THE HOUSE OF BEAUTY with Arabelle Sicardi

Arabelle Sicardi is a writer and consultant who focuses on beauty as an art form, an act of care, and a tool of political possibility.

They pen a beauty newsletter and have written for places like ALLURE, ELLE, SSENSE, Teen Vogue, The Cut, Google, and VOGUE Business. So far, they've written two books: Queer Heroes, a children's book on queer folks throughout history, and The House of Beauty, a non-fiction book on the beauty industry, released in Fall 2025.

They run a scent-centered creative collective called Perfumed Pages and a non-profit arts project called the Museum of Nails Foundation.

In this episode, Arabelle discusses beauty standards and resistance,, the potential and hope for community building through beauty activism, their new book, and so much more. 

For more about Arabelle visit:

https://arabellesicardi.xyz/

Instagram: @arabellesicardi + @themuseumofnails

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Hosted by Jessica Richards and Jezmina Von Thiele

For bookings and for more about Jessica visit: www.the12th.house and Instagram: @jessicaxrich 

For bookings and for more about Jezmina visit: www.jezminavonthiele.com and Instagram: @jezmina.vonthiele

Music and editing by DIA LUNA

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Artwork by Lane Friend 

Instagram: @friendlane

Transcript

Meet Arabelle Sicardi

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome to Material World, a dedicated and transparent space to recenter how we explore glamour, magic, culture, and everything else we love together.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

They pen a beauty newsletter and have written for places like Allure, Elle, Essence, Teen Vogue, The Cut, Google, and Vogue business. So far, they've written two books: Queer Heroes, a children's book on queer folks throughout history, and The House of Beauty, a nonfiction book on the beauty industry, released in fall 2025.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

They run a scent-centered creative collective called Perfumed Pages in a nonprofit arts project called the Museum of Nails Foundation. Today we're speaking with Arabelle Siccardi, a writer and cultural critic whose work asks us to look at beauty with more honesty, complexity, and care. You may know Arabelle from their influential writing on the image industry, including their 2015 Critique of Dove's Average Beautiful campaign, which challenged who gets to speak critically about beauty and why. Their new book, The House of Beauty, looks at beauty as both a form of survival and a system of power, a place where terror and care can exist at the same time. In this conversation, we're talking about how beauty shapes desire, identity, community, and conflict from trends and aesthetics to the histories of marginalized creators to what it means to build spaces like perfumed pages and the museum of nails. Let's get into it. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

I'm excited to chat. Let's talk about how it all got started. Tell us about your path and your early life and why beauty. Okay. All right.

From Fashion Pirate To Critic

SPEAKER_04 2:43

Yeah, everyone get comfortable. Okay. So fundamentally, I've been on the internet for far too long. Let's start there. But I have I grew up on the internet, um, developing my identity in the public space among everyone that reads me. Um, I think that's why I've developed such a loyal following. Um but I was initially a fashion blogger. This was before Instagram and influencer economy was really even a thing. It was, you know, a small group of us that, you know, grew up together on Blog Spot. And then like first it was Zenga, then Live Journal, then Blog Spot, and then Tumblr, you know, all of these dead platforms.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

This is oh, sorry, I had to say this is the fourth mention now of Live Journal on this podcast. We're bringing it back.

SPEAKER_04 3:32

Yeah, yeah. The oral history of live journal, it really needs to be done. But I had a blog spot called Fashion Pirate, and then I moved to Tumblr, and that's where like a majority of my audience probably found me at one point or another. And that was in college and high school. So then I became a magazine writer. I started writing reviews on shows and going to shows and being part of the fashion industry at a really young age. I think I was like 15. And so I've been in the industry for fashion and beauty ever since. I knew really at an early age that I wanted to write about it and not be on the other side. I didn't want to be the story, I wanted to tell it. So being a Capricorn, I kind of came up with like a 10-year plan when I was maybe a freshman or sophomore in high school. And I was like, I'm gonna be a writer about this industry. I know that a lot of people don't do this particular thing in it. I want to do this. These are the stories I want to tell. This is how I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna write it write a book when I can do so. And I'm gonna go to college to get a background in reporting and in feminism and gender studies to build the foundations of the type of work I want to do. And that's what I did. And I became a beauty editor right out of college, a Buzzfeed, decided that was definitely not what was right for me and the stories I wanted to tell. So I left that and became a freelance writer and started reporting out the House of Beauty, which took a long time and is now out wherever books were sold. So in the process of writing The House of Beauty and reporting out the House of Beauty, I've been a consultant for different brands, big and small. And I also wrote a children's book and started both the Museum of Nails Foundation and Perfumed Pages just a couple of years ago, around the same time, but I wanted them to be different projects and different different foundational structures because I wanted to kind of compare what kind of work I can do within each framework. So Museum of Nails Foundation is an actual like certified nonprofit. And we have we're a volunteer-run organization that's dedicated to archiving and celebrating nail art, beauty labor, history, and male artists in general. And then the Perfumed Pages Project is a scent-centered event collective, which I started fundamentally because I wanted to be able to share the materiality of and the playfulness of the fragrance world with people that wanted to understand perfume and scent, not just as a thing you buy, like a product to purchase and consume, but a material that they could use for their creative art and practice, and that we could share resources in. So we do uh nose training workshops together. We have perfume swaps, we have a Discord, we have online and in-person gatherings. And people that have been in it have created perfumes, created brands, um, workshops, their upcoming perfumes, uh, traded fragrances all around the world and stuff like that. So that's been really fun to create these little ecosystems of different parts of the beauty industry and bring people into the world that I'm building. So that's a spiel.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

That is so inspiring. I love ambition and vision, especially from a really young age. That's impressive. Do you feel that you have a signature look or any beauty signatures that someone might see and say, like, that's so arabile?

