Marry, Avoid did was take these people who dress a little bit strangely to, you know, pods or like BBC Three's eye and strip them of those things that made them like individual and interesting like remotely unique

i'm gonna explain snog married avoid to retire because earlier you said that you'd never seen it so basically snog married avoid it was bbc3 it was quite a short show they'd go and find these women they'd take a picture of them they'd get people to go out into the street they'd hold a picture of them and they get that say to men would you snog marry or avoid they collate all the clips of the men saying avoid. And they say, right, we're going to give you a makeover. I actually think a massive element of this is like class prejudice, because lots of the women were really heavily fake tanned, would have lots of jewelry on, be dressed quite

like slutty. And I mean that like fully positively in a way that like, do you know what I mean? Like in a slutty fab way. And they would basically scrabble their tan off, take their lashes take out their extensions dye their hair oh my god basically they made them look like a slightly buxom primary school teacher always afterwards and then they go back onto the streets and ask everyone if they would snog them and all the men apparently said they would snog them it was so weird and then they would get more outlandish there would be these girls that kind of would have those like big fluffy snow boot things on and like they always had 20 layers of fake tan on and it was so funny because even after the makeup it do you know how hard it is to get more outlandish there would be these girls that kind of would have those like big fluffy snow boot things on and like they always had 20 layers of fake tan on and it was so funny because even

after the makeup it you know how hard it is to get fake tan off and especially if these girls been fake tan for years there's like 10 years worth of fake tan that they're trying to get off in this like 20 minute video it was a fake tan it was like regional trends of young women like the scouse brow and it's so classist look but it's so sneering and then they'd end up like looking like Dorothy Perkins had like thrown up on them it was so and they just basically like it was a factory lineup of just the most like conformist women and ah yeah watching it back like it's not like no one wanted that interaction they were none of them stuck with it they were like oh cheers and like back to the fake Dan I weirdly re-watched i'm sure you can find it which i don't know it's on bbc3 like maybe like a few years ago and i was flabbergasted at how brutal it is it's actually awful and the second host of it is um

ellie taylor who i really like who was in she's in ted lasso quite recently but that was like i think that was her like one of her breakup things that she did hosting that and i was really shocked but anyway for research i think you need to get on that because you will be, yeah, shocked. Okay. There is a good piece by Jordan Page for Digital where they kind of, like, catch up with former contestants. And unsurprisingly, most of the contestants are like, yeah, it was miserable. It made me feel shit about myself. My self-esteem was completely rocked.

Like, the only positive things people have to say about appearing on that show was that it gave them a bit of like you know media experience and they got to kind of like build a bit of a career off the back all the other contestants were like no it's fucking horrible and the transformations like were shit it hasn't aged well I mean none of these shows have aged well but that especially no and like I feel like of the bunch of them Gok Wan's How to Look Good Naked is the best out of you know some of the like most horrendous egregious examples of tv in our time but when I was thinking about it I was thinking about how while it definitely had good intentions and swings closer to the body positivity movement that we saw in the years after I feel like it still has a really shallow superficial impression of what makes somebody confident the idea is this you know

gay man can come into your life shower with you compliments grab parts of your body and like scream that you're beautiful and then you know you'll get changed into some clothes and then you're suddenly meant to just feel like oh you know what all my issues all society's shaming of my body my face my race my skin tone that that's just gone now and it has this like really well-intentioned but very superficial idea of you can just feel confident overnight with the right circumstances i.e showers of compliments that's such a good point it's like it's a societal it's kind of it does it individualizes the problem and says hey look confidence can solve this and you go no we're talking about systemic issues here and like it's

such a it's such a veneer like that's such a good point i just hadn't kind of pieced together there i guess the only show that maybe does do something slightly differently is the new iteration of queer eye for this because the used to be queer i Eye used to be called Queer Eye for the straight guy the original one but they've dropped the for the straight guy now haven't they and that show now I haven't actually watched loads of it but I know that they will go into their lives and they might like it's quite holistic they kind of like help talk about their relationship and they go into their home and I mean maybe there's never is there such thing as like an ethical makeover show? But I'd say maybe that's the closest we're getting to some actual positive makeover that's an all round impact. Agreed. And it's nice to watch men get, and it's not just men on that show, but it's nice to get to watch men get makeovers.

