EPISODE 8: THE BEAUTY

Inspired by Ryan Murphy's recent hot! hot! hot! series,The Beauty, Booth and Taylor-Foster discuss the emergence of a nascent subgenre in Horror. The subgenre in question? The aptly named 'Beauty Horror'. That's what we're calling it for now, at least. 

Our obsession with youth and beauty might not be new, and neither is its exploration on the screen, but we've certainly seen a surge in horror movies over the past few years positioning the topic front and centre. Nicolas Winding Refn's stylish 2016 shockerThe Neon Demon, Coralie Fargeat's decorated The Substance from 2024, last year's stunningly grotesque debut from new Norwegian talent Emilie Blichfeldt, The Ugly Stepsister, and now, of course, The Beauty. 

But why now? The ladies ride the somewhat slippery slope of gender politics, feminism, and beauty standards in an attempt to provide a meaty, visceral, honest, and intriguing look into our love/ hate relationship with beauty and how it has shaped cinematic history. Expect the usual highly intelligent conversation splattered with ridiculous humour – you'll find out exactly why Booth just loves the word MULCH. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Two women, countless villains. You have entered Kim and M versus Evil.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Mirror Mirror on the wall. Who is the fairest of them all? Snow White's evil stepmother and her obsession with beauty is a tale as old as time, but is becoming even more relevant in both today's society as well as within our cultural landscape, especially the movies.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Yes, we are acutely aware that a new breed of horror is coming to fruition. Exploring our obsession with youth and beauty with the recent slew of beauty-themed horror that's graced our screens over the last few years. But so far, while emerging as a subgenre in its own right, it doesn't have a particularly sensational name. So we're calling it beauty horror. For now at least. Beauty horror.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Did you come up with any?

SPEAKER_01 1:12

I did have a little go. Because you did say as a starting point, hagsploitation. See, I love that. That's still working, hopefully.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

I love hagsploitation. Um so I Yeah. And bitchy witchy or whatever it's called. There's a few, and I thought beauty horror. Like there's torture porn, for example. I don't love the word torture porn, but at least it's quite an exciting. It is.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

There's no real naming convention for horror subgenres. Because I, you know, because you get quite standard stuff like um Zomedy. Yeah. Zomedy. Zomcom Rom. Rom Zomcom. Rom Rom. Rom com. Zom Rom. Well, however it was, whichever order that went in, that was Sean of the Dead and applied only to Sean of the Dead, right? I think. There's a few. There's a few Zomides. Yeah, well, there's um I'm thinking of Cockneys versus Zombies.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

Yeah, and there isn't a Pride and Prejudice zombies.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

There's a Pride and Prejudice type zombies. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? Yeah. Which was a was a anyway, whatever. So with that in mind, um, because no, right, folk horror was another thing. I thought that's really dry. That's a really dry title. And then you've got some of these more exciting uh and uh inventive names. Anyway, so I came up with looksploitation. Okay, which kind of works. I've got nothing. I've got nothing.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

Well, yeah, because it's black exploitation already, isn't there? There's um a few of those black exploitation. So exploit anyway, if you think of any good old. Oh sorry, sorry, go go beauty booty.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Oh and um and and booty in the in the sense of the original meaning of that word, like treasure, you know, uh rather than your back size. Uh and hottie horror.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

Okay. In the wake of more female directed, produced, written, and themed horror, this pertinent subject, while it's certainly not uh brand new, uh, because we see its emergence in the 1960s, even possibly even before that, it's definitely pulsing and throbbing right now, specifically in the last few years, with films such as The Neon Demon, The Substance, The Ugly Stepsister, um, all films we're going to touch on for sure. And uh very recently, Ryan Murphy's new hit TV series, The Beauty, which has inspired today's podcast. So we're going to be discussing this while also digging out the key films aforementioned, and the players and the people, and also looking at culture a bit as well and history, if we can get it all in. Um I'm sure we'll be all over the place. We will be all over the place. Apologies now. Um, that have inspired this darkly disturbing and let's be honest, pretty much unapologetically female obsession with the pursuit of perfection. It's a big one, so it's going to be a two-parter, hopefully. And I will try not to keep getting sidetracked because I do get really interested in the why. Like off pod, I was just saying, why, Kim? Why? I'm in the shower. Why are we shaving our armpits? And I want to ask all the men out there. Like, I know they go, Well, it looks normal, doesn't it? And I agree, I've started shaving my less. And I and we said, let's not get on that on a hairy debate.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

I mean, it's all conditioning. It's all it's interesting. What is wrong with my hairy legs? It's not that there's nothing wrong. It's all all that we we have all been conditioned to to believe that um women should be hairless. But do you like a hairy man? I mean, y yes, but well, I mean, I'm I probably of the I don't mind how they cut. I don't really mind.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

Not fuss uh.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

No, but you know, it's all individual, you know, it's the it is, it is.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

I I don't love really hairy men. So yeah, maybe but then you know, I I also equally wouldn't I wouldn't expect a partner to wax or shave, and I think that's the difference. It's like whether we want to or not, um, we kind of are expected to, whether we want to or not. Like if I go to the gym and the pool and I haven't shaved my legs, I'm like, I feel really awkward. Um, why the fuck should I?

