Some Thoughts After Covering Kylie Jenner for a Decade
Plus, the privilege of recession hair and new peptides for better orgasms.
There are lots of signs that we’re culturally cycling back to where we were 10 years ago. Gen Z loves the same makeup looks I was reblogging on Tumblr. Everyone’s wearing Adidas (though this time it’s Sambas instead of Stan Smiths). Lana Del Rey, Selena Gomez, Mumford & Sons, and Miley Cyrus all have new albums. We’re talking ad nauseum about the Kardashian/Jenner family.
It’s that last bit that’s been particularly relevant at Allure this week, with the back-to-back reveals of details about Kris’s facelift and Kylie’s second boob job. Despite the “ugh no one CARES” comments that inevitably come any time any media outlet posts about this family, the fact is that, actually, a lot of people do still care—we did four Jenner-focused stories in the past week and all of them hit our Top 5 in terms of traffic.
Four stories over the course of a week is very restrained compared with 10 years ago when the beauty team I was running at a different outlet would “swarm” coverage every time Kylie Cosmetics dropped a new lip kit. We’d whip up at least five different angles, then enjoy our ride on the multi-million click wave that inevitably followed. When the #KylieLipChallenge (people sticking their lips into shot glasses and sucking the air out to cause temporary, lip filler-esque swelling) went viral, you bet we did multiple posts about it. I vividly remember having to pause a group interview with a job candidate in 2018 so that we could all cover the announcement that Kylie had given birth to Stormi after a secret pregnancy.
Writing those stories was not creatively fulfilling, but they took very little time and relieved some of the pressure we were under to hit aggressive monthly traffic goals. And that gave us more leeway to pursue reported features and essays we were passionate about but weren’t guaranteed to bring in as many eyeballs.
The point being: People have cared about this family for, by internet standards, since the Paleolithic Era. Some folks really do just have “it.” Perhaps this has something to do with their superhuman exhibitionism and ease at shifting focus to the attention needs of the moment. And for better or worse, you can’t be a brand that reports on beauty trends without covering the K-Js. Right now, transparency about your aesthetic treatments and surgery is very in vogue.
There are all sorts of opinions about what celebrities owe us in terms of this type of transparency. I personally am in favor of the people setting our nationwide beauty standards (on purpose or not) being up front about the work they’ve had done. I don’t mean they have to share all the specifics, but at least saying “yes, I have spent a lot of money to look like this and no, it was not on buying moisturizer in bulk.” Frankness helps give the people hoping to achieve a similar look a more realistic picture of what it would actually require to get there. (Even when surgery isn’t involved; I think about Rob McElhenney’s video where he says anyone can get “an unrealistic body, such as mine” as long as they quit their job, hire a personal chef and the trainer from Magic Mike, go to the gym at least twice a day, stop spending any time with their family and friends, etc.) Some people will decide it’s worth it, others will come to terms with the fact that a face/body they aspire to is not one they can afford to buy and (hopefully) start to appreciate the way they look already.
Another opinion, from Allure senior news editor Nicola Dall’Asen, is that this honesty, which the public has been begging the Kardashian/Jenners for basically since Kim was better known as Paris Hilton’s assistant, is just too little, too late. “Knowing for sure that Kris got a facelift or that Kylie has breast implants won’t resolve the feelings of resentment so many of us have toward them for their impact on how we’re expected to present ourselves,” she wrote. “And we shouldn’t expect the Kardashians—or anyone famous, for that matter—to give us that. Not because they don’t owe it to us, but because that closure has to come from within ourselves.”
Even Kylie’s surgeon, Garth Fisher, is a bit cautious about how beneficial this info actually is for people looking to emulate her look. Jolene Edgar spoke with him right after the post went viral and, as she writes, “He cautions against using the work he did for Jenner as a guide for yourself: ‘This is not cookbook surgery—it’s highly personalized, thoughtful, and tailored care,’ says Dr. Fisher. ‘Each patient is unique.’” In other words: Don’t go asking for “the Kylie Jenner boob job.” That’s pretty similar to what surgeons Edgar interviewed said about Kris’s facelift too.