Like men occasionally will get makeovers in the media. Like there's a few films where it happens and it's, you know, it's handled very differently. But it is really nice to watch men, men's lives be altered by like a soft touch and kind of like just someone showing care in them and like you know grooming habits it's all really like here's how you basically groom yourself it's not like hello fugly we need to you know completely change that because you're a mess it's quite nice and like i wasn't saying there's no real modern makeup shows but there's that and there's um what was Khloe Kardashian's horrible revenge body so like they do still spring up these shows which is so problematic she was like a year late with that show though because I think it came out in 2016 2017 and it was just when I think anti-dark culture was kind of like

coming into the mainstream and she suddenly was like revenge body with Khloe Kardashian and I think it fell really flat she actually really missed the sort of like culturally everyone had kind of been like oh i'm not sure if we're we're doing that anymore one i want to talk about is america's next top model the makeover sequence which was i think everybody's favorite part of the show did you two watch that show and was the makeover sequence like or the the task not the most batshit thing you've ever seen yes oh my god it was sadistic i'd be like 14 watching them and i'd be like just like smirking being like they're having tears and having breakdowns because they've cut all their hair off and i was like snickering to myself just being like so cruel and does reveal like how

like in like how important it is or how like incredibly like mentally draining it can be to have a bad makeover because that's what was happening Tyra Banks was engineering these women's downfall sometimes and like it was actually psychologically scarring for them and at the time I was like well it's just a haircut but no no no sadistic is so the word because it'd be like this woman who had the most gorgeous long hair that she'd been growing since the time i was like well it's just a haircut but no no no sadistic is so the word richard because it'd be like this woman who had the most gorgeous long hair that she'd been growing since she was three and then tyra would be like i think we should cut it into pixie crop and bleach it which actually for modeling isn't like not useful for cat because that's such a striking look like

actually they want models with like plain hair they can do different things with or whatever and she would just do it just you could tell she just shave off the head she would just do she made everyone's hair look different to what it was but none of them look better and she'd be like this looks so good and it would be like oh the haircuts in edwards's hands and there was that one woman who had the the sew-in and it was done poorly or something and she was in agony for weeks and weeks and weeks and like it really just like fucked her head up and tara was like you've got to smile through it you've got to smile through it and obviously it was actually causing her deep trauma that was exactly what i was going to bring up she gave that yeah that white woman

a red weave it was just it was just crimes on crimes that show that show is fucking crazy so as we've said with the kind of rise of those like plastic surgery tv shows now i think what's happening is it's not even that it's happening on tv it's happening in our homes in our friendship groups botox filler all of these kind of like small tweakments you can get done and becoming so normalized that it's not even about the makeover anymore it's about your everyday woman kind of wanting to wake up always looking that makeover perfection so it's kind of like your skin's great you haven't got any wrinkles you've got maybe some semi-permanent eyebrows or lip liner or something so that actually you're always looking kind of picture perfect would you say that's how makeover and culture

has changed now is it that we are just trying to always be this like picture of perfection I feel like the difference now is social media and I don't know at least anecdotally my Instagram is just full of not only just influencers looking gorgeous and kind of extending what celebrity and fame is and what you know the metrics are for being beautiful and looking beautiful i.e that more people can do it it's also just like over lockdown i don't know if you had this but my my explore feed was like full of cosmetic surgery accounts that i had never followed just like flooding my explore feed and having before and after pictures of you know alleged people who'd come into their office and it would just be like such a drastic change and that really got into my head all of this

content all around me before and after people looking beautiful the accessibility of these products and just like I guess how close it is to me if I want to pay the money and if I want to make the jump we've claimed to have like kind of democratized it and then like don't worry like now you can have it and here's why whereas actually what I think it's just it's just a product line basically it's just another way to like it just ties into our mass consumption habits which probably did get way worse over lockdown you can glow up but you have to buy this this and this you can glow up but you do have to do it four or five times in a year and because otherwise you're out of trend and then you're