Building Perfumed Pages And Museum Of Nails

SPEAKER_04 7:26

I think I have different eras in which this applies. So I definitely I've had every hair color under the sun, right? So a lot of people remember me as having like short red hair. I had red hair for a very, very long time, fire red. I actually have this is very hilarious. I have a corner of my apartment in every apartment I've ever had that's just fan art that's been given to me over the years. And for whatever reason, it's just me in different haircuts and colors, but I have the same dress on throughout the years because whoever decided to use me as a muse, they really like this particular outfit of mine that I've worn at different events, and so it's just me with different hair in the same dress. I thought I think it's really funny. Um, because it that wall definitely spans at least like 12 years of of fan art and I I love that. Um, but ultimately, and I had shaved a shaved head, I've written about having a shaved head before, but right now I guess I'm in my my braids and long hair bubble era. When I was, you know, 14 or whatever when I was writing for rookie, um, I had purple hair with uh braid braid up to, and that that made the rounds on Tumblr and Pinterest for a really, really long time. So that is also a look that people recognize me for. But right now, um I think I'm quite incognito with what how I look. I I guess most of the time right now I'm wearing a semiyaki like please please, because I travel a lot and I just always carry it with me. But I think if people were to like manifest me in their brain, I I would usually be in like tabbies, because I collect tabbies and I've written about them before. And I would probably either be wearing like Comme de Grosson or like Please Please. And um I'd have my hair in a very intricate hairstyle, which is true, I guess. I I do those things when I decide to leave the house, but most of the time I'm just in sweatpants.

SPEAKER_03 9:40

I I very much relate to that. Yeah, where it's like a signature, but mostly I'm in sweatpants inside of the house. I want to go back to your rookie days and talk about, you know, like what inspired you to start playing with hair color like that.

SPEAKER_04 9:57

I actually don't even remember. I think I just really wanted to understand beauty as play, and I wanted something unique and fun. My dad used to help me dye my hair in the backyard, and one of the first, I think, written pieces I ever did for rookie was just a tutorial for how to dye your hair. And it's surprising how many people from a certain era of beauty media remember that tutorial. I remember I visited Glossier once, I was doing some pop-up collaboration with them for a launch. I think it was like for the face masks many years ago. And people that worked there came up and they're like, You actually your you and your dad helped me dye my hair, like when I was in college.

SPEAKER_03 10:44

Oh, I love this. That's so sweet.

SPEAKER_04 10:47

Right? I was like, damn, how am I an elder now? We're both working in cutie media. The youngest elder. Yeah. So that was hilarious. Um, but yeah, honestly, I really love and cherish the the era that I had different colored hair. I think a lot of people gave themselves permission to try things out because I did in in public. And um it was definitely I my style changed slightly with every hair color I had, right? So I looked a little different with blue hair, I looked a little different with green and red. It helped me like just compartmentalize the different mood boards stuff that I wanted to play through. And it was it was fun just to feel fearless, you know. And my friends, we used to put together like weekends where we would all just do each other's hair in our apartments, in our bathtubs, right? Like you just have a two-day long sleepover. Today we're doing Arabelle's hair, tomorrow we're doing, you know, cocoa's at the end of the 72 hours or 48 hours, everyone looks brand new, so to speak.

SPEAKER_03 11:58

I like this.

Signatures, Hair Eras, And Style

SPEAKER_01 11:59

I love this. So cool. That is so fun. Also, looking back, an early milestone in your career was now an infamous article you published in 2015 on Bud Speed on the Dove Average Beautiful campaign. We're really interested in your criticism in relation to what kind of critical thought and beauty in general today is permitted or allowed to be trusted in the industry, in the media. Could you share your thoughts on the dangers of the erasure of conflict?

