Honestly, with that one simple sentence, you said something more substantial regarding this topic than this whole post.
Seriously, what was the point of this piece? Other than rambling about how she hates cosmetic surgery, she is rambling about how she hates…Gen Z slang?
I think it's that you can't be seen as a "girls girl" if you express any opinions on the stupidity of other women. And unfortunately there are many in the public spotlight. You are immediately discarded as a pickme or NLOG or told to not have children ever and you will die alone, from all the "unproblematic" girls
You can be ugly as sin if you want, nobody is stopping you. The same as men. There is no force or law that forbids you from presenting yourself as you wish.
It really has gotten out of control. An extremely wealthy friend of my mom’s (who was in her late 50s at the time) went to the Park Avenue plastic surgeon everyone in her social circle used to discuss getting a facelift. When the surgeon explained to her what this would entail, she could not believe what he was telling her. I’m not sure how she thought facelifts worked, but the minute she heard terms like “skin flaps” and “excision of flap redundancy” she was out of there. She didn’t even stick around long enough to hear the scariest part: the possible side effects. She did not grow up wealthy, so once she became wealthy (her husband made a fortune in the pharmaceutical industry), she assumed the whole point of being rich was to enjoy the best things/experiences life had to offer and be shielded from the unpleasant/horrible things. Having her face cut up definitely didn’t meet those criteria.
Back when there was a surgery channel, I mistakenly saw part of a breast lift. Prior to this, I 100% thought they were just going to fold and tuck the skin (more or less). Holy hell, no. I vowed that day never to have one.
Calling it a 'lift' is almost a euphemism, really. Sounds cute and easy.
I kind of knew what it was, but it still shocked me that with deep plane face lift, they basically cut the ligaments and have your face off like a mask, then readjust it and reconnect it
I know! But as I mentioned, she grew up poor in a small mining town (where she probably never even heard of anyone getting a facelift). Then, once she became wealthy and began traveling in those circles, she was like, “oh, being rich is about pleasure and comfort, not voluntarily having your face chopped up like some poor child soldier recruited to fight in the Congo”. She had a point. If anyone has the power to say, “fuck off” to this kind of nonsense, it’s rich women. They don’t have to worry about not getting a job or finding a husband because they aren’t conventionally attractive enough. 🤷🏻♀️
My girlfriend grew up lower middle-class but now has a high-income job in the fashion world. The normalization of cosmetic surgery among her well-to-do 30 year old peers is.... shocking and worrying. And it's rubbing off on her. I'm sympathetic to this article despite the bad writing because I find myself in a moral quandry between "women can do what they want" and "we are all going to look old one day, the answer is not to get tens of thousands of dollars of plastic injected into your face."
She's fine the way she is, but it does seem to be a keeping-up-with-the-neighbors type of thing among women in this social class.
Yeah, I agree. The loose associative approach weakened her points. Using consumer consumption without drilling down for specific markets while immediately extrapolating it as a beauty driven consumption felt misleading to me. I feel like this lacked the rigor of writing for a publication with an editor.
I have zero plastic surgery done, not even injectables, yet I find this writing to be juvenile, badly written, and gleefully mean. There are better and more insightful ways of delving into the commoditisation of women's looks hiding as feminism.
We do desperately need criticism of the beauty industry, but it'd be great if we could do so without being snide and vile about the women who've bought into it. Not a great way to convince them, you're just feeding your own ego and misogynistic power trip.
Agree. There's talking about the irony of choice feminism and its ties to beauty standards and there's, i can't believe i'm writing it, applauding someone using a word chopped to describe a woman's appearance and denying it's an insult.
I also can't get over the irony of her talking about an issue that stems from how society treats women who don't fit the beauty standards and arriving to a conclusion that it's okay to... tear down women who don't fit her own beauty standards?
IDK. I think there is validity to calling out the emperor not wearing any clothes. The women who bought into this shit should feel ashamed of that, especially the famous women who are perpetuating this bullshit by endorsing it with their ongoing surgeries.
It’s disgusting. And they do look ridiculous. The more we call this out perhaps the more likely they’ll be to avoid further disfigurement.
