The culture of "wellness" has partly replaced the culture of beauty. But I'm suspicious | Jill Filipovic

You may have noticed that in our time of bodily positivity, acceptance of fats and well-being feminism, the celebrity regime was out.

in its place: Celebrity skin care.

Yes, Tabloids and magazines Can still describe the regimes that keep stars (mainly women) extremely thin, but it is no longer a standard question of interview with celebrity. Nor are readers of fashion magazines routinely treated to photos of skinny blonde movie stars devouring cheeseburgers to prove that celebrities are just like us. high-end fashion magazine meal serves relatability on a plate (love me, because I'm just like you!). Meanwhile, all the happy, unapologetic indulgences happening in GQ or Esquire send a different message to male readers: Love me, because my appetite is sexy, and if I'm eating ribs in bed, I don't know what else to do. lean, or the ease of staying lean despite all the burgers, but the promise of youth. Many of them are selling skincare.

Celebrities ranging from Hailey Bieber and Jennifer Lopez to Kim Kardashian and Rihanna are selling products that promise a smoother, brighter, and younger-looking face. And don't get me wrong: I spend as much money on my face as any moderately vain New York woman looking into her 50s. I follow skincare influencers on Instagram; I zap, scratch and massage conscientiously; I'll try just about any face mask, eye mask, serum, cream, gummy candy, or prescription medication that promises to shrink my pores, plump up my collagen, erase my fine lines, or leave me glassy like a glazed donut.

This is not an anti-skincare polemic. This is an objection to the basic reality of female beauty culture: the expectation that one should devote a lot of time, do a lot of work, and spend a lot of money, never to achieve a goal, but rather to constantly seek improvement. And then you have to hide the amount of time, money and effort, because an easy veneer is needed to keep this whole scam going.

Take the skin care line from Bieber, Rhode. She's a gorgeous 26-year-old model married to one of the world's biggest pop stars and she has the glowing, smooth, seemingly poreless skin you'd expect from an extremely wealthy, professionally beautiful 20-something. Of course, a lot of us want to believe that her face is something she could bottle up and the rest of us could buy. Much like the skinny "I love cheeseburgers" women of old, Bieber often takes a kind of woman's stance when talking about her skin-care routine, which she says is made up largely of her own products and a handful of others you can buy at Sephora or your local drug store, most no more than $30 or $40. And it's lovely, really, that average women with average budgets can snag the well-priced and hopefully effective products that Bieber says makes her skin so beautiful.

Less beautiful is the truth behind the items. Many (most?) rich and famous women have great skin thanks to a combination of lots of money to spend on products and procedures, a good dermatologist, a good esthetician, a good cosmetic job (injections, lasers, maybe more), and winning the genetic lottery. When it comes to time, effort and money spent on celebrity faces and bodies, stars are not like us. But there are real costs to pulling back the curtain. Admit the truth - that it's a lot of work to look this good and maybe she wasn't...