SPEAKER_04 12:32

Well, it's not a an old, it's not like a how do I say this politely? Things haven't changed fundamentally from this moment. Um, people's articles get revised or taken down for the exact same reasons this year. It's happened this year to another freelancer, I'm pretty sure. Um, I was a staff writer when this happened, but this is this happens to people pretty regularly to know fanfare. For me, I'm not sure why it became such a story. Um, maybe it was because I was already somewhat of a high-profile writer when that happened and people were watching what I did there. Um but essentially the summary is I wrote a piece that was critical in the sense where I pointed out the hypocrite hypocrisy of this brand doing this thing in one country and doing the exact opposite in another. And I was like, this is disingenuous, and we should demand more from feminist marketing. Um, and it was approved by the editors immediately above me, all all of all of them were women, and then it I was told, I was informed that it was removed by someone outside of the organization, and that became a bigger story. Um, and to this day, I'm pretty sure uh the editor-in-chief at the time has said that it was had nothing to do with advertising conflicts. Uh he said so to me especially. Um and I just didn't after that situation, I didn't feel that my contributions were going to be uh worth doing there. I felt that if I could not do at least this kind of piece, then any of the further rigorous reporting that I had wanted to do and I came to do at that organization would not be permitted to exist. It was honestly just me dipping my foot into a pool of the criticality that I wanted to present. And that clearly didn't go down well. So I was like, okay, well, I frankly do not need to be here to do this work. So I will be going elsewhere. And that's what I decided to do. And it was probably the best decision I ever made for my career. I will contextualize that by saying, I don't think most people would be able to do that though, because I was right out of college, I was already in demand, and um I could be on my parents' healthcare plan because I was, you know, that young still. I did not have children, I did not have high expenses, I had years to be able to take risks. And so I chose to do that. If I were older, if I had children, if I had more debilitating chronic illnesses, this, that, and the other thing, perhaps I would have made different choices, but I knew I had time and run away and options. So I chose to to indulge and believe in myself. And it worked out, but it was a gamble. I don't think most people would be able to do so.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

I'm so glad you could and that you did.

SPEAKER_04 15:43

Me too.

SPEAKER_03 15:45

Yeah, I love that. And I love that you took that ethos into writing your book and really it felt very experimental in certain ways, the choose your adventure at the beginning. I really enjoyed, and I loved how brutally honest you were. Um, I really enjoyed your book, by the way. So the recently released House of Beauty lessons from the image industry, um, you start by saying, you know, beauty is a tool of tear, but it's also an act of care. How can it be both? And I I really loved that. There were so many parts of the book that really resonated with me, you know, talking about the um story of Coco Chanel, which I think many people are unfamiliar with. As someone that's worked in fashion, you know, this was not news to me. I love that you presented it very honestly and frankly and also questioned people. If they were in the same position, would they do the same or would they do what they say that they would do? Um, you really talked about community care, marginalized communities coming together through the beauty industry. I I loved all of that. Um, but I want to come back to this quote that you have when you say, When I tell you that beauty is a monster, I need you to know it is my favorite kind. Um, share a little bit about the terror and the care of beauty, like what you mean by that quote.

SPEAKER_04 16:59

It's so funny that that quote resonates with so many people. And it's like even in the marketing flap of the book at this point, because it was the first sentence I wrote that. So real. Nothing ever changed. Like I revise every single line of that book, like endlessly, but that one just that one was that's that's the first brick of the house. Um how do I summarize it more than it summarizes itself? I think my fundamental aphorism that I've lived by for a really long time is beauty is terror. And that's kind of what some people even like came up to me, they're like, I thought that would be the name of your book. Like, that's something that I know you say have grown up saying. Um, and that's true. But I wanted to also declare at the same time that just because something frightens you doesn't mean you don't love it. Like you can you can have conflicting feelings, the duality of the complication, it's sometimes what makes it interesting. For me, I understand so deeply that beauty is problematic and it's been a tool to intimidate and control and demean and this, that and the other thing. I can list them all to a great extent, but it's not all of those, it's not not just those things. It also is a method of coming together, of recognition, of storytelling, of lineage, of comfort. And you cannot have one without the other in the reality of what beauty is. And so, yeah, it's a monster, but to be honest, like I love horror movies. I love the monster in horror movies, I love a villain. I don't need them to be redeemed to be interesting or worth thinking about. And that's how I feel about beauty too. I think that it's interesting because it's not simple, it demands a lot of us if we want to grow while we face it. And I think that growth is good.

SPEAKER_03 18:53

I love that. And you know, visually, when I read that line, I don't know if you saw the substance, but I imagined that monster like felt very evocative of that monster.

SPEAKER_04 19:04

Yeah, we can have another podcast just on the substance. You know, there's a lot there.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

I love that. I have a little side project called the Most Interesting Monster podcast, where we um my co-host Manny and I dive into monsters of all kinds. So this is like speaking to my deepest heart. Yeah, we love a really good monster. There is a great sentiment in the opening of your book regarding, quote, the power beauty holds in relation to exploring our own desire. End quote. What do the aspirations or explorations that people have about beauty say about them, in your opinion?