Renee Zellweger, Taylor Swift, Nicole Kidman - the worst recent examples. So sad they voluntarily butchered their faces.
Full disclosure… I’ve had cosmetic surgery. I lost 175 pounds. The extra skin was infected and it had to go. I don’t regret it but I’m also not about to go get a BBL to go with it. I don’t consider myself superior or inferior. I’m just trying to make my meat suit comfortable while I’m stuck in it.
And it’s more than just “buying in.” There was criticism of fake tits when I was a kid. The criticism of cosmetic surgery has always been there. The women who feel superior for not having it are still around. The women who feel superior for having it are still around.
The truth is that it’s all gender affirming care. If we criticize women who get cosmetic surgery, that includes trans women and not just the Trump administration.
Trans men also get cosmetic surgery for gender affirming care. So do cis men when they get hair transplants.
This whole stream of consciousness rant misses a lot of points in its fervor to be superior, or at least that’s how the stream of consciousness reads to me.
Lot of people in these comments seem a bit triggered by the authors position and while I find this style of writing kind of tiresome (over the top tortured metaphors are best used sparingly), if we saw men indulging in this much plastic surgery this routinely we'd be absolutely having these convos with less hand wringing. You ARE starting to see this more in men (Zac Efron, Bradley Cooper, Jim Carrey, and even younger, the Claviculars of the world) and it is roundly condemned by people.
Yeah, and beyond the misogyny, it feels like an awful lot of words in search of a point. The writer feels like the kind of person who really enjoys the sound of their own voice
I got two paragraphs in. This is some circa 2010 tumblr level writing. I mean, I’m sure I shared stuff this aggressively bad at times (I remember taking Melissa McEwan very seriously) but this is… just not good.
“it makes me sad, because i definitely have the face of a woman as well as the vagina of one. and every day i fight the urge to post pictures of these things here to validate myself. an outfit of the day. a provocative book draped over my tanned hotdog legs. a cheeky little photo of my tight pink innie pussy that doesn’t have any labia whatsoever b/c i had all six of them removed at the vet when i got my dog de-wormed last spring... it’s just like the old thought experiment that begs the question: “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” if i don’t post pics of myself on substack dot com, am i even real???”
GOD I am so happy she talked about the Nice Girl Gestapo. It’s fucking everywhere, including Reddit, and it’s driving me insane. People will ask for opinions on their makeup and if you don’t start with “omg you look so goodddddddddd!” and then maybe tap dance around the criticism you have, the NGG swoops in to berate you for being soooooooooooooo mean!
Also I have no idea what this woman is on about because her opening paragraph posits that Emma Stone was like, unrecognizable and ugly as sin with her "new face" and that's just... not true at all? I didn't even think she looked all that different when this was first published?
I didn't say I didn't see a difference. I said that the author acts like Emma's work was deserving of being on Botched or something, and that she was unrecognizable, and I find that to be histrionic nonsense. She also used the worst possible picture of Stone, a simple "Emma stone 2026" search shows she doesn't even look like that.
I think there is a way to discuss the harm of the beauty and plastic surgery industry without insulting women who are victims of it. Calling Miley Cyrus "CHOPPED" is not feminist, not a critique of capitalism or a misogynist industry, it's an insult. Period. The writer can dress it up in as many convoluted metaphors as she likes, but it's an insult.
You see this with women who have obvious eating disorders. There is a lot of disdain for them online and people justify their bullying because they see them as perpetrators of a harmful culture rather than victims. But they're vulnerable; eating disorders have high mortality rates.
I'm tired of seeing bullying disguised as some sort of moral critique.
I am also shocked that we are expected to treat extremely privileged beautiful women with incredible wealth and decision power as victims now. The rest of us make poor decisions, but they are victims?
If nothing else is wrong with it, you are taking agency away from them and infantilizing them asnot responsible for their own life choices
Women can be idiots or villains as well. And can be called out on it. This is true equality.