inherently like you're not you haven't glowed up because you're not keeping up so I think it's these kind of like micro glow ups that are like really indicative of like this moment in time it's not like here's just this one glow up this one attitude change and you're made it's like okay you've done this shift you've got to do it season you've got to do it like it is so exhausting how many different ways it's packaged whether it's like 75 hard or like the 25 day glow up or like the overnight glow up there's so many ways now to have a makeover i'm sure you guys would have read this piece by gia tolentino and the new yorker that came out in 2019 that was called the age of Instagram face how social media facetune and plastic surgery created a single cyborgian look and this is like a massive piece

that blew up and I think I don't know if it ended up being in Trick Mirror Gia's book or if it was taken from the book I can't remember which way around I think in lockdown as well what happened was everyone was on zoom all the time like looking at their own faces I feel like post lockdown then we saw this massive influx of people wanting to get more stuff done because we were looking at so many people online really stuck in our houses that our beauty ideals became that exact thing that Gia kind of almost prophesied in that piece which is like everyone's logged in everyone's looking at the same stuff and suddenly there is this face which is kind of like taking a mixture of different things from different ethnicities and blending different kind of like beauty ideals from different eras and everyone wants to look the same and it was when everyone was getting that was it called like fox eye surgery

and stuff do you think the instagram face is still pertinent now because i feel like that was super 2019 2020 i don't really feel as if that face the amalgamation of you know big lips indian south asian eyebrows like um east asian eyes with the fox eyes like a button nose from whatever ethnicity that's from i don't feel like that bit and pieced quote-unquote perfect face that is you know not any real woman's face for most people is still the same thing I think now the main thing is just trying to look wealthy by having all of these tweakments it's not one face it's just about I guess spending an inordinate amount of money to look like luxury it is it's not one face it's just about i guess spending an inordinate amount of money to look like luxury it is it's also i think it's optimization it's getting things done so

people know you can but it's also optimizing what you've got which kind of sounds like it's like well work with your natural beauty but it's not that because it is still a transformation and it is i know people who do just kind of get work done they kind of go well get my lips done and that used to be something you do if perhaps you had lips that were you know smaller and you had you know a thinness now it is I'm going to get lips done so it looks like I've got my lips done and it's not Instagram face but it's a it's a third thing it's maybe what you're talking about it's it's done face yeah it's definitely a secret third thing it's a third thing it's maybe what you're talking about it's it's done face yeah it's definitely a secret third thing it's definitely this idea I think that women think um myself included that

if you get something done then I'll be able to quit right if I get you know maybe if I get a little bit of Botox or maybe if I get a lip flip or maybe if I do this then I won't have to worry about my face then I can wake up in the morning and think about something else first you know like first thing you do when you wake up in the morning you look at the mirror and you think oh maybe if I get these things done I'll hack the system and by hacking the system I will then be able to like not spend as much time money energy paying all this pink tax that I pay for being a woman and trying to be attractive I think the converse happens like I have Botox it's worn off now and I am starting to wonder if I maybe need to not get it again because it's like a slippery it's like anything once you start doing one thing get used to it and then you think oh well maybe I could do this like I've now had my eyebrows mic bladed and like I've had a lip flip I had lip

for years ago but I had that dissolved so I've like tried tweakments I'm not like super set in stone with any of them but I can completely see how if I had the more money it's also the time to book it in is actually quite long but if I was someone that was really wealthy and could like get someone to book in like loads of appointments for all the time it's actually it's the opposite of what I initially said I thought it was going to be which is like a way to save money and time and energy it's actually just even more expensive way of yeah paying into being attractive yeah it's a new baseline that you give yourself and there's the kind of theory of like the hedonic treadmill which is basically a human being's ability to just return to a baseline very quickly even after like the thing that happened or the thing that you do that you think this is going to make me so happy like winning the lottery or like

you know meeting the love of your life or getting you know facelift whatever you think well then i'll reach this new echelon of happiness whereas actually the theory of the hedonic treadmill is you do return to your baseline very quickly and when you do return to that baseline you've had the tweakments you go i'll just get more because that did make me happy in the short term and i do think there's this like if we keep doing these little mini makeovers when they involve kind of cosmetic procedures needles and and scalpels if that becomes your fixation then you do think well I'll just do another one I'll just keep making myself over I'll just do this and it does not make you happier it does just drain your bank balance beauty has become work and there is just an