Play, DIY Hair, And Early Influence

SPEAKER_04 19:43

I think it's really revealing about what their values are, what they recognize as power, what kind of transactions they're willing to do to get it, to attain it, to hold it, and what they recognize as worth fighting for. For or trading for more of it. Um it's really, I think a lot about wish lists, and maybe it's because it's the end of the season, like holidays, gift guides, and all these things. But the other day, I was really thinking about how so many people don't ask a lot from the world. Like their desires have shrunk so much because they're struggling to exist in the world that like their wish list might be like a sweater and socks when they could be envisioning so much more for themselves, you know, and especially Americans, like the fact that we have so little institutional support around healthcare and social systems that sometimes when we hear about other countries, it feels like fan fiction that we can have these things. And when I'm gonna I'm circling back around to the question here, when I'm thinking about what people want from beauty and and the types of things they want. So much of the time, people want to do things about their body or have things done to their body so they are more recognized as respectable to other people, so they can, you know, have a version of love that's conditional. Like people want nose jobs because they think their nose is big, because they want it to conform to a certain ideal of beauty, or people, you know, get laser or whitening and this and the other thing because they want to conform to specific ideals, and a lot of that has to do with whiteness and white supremacy, and people get graphs and lipo and just reshape their bodies so they fit into certain shapes and molds. And this all has to do with other people having their behaviors towards you change so you can get more respect or whatever, but it's conditional care, it's conditional respect, it's conditional love. And I think for a lot of people, that is a definition of what beauty is for them. It's just it's a phase and a currency in a transactional moment, and I feel like that is quite heartbreaking. That's not enough of a definition for me. And what I'm interested about when it comes to beauty is how it can be all many other things too, and that it doesn't need to be the worst version of itself, and it shouldn't be if we want to survive ourselves. We need it to be bigger.

SPEAKER_03 22:31

I love that. I love that. And I think that not only surviving ourselves, but finding joy in our lives as well through through beauty and experience and exploration. Um, you know, as I was reading your book, it was bringing me back to a time early in my career when a book came out called Deluxe, How Luxury Lost Its Luster. And, you know, this book came out in 2007. So it was sort of foretelling the story of everything we were about to experience in fashion where we're dealing with mass production in a way that we never had. We're dealing with the loss of craftsmanship, um, you know, this the markers of overconsumption and overspending, and what that was going to mean with the economic times that we were going through. So I feel everything that you're talking about in your book is starting to shape conversations at what we're looking at next for sure, in that same way that that book did. Um, but specifically around the individual versus the community when it comes to beauty, what we might do for survival, like I said before, but also what we might do to uplift those around us, how beauty brings us together or how it tears us apart. What are some of your hopes around that, or maybe some of your warnings that you're you're sort of inserting into the book? Phew.

The Dove Critique And Leaving BuzzFeed

SPEAKER_04 23:50

Um casual, casual conversation. My warnings. I mean, the thing is, it's like a lot of the things I was fearful of and predicting would happen by the time the book has come out, like it's been pretty aligned. Um I think people have sacrificed the friction of figuring things out for like quick optimization. And that has been really sad to see across like artistic fields and like job stuff, but also figuring out what like finding comfort in what they what they even look like. Like, for example, I mean, all of the filters and stuff on Instagram and on you know, all of these different social media platforms, it has reshaped the plastic industry to the point where like you people just bring in filtered versions of themselves. I mean, like, maybe look like this, right? That's totally something that happens. Um, and GLP1 drugs being like a fast track to losing weight. And a lot of that was something that I kind of predicted would happen in like the um Death is the Father of Beauty chapter, because that chapter is specifically around biohacking, optimization, transhumanist practices, and like the first wave of experimenters in terms of what we do to look younger, live forever, ideally. Uh so I followed around biohackers and body hackers around a convention that was dedicated just to that stuff. And you know, since that chapter and since the books come out, some of them have died from just over-experimenting, you know, like they injected themselves a little one too many times and they died. And now we have ads for GLP1 drugs um on subways. So it's it's depressing in its own in its own ways. And I was also frightened and concerned that people would become desensitized to each other's struggles that we would lose organizational motivation during the early stages of the pandemic. I have a chapter that's just early pandemic day in the life around mutual aid and community organizing. And at the end of the chapter, I'm like, I can outline all these things that we're doing and celebrate them, but if we don't continue doing them, we're gonna lose traction and we'll get exhausted and people will stop caring. And I think that that's happened in for a lot of people, and that has been sad to see. So those are the warnings, and then in terms of the things that I hope would happen and that I hope still won't have time to happen, um, I do think that there's more like ad hoc communities that celebrate beauty. I'm seeing more collectives pop up that you know do fragrance workshops or you know, um swaps, fragrance swaps, or they just like have their own clubs and fundraising drives and things like that. Like they make uh care packages for women and families in their areas that might have wellness products in them, this, that, and the other thing. Like direct action. This is happening a lot all around the world and all around the country in in ways that people can do. And so I do admire that and hold space for for those for those small wins in the face of lots of losses.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

There's so many examples in the book that you give about how historically underrepresented and marginalized communities became integral in spaces like hair or nails that are still exemplified today. And there's also examples of how those in power will use that power to even further drive divide. And so, how do you see some of the that playing out in those spaces today?