I think you're focusing too much on the word victim. I never said the rest of us make poor decisions and can't be "victims"; I think any woman can be a victim of misogyny, even wealthy privileged women. Obviously there's many layers to it and someone like Miley Cyrus is far from the most vulnerable person. But I see no point in insulting a woman for her looks in such a gleeful way and painting it as feminist. It's not. I already stated criticizing the beauty industry and plastic surgery should be done. I don't subscribe to choice feminism at all.
I just think this discussion is better served without dressed up insults. Plastic surgery is becoming increasingly common, so it's not an exclusively uber wealthy thing anymore, and I do think many average, everyday women are suffering from these beauty standards. Miley Cyrus was just the example I used because she's part of the article. I'm not saying women can't be bad people or can't be criticized at all.
To me, the reason we don’t talk about these bad surgeries is because movies and TV are less of a big deal now. I barely consume any visual media. People who work in visual media are way less ubiquitous than they used to be.
I agree with much of the thesis, but in my view the author makes the mistake of seeing planning and intent when there is none, e.g., "This is not random. It is a system designed to keep women trapped in an eternal hamster wheel of low self-worth and misery"
I think it is a huge misunderstanding of how the world operates to believe that there is someone/someones behind the scenes planning and designing social norms in this way. The very fact that these norms arise accidentally from uncoordinated behaviour is one of things that makes them so hard to change.
>Choice feminism works in tandem with adjacent philosophies to form a complex set of “ideologies” which can even sustain internal contradictions: “Live and let live,” “mind your business,” and the especially vile “omg let people enjoy things!” have all seamlessly worked together to fragment our society into a billion individual consumer choices, each equally worthy and unassailable as the next.
Congrats on your liberal arts degree level of critical thought, but in the real world, women absolutely are forced to make these types of choices. "Choice feminism" is exactly WHY you get to blog about how you'd like to do things differently. EVERY wave of feminism that came before has paved the way for you to live your life the way YOU CHOOSE. Each generation has done what they had to do to further the cause and the ideology doesn't exist in a vacuum. Just because you dont like the way it plays out IRL doesn't invalidate its impact and importance. By all means, do what you want, that's what feminism is supposed to be. But some of us like to do what we want to do, and looking down your nose at anyone who wants to do something you deem gauche is not feminism.
Hungry_Working_9284 | a day ago
Men can be ugly as sin, women deserve the right to do that too
Yelesa | a day ago
Honestly, with that one simple sentence, you said something more substantial regarding this topic than this whole post.
Seriously, what was the point of this piece? Other than rambling about how she hates cosmetic surgery, she is rambling about how she hates…Gen Z slang?
delirium_red | a day ago
I think it's that you can't be seen as a "girls girl" if you express any opinions on the stupidity of other women. And unfortunately there are many in the public spotlight. You are immediately discarded as a pickme or NLOG or told to not have children ever and you will die alone, from all the "unproblematic" girls
TiktaalicGarr | a day ago
You can be ugly as sin if you want, nobody is stopping you. The same as men. There is no force or law that forbids you from presenting yourself as you wish.
Vildekhaye | a day ago
It really has gotten out of control. An extremely wealthy friend of my mom’s (who was in her late 50s at the time) went to the Park Avenue plastic surgeon everyone in her social circle used to discuss getting a facelift. When the surgeon explained to her what this would entail, she could not believe what he was telling her. I’m not sure how she thought facelifts worked, but the minute she heard terms like “skin flaps” and “excision of flap redundancy” she was out of there. She didn’t even stick around long enough to hear the scariest part: the possible side effects. She did not grow up wealthy, so once she became wealthy (her husband made a fortune in the pharmaceutical industry), she assumed the whole point of being rich was to enjoy the best things/experiences life had to offer and be shielded from the unpleasant/horrible things. Having her face cut up definitely didn’t meet those criteria.
IMO4444 | a day ago
What did she think a face lift was?! 😂😂 They were just gonna fold and tuck the skin?
BoDiddley_Squat | a day ago
Back when there was a surgery channel, I mistakenly saw part of a breast lift. Prior to this, I 100% thought they were just going to fold and tuck the skin (more or less). Holy hell, no. I vowed that day never to have one.
