On celebrity 'cosmetic transparency': A Q&A with Jessica DeFino
Why is Dolly Parton’s plastic surgery *energy* different from Kim Kardashian's?
For more on the intersection of body image and celebrity culture, check out my previous pieces: “On Taylor Swift’s Scalegate,” “No celebrity can be a body image icon,” “I cannot stop thinking about this 2009 survey about women’s bodies,” and “Don’t police people’s bodies unless they’re hot.” The full Body Type archive is here.
Recently I was mulling over why the Kardashians and other celebrities who clearly dump big money into surgical and cosmetic interventions don’t just cop to it and make light of it, à la Dolly Parton’s “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap” line. Dolly has long been honest and witty about her plastic surgeries.
What would it be like for us as content consumers if more celebrities poked fun at themselves and were forthright about cosmetic procedures? Would it spare people the potential psychic harm of believing that certain looks can be achieved “naturally,” and comparing themselves to these celebrities?
Does awareness actually help us feel better? Does humor or self-deprecation?
Kim Kardashian did savagely poke fun at herself and her family in her Saturday Night Live monologue; she even joked that she’s “so much more than that reference photo my sisters showed their plastic surgeons,” (yow!) but she’s never admitted to herself having done anything but Botox. Recall how in 2000, also on SNL, Britney Spears joked about rumors of her breast implants. Does that make you feel differently, somehow, about Britney? What if Kim did a similar thing with her butt, for instance?
That lack of self-seriousness in a famous person can be pretty charming. It makes the mythic figure that is the celebrity feel more real. But does it actually change anything about how we think about plastic surgery and our own bodies?
To tackle these questions, I spoke to Jessica DeFino, author of newsletter, whose work “basically gives the middle finger to the entire beauty industry,” per HuffPost. Jessica dissects beauty marketing myths, our relationship as consumers to aesthetic standards, and topics like why skincare culture is ideologically the same as diet culture (one of my favorite essays).
This interview has been edited and condensed.
MJ: What do you think would happen if celebrities like Kim—famously tight-lipped about surgical interventions—admitted that they’ve had them?
JD: It would be wonderful, but I also don’t know that it would change very much because we all know they’re doing a lot of shit to their faces and bodies. They’re not hiding it well. I also don’t know that it would have much of an impact on the issues that these beauty standards and the pressure to conform to these beauty standards bring up.
There have been some studies with advertising images and disclosure, putting a little message on an image that’s been photoshopped. It basically has no effect on whether a person sees that image and feels inadequate as a result. It doesn’t lessen the pressure to adhere to the standard of beauty, it keeps the pressure about the same or even increases it, because now you have a laundry list of what you need to do in order to look like this.
If the Kardashians were to come out and say, “Here’s everything we’ve had done” … I just don’t think they would, because they capitalize on it. They have all these lines of shapewear, makeup, skin care, they used to do hair care, vitamins. They’re profiting off of this in many ways.
Do you think that’s the difference in how we receive their disclosure? Some celebrities are selling us beauty products and others aren’t?
That’s one thing that comes to mind when I’m like, “Why does it feel different for somebody like Dolly Parton?” And I think a big part of that is that she hasn’t tried to sell this to people. For the Kardashians, their livelihood is selling their standard of beauty to the public. Just from some of the things Dolly Parton has said, I don’t think she wants a world in which everybody looks like her. And all of these doppelgangers of Kim Kardashian, she has a very signature look—I don’t think that is a goal for somebody like Dolly, whereas a lot of beauty idols today love having that type of influence.
It might sound a little wishy-washy to be like “There’s an energy about it,” but Dolly Parton just feels a little bit more authentic, a little bit more herself, a little bit more confident and self-assured. I don’t necessarily feel like her procedures are coming from this deep well of insecurity or people-pleasing.
You’ve written how more influencers are practicing “cosmetic transparency.” Do you think that’s because of what you said earlier—we all know, so they’re trying to beat us to the punch?
I think there is a lot of validation for themselves and for their audience to be found in co-opting honesty and transparency for the use of beauty culture, which is obtaining power, which is upholding an oppressive beauty ideal. In my view those are immoral causes.
I also do think it probably has a lot to do with the sort of surveillance state of everything today. We have amateur detectives on TikTok and Instagram who are taking screenshots of these influencers and celebrities going years back and creating these videos like, “Here’s how their faces changed.” I’m sure that has something to do with the boom in transparency, there are all these accounts on social media that “expose” influencers and celebrities. If you can get ahead of that, it seems like you’re doing something moral and ethical and caring for your community.
Somebody like Dolly Parton—or Joan Rivers used to do this, Jane Fonda kind of does it—they do this jokey, self-deprecating thing. Is there a difference between that kind of transparency and someone just listing what they had done? Is there something about the humor you think makes us receive it differently?
It might take some of the desirability out of it. If you apply this self-deprecating thing to it, you’re talking about a less desirable outcome for somebody who is considering it, perhaps. You’re barely scratching the surface of emotional transparency, which is something I think would be actually useful. Of course, you’re hiding any sort of emotional vulnerability with the humor of it.
