The beauty industry has an Epstein problem
It's Been a Minute
NPR
4.7 • 9.2K Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Host Brittany Luse wonders: can society let go of decades old obsession with youthfulness? Luckily, Jessica DeFino, reporter, critic, and author of the FLESH WORLD substack, joins the show to answer that question and unpack how we’ve made beauty our God.
(0:00) How the beauty industry shows up in the Epstein Files
(3:24) Why the language of "self-care" is hypocritical post-Epstein
(6:06) The beauty industry's obsession with youth
(11:55) The secular religion of beauty
(19:59) America's Next Top Model & the internalization of beauty standards
(24:30) Tyra Banks & the power you lose in pursuit of power
Correction, March 19, 2026
A previous version of this episode incorrectly said that the 1970s tagline “because innocence is sexier than you think” was used to promote Maybelline products. It was used in advertisements for Love’s Baby Soft products.
Want more about beauty and power? Check out these IBAM episodes:
"Looksmaxxing" is teaching men that pretty hurts.
Peptides & the pursuit of the "perfect" body
The privilege of being "skinny"
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Beauty culture really does function as sort of a secular religion. |
| 0:04.0 | When you think of worship as sacrifice, as where are you dedicating your time, your money, your tie to the beauty industry, right? |
| 0:13.0 | Like so many of our resources are funneled into the pursuit of beauty, even sort of silly sounding things like calling products like Holy Grail |
| 0:22.3 | Moisturizer or a miracle product, there's so much religious language baked into just the |
| 0:29.4 | normal everyday ways that we talk about beauty. There's a morality component to it. |
| 0:38.0 | Hello, hello. |
| 0:39.4 | I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's |
| 0:44.3 | going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. |
| 1:00.5 | Today on the show, we're unpacking the fraught relationship between beauty and power. |
| 1:02.7 | I'm joined by Jessica Defino. |
| 1:09.1 | She's a reporter, critic, author of the Fleshworld Substack, co-host of the Mess World podcast, |
| 1:12.1 | and the writer of the Guardian's beauty advice column Ask Ugly. |
| 1:13.6 | Jessica Defino, welcome back to it's been a minute. |
| 1:16.9 | So happy to have you. |
| 1:18.0 | I'm so happy to be back. |
| 1:20.0 | All right. |
| 1:21.3 | I want to hop right into it. |
| 1:23.2 | So the gradual release of the Epstein Files has been a lot to process, I think, for everybody. |
| 1:32.0 | And, you know, especially as the people named in the files come from just about every sector of American life, right? |
| 1:40.3 | Education, tech, politics, business, and as we are about to discuss, the beauty industry. |
| 1:46.8 | You've been keeping tabs on all of this as the files have been released. |
| 1:51.0 | Tell me how the beauty industry has shown up in the Epstein files. |
... |
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