Calling it a 'lift' is almost a euphemism, really. Sounds cute and easy.
delirium_red | a day ago
I kind of knew what it was, but it still shocked me that with deep plane face lift, they basically cut the ligaments and have your face off like a mask, then readjust it and reconnect it
I... Why
Just no
Vildekhaye | 19 hours ago
I know! But as I mentioned, she grew up poor in a small mining town (where she probably never even heard of anyone getting a facelift). Then, once she became wealthy and began traveling in those circles, she was like, “oh, being rich is about pleasure and comfort, not voluntarily having your face chopped up like some poor child soldier recruited to fight in the Congo”. She had a point. If anyone has the power to say, “fuck off” to this kind of nonsense, it’s rich women. They don’t have to worry about not getting a job or finding a husband because they aren’t conventionally attractive enough. 🤷🏻♀️
44moon | a day ago
My girlfriend grew up lower middle-class but now has a high-income job in the fashion world. The normalization of cosmetic surgery among her well-to-do 30 year old peers is.... shocking and worrying. And it's rubbing off on her. I'm sympathetic to this article despite the bad writing because I find myself in a moral quandry between "women can do what they want" and "we are all going to look old one day, the answer is not to get tens of thousands of dollars of plastic injected into your face."
She's fine the way she is, but it does seem to be a keeping-up-with-the-neighbors type of thing among women in this social class.
SeahorseRevolution | a day ago
Hot take but I don't think substack blogs should be allowed in this sub.
Julialagulia | a day ago
Agreed but I would be down for a sub for substack discussion on its own
Skeleton_Meat | a day ago
Same tbh
hopefulrealist23 | a day ago
Content aside, this is what you call stream of consciousness. The piece would have benefited from having an editor
Easy-Concentrate2636 | a day ago
Yeah, I agree. The loose associative approach weakened her points. Using consumer consumption without drilling down for specific markets while immediately extrapolating it as a beauty driven consumption felt misleading to me. I feel like this lacked the rigor of writing for a publication with an editor.
QualityKatie | a day ago
I agree with that. That was my impression, too.
sapatista | a day ago
I rather enjoyed the writing. Granted I only read the intro that was pasted on this post
Skeleton_Meat | a day ago
It just keeps GOING
tiragooen | a day ago
I have zero plastic surgery done, not even injectables, yet I find this writing to be juvenile, badly written, and gleefully mean. There are better and more insightful ways of delving into the commoditisation of women's looks hiding as feminism.
EliBadBrains | a day ago
We do desperately need criticism of the beauty industry, but it'd be great if we could do so without being snide and vile about the women who've bought into it. Not a great way to convince them, you're just feeding your own ego and misogynistic power trip.
rask0ln | a day ago
Agree. There's talking about the irony of choice feminism and its ties to beauty standards and there's, i can't believe i'm writing it, applauding someone using a word chopped to describe a woman's appearance and denying it's an insult.
I also can't get over the irony of her talking about an issue that stems from how society treats women who don't fit the beauty standards and arriving to a conclusion that it's okay to... tear down women who don't fit her own beauty standards?
WhatTheCluck802 | a day ago
IDK. I think there is validity to calling out the emperor not wearing any clothes. The women who bought into this shit should feel ashamed of that, especially the famous women who are perpetuating this bullshit by endorsing it with their ongoing surgeries.
It’s disgusting. And they do look ridiculous. The more we call this out perhaps the more likely they’ll be to avoid further disfigurement.
Renee Zellweger, Taylor Swift, Nicole Kidman - the worst recent examples. So sad they voluntarily butchered their faces.
catsandkegstands | a day ago
Full disclosure… I’ve had cosmetic surgery. I lost 175 pounds. The extra skin was infected and it had to go. I don’t regret it but I’m also not about to go get a BBL to go with it. I don’t consider myself superior or inferior. I’m just trying to make my meat suit comfortable while I’m stuck in it.
And it’s more than just “buying in.” There was criticism of fake tits when I was a kid. The criticism of cosmetic surgery has always been there. The women who feel superior for not having it are still around. The women who feel superior for having it are still around.
The truth is that it’s all gender affirming care. If we criticize women who get cosmetic surgery, that includes trans women and not just the Trump administration.
