Show Notes
Botox, filler, beauty trends, and the pressure to keep up with it all. This week, Christiana sits down with NYT columnist and UNC Chapel Hill professor Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom to explore how beauty culture is changing around the world, why our appearances carry so much power, and what happens when the rules of beauty keep changing.
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01:37 Meet Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom
03:45 Sculpt and how beauty norms became what they are right now
06:12 The democratization of plastic surgery and injectibles
09:06 Beauty and ugliness as structural concepts
13:14 The end of body positivity a return to whiteness
15:13 How technology has changed time, our attention, and beauty norms
16:55 Peptides
19:45 How what is seen as beautiful has changed
21:00 Thinking of ourselves as scientific compositions
22:05 Grappling for community
22:39 Discourse around “the Black community”
24:15 Ethnic rhinoplasty
25:51 The death of the natural hair movement
26:30 What is Black beauty now?
27:10 The homogeneity of beauty
30:14 How the formula we were taught for a good life isn’t working and cruel optimism
35:26 Observing neutrally and knowing our choices aren’t neutral
39:10 The cost of resistance and choosing our defeats
42:49 Bracing for impact
45:00 Black women being punished
45:40 Conservative movements among white women and where white women go next
49:55 “One Household, One Vote” and women retreating from the workplace
52:30 Late-stage capitalism and AI will come for everyone, including men
54:00 Men committing Interpersonal violence
55:30 Going analog
56:38 How Tressie approaches reading and engaging with ideas
01:01:22 What Tressie is turning to for nourishment and delight
01:06:25 What Tressie is working on now Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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