SPEAKER_04 28:20

Oh, it's it's been quite interesting, sad to see, hasn't it? Um so I think the dismantling of DEI initiatives and black-owned businesses in the beauty space has particularly been sad to see, uh especially in like this second administration. Um because there's just been a complete rapid shift in who's getting funded, where equity is going, who's getting space in certain stores, and this, that, and the other thing. And it's very much and also like the employment numbers and job loss numbers are so transparent in in like the corrected quote unquote corrective measures that are being taken by like just like white supremacy. Um like black women are the ones that are losing the most jobs, right? And white men are the ones that are getting most jobs in the job market in the United States. Fascinating how that works. And um there's just there's a lot less grace given to founders of color and businesses that are run by black women and women of color, and they already had the hardest time fundraising, you know, and all of that stuff just economically it it tells itself. It tells itself, and it it's hard to debate those things when you just like look at the breakdown financially. So that's that's how I would answer that question. It's like looking at the numbers, it's uh it's been a travesty.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Yeah, it's pretty clear. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 30:10

Uh so switching gears and going to what you were saying about being chronically online, as we all are. We're familiar with so many of the trends and the cores and aesthetics over recent years. Clean girl aesthetic, mob wife aesthetic, trad wife aesthetic. Um, what do these trends signal to you? Who are they trying to speak to? Uh, especially because one of the pillars on our podcast is speaking to resistance and how people might demonstrate or personify these politics. Uh, we'd love to see how you're seeing this unfolding in the beauty space.

Beauty As Terror And Care

SPEAKER_04 30:46

I mean, the Make America great again, make America health again, healthy again, all of that is just white supremacy. That's just the eugenics movement rebranded. It's not even rebranded, really. It's just like slightly typefaced differently. Oh, yeah. Let's be honest. Um and I whenever people like compare all of this stuff to like the Nazis and things like that in the history of Nazi imagery of being like milkmaid braids and and like white women looking happy with a bunch of children and all of all of this stuff, uh and they refer back to specifically like Nazi Germany and stuff. I'm like, that is true, but actually, that Nazi Germany was inspired by American eugenics and American racism. So the call is coming from inside the house. This is very much an American sensibility. This is this is not a new sensibility. This is fundamental to the existence of this country. It's not new, right? This is just the latest version of this undying thing that has shaped us time and time again. Um, and the other, like the the idea of purity, uh, it's just, I mean, honestly, it's so boring for me, because it's it's so predictable. Um, when I see versions of these women, I understand the lineage on which of which they came, and it's the same lineage that they've always existed in, which is just conservative homemaking ideals. And a lot of the people that were the forefront of this movement in like the second wave of feminism, like Phyllis Shaffley, who was played by what I think like Kate Blanchett in a Hulu documentary, um, which I guess a lot of people should watch because it's very helpful to understand um the history of the Equal Rights Amendment. Um, so Phyllis Schafley was, I don't even know if I'm saying her name right, so I apologize to to the documentaries, filmmakers, and the archivists. I don't apologize to her ghost because she was a terrible person. But she was a lobbyist and advocate against equal rights for women. And she was also like an actual lawyer. So I always found it fascinating that she like was a very educated woman with lots of resources, and she spent her entire life advocating for women to go back into the kitchen and that they didn't need equal rights protection, and the right way to be a woman is to be a homemaker, and that is the only correct way of doing things. And so when I see the Make America Healthy Again and this particular like religious conservative sentiment on the rise, and it's with women with like beautiful blowouts and overly perfect teeth, and um, they look like pageant girls, they are her, they are her daughters. They are just the daughters of the conservative movement that has existed in this country for a very long time. They're just the latest version. So when people are like shocked at the the rise of it, I'm like, you just simply haven't been paying attention because it hasn't affected you yet, but it's affecting you now. And they were preparing for this, and they the conservatives have broadcasted their intentions every step of the way. They they did have a playbook, and it was a published playbook. Project 2025 is available for download in the exchange for your email. I mean, they're they're very rigorous in how they're going through it, but none of this is a surprise. It's just people didn't take it seriously.

SPEAKER_03 34:32

Can I tell you one thing I am surprised about that I'm just dying to know your thoughts? Um, Mar-a-Lago face is something that's so interesting to me. And I I'm going to preface this by saying that I have filler in every inch of my face. So this is not anti-filler, this is not about anti-plastic surgery, but it's access to anything. And then these are still the consistent results that we're seeing. Um especially for people that we're talking about clean aesthetic or conservative aesthetic. Do you have any thoughts on this?

SPEAKER_04 35:07

Oh, yeah. Um it's really funny because I I think that they all go to the same like three people in Florida, number one, but number two, I think that the the things that are being done are also they're not doing it for themselves, they're doing it for the men and for like the male-dominated environment and power dynamics that they are ingrained in. It's not it's not empowering like these actions. Like, let's be so honest here. No. Um but they're also it's just fascinating to me the cognitive dissonance of of the actions. Um you can get everything done and you just get really bad stuff done. It's fascinating. And the idea that like you can get all of this stuff done and still be transphobic is also really funny to me because I'm like fundamentally plastic surgery is gender-affirming care. It's gender-affirming care, and everyone that's like, you if you get it, you're a bad feminist because you don't love yourself or your body. Yeah, that's that's trans-exclusionary radical feminism repackaged. I fundamentally disagree with it. I think all the conversations around plastic surgery being bad for women are um exclusionary and repulsive, and I'm 10 toes down on that.

SPEAKER_03 36:38

So yeah, I I completely agree. I think my my question is always just when I look at it, why does it look like that? So I'll just leave it there.