Trans men also get cosmetic surgery for gender affirming care. So do cis men when they get hair transplants.
This whole stream of consciousness rant misses a lot of points in its fervor to be superior, or at least that’s how the stream of consciousness reads to me.
kamace11 | a day ago
Lot of people in these comments seem a bit triggered by the authors position and while I find this style of writing kind of tiresome (over the top tortured metaphors are best used sparingly), if we saw men indulging in this much plastic surgery this routinely we'd be absolutely having these convos with less hand wringing. You ARE starting to see this more in men (Zac Efron, Bradley Cooper, Jim Carrey, and even younger, the Claviculars of the world) and it is roundly condemned by people.
Skeleton_Meat | a day ago
It's less her position and more her weird glee at absolutely trashing these women in a way that undercuts her entire point
Feisty-Donkey | a day ago
This is some unreadable nonsense that is really ugly about women
Skeleton_Meat | a day ago
Blog-her era nonsense
armadillo1296 | a day ago
Yeah, and beyond the misogyny, it feels like an awful lot of words in search of a point. The writer feels like the kind of person who really enjoys the sound of their own voice
[OP] Low_Collection_890 | a day ago
you might enjoy this one then: https://fatherkarine.substack.com/p/ugly-girl-manifesto
Feisty-Donkey | a day ago
I got two paragraphs in. This is some circa 2010 tumblr level writing. I mean, I’m sure I shared stuff this aggressively bad at times (I remember taking Melissa McEwan very seriously) but this is… just not good.
“it makes me sad, because i definitely have the face of a woman as well as the vagina of one. and every day i fight the urge to post pictures of these things here to validate myself. an outfit of the day. a provocative book draped over my tanned hotdog legs. a cheeky little photo of my tight pink innie pussy that doesn’t have any labia whatsoever b/c i had all six of them removed at the vet when i got my dog de-wormed last spring... it’s just like the old thought experiment that begs the question: “if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” if i don’t post pics of myself on substack dot com, am i even real???”
armadillo1296 | a day ago
It reads like off brand Jezebel circa 2012 but dumber and meaner
QualityKatie | a day ago
It has a dash of XO Jane.
Dreaming_Blackbirds | a day ago
Great summary. They’re a bad writer who needs to log the f off
Particular_Piglet677 | a day ago
I'm glad it's not just me who had this reaction.
[OP] Low_Collection_890 | a day ago
a big difference imho is this is funny
Feisty-Donkey | a day ago
I think it’s just stupid.
baobabbling | a day ago
Is the funny part when she dehumanizes women who have labiaplasties or is there another "joke" I'm completely missing?
Fearless-Feature-830 | a day ago
That’s a choice
baobabbling | a day ago
What is?
Fearless-Feature-830 | a day ago
Having a procedure
Zealousideal_View47 | a day ago
Unfortunately I actually found this article incredibly funny
Accomplished_Sci | a day ago
I don’t enjoy their writing style at all. And I don’t care about rich women’s faces. And neither should they. Truly.
ValosAtredum | a day ago
GOD I am so happy she talked about the Nice Girl Gestapo. It’s fucking everywhere, including Reddit, and it’s driving me insane. People will ask for opinions on their makeup and if you don’t start with “omg you look so goodddddddddd!” and then maybe tap dance around the criticism you have, the NGG swoops in to berate you for being soooooooooooooo mean!
Skeleton_Meat | a day ago
I find this essay to be disgusting actually. If this is feminism no thank you; the misogyny wrapped as feminist critique is so tired to me.
Edit: and don't get me started on the comment section! Yeesh
Skeleton_Meat | a day ago
Also I have no idea what this woman is on about because her opening paragraph posits that Emma Stone was like, unrecognizable and ugly as sin with her "new face" and that's just... not true at all? I didn't even think she looked all that different when this was first published?
Born_Skill_9791 | a day ago
With all due respect, you really don't see the difference in Emma's face?