SPEAKER_01 5:46

Yeah, well, and that's the thing, isn't it? And of course, we don't all have to, and there are a lot of women that choose not to, but it is a it is a choice, and it is it is whether you intend it to be or not, a statement that you're making because people receive it and people will will judge it however they see fit. So you have to be as I said to you before, Em, that you know you have to be you have to accept that if you're gonna make that choice, I suppose. And I'm not brave enough.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Well, we are of a different generation. I mean, I've started to, yeah, I'm I'm not shaving my pits so much. I probably shouldn't be letting all this close personal information come out on the pod, but never mind. Done it now. Um, of course, some people like it as a fetish.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

I mean, and then that and that is a thing, isn't it? I guess it becomes a fetish.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

I can bring this back to film and make it relevant. Go on. Um I have you heard of Tinto Brass? Yes. So I had to interview Tinto Brass. Um, this was this is like my hashtag me too moment, actually.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Um my god, you're not gonna out someone.

SPEAKER_02 6:48

Well, Tinto Brass. Oh, okay, go on. Um, I mean it wasn't it wasn't awful, but um, so he's I interviewed him for a show called Shock Movie Massacre. Yeah, and um the interview had to involve me kind of trying to pretend scoring a film a part in one of his films. It was like a setup, yeah, bit of fun in the interview. And apparently um one of his demands on his actor actresses is that they have hairy armpits.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

That was a a really big thing. It's yeah, he he he doesn't want really shaving people, and he's Italian. I don't know if that's the thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:24

I mean it's a European thing, it had it's always been a European thing, certainly in France, um uh that women don't shave their armpits, right? True. That is true. It's not everywhere. This is good to know.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

Anyway, any hoodle, let's get back to the card.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

You're up. Oh, it's me now, it's me. Well, all right, all right. So going way back to uh one of the first villains to represent the dark side of beauty, both historically and culturally, is the 16th century aristocrat Elizabeth Bathory. I say Bathory. I say Bathory. I don't know what's correct. And she, I mean, she doesn't, I mean, this is commonplace now, but she allegedly bathed in the blood of 600 or so virgins in 16th century Hungary to restore and replenish her youth.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

What a bitch! What a bitch. Well, you said you do it.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

I do it, yeah. But I and I asked where you get your virgins from. My virgins.

SPEAKER_02 8:34

Um go up onto the go up to the East Hill. On uh our uh May Day, which is coming up, get a few virgins. No, there aren't any in Hastings, so no. Um yeah, don't let me go on about it because she's a very interesting character and the only um well, she's a real person. Yes. Um, and if she did murder 600 uh noble women and peasants, she's probably the most prolific serial killer ever. Um don't get me started, but we don't know whether it's true or not. It is it's a bit of a fuzzy area. But anyway, the reason I mentioned Or whether it worked. Yeah, or whether there were other people at play. Anyway. But I think but this this wanton act of chasing the young plump, I love that word, plump plump aesthetic. Um, it's clearly been a sort of dangerous and delicious, seductive narrative that people can play with in in films. Um, with Elizabeth Bothhory herself being directly referenced in Hama Hora's 1971 Countess Dracula. I love that film.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Wrote about that at university.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Yeah, so it's one of the first sort of fully nude, frontal nude scenes, isn't it? Is it? Well, that might be another one that she does. She didn't mind, did she? Um she uh Elizabeth Bothhorie appears as a cameo character in Eli Ross's Hostel Part 2, if you remember that. There's a poor girl sort of strung up like a pig, and she's sort of kind of coming over this woman in a bath, and then this woman's throat gets slipped, and then the beautiful woman in the bath kind of drinks the blood and you know, lavitates, that's not a word. Come on, lavishes in the blood. We don't do it, given half a chance. And then, of course, back to Ryan Murphy, we've already mentioned him in The Beauty. Uh, he obviously likes the character of uh Lizabeth Bathora because she um makes an appearance in American Horror Story Coven and Hotel with her character directly inspiring Lady Gargar's character. It's an evocative image, bathing in the blood of the young and beautiful, and one that um you picked up on as well in The Neon Demon towards the age.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. They um they well, we were we were discussing this off microphone, and um they're not acting we don't actually see them bathing in the blood, they're covered in blood. They're in two of the girls are in the shower washing it off or luxuriating in the whole process. They've got bits of um kind of flesh on them as well. Yeah, because we later find out that they did eat her. So mulch. Mulch that's another good word. Mulch. Oh, there's a bit of something, something there I can see on her cheek. And um, Jonah Malone's character, Ruby, she's in a bath, which I checked this morning, is not blood, it is just water.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

So she's but still, it is the blood of their formerly beautiful victims, and she was a virgin.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

She she says at the end, she says, like, oh by the way, I lied to you. I haven't actually ever done anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 11:41

So she's even more it's that whole value thing as well. Like, what is the most valuable um God, even in you know, anything with some kind of sacrifice? It's a virgin woman. Yeah, God cliche.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

So, anyway, yeah, so well, how is our obsession with beauty and the inevitable cost, both financial and otherwise, including the lengths we're willing to go to, um, shaped horror cinema over the years. And is the inevitable punishment um that plays out on the nearly always female characters a tad unfair?