So, I suppose, my final verdict is: This was a morally neutral thing for Kylie to do. It doesn’t really make her “for the girls,” as some commenters have said, but it’s less cringey than claiming there was no surgery at all.
Have your own thoughts on this whole news moment? I’d love to hear them in the comments.
It’s Textured
Sign on to any social platform these days and you’ll see someone talking (sometimes seriously, sometimes not) about “recession indicators.” One we and many other beauty outlets reported on is recession hair, the internet’s name for a real trend hair stylists and colorists are clocking: Their clients are opting for lower maintenance colors—rooted balayage instead of all-over highlights seems to be the most common switch—and cuts in anticipation of a possible recession in the U.S. But what this coverage doesn’t get into are the people who can’t afford to make their hair routine lower maintenance. “When you’re Black, like I am, your hair isn’t something you can scale back on without risk,” Sophie Meharenna writes in her first essay for Allure. “It’s one of the most visible, policed, and politicized parts of who you are…The rising price of maintaining our hair is lower than the cost of what may happen if we don’t.”
Oh, Oh It’s Magic
You’ve heard of peptides for plumper skin, but what about peptides for more pleasure-filled orgasms? Apparently, as Eloise King-Clements reported this week, scientists are quite optimistic about the skin-care ingredient’s potential in the bedroom.
Getting Messy
Alli Webb—who you probably know as the founder of Drybar, though she left the brand years ago—launched a new product line this week that is decidedly not for blowouts. “Obviously, the blowout [trend] was largely my fault. I mean, I’m proud that I did that…but now there’s this in-between,” Webb told me this spring. “Right now, there’s a big movement for air-drying, but air-drying doesn’t work [for me]. It kind of sometimes works, but it’s a crapshoot. You would never go out to do something important, like a meeting or a date, with the risk of the crapshoot of air-drying your hair.” So, she launched some products meant to make your rough-drying results a little more predictable.
As a fellow crapshoot-adverse person with wavy hair, I got my hands on the products back in April and have been testing them ever since. Here’s how it’s been going so far.
Skin Tips
You know who looks great, and not just “for her age”? Our 46-year-old contributing editor, Marci Robin. The neuromodulator and filler she’s been getting for years definitely plays a huge role in that, but her skin-care routine is certainly an important member of the supporting cast. This week, she rounded up her favorite products from SkinCeuticals, a brand people constantly ask me “Is it really worth the price?” about, in a (not sponsored, I swear!) story.
Boutique News
Quince, the fashion brand you’ve heard about mainly on podcast ads, is getting into beauty. Business of Fashion reported that the company will launch “The Beauty Atelier by Quince,” a section of the site where customers can buy (to start) 11 luxury skin-care products from brands like Augustinus Bader and 111Skin. Why would you buy from Quince instead of one of the many other retailers that sell these brands? I’m…not sure. But, apparently, “Shoppers can earn 30 percent of their purchases back as Quince store credit,” the BoF story says. So, I guess, buy some $300 moisturizer and you could get 90 bucks off a Bottega Veneta dupe.
This week, I can’t stop talking about…
Actually, I haven’t stopped talking about this lip oil with the rest of the Allure team since April 24, when I got the sample and had a virtual meeting with the brand founder Violette Serrat, but an embargo prevented me from talking about it with you—until now. The shade Bêtise, a medium red, has become my go-to lip color for the summer. A lot of lip oil-stain hybrids either vanish or start to feel dry pretty quickly, but this one makes my lips feel soft and hydrated, and the color (which starts glossy and mellows down to a soft matte) sticks around for hours.
I'm puzzled by the luxury brands who've chosen to partner on Quince's beauty marketplace. There must be some strong incentives in play.