As an Indian musician, trying to score press coverage is a huge part of the job.

And I remember being so stoked and so nervous for one of my band's first magazine photo shoots.

With a professional photographer, proper wardrobe on set, an actual makeup artist and everything.

I usually wear blush and eyeliner, but the makeup treatment for print photography is intense.

Essentially, all of your features are painted over.

Lip pencil, brow pencil, eye shadow, highlighter.

It's like a very thin mask of pastes and pressed powders. You can't see the

makeup artist's handiwork while they're at it, so you're just sort of left guessing how all of

these colors are combining on your head. The last step is the false eyelashes. I remember this

dude carefully gluing them to my eyelids. Then it was time for the big reveal.

I was handed a mirror, but I couldn't see myself because he'd accidentally glued my eyes

shut. And so instead of feeling like a movie star, I felt like a fetal piglet.

I'm Dessa, and this is deeply human.

Today is about beauty and ethics and intersection between them,

stuff I've personally spent a lot of time thinking about.

Why is beautification so ethically fraught?

Celebrities take heat for getting Botox or lip fillers.

Most of us have at some time or another been shamed for trying too hard.

Makeup at the gym, that's a hot button one.

Or if we're not trying hard enough, your teenage self getting pestered into a haircut, maybe.

Plastic surgery is particularly likely to evoke moral feelings. So let's start there. We begin with a fire.

In the 1960s, there was a big circus fire where lots of lots of people, and there was a lot of burned victims, hundreds of burned victims,

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