SPEAKER_02 12:21

Well, this is yeah, this does sit, I wouldn't say uncomfortably with me, but I do, it's just a question that I have. Um, you know, we all these brilliant beauty horror films. I want to shout out the Soska Sisters as well, with their remake of Rabid set in the fashion world. She has this bizarre um uh medical procedure, and then she becomes more beautiful, and then she becomes more successful at work. So we've got the whole beauty equating to success theme in uh the Soska Sisters, Rabid as well. But so they're all female directed, and uh but but still it there is always a punishment. Yeah. Like, I mean, I know it's a horror film and it's more interesting, um, but I'll I don't know. I just get I I wonder what the message is. I'm I'm hoping the message is you know that we are doing it because we are all victims of the patriarchy.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

I mean, I think we can be and should be punished for for seeking this aesthetic ideal in some ways, because it is uh I'm hesitating to say shallow because obviously as capitalism marches on, it's more and more important that we look a certain way to make it in the world, to make a living.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

And then it starts getting really complicated when you think, well, if you're a feminist, which we both are, surely that doesn't, you know, it's too simplistic to think, well, that doesn't, you know, we you wear makeup, I wear makeup, we love it, we like looking nice. That does not mean you can't be a feminist. Surely you can do both. Yeah, and we do. I think Madonna sort of set that out a long time ago, didn't she? You can be everything and be a feminist, you can be sexy, you can be evocative, you can wear sexy clothing, and let's not get into too much feminist um dynamics in politics because it's um it's complex at best.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

But yeah, I mean, and and to your point about women directors, uh um, you know, I was thinking that my response to that is always, well, we all um live and are indoctrin live within and are indoctrinated by the this patriarchal framework we exist in, and um and our thoughts and behaviour are affected by that, whether we are male or female, and um that will come out. Um some of us not necessarily including me in that, but have unpicked it more than others um and are able to see through it a bit more, but even if we can see through it, we've still got we've still got all of this um stuff that we've learned just inextricably almost woven within us, and so we make decisions like wearing makeup um based on all of that, and even though I know that it's or I might feel that it's um oppressive or pushing me into a role, I still like it, and I'm still gonna do it. Fuck it.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

My terrible summisation of that. Um, yeah, right, but and of course in the films it's always a lot more extreme, so we can't always obviously compare films to the real life. The substance is a very extreme film, um, and what she's doing is very extreme. Um and it is a shame that people do have to sort of go to those extremes to sort of to try and feel wanted and accepted. Um, and I think in the substance, which we'll get onto another time or later, what got me, because I'm hitting that soon myself, I think is a very specific cut-off point in a substance where it's like, hey, when a woman turns 50, well, you know, and then Dennis Craig's character, he just doesn't, he doesn't even say the word. I think he just he can't verbalise it, can he? He just sort of goes, you know, they can't, like, you know, they can't work. Then she's like, no, what what can't we do? What what spell it out? What can't we do? Or what does it mean being 50? And he doesn't really want to say. Yeah. There's that scene in the in the restaurant.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Yeah, and that's funny, it just made me think in the last couple of days. Ali Larter, do you know the actress? She's been popping up in my feed looking fabulous. And the articles around her about the fact that she's 50 and looking this way and um and how she's still sexy, and like that alone, is you wouldn't have an article like that about men. About men, about a man that's 50.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

Yeah. And they don't say, Oh, I look this good for 50, or I look it's like just just full stop. Just say I look good, full stop, not I look good for 40 at home. Excuse me, I'm sorry I'm this age. It's really annoying. Anyhood. Um, when beauty equals power, success, being validated, adoration. Is it any surprise? We've always aspired to achieve this. We both do, we all do, men and women. Um, and so why the moral sting in every in every tale? We're gonna um look into this. Um perhaps we're simply exploring and echoing the world around us, which we're forced to be in. Um, and the films are like uh a mirror, really, onto our own lives and society. So thinking about beauty horror as its own little very exciting genre, uh, a little bit of potted history going back. Yeah. Obviously, we've gone all the way back to Elizabeth Bathori, but film-wise.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

I mean, there I and we are we are trying to keep this on a horror track. But um films about looks or exploiting looks exploitation films. Have uh have um uh uh been made that don't exist within the horror genre. And I'm thinking specifically of um Death Becomes Her, although there there are horror elements to that, um, because that gets referenced very um much in the beauty. And um Celine Song's Materialists, which is a recent one, um, which is also all about uh the pressure to look a certain way, that does go a bit more like the beauty does into um the pressures on men as well.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

Plus, various um uh I don't know specifics, but there's been loads of like Twilight Zones and Tales of the Unexpected and things like that, where there's always some sort of again, like a you do this, and then there's a little moral sting in the tale.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

There's also horror films about about beautiful women that use their beauty to lure men and succubus! Yes.