endless amount of work we can do to make ourselves more attractive we you know in theory talking about this we could just give up the game completely but that almost feels as if we're giving up on ourselves or giving up on you know life by not constantly striving to be more beautiful to constantly strive to like be the best versions of ourselves my relationship to this whole topic is interesting because I feel like in the last few months I realized before and after pictures had really messed with my brain and I started looking in the mirror and like you said Anoni just like looking at the bits of my face that I felt like needed stuff doing. And I kept thinking

of myself as before. And I kept thinking, oh, yeah, you know, when I when I am my better self, when I'm my more beautiful self, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do so much better in my career, I'm gonna feel so much better, life's gonna be better. Oh, I can't wait to be that person. It's gonna be so good when I'm that person. And then I caught myself. And I've had to, you know, literally stop following all these surgery accounts actively make choices to not consume this media because it really poisoned my brain and poisoned my self-image and it honestly had gotten quite deep to be honest I don't know if this is a reach but I experienced a similar thing where like I was looking at all these pages and I was like oh my god I didn't even know my face was flawed and then I remember really

interrogating that and I realized that it was because when I was younger my fixation was always on my body and it was on a desire to be super super thin and when I was younger it was like if a woman was very white and very thin she was the beauty standard even if actually her face now wouldn't be like I feel like our new fixation in the last decade has been on faces and specifically like the way a face can be perfect. As much as it is about bodies, it's almost like the face is more.

Does that, I don't even know if I've explained that right, but it's like, I didn't used to think about my face really when I was younger, as long as I didn't have a spot, all I cared about was like being thin. And then as I've gotten older, it's suddenly like, actually there's so many ways that my face is wrong. Like my mouth's lopsided and my, and by wrong,

I'm saying in vertical comments, like from what I've learned, it could be, it could be doing differently. Like my eyes could be pointing in a different direction. Not my eyeballs. Where's she looking? But surely this has to do with how how much how often we look at our faces not just i mean you know in the mirror and reflective surfaces but we are constantly looking at images of our face the kind of trick mirror of social media like i look at my face so

often if you think like 50 years ago you'd you know okay i'm gonna go back further than that because that's actually the 80s um 150 years ago you wouldn't be staring at your face you you know you'd maybe walk past a puddle and you'd see it and but that would be it now we are we constantly see our own faces we're so primed to nitpick we're so primed to and we see other people's faces as well this horrifies me how many people's faces i see within my phone on tiktok on however we i don't know who made this point uh but we've never seen this many faces we've never seen this many kind of like quote unquote above average attractiveness faces before in history of course it's going to do a number on the average woman's self-esteem or the average person's self-esteem to see this this kind of volume of beautiful, interesting,

you know, smoothed out faces, it seems like even more people should be kind of fucked up and running to the surgeon's office. I think it is that kind of social media effect of like, that fucks us up. I think with a topic like this is, you know, it's going to be hard to say that there's a solution. But I wondered if you'd read that New York Times piece in 2019 from Megan Nolan, I feel like it went, you know, super viral. Speaking of the Tyra Banks, I remember she quote tweeted the piece and said it made her think quite a lot about the messaging she put out there is called, Why do we all have to be beautiful? In it, she talks about her own relationship to beauty and desperately trying to be beautiful. And then she writes, what if I tried something that has always been too frightening to think about? What if I tried accepting that I will never be beautiful and that I do not need to be? Challenging social norms about who can be beautiful is vital work. And of course, it's true the representations of beauty in the media are pathetically white,

thin, able-bodied and hetero. And of course, this should change representations of beauty in the media are pathetically white, thin, able-bodied and hetero. And of course this should change. But somewhere along the way, the message of inclusivity went from quote-unquote every kind of person can be beautiful to every person is beautiful. I'm increasingly convinced that this message isn't only less radical than we might like to believe, it's also harmful. She said, wouldn't it be freeing to admit that most people aren't beautiful? What if we just stopped prioritizing pleasing aesthetics above so much else? And I remember at the time feeling like