SPEAKER_04 36:47

But I was so curious what I thought. I agree. It's I just think that there's like a very enclosed bubble of what they understand men to want and they ask for exactly that. And they go to people that won't tell them no, that are terrified of telling them anything but yes. And so even if those people like would personally not do that to someone they cared about, I think they're gonna just take the these women's or their their family's money and keep it moving. And if they're not personally, like I can see going to these places and the plastic surgeons like personally hating the politics of these people, but finding a kind of pleasure in ruining their faces in some way, and that is a kind of vengeance and getting a paycheck. But all of the plastic surgeons that I know would like never personally do that, and they're they're so artistic. So I can't confirm that that's what they're doing. But you know, if I had to do with really entitled women that I hated all the time and I was mad with power, I can see me just doing that, right? Like, yeah, there's a little villain in all of us, and plastic surgeons ultimately they are little gods with a scalpel. So maybe that's part of it too.

Desire, Power, And Conditional Love

SPEAKER_01 38:16

I have so enjoyed your your thoughts on this, and I'm so glad um that you know there was an opportunity to talk about um gender-affirming care and beauty. And um well, before we get into the next question, actually, are there any trends that you feel like you want to talk about that you think might come up in 2026 that are of note, of interesting, of interest, or maybe you'd want to encourage?

SPEAKER_04 38:42

No, not really. I feel like all of the stuff that I've seen so far, I'm like, oh god, really? Why? Like the pantone color of the year is just white supremacy. Like that's so depressing.

SPEAKER_03 38:56

Yeah. It's uh as someone that's worked in the trending color space for 20 years. I saw that, and there's no way that that's not just rage bait. I I mean there's no excuse for it. It's actually extremely disappointing to me that that that was the choice that they made.

SPEAKER_04 39:12

Yeah, I don't think Pantone has been on it for a while, like they've missed for several years, but this was just like egregious. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

But enjoying enjoying a lot of the rage memes and response. They are pretty fun. Yeah. Oh man, how does like onto happier topics? How does beauty help to shape niche communities? So, for example, it seems we're seeing so much more around fragrance on social media in the past few years, which you know we're both so excited about. And of course, your platform perfumed pages. Fragrance feels particularly community friendly, uh, just because it's so much about knowledge and education and nuance. So, what has it been like running that community?

SPEAKER_04 40:00

Running perfume pages has been one of like the enduring joys of my life that I'm like delighted that I get to do. Um because writing about beauty, I mean writing about anything can be really isolating because you're just, you know, at the end of the day crunched over in a corner, terrible posture, you probably haven't gone outside for several days if you're doing it right, right? And you're just in the zone, and it's very solitary. A lot of times your relationships are just online or like via emails, even the people that you're in community with. And Perfume Pages has been so fun and life-giving because I get to introduce fragrance as a story or as like a tool of imagination and curiosity and world building to people who have not been able to find ways to do so themselves before, or like they're very curious about its possibilities, but they don't know where to start. Um, or they have like their collection of fragrances that they really like, but they want to use in a different way and not just like appreciate it on the skin, but use it as a way to be the inspiration behind a poem or a short story or a work of art they want to do. And like by creating the structure where they don't only have permission to do those things, but it's actively encouraged, and they get affirmation and they get workshopping time to talk through these experiments, I think has been really beautiful to behold and to also see what comes out of it. Um because I I mean I realized maybe a couple of weeks ago that I've been doing it for several years now. I never formally was like established day, blah, blah, blah. This is a formal business. It was really an experiment to begin with. I just wanted to share some of the ways that I worked as a writer with other people because they kept on asking. And I was like, I use fragrance to remember certain times or places, or I use it to help world build in my stories and my reporting more accurately. Um, here's how I do that. You can do it too. Here's some exercises. So it started with like writing workshops, really, and then I built it out to be less a little less niche in the sense where like we're not maybe we're not doing writing exercises, we're doing nose training. So you're not gonna guarantee production of like a marketable article or story. I want you to just enjoy the material stuff around you and really recognize it throughout the world. So for the nose training workshops, I sent everybody the same nose training kit of like 40 plus materials, and every month for six months we met to smell the core materials and then compare it to finished perfumes that they may already have. They can go out and get it, they have enough time to do so. And I would bring in sorry, that's my dog. I would bring in perfumers that have done fragrances with those notes to just talk them through so they could have like office hours with the composers of of the perfumes that they loved. And that has been so lovely because one perfumers get pupils, they get to both meet their consumers and their clients, and people that understand themselves only as clients and appreciators can understand themselves also as like artists in conversation. And that has been really beautiful because it's resisting the urge to just commodify everything around us. It's really about how can we appreciate the the materials around us that took so many people so much time to do, and what can we carry with us um through the world once we recognize these things for what they are? Because some of the materials of fragrance, like Linal or um I don't know, just like some of the random notes, so to speak. They're in so many fragrances and laundry detergents and soaps, but we don't really recognize it individually. And so once you've had some training with particular materials, you understand how much of it inundates the entirety of our space around us. And then it's like a layer of the world has unlocked itself for you and it doesn't ever lock again. It's just it's part of how you see the world. That's been really cool to see happen for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03 44:45

That could go on forever, but I love that. It's so sweet, it's so magical. And speaking of things that are sweet and magical, we love that you have also branched into the world of children's books and that you've authored a book called Queer Heroes. It's so sweet to see a queer representation for kids, something that we did not get growing up. So tell us a little bit about that.