SPEAKER_02 18:55

Succub. Succubus. The succubus. Well, this is something I I should probably get out now. Um, is that we it the that the you could argue that the entire vampire genre comes into beauty horror. However, it's a genre in its own right and it's very prolific.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

There are millions of films, so yes, I know that the vampire genre um, you know, it they they are often a metaphor for um chasing youth, vitality, immortality, but we're not gonna go there simply because it is so mahulsive, um, and we'll do that another time.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

Okay, so potted history then. With that, with all that uh taken into account. Horror cinema has long used beauty as a site of terror, evolving from gothic tales of tragic vanity to modern critiques of the multi-billion dollar wellness and plastic surgery industries. Back in 1960, Georges Franjoux, is that how you say his name? Sounded good. Georges Franjou's Eyes Without a Face, I definitely know that film, sees the obsessive patriarch trope, a doctor who kidnaps young women to transplant their faces onto his daughter after she is disfigured in an accident. It's quite quite shallow. I mean, how many faces does he put on his daughter? I don't read it. Till he gets it right. All right, he keeps okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

Anyway, um, and then we see um possibly one of the first films that began what's called the hagsploitation uh genre, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane back in 1962. So this, you know, we're going back uh 60 odd years, this theme has been explored. Um so this birthday's bloitation subgenre, which weaponised the grotesque reality of the shock horror, sort of the crime of growing old in Hollywood and and that need to cling on to youth, which is obviously a theme in the substance. They both look in the mirror and scream and hate what they see, which is heartbreaking, really.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

It's not in the neon demon as well, one of the models.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

It's just a yeah, they it's just a good moment, isn't it? Look in the mirror, and but you know, when um what's her name does it, you know, the crate baby Jane. Yeah, ah, forgotten the addresses. Betty Davis does it. Doesn't that doesn't the mirror actually crack? She goes, she actually screams and it cracks. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Story, isn't it? The mirror cracks. Um, which is uh and a complete aside, but I'm just I was just thinking it was it's interesting in the neon demon, and I know we're gonna talk about this. We're talking about it now, it's fine. Because because women are be are made to believe they're old, whatever their age, and they're and they're around 20, and they're talking in that film. There's a discussion about when a model's days are done, and someone says 21, and someone says 20, darling, you know. And Elle Fanning's character, who's coming through, is 16, and she's the one they're all jealous of. Anyway, yeah, I know depressed. But the but I've but people think or women think they're old whatever age they are at twenty, you know. I think this is a thing. I think this is a thing.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

Yeah, and then when you get to um our age, you sort of I don't know, I guess you finally, finally make peace. Just takes a long time. We all get there. We all we all have to get old anyway. So um uh diving off point, I guess, the whole point of this discussion, which is a really, really uh deep and tricky one, was uh The Beauty, Ryan Murphy's TV series streaming on Disney Plus.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Um sorry we've taken so long to get there.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

So long to get there. Uh hope you guys have been enjoying it. Uh if not, uh watch it and tell us let us know what you think. Um, but for those of you who are less aware, let's get some basics. So it stars um Ryan Murphy regular. I think he's the most regular Murphy player, uh, Evan Peters. He's been in every single one. Yeah. Uh even Evan, even Peters, Ashton Kutcher, Jeremy Pope, Rebecca Hall, Anthony Ramos, and Isabella Rossellini. Um, also, there's uh, of course, Bella Hadid doing more of a cameo at the beginning. Um, and it is an adaptation of a comic book. So it's not actually Ryan Murphy's idea completely. Um, and I think we discussed this a tiny bit in the preview show. Um, it's just very good time. I don't know how long it was been in um development, but it's, you know, coming out what, a year or so after things like The Substance and the Ugly Stepsister. So it just seems like a very zeitgeist moment at the moment in cinema to be discussing what we look like and our obsession with beauty and and um injections and surgery and all this sort of thing. It's good timing.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

It certainly seems to have stepped up a gear in Hollywood, doesn't it? People are talking about it more people have been having done and uh yeah, more and more. I mean, it's always been a thing, it's always been a thing. But uh, right now, right now the transformations are astonishing, and people are talking about it, particularly with uh a Zempic culture and well, this is it.