It’s also kind of frustrating to me, though, to subtly point at the problems with cosmetic surgery and beauty culture in general and then be like, “I’m doing it anyway!” You know, today there is more critique of beauty culture, and I see so much of it come with this caveat of “I’m not judging anybody who does it!” It waters everything down. I think some judgment is fine, self-judgment is good. It’s fine to judge ourselves, and if someone is choosing to do something that is compounding a collective problem, what’s the problem with a little judgment?
In a piece you wrote [scroll to “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” & Face Lifts], you said that actual radical transparency would be if someone practiced that emotional transparency. Like, “I got a facelift because if I don’t feel young and hot, I don’t feel worthy.” Not humor, but vulnerability. Is there anyone who has even come close to that kind of transparency?
I really can’t think of anyone that’s come close. Because, I think, were people to practice that type of very vulnerable, deep, emotional, not humorous, not making light of it sort of transparency, I think the procedures would go way down.
Part of the reason I advocate for this emotional transparency is because when you are transparent with yourself, it lessens the appeal of some of this, because you are understanding what the underlying issue is. I would say the majority of people who participate in these cosmetic procedures and injectables and surgeries are not truly getting to the emotional truth behind it, are not truly understanding the mechanics of beauty culture that have influenced their decisions. If you do interrogate the system, your place in it, and how it has influenced you, the system is less appealing.
If someone is new to the world of “I want to divest from the worst of beauty culture,” when it comes to celebrity content and how it affects their body image, what is the first thing they should do? Is it just to look at these people less, to unfollow?
I do think there can be a lot of good in unfollowing people and opting out of social media as much as you can. I also advocate for this thing I call being “the eternal toddler.” Every time you get an urge to participate in something, some sort of beauty behavior or a negative thought about yourself and your body, just keep asking, “Why?” Say you really want to buy this new moisturizer. Why? Because a celebrity uses it? OK, why is that appealing to you? “Because so-and-so celebrity has the type of face I would like to have.” OK, why? Why do you want that? Once you get to the root of why all these things are influencing your decision, it’s easier to realize, “Oh, that actually wasn’t my longing.”
has a quote in her book, Thick: “‘I like what I like’ is always a capitalist lie.” Nine times out of 10, that thought is not coming from me, my internal truth, my authentic self. It’s a cultural influence that actually has nothing to do with me as a person. Keeping that in mind as a possibility, that what you like isn’t always about you, is huge. And then if you have the time and availability and emotional willingness, dive deeper and just keep asking why, why, why.
So, thinking about separating self-worth from appearance, how do you personally relate to compliments about your appearance? Say, if someone complimented your skin or your eyebrows.
I think being a person on the internet has helped me divest from compliments as a confidence booster, because it’s usually one of two reactions: People who don’t like the writing will say, 1.) “You can’t talk about beauty culture because you have pretty privilege,” or, 2). “I’m not going to listen to anything about beauty from somebody who looks like you,” suggesting I’m ugly. That has strangely helped me—it’s all fucking perception, it’s not real, what I look like is not part of the value that I bring to the table.
I do try to just respond to compliments with honesty and detail. If somebody compliments my skin I will say, “Thank you, I use absolutely nothing after dermatologists ruined my skin for the majority of my life, and now I don’t do anything to it.” If they compliment my eyebrows—I’ve been getting them microbladed for years because I have trichotillomania so I pick out my own eyebrows as an anxiety thing. So if someone said “Your eyebrows are beautiful,” I’d say, “Thank you, they are completely fake!”
I get a lot of joy and validation when somebody compliments my outfit. I really love fashion. That feels like self-expression to me. It’s not my own body, it’s something I’m putting on momentarily and saying, “This is how I feel right now, this is what I want to project out into the world right now.”
Beauty stuff like makeup, surgeries, or body alterations—when people compare that to fashion, it really grinds my gears. That to me is like shapewear, not fashion. It’s not self-expression, it’s molding. It’s molding to a standard.
I’ve written that I do not believe celebrities can be body image icons. Do you think there is anything celebrities could conceivably do that would make us feel better about ourselves, if we have to see them all the time?
I would say that there’s no point in looking at them for how we should feel about ourselves. Sometimes people ask a similar question: When I reference “an unrealistic beauty standard,” they say “Well, what is a realistic beauty standard? What is it realistic to look at somebody and want?” I say there is no such thing as a realistic beauty standard because the unrealistic part is not the feature, it’s not the beauty feature. The unrealistic part is the standardization, this idea that we should look like somebody else or that some feature should be standard across billions of people. So I don’t think there’s anything that we can get from somebody else as a beauty icon in terms of our face or our body.
The point to me of this work is liberation, is to not compare ourselves to other people, to get to a place as a culture and individuals where we are allowed to exist in our bodies as they are and face no social, financial, or political consequences for doing so. Looking to any celebrity or influencer as an icon in regard to your physical being is completely counter to those goals.
[Note: Upon further research, it appears Dolly did have plans to launch her “foray into the beauty industry.” Alas! But it appears she only launched a fragrance. I’m not sure there’s any celebrity who hasn’t.]
Loved talking with you about this!!