Individual Vs Community And Optimization

SPEAKER_04 45:12

So queer heroes came about, and I was when I was researching uh the House of Beauty, I was approached to write it. Uh, so I decided to do so, and that was a fun uh editing experience because I had different editors from different countries because it we already knew that it was going to be like translated into different regions. And so we had like multi-week conversations with different people, being like, who should we include from what part of the world and what time period? Because it was not ever meant to be centered around, like in a North American modern experience, there's people in the book that um are from all around the world in all different time periods, and being able to have that back and forth was really healing in a sense because like it connects you to histories far beyond your own. So that was really nice, and I really enjoyed being able to visit different schools and reading some of it to little kids, little middle grade elementary school students. And I have like a folder in my my living room of just like their illustrations and their biography contributions that they would do. And I just like love, I love that. I love being able to connect to readers across age groups. I think it's a great privilege to be able to do.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

That is so beautiful and so sweet. And yeah, thank you. Um we also really admire your commitment to community building and cataloging, which feels like a natural intersection for your nonprofit, the Museum of Nails. Can you share a little more about what that experience has been like with your organization?

SPEAKER_04 47:10

Yeah. So the Museum of Nails came about from research that I did for the House of Beauty and for the Nails chapter when I was researching the nail industry for the book, and I was interviewing dozens of. I don't actually even remember how many people I interviewed for the book. I interviewed like at least three people a week for many years. And so many of them were nail artists around the world, and the conversations that I had with them had like the same pattern of them being surprised they were ever being considered as artists. They're like, yeah, I am only ever approached as a service worker. And you know, I do I have a good background as a sculptor or traditional painter, and my I have a studio, and you know, I I translated my ideas and my techniques from that to small canvases, but I've never really been able to have these conversations where I'm like, oh, what are my inspirations? What? And those conversations became very healing for them. And we would leave with like a long list of like wish list items that they wish they had for resources. And at a certain point, I was like, why can't why can't we make these happen? Um I why can't I make this happen? I don't I can't solve institutional systemic issues around exploitation in the industry, but I can at the very least archive and document these people that I'm already interacting with and already respect, and I'm already archiving when I'm interviewing them for pieces for magazines and stuff. So I think I should just start doing that because no one else seems to be doing so. And um, because I looked around and you know, now art was being archived. Specific manicures were in certain museums, like the Museum of Modern Art has the Money Manicure by Bernadette, and there are certain manicures that are in specific exhibitions, but there has never been a formal archive dedicated just to nail art, so we became the first one to do so. And by we, I mean me plus other volunteers, and they've all been great. It's a very small collective of people that contribute the time and resources that they can, right? Um, but it's been so wonderful to be able to host documentary screenings of films around nail art history. We just did a bi-coastal screening. We did a documentary screening series of two films, and they were both about the history of nail art and um race relations in beauty spaces. And so that was really wonderful because everyone that was in the audience was either a nail artist or you know loved nails, and a lot of them didn't know the history behind the industry and how it related to immigration in America. And so it's been great to be able to offer an educational platform for people that simply love beauty, and um to be able to just be in community with artists, ask what their needs are, and to understand how we can help foster resources and mentorship and archival space for the work that that's being done. So yeah, it's it's been a really educational process to learn how to build a nonprofit. Because obviously, I've this is my first go of it. I'm learning as I go, and it's been really enlightening to figure out how to structure resources intentionally and learn from people that are already in the art space or a curatorial space and nonprofit space, like what works, what doesn't, has been really it's been like a long journey, I will be honest, but it's been so worth doing. It's been so worth doing.

SPEAKER_03 51:19

That is so beautiful. And you are offering so much to the causes that you care about. Are there any tools or practices that you like to use for your own personal divination, self-care, or healing?

SPEAKER_04 51:32

I work out almost every other day. I must, I must work out. I must work out that's a priority for me, especially since I'm bi-coastal and I have a lot of different projects on my plate. And so I have to have a very structured routine that isn't non-negotiable in terms of like what I do when. So I go and I work out regularly, and I go to the Korean spa at least once a month, and I get acupuncture, and um I mean, obviously, I get my nails done. I consider getting my nails done like a research expense, though, because I'm interviewing the nail techs, I'm asking them what their needs are, like what they wish that they had for resources, and like what kind of mentorship opportunities are they looking for. Every time I go anywhere for beauty stuff, I'm also working.

SPEAKER_03 52:28

So the things that might be done for other people's self-care, I'm doing, but Capricorn, the love and the work have to be intermingled with one another.

DEI Rollbacks And Funding Shifts

SPEAKER_04 52:40

Yeah, it's really, really hard for me to turn that off. I frankly, I will be the first to admit I don't really know how to turn it off. It's really hard for me. I would say maybe I've had five days off the entire year because a lot of the times my programming is on weekends for other people's schedules. So another person's weekend is my full day of work. And while I love my work, because I get I get to make up what I get to do, it's still work. And so I think I really have more like rest breaks and rest hours than I do rest days, which is really, really bad. And I need to improve um in the coming years, and I recognize that, but I'm still figuring out how to not turn the things I love into work to do. I'm not good at that.