SPEAKER_02 24:10

We're gonna talk a tiny bit because Ryan Murphy directly cites a Zempic culture as um something that um inspired him to make this. He didn't write the story, it came from a comic book by uh Jeremy Horn and Jason Hurley. I've not seen it, it's it's called The Beauty, this comic. Um, but I yeah, uh Murphy said he was interested in a Zempic culture, and I didn't know much about it at all until I started watching The Beauty, and then I started uh typing in a Zempic, and yes, it does seem to have taken Hollywood and America um I hate saying by storm, but it has. It's actually a diabetes drug, and the side effect is that uh you can lose a lot of weight, but this is where the ugly side of it, yes, you lose rapidly the weight, but you sort of age, your face ages because maybe it's just too rapid, maybe you just lose it too fast, and you can see people. I don't like naming and shaming, but but I'm gonna know um Kelly Kelly Osborne. Yeah, he was, I mean, everyone, it's shocking, shocking difference, not just a bit skinny, it's like a bit skinny and 30 years older looking.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

Yeah, I mean, I we don't know if she's if she's taken a Zempic or any other um drug like that. Um and I know you know she says that she's had obviously Ozzy died and her dad and um true, but she's completely different and then even like certainly she will have had and her mum. Yeah, and and I mean they're kind of similar, they probably go to the same surgeon. Yeah, probably, allegedly.

SPEAKER_02 25:50

But yeah, let's not let's not get into specific people because we don't know you're right, but there is it is sort of everywhere this quite sad going backwards in time. They don't call it they're not calling it heroin chic, but I feel like we're going back to heroin chic days. Yes, even though we'd made quite a lot of progress, or so we thought.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

People have said this about Margot Robbie in recent photos, um, having uh equated that label heroine chic with her very recently. Um really weird.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

It's all uh it does seem to be it's like two steps forward, one step back, with feminism as well, and just with the female role, two steps forward.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

To kind of bring it back to the beauty, the series, and um we do see as a society that a certain aesthetic um does correlate with success, financial gain, um fame, if that's what you're after. I mean, everybody wants lots of followers on social media, um, I say everybody, everybody that's on social media, because it could because that equates to financial um and validation. Of course, that's really really powerful. But so somebody like um uh Abela Hadid, who is in the beauty, who when you see before and after photos of her, has changed the way she looks um beyond recognition, she does not like look like the same person that she was um without intervention, um, and has become a top model. She's getting acting jobs. I mean, it's smart to cast someone like that in the beauty because that's what this show is commenting on. Um but we see that, everybody sees that and sees a route to wealth and adoration. I hesitate to say fame because there's a dark side of fame. Um and they affire to it. And it's yeah, and it's just investing in procedures in yourself, in you know, and sometimes sometimes it doesn't look as good as others objectively or subjectively. Um but the Kardashians as well and the Jenners, we we see the difference in the before and after with them.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Yeah, and it's and they and it's trends, yeah. They they changed, like you know, for a while it was like having a ridiculous, ridiculously big ass to the point where you looked like quite peculiar. Um, and then they were sort of decided, no, no, no, no, no, being skinny is good actually. And so it's almost like certain people decide on what looks good, and then everyone follows you.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

It's all tied to wealth. Beauty has long been tied to um being to wealth and and being an expression of wealth. Um once upon a time it was fashionable to have pale skin because it's it showed that you were not an outdoor worker. You not a flooding, you were indoors.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

And and being a bit lump meant you could afford cafes.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

So exactly, and then and then sort of uh along around the time that particularly uh well the foreign holidays became um something, a thing in the 80s, maybe santans were the aesthetic because it meant you could afford to go somewhere exotic.

SPEAKER_02 29:26

And now it just means skin cancer. You live and learn. Going back to the beauty. Um, I'm not gonna do a long plot because a lot of people will know it, but basically the world of it's set in the world of high fashion, which turns dark when uh international supermodels, well, people that became supermodels begin dying in gruesome and mysterious ways. FBI agents Cooper Madsen and Jordan Bennett are sent to Paris to uncover the truth. And as they delve deeper into the case, they uncover a sexually transmitted virus that's transforming ordinary people into visions of physical perfection. So there's actually um really good sort of metamorphosis scenes. I mean, there's literally a metamorphosis where they they sort of they get this uh STD either willingly or unwillingly. Um and then they kind of get cocooned, which forms part of the good, I don't know about body horror, kind of body horror. Yeah, some really good squelchy moments when they come out of this like vaginal, gooey kind of cocoon, womb-like gooey mess. And the irony is this is where some of the cleverness I think it is in the show, but I don't think it's been explored very much. Obviously, an STD, let's take, oh I don't know, syphilis, herpes, usually, you name it, as we all know, bit of AIDS, it doesn't make you look or feel great, does it? So ironically, here the script is completely flipped, and an STD, as they say in the actual show, this is an STD you're gonna want to get because it makes you beautiful. And I just wonder why they chose the writers at least, why they chose that particular mechanic of having an STD, which is normally something you know horrific, which results in your knob looking horrible, or your vajuzhu looking or or or syphilis. Yousal bit of d drops off. So normally it results in your body becoming alien to you or mutating in a horrible way, but in this case it mutates in a really good way.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