I had never heard anyone say that before. And even reading it now, you know, a few years on, I feel like we haven't, we still haven't absorbed that. If anything, it's just got further whittled down into you can hack yourself to being a better version of you if you just try hard enough, if you spend more, if you're, you know, not lazy. But why have we not accepted

that not everything has to be about aesthetics? Oh, it's so true. Chills. It's so good, that piece, to the point where sometimes I will be like having a really ugly day, we all have them, and I'm like, I need that piece to the point where sometimes I will be like having a really ugly day we all have them and I'm like I need to go to the shop and I am like oh but you can't go out looking like like who cares I'm living in Paris I don't even know anyone like the shop is five

minutes away and I have to like almost remind myself like why do you care like it doesn't but it's so intrinsic in me and I feel I feel like ashamed saying that but it's true I genuinely be like well it'll just be mortifying to go outside looking like this and that sounds so self-involved and so like hyper like sensitive but it's such a weird thing that actually there's somewhere like deep in my brain that I'm always performing always thinking like I have to make sure that I'm like not like unbearable to look at for strangers because that's like my duty is what i've been conditioned to do as a woman on the flip side we then all harm each other by thinking this like the royal we by me feeling that way then posting pictures on instagram who then make another and

this is like a russian doll which is never ending and it's like no one really wants to break the cycle to the extent that we all i mean i think we tried it with feminism before but like everyone's kind of started shaving their armpits again quietly and being a bit like you know what actually I will get my Botox and we've kind of done the choice feminism and it's like it's I think that we're always going to have this like push and pull between these really honest conversations and then all just kind of where we get back to you which is like actually is a bit more comfortable if I just get a wax and maybe like you know do get my highlights and stuff just as life's easier when I feel more attractive it's hard to be subversive I think that's that's the point it is hard and when subversive is as seemingly like inane as you know the chin hair or like you know

kind of wearing no makeup or like whatever else it is, like it can feel like, well, if that's going to defeat me, then this is a lost cause. I might as well conform and feel more comfortable. I think we do have to reckon with it on a personal level, like before you even think I'm going to solve this on a societal level, you do just have to think on the personal level, what could be won by doing less? Because beautifying, making over, it's labour, it's labour that men, and i'm going to say this broadly men don't have to do to the same degree obviously men will argue that they have to go to the gym they have to do basic grooming habits we can get into that that'll be a whole other episode but women are expected to do this and it's so expensive and it's so time consuming and you kind

of if you think about it from a personal liberation front you go what can i do with my life if i if those hours are not spent waxing even just that i was thinking about it what could i conceive of how much bigger would the world get like i am not even like i'm not going to solve these problems on any bigger level than myself but i could maybe begin to wage that war a little bit and maybe you're putting your armpit up now i can see on the on the zoom maybe you know a bit of hair there could be like a small battle one yeah but the irony of all of this go back to like the beginning of the conversation is for pleasure I could quite happily sit and drink a glass champagne give myself a full makeover do my hair have a shower wash it all off have everything

shower shave everything moisturize have a cup of green tea put cucumbers on my eyes and oh my god I would have to give me a whole evening just doing that by myself not even showing anyone not taking any pictures and I would find I don't know is it conditioning is it that I genuinely am just just finding pleasure in like the artistry of doing my makeup or like the kind of yeah the self-care of touching my body and moisturizing it's too entrenched in my joy I definitely want to make the point that it can be it can be it's labor when it's expected over a lifetime but it can be leisure and it can be like female bonding I do think there's something very sacred in the makeover and that's why we love them at the beginning where we had this conversation I think yeah like I want to be really careful

and really like clear that I don't think it's just this like hideous evil like beauty and feminine like practice femininity I do just think there's it's they just both exist like so close it's so frustrating sometimes because I'm like why am I doing this who was I made for Billie Eilish the other element which we haven't gone into loads is just like there is also discrimination if you don't keep up with this so yeah i could you know let my eyebrows go rampant i could not shave my armpits i could just like turn up in gym clothes to work but the reality is no one's gonna fucking promote me if that happens and also you know there's been much rightly said about black women and their hair and the kind of discrimination they face in mostly white working offices and

