In this episode, Scarlette and Miranda teach the girly pops about Marxist historical materialism! Just kidding. But really, we go to town on Rini: how the face mask brand’s marketing co-opts the language of self-care and play to integrate beauty regimes into children’s lives. We unpack our changing perceptions of plastic surgery, its manifestation in ‘unproblematic’ and ‘problematic’ Hollywood celebrities. We think through the decision to get beauty procedures via the theories of our old mates Karl Marx and Pierre Bourdieu, who are actually helpful for understanding contemporary conversations around pretty privilege, the pilates body, and clean girl aesthetics. Scarlette traces the roots of the clean girl back to the classical Renaissance body and to the ideal of a virtuous white woman within European colonialism. In response to respectability politics, Miranda fleshes out rationales behind cosmetic surgery in South Korea and how this might be perceived in Australia, all of which helps us tackle the racism underlying responses to the Australian Golden Bachelor. And Das Kapital, baby!

Important disclaimer: Miranda and Scarlette are not THAT kind of doctors so any discussion of cosmetic procedures are cultural commentary and should not be taken as medical advice.

Support the podcast by rating and reviewing us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music. Sources consulted in the production of this episode:

• Dana Berkowitz, ‘Botox and Beauty Politics’ (2021)

• Alexander Edmonds & So Yeon Leem, ‘The racial politics of plastic surgery’ (2021)

• Joanna Elfving-Hwang, ‘The body, cosmetic surgery and the discourse of “westernization of Korean bodies”’ (2021)

• Joanna Elfving-Hwang & Jane Park, ‘Deracialising Asian Australia? Cosmetic surgery and the question of race in Australian television’ (2016)

• Ruth Holliday and Joanna Elfving-Hwang, ‘Gender, Globilization and Aesthetic Surgery in South Korea’ (2021)

• Mary Russo, The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess and Modernity (1995)

• Helen Wood, ‘Beauty and Class’ (2021)

This podcast was produced by Scarlette Do and Miranda Park on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nations.