I I mean Which is odd. It does, but then they've they've got this mechanic in the series where um because of the whole financial thing and uh so this thing was developed initially, as you learn in the series, as a serum to sell to make people beautiful, right? And then they discovered that it also transmits once you've injected yourself with the serum or been injected with the serum, uh, you can transmit it sexually, and um the person that you've had sex with will also transform. Um so this devalues the um the product, the market value of the serum goes down, and so uh the the main villain this is a podcast about villains, um, in the series, uh Byron Forst, who is played by Ashton Kutcher slash Vincent Dinofrio before and after. Oh yeah, yeah. Um uh doesn't want to wipe out the value of his medical uh serum, and so he employs an assassin to kill off the people that have uh illegally um spread this virus, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:53

So that yeah, and it's in obviously because STDs they're normally free, you don't normally pay for them. Um but I just think there's loads of like potential as well, though, for that story to be really cool because uh there's one put character we really need to do a little bit of a dive into, and that is um he's introduced episode one, Jeremy. Yes, he's also played by a Jeremy, I think. Is that Jeremy Pope playing Jeremy?

SPEAKER_01 33:17

Jeremy Pope is the um the after the after, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:21

And he plays um an incel character, and I I could be totally wrong here, I probably probably am, but it if it's not the only, it's certainly one of the only um TV shows or films or whatever that actually actively calls a character an incel. It's not the only one, obviously, there's adolescence and stuff. But he's he's he's called an incel by the doctor. He actually says, you know what your problem is, you're an incel. I'm gonna make you a Chad. I'm not quite sure what Chad means in America, but I I presume he just means a player. Um I don't know if it stands for something, but in the American Yeah I mean like to me, incel, you know, to be called an incel.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Is that like a is that like a football player's chair sort of thing?

SPEAKER_02 34:02

Yeah, but an incel is obviously a complete insult, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 34:07

I mean it it's well it's no, but add its yes, because by definition it means involuntary celibate.

SPEAKER_02 34:15

So but interestingly, you know, incel culture is something that's is part of the toxic manosphere, which is a really good pertinent theme in the beauty that is looked at. And one of the reasons I think the beauty is is refreshing, really refreshing, is because apart from you know, all the films we've mentioned, and in the real world as well, this this whole aesthetic and obsession with beauty and surgery, it's largely a female domain, and I really like the fact that in The Beauty, actually, maybe because it's a gay director, but also because of the comic book, there's a lot of male characters who we see as victims. So we don't I don't particularly, you know, incel culture and incel people terrify me, but the way Jeremy is written is is good, I think, because even though in the first scene you see him beating off to some woman, some cam girl, and it's pretty yuck-yuck gross. You kind of do feel sorry for him.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

Yeah, and then Which is interesting. You do, and it and it talks about um the reasons or the issues around being a man and and expectations are met. And of course, the patriarchy, as much as it sets out expectations for women, also sets out expectations for men. And um, you know, and they talk about um uh I mean it addresses racism in uh early episodes, certainly. And with with him, with his character, as a black man, he's expected to have a big dick. True. And they talk about that, and he says he went to I think he says something about going to have sex with a woman. Uh was she was she a white woman? I'm not sure, but she expected his expected him to be bigger, and she's she expresses that she's disappointed.

SPEAKER_02 36:09

It's almost like reverse, reverse racism. It's like it should be a compliment, but it's not if that's all you're expected to be, it's just a cliché.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

Well, they talk about it in another episode, or it might be the same episode, but him when he when he's recruited to be the assassins um sidekick. Yeah, um, they talk about how the feticisation of black people by white people, particularly, I mean, specifically they're talking about white women wanting to have sex with black men. But then they also mention that oh, the husbands like to watch. So this is this whole and and they talk about white white men getting more and more more of everything. Um so you get this, like you said, you do empathise or sympathise with that character as an incel.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

Which is it, you know, it is useful because you know, uh I don't know enough about it, and I mean obviously it's only a TV series, but I thought it was refreshing to see a character like that. Um, and I mean, and then and then this is another interesting part mechanic, if you like, in the in the in the beauty script quite early on. Um, he does go to change himself. He thinks I've had enough of this, I I need to change myself utterly. And he goes to get a procedure and it doesn't quite work, does it? It's not it's not what he thought it was gonna be. Yeah, he just looks weird.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

Yeah, really weird. A bit like the doctor that performs it the center. Yeah, it's weird.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

And then this someone, and I think is it the doctor? I can't remember who says actually, I I I'm gonna sort this out for you. Well, because he comes in killing people. Yeah, he's about to uh Jeremy is like, I've had it enough, I've had it, and he's about to kill this doctor. And the doctor's like, no, no, no, I can sort this out, I can sort this out. And he high I presumably hires some prostitute woman who has inadvertently maybe got um the beauty as an STD and she's paid to have sex with Jeremy, and then he goes, undergoes his own metamorphosis and he comes out as a beautiful black man with presumably a big dick. I don't know. Or do they there is some thought there is again with Ryan Murphy, yeah, you can expect male nudity.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Yeah. Tick, tick, tick. I'm trying to remember what male nudity is there.