workplaces so i think that it is labor because part of your brain also acknowledges that you have to keep up to keep appearances like you said and only but like there is also a side of it that can be enjoyable but i think it's the part that feels like you're falling behind like when I haven't got time to wash my hair and I put it in a bun and I feel gross and part of me worries how it's going to look to other people I think what I find so hard is what you're saying about the two things meeting Beth is like I do have all of these pleasures then I got this guilt because I think god like is this for me and I always try to imagine like if I was on a desert island would I shave obviously not I'd have a fully grown bush I don't live on an island so like I don't know how and also have tried to grow a bush before and it gets itchy as hell

there is as a side note there's reasons why you know some grooming is actually it does feel better but yeah god the old eternal question of the bush to bush or not to bush it does also fall down to class because the more money you have the more you can outsource much of this labor of keeping up so you know getting a wax appointment getting somebody to like rip all the hair off you rather than having to do that in your private time outside of working hours and yeah getting your hair done and all these things I feel like part of the reason it feels like labor is because it's also fucking expensive when you don't have the money to afford all the things you want to do for yourself oh the other thing though that's so layered and so

complicated about this as well is like with the class and beauty and beauty signifiers it's like the wealthier you are the more you can afford to make it look like you haven't paid to have the work done whereas you might find that like a massive class signifier or people perceive people to be of say a different class if their work is very obvious like if their lips are a certain size or their hair has been done in a certain way so it's like you could be spending the same amount of money and it not have the same effect because of these other kind of like silent more insidious ways that we it's created like a whole new system of like how we judge people and like what is beauty because not only can you like have the privilege to be able to afford to get work done but you could get it done like in the wrong inverted commas way yeah

you want to be beautiful you don't want to look like you've tried too hard if it's obvious you've tried then it's gauche that's kind of the messaging we have at the moment I feel exactly because even if people know you've had work done they'll be like she's had work done but it looks so good but then say someone had work done a little bad both of those people have had work done both those people have the same intentions but if one person's had it done and they don't look good it's like how embarrassing for her when actually that's so mad and it's how extreme like if you start with like a bone structure like you know if you start with eurocentric very commonly accepted features and looks like it's it's not a big leap to get from a to b it's like a few procedures

versus someone who you know is seeking beauty from a point where like that you know bone structure and things like that like are never gonna like it's just it's never a level playing field when something is so nebulous as as female beauty yeah and it's never going to be a level playing field when so much of our beauty standards come from you know a post-colonial attitude and many of the brown and black features and faces that we have just don't fit into that beauty standard or nor do, you know, non-slim bodies. And even like it's so wild to me whenever I go on X and someone's posted like I visited this country and in this country, this thing about me that in the UK everyone thinks is awful, everyone loves. And then you're like, oh my gosh my gosh this thing this ideology is so interesting because it feels so fixed so true so real the only reality that exists and that is literally

just on this tiny little island then you fly you know go somewhere else and they'll think you know that so-and-so's butters and someone else is you know the most beautiful person i've ever seen i feel really like fired up i do i feel like you cross I don't know I feel cross but in a quite an empowered way like you know I feel smarter but also yeah more upset it's making me want to get lip filler again no that's not the point of this no I'm joking let's all go together let's all have low ups let's go I do think like how beauty and makeup everything is tied into a fear of ageing with women

it always comes down to like basically hiding all visible signs of ageing that's what we understand in like a really crude way to be beauty so next week

shall we do an ageing episode yes I have so much to say at my old age of 30 I would say careful because I'm also, I'm about to turn 31 as well.

So as the elder statesman of the trio, tread carefully. Do you know what you're so, everything is just to try and make us look as like fertile as possible. So it's like the boringier the breast, the boringier the bum, the more kissable the lip,

the more youthful the looking, the riper the woman. None of this is a sentence. Is that a haiku? It could be. Someone write that down. Well, we've got loads to say, so make sure you're subscribed

so you don't miss it and see you next week for our special on ageing. Bye! Everything is Content so you don't miss it and see you next week for our special on aging bye everything is content is a great original podcast and we're part of the acast creator network this podcast was created devised and presented by us beth mccall rutura shama and anoni the producer is faye lawrence and the executive producer is james norman fife