Why You Need to Downsize Your Skin-Care Routine
The Waves: Gender, Relationships, Feminism
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 903 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2022
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus is joined by freelance beauty reporter, and author of The Unpublishable, Jessica DeFino to talk about why you probably don’t need all the lotions and potions in your cupboards. They start out by discussing Jessica’s recent Slate piece, “Why Your Skin Doesn’t Need Skin Care” and why other outlets turned the piece down. They then go behind the scenes of the beauty industry and talk about the toxicity of celebrity skin-care brands, what it’s like being fake Internet Khloe Kardashian, and why the industry keeps targeting women.
In Slate Plus, is the upcoming bar-soap trend feminist?
Recommendations:
Shannon: Using the Peloton app for exercise (but not buying the equipment)
Jessica: The Angela Caglia vibrating rose quartz facial roller
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus and June Thomas.
Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're listening ad-free on Amazon music. |
| 0:03.7 | This is the waves. |
| 0:05.6 | This is the waves. |
| 0:06.6 | This is the waves. |
| 0:07.8 | This is the waves. |
| 0:08.5 | This is the waves. |
| 0:09.5 | This is the waves. |
| 0:14.3 | Welcome to the waves. |
| 0:17.8 | Slate's podcast about gender, feminism, and today are skin. |
| 0:22.3 | Every episode, you've got a new pair of feminists to talk about the thing we can't get off of our minds. |
| 0:27.6 | And today you've got me, Shannon Paulus, a senior editor at Slate. |
| 0:31.1 | And me, Jessica Defino, a freelance beauty reporter for Slate, The New York Times, Vogue, and Moore, |
| 0:36.3 | and the writer of the weekly |
| 0:37.5 | beauty newsletter, The Unpublishable. |
| 0:39.6 | Today we're going to be talking about skin care and why it's kind of a scam. |
| 0:44.0 | I've been interested in this topic for a really long time. |
| 0:47.1 | Before I came to Slate, I was a health reporter, wirecutter, the New York Times' product |
| 0:52.0 | recommendation site. |
| 0:53.6 | And as a science journalist, I've spent a lot of |
| 0:56.3 | time both there and at Slate digging into the science behind skin care and what works and what doesn't |
| 1:04.1 | work. And I'm really excited to talk to Jess today, who recently wrote a piece for Slate on why may be the entire premise that your |
| 1:13.0 | skin needs, all this additional and expensive care is misguided. Jess, why did you want to talk |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