SPEAKER_02 38:33

Well, there's definitely arses everywhere. Yeah. I don't know if we get dick.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

I can't remember. No balls. You do and the ugly stepsister.

SPEAKER_02 38:43

You do, did you? Did you see? Yeah, there's like there's a sort of erect penis walking across the screen.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

Oh no, and the mum, the step, the step mum, the m is giving a blowjob.

SPEAKER_02 38:52

Yeah, you can't see the I saw it. You saw I saw the job, not the blow. But I saw the job.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

But you saw the penis, didn't you? I just remember the penis. But the I mean this is play into everything I always say. When you see a penis on screen, normally, it's either in darkness, it's at a distance, it's fleeting or flaccid. It's very all of those things, or comedic. Never, never wow. It's never all the body. They always shoot or usually shoot women's bodies in a sexy way, in a like a lascivious sensual way. Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

Change that, Kim. Just become a director. I have trouble, yeah. Change it all. Um, so yeah, we've got we've got the incel character, he becomes gorgeous, and he ends up working with the assassin. And it's the assassin's job to obviously eliminate people who have got hold of the beauty and um for free, because we can't have that, can we? Your your billion-dollar beauty industry is gonna go down because um STDs are free. Um, and he they're getting rid of people who have acquired it to stop the um virus spreading. Um, but I think we should talk about he's just called the assassin. The assassin. That's played, is it Antony Ramos? Yes. My daughter said that's her favourite character in the whole series. Because he's quite again, it's just a job. He's almost got a bit of a sort of pulp fiction-y character vibe going on, hasn't he?

SPEAKER_01 40:21

Yeah, he has, and he fucking loves Christopher Cross, and so do I. I don't get this, but yeah. I mean, I this is when I first watched a trailer, we talked about this in the last episode, but um, I was so excited by the prospect of some yacht rock, which I'm a big fan of, and particularly Christopher Cross, and we get in the in the series two Christopher Cross songs. I mean, Anthony Ramos is singing along to um Sailing, I think it is.

SPEAKER_02 40:49

Yeah, and they have quite deep discussions about music. He's a he's an intelligent assassin.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

Well, I mean, the point of including Christopher Cross, as he like his speech says, is um Christopher Cross was riding the wave of success in 1980, uh, or around that time, and when people it was around the advent of the music video, and then people he was very successful because the songs were great and his beautiful voice, and then people saw him, and he didn't fit. Oh, I mean, you know, and this is one of the reasons, it's not the only reason I love Christopher Cross, and not the main reason, but one of the reasons I love I love him is because of the way he looks. It's the reason I love Phil Collins as well, because they're both unlikely looking pop stars. Um but yeah, anyway, so that's so there's this whole thing about his career getting um derailed because of his because of his looks, and yet this character, the assassin, has really taken Christopher Cross in, probably partly because of that, like me.

SPEAKER_02 41:57

So we've got the um we've got all these different characters, um but in terms of the the themes of the beauty, yes, let's get into that. I mean, obviously, we we we as we always say with uh horror and with a lot of the films and genre films that we talk about, it does always seem to come back to capitalism and it's the beauty is no different. I know because um yeah, it's all about monetizing, monetizing. I mean, beauty obviously is monetized, but it's monetizing um this this this serum which turns you into your absolute perfect self. But also we do have themes because of the STD element, this is what I found interesting. I don't know if it's explored enough because there are themes of like sex, intimacy, desire. It's still being punished because we haven't mentioned this, but you have this um this STD, which turns out to be a good thing, which then turns out to be a bad thing because if you get this, you turn beautiful, but then you spontaneously combust, or whatever they call it. They don't I don't know if they call it that. So people literally catch fire, and that's established quite like Nician ketosis, they call it in the you do. I mean, you see Bela Hadid and and some fantastic blowing up scenes, yes, really good fun.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

Um which is why they then in the series develop booster jabs which um prevent control.

SPEAKER_02 43:27

That's the or do they just put it off? Well, this is it, we don't know. An explosive bomb of human, beautiful, human experience.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

And it's almost like this subscription model that's become popular in uh modern in the modern day, if you you know, because so they get regular payments from you, like whatever, whatever you subscribe to, streaming services, blah blah blah. But in Byron Forst's case, uh and the and the beauty, which is what they call the injectable, um It's it's regular boosters to stop yourself from exploding.