Skeleton_Meat | a day ago
I didn't say I didn't see a difference. I said that the author acts like Emma's work was deserving of being on Botched or something, and that she was unrecognizable, and I find that to be histrionic nonsense. She also used the worst possible picture of Stone, a simple "Emma stone 2026" search shows she doesn't even look like that.
schoenstefrau | a day ago
Beautiful
Maleficent-Injury-39 | a day ago
is there any data on how widespread cosmetic surgery is becoming among younger women
TheRubyBerru | a day ago
Substack garbage. This is why editors gatekeep.
croissantandalatte | a day ago
I think there is a way to discuss the harm of the beauty and plastic surgery industry without insulting women who are victims of it. Calling Miley Cyrus "CHOPPED" is not feminist, not a critique of capitalism or a misogynist industry, it's an insult. Period. The writer can dress it up in as many convoluted metaphors as she likes, but it's an insult.
You see this with women who have obvious eating disorders. There is a lot of disdain for them online and people justify their bullying because they see them as perpetrators of a harmful culture rather than victims. But they're vulnerable; eating disorders have high mortality rates.
I'm tired of seeing bullying disguised as some sort of moral critique.
ziper1221 | a day ago
You think Miley Cyrus is a victim?
delirium_red | a day ago
I am also shocked that we are expected to treat extremely privileged beautiful women with incredible wealth and decision power as victims now. The rest of us make poor decisions, but they are victims?
If nothing else is wrong with it, you are taking agency away from them and infantilizing them asnot responsible for their own life choices
Women can be idiots or villains as well. And can be called out on it. This is true equality.
Fearless-Feature-830 | a day ago
I can’t stand people that defend any choice a woman makes as tho it’s inherently feminist. Choice feminism is a mistake.
croissantandalatte | 23 hours ago
I think you're focusing too much on the word victim. I never said the rest of us make poor decisions and can't be "victims"; I think any woman can be a victim of misogyny, even wealthy privileged women. Obviously there's many layers to it and someone like Miley Cyrus is far from the most vulnerable person. But I see no point in insulting a woman for her looks in such a gleeful way and painting it as feminist. It's not. I already stated criticizing the beauty industry and plastic surgery should be done. I don't subscribe to choice feminism at all.
I just think this discussion is better served without dressed up insults. Plastic surgery is becoming increasingly common, so it's not an exclusively uber wealthy thing anymore, and I do think many average, everyday women are suffering from these beauty standards. Miley Cyrus was just the example I used because she's part of the article. I'm not saying women can't be bad people or can't be criticized at all.
Silly_Somewhere1791 | a day ago
To me, the reason we don’t talk about these bad surgeries is because movies and TV are less of a big deal now. I barely consume any visual media. People who work in visual media are way less ubiquitous than they used to be.
thismynewaccountguys | a day ago
I agree with much of the thesis, but in my view the author makes the mistake of seeing planning and intent when there is none, e.g., "This is not random. It is a system designed to keep women trapped in an eternal hamster wheel of low self-worth and misery"
I think it is a huge misunderstanding of how the world operates to believe that there is someone/someones behind the scenes planning and designing social norms in this way. The very fact that these norms arise accidentally from uncoordinated behaviour is one of things that makes them so hard to change.
SeahorseRevolution | a day ago
>Choice feminism works in tandem with adjacent philosophies to form a complex set of “ideologies” which can even sustain internal contradictions: “Live and let live,” “mind your business,” and the especially vile “omg let people enjoy things!” have all seamlessly worked together to fragment our society into a billion individual consumer choices, each equally worthy and unassailable as the next.
Congrats on your liberal arts degree level of critical thought, but in the real world, women absolutely are forced to make these types of choices. "Choice feminism" is exactly WHY you get to blog about how you'd like to do things differently. EVERY wave of feminism that came before has paved the way for you to live your life the way YOU CHOOSE. Each generation has done what they had to do to further the cause and the ideology doesn't exist in a vacuum. Just because you dont like the way it plays out IRL doesn't invalidate its impact and importance. By all means, do what you want, that's what feminism is supposed to be. But some of us like to do what we want to do, and looking down your nose at anyone who wants to do something you deem gauche is not feminism.
Fearless-Feature-830 | a day ago
Nothing about plastic surgery is feminist