The moral ideal of an 'untouched' face

Plus: Oscar noms and moms, conservative young men, and more in the weekend roundup.

Photo: Inga Gezalian

There’s a new TikTok trend that I cannot escape on my feed: women in their 30s and 40s documenting their “untouched” faces (no Botox, fillers, or filters). Think: lots of glowy but ever-so-slightly lined faces—maybe even with the subtle fleck of a sun spot or two. It’s all very “Dove ad.”

Of course, I love to think of wrinkles and sun spots being normalized, but I’m not so sure that’s what’s happening here. The risk with trends like this is that they add pressure around performing “untouched” beauty, and within still very narrow constraints. As

Jessica DeFino

has pointed out: the beauty industry capitalizes on that pressure with “natural beauty” products and “no-makeup makeup.”

It’s just a different aesthetic (and moral!) ideal.

To the links…

I went on the Mother Culture podcast to talk about Oscar noms and moms—specifically, the way motherhood showed up in last year’s films, from May December to Anatomy of a Fall (my hot take: it’s a phenomenal film about a husband who couldn’t stand being “emasculated” into the role of a wife).

Clara

says of the outrage over the Barbie Oscar “snub”:

[I]n the last two days, I have seen more people express more outrage about Barbie receiving not-ten-but-eight Oscar nominations than I have heard expressed in the last two months about the crisis in Gaza, the ever-worsening abortion crisis affecting all women in this country, or the sad state of parental leave in America.

On that note: Kylie Cheung of Jezebel writes about feminist activists who interrupted Joe Biden’s “reproductive freedom” event to protest the war in Gaza:

Code Pink, one of the groups that helped protest the rally, pointed to how “miscarriages are up 300%,” “two mothers are killed by Israel every hour” according to the United Nations, and 20,000 newborns born into the war are without neonatal care in social media posts about the rally. “How can [Biden] campaign on reproductive justice while dropping bombs on Palestinian mothers?” the group tweeted on Tuesday, highlighting how Biden’s refusal to demand a ceasefire has directly contributed to reproductive violence in Gaza—in direct contrast with the reproductive freedom values espoused at the Tuesday rally.

Susie Bright

just recirculated an essay she wrote in her 40s about body image, aging, and pleasure. “There’s a big secret and irony about appearance and sexual satisfaction: they peak at opposite ends of the age spectrum.” I’ll never forget my grandmother telling me that she was having the best sex of her life well into her 80s.