SPEAKER_01 53:39

I so hard relate, I monetize everything I love, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:44

The only thing that I haven't monetized is like I don't want to make a fragrance, I don't want to make a perfume brand. People ask me all the time when I'm gonna do it. Or like, is there gonna be a perfume for House of Beauty? And I'm like, no, thank you, no, I can't.

SPEAKER_01 54:00

Yeah, you gotta something sacred sometimes. What are you calling in next for your work or personally that you might like to share?

SPEAKER_04 54:11

I would love to have more partners and support for the Museum of Nails for the next couple of years. We are we have a frankly really long wish list of things and programming that we'd like to do and um that nail techs and nail artists have asked for us to think about producing. But you know, we're a nonprofit and we need support for grant funding and how to build up grant funding, and we need brand partners to execute any of these ideas and to be able to pay the artists for their time and work if they want to participate in them. It's really important that we we pay um all the artists for their commissions and for any workshops that they want to produce for us. And so we need the infrastructure to do that. So for me, like so much of what I'm calling in for the next few years has to just do with building up these ecosystems that that will help um it not be completely reliant on just me and my own resources, you know, like I want to be able to build out the Museum of Nails so that it can run without me eventually. I cannot be part of it indefinitely. I really love it and I'm going to be committed to it for many years. But I would love more help with that. And um I would love for more people to want to do perfume pages stuff and stuff. But I'm also I'm gonna be real with you. I keep my cards really close in terms of like my other upcoming projects. Um, I've built in public for a really long time, and that has been a blessing and a curse in some ways because I've been able to share the long-winding process of being an artist with people. And so they they've seen every step of the way for a lot of these projects. Like House of Beauty, people have been following since before it was sold, and it's been a 10-year-long process, right? Um, but I think for me, I don't even like telling people what upcoming projects I'm doing because I don't need so many people's eyeballs on it unless they're gonna help with it. So I'm keeping my cards close for all the other projects that aren't that aren't declared. Because I I think that when you speak it out loud too quickly, you might not be prepared for what comes out of it. And I know that I have an uncanny ability to manifest to the point where I have to just be very careful about what I say at this point, because things happen within 48 hours of me saying something sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 56:58

So I'm just like, let's not, let's not, let's not get too specific. You know what? Hell yeah. Like we we love divination and we're we're literal, like keep your cards close to you. You don't want your ops, you don't want any energy on anything that you're doing. So we love that for you. Uh, in the meantime, how can people best support the work that you do?

SPEAKER_04 57:20

There's so many different ways that people can lock into any of these projects for Museum of Nails. We have a monthly membership like program. So if they just go to museumofnails.com um or if they want to just follow us on social media, the Museum of Nails on Instagram, we'd be happy for that too. But we are doing um a monthly membership and that helps us build our programming and our support systems for a year at a time. We're also launching a beauty book club through the Museum of Nails starting in January, and we're gonna be doing six books, so you get two months per book, which I think is a really healthy amount of time because it takes a while to read a book sometimes, you know. So we're like, we're giving you as much time as you need. Um, and that's going to incorporate artist and author talks, of course. And some of them will also be workshops because some of the authors are nail techs or makeup artists. So maybe we'll have like makeup tutorials with the author, which I think will be so fun. Um, that's gonna be a monthly program, and that's gonna be like launched pretty much tomorrow. So you guys are the first to hear about it on this month.

SPEAKER_05 58:33

Congratulations!

SPEAKER_04 58:34

Thank you. Thank you. Um yeah, and we have merch coming, and that's already launched. So if you want to get a nail file or stickers or a t-shirt that supports Museum of Nails programming and talks about the history of nail art, then you can get that on our website. And um yeah, so there's many ways to plug in for that. And for my other work, um, the House of Beauty Lessons from the Image Industry is available in most places books are sold, so bookshop.org or Amazon or your local bookstore, and would love for you to grab a copy or 10, 20 if you love me. Um and I have my Substack, so you can always follow me and my my work on there too. It's it's arabelsaccardi.substack.com. So yeah, many places to find me.

SPEAKER_03 59:29

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. We'll be checking you out in all of those places. And uh thanks for your time today.

SPEAKER_04 59:38

Yes, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 59:41

Yeah, thank you. We love your brain. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 59:44

Yeah, you guys are the best. Appreciate the deep dive. Hope to talk to you soon.

Aesthetics, Conservatism, And Eugenics Lineage

SPEAKER_03 1:00:04

I like to see you shining Special kind of magic I'm gonna be like a stunster Special kind of magic material world Gonna beat me in the if material world As far as the galaxy goes We're flying in the if material world In material world G'll meet me in the if material world Your mind, your body and soul delighted in the if material world The if material world The if material world Immaterial World is hosted by Jessica Richards and Jasmina Bonkilla Music by Dia Luna Artwork by Lane Friend Follow us at Immaterial World Pod on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Visit our website at www dot immaterial dashworld.com or send us an email at Immaterial World Pod at gmail dot com.