The Cut - What Is ‘Natural Beauty,’ Anyway?

When I first began working in the clean-beauty and wellness space, I didn’t know what I was stepping into — or, rather, onto: The store was built on a bed of rose quartz, I learned in my second interview, for its medicinal properties of self-love. That was the first sign this was no ordinary retail job. I wasn’t going to be selling the many beautiful vials that lined our shelves but the intoxicating promise of becoming your best self. This was almost six years ago, before the words clean beauty or wellness were ubiquitous and interchangeable.

Working in this space raised a lot of questions for me. Attempts to answer them turned into my debut novel, Natural Beauty. My book has been called many things, including speculative fiction, literary fiction, and body horror. But, for me, it is sheer fantasy — the fantasy of escaping the performance of gender and the constant appearance labor our hypercapitalist society expects us to maintain.

There’s really only one link that matters today: the new Barbie teaser trailer. But in case you aren’t interested in the most exciting film of the summer (sorry, Oppenheimer), we won’t stop there. There was Finland becoming the 31st member of NATO today, of course. Also earlier today, Tennessee House Republicans started the process of expelling three Democratic state representatives for protesting gun violence at the state capitol. We have high hopes for this podcast exploring the forgotten story of 1970s erotic magazine Viva, a thinking woman’s Playgirl. Three things we’ll always be glad to hear: compliments, good news, and Trader Joe’s recommendations. You can see the winners of the 13th annual Birth Photography Image Competition awards honoring the beauty of childbirth. Good ’80s trend: headbands. Bad ’80s trend: book bans.

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