SPEAKER_02 44:04

Well, yeah. I mean, I actually did a post on my Patreon of me when I watched the substance. I got really inspired because I thought, I mean, obviously the substance is uh at an extreme end of what is happening on a sort of cellular biological level. We're not quite there yet. But even I, for a while, I don't know if you've heard of them, I think it's it's called NRD or something, or maybe it's not NRD. It's something, so I actually had some. It's been meant to promise, it's meant to make your cells on a cellular level more youthful, makes your cells younger. Um, but it's still being researched. But I went and bought it and injected myself with it. Did you? Yeah. I'm gonna look it up. Carry on. Oh, I can't because my phone's recording.

SPEAKER_01 44:53

Oh, look it up online.

SPEAKER_02 44:54

I'll then it's something like it's it's N R D. You have you not heard of it?

SPEAKER_01 44:58

No.

SPEAKER_02 44:59

Ooh.

SPEAKER_01 45:00

Talk about Noah. What can I talk about? Byron Forbes. Well, Byron Forbes. To bring it back here.

SPEAKER_02 45:07

He's the corporation. Yeah. And his relationship with Isabella Rossellini.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

Oh my god, this is just so there's so much in this. It seems like it seems like, but it seems like a really kind of straightforward um series, surface level, uh untle, and it is unsubtle in a lot of ways, but there's so much in this. There's there's characters that that have the serum that that you have your heart bleeds for. There's that couple that aren't a couple, the um what are they? What are they nurses? The the trans the trans guy and and the guy that he works with, and it seems like they kind of love each other a little bit. And and he just wants to be the woman that he is inside, you know? I don't and and um and they take this they take the serum and um it turns it turns him into the woman that he wanted always wanted to be.

SPEAKER_02 46:11

And then that's quite weird then. So hang on, does this does the beauty serum make you what you want to be in your head?

SPEAKER_01 46:19

Who knows?

SPEAKER_02 46:20

But it turned like if you wanted to be a woman. Well, maybe it's not just him becoming more beauty. What you really are inside.

SPEAKER_01 46:27

What you really are inside, maybe. I don't, I'm not, I'm not really sure. It's really confused and confusing, actually. But there are these characters, and there's that, there's that um couple, the the FBI guy, Maya, Mayer, however you say his name, who is married and they have this really strange relationship him and his wife, but because they've got this this daughter who has this disease, and as a family, um Ashton Kutch's character, Byron Force, comes to visit them and says, I can I can save your daughter. And they all take the serum and they all turn beautiful and it fixes her um disease, the daughter, and they turn into this beautiful family, and they all seem they're all really happy. Although they start he starts working then for uh forced, and um that's really nefarious, and um anyway, but uh essentially it makes them it fixes their problems. I mean they've still got this ticking time bomb inside.

SPEAKER_02 47:29

That's the thing, it's uh there's always like a I guess that is there has to be in Ralsting and the Telewest, it wouldn't be like that well, they'd be in the punchline.

SPEAKER_01 47:37

But it's not just about people seeking physical beauty, contemporary.

SPEAKER_02 47:42

I think that's the that's always the theme, whether it's um the Twilight Zone or something, it's always like, yes, you can borrow time, but there's a catch, or it will run out. About this Cinderella all over again, you've got till midnight, and then you'll go back to normal, or or something will happen, or and also about this whole time in order to keep this, you have to keep giving us money. Yeah. That whole exploiting of subscription culture is I mean, that is where the economic model now has completely gone, whether you're buying uh cat food or what I was talking about earlier. Yeah, it's called NAD Plus. Have you not heard of it? Oh, I have heard of it. Yeah, I said N A D, didn't I?

SPEAKER_01 48:21

TikTok, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:22

So Nicotym Nicotym Nicotimide. What's it stand for? Adenine denotolide injections. And they are advertised as the fountain of youth treatment designed to boost energy, improve cognitive function, and enhance skin vitality. And I fet I say I fell for it. I don't think it's a scam, but I um it's quite expensive, it's like 300 pounds for a vial. But yeah, you get sent um your injections, you get sent a vial and these little cleaning things, and I just felt found it like the next step up in beauty. I was in my bedroom injecting my thigh fat with NAD, and you do feel something. I did I didn't notice, I didn't go like the beauty, I didn't do it for and go into a cocoon. How long did you give it? I did it for about three months, but I just found it too expensive. But you know, the Kardashians are the ones that made that viral on online as well. Right. Um, but I just found it interesting that I was again with a lot of films and sci-fi, you see it in the films first, and then life starts copying it. Yeah, it starts to, and it's already happening. Yeah, you're already you can already inject yourself with various things to make you uh feel younger. Things are working on a a more cellular level. It's not just about like Botox and good makeup, it's about how can we change our molecular structure and our cells to perform better and look younger and it's happening, Kim.

SPEAKER_01 50:00

I know it's happening. I'm thinking about Byron Forced again now, which is good because we bring it, should we bring it back to the series and and him as a villain because and and his relationship with his wife, which you mentioned, and we haven't touched on that yet, because Isabella Rossellini is incredible in this. She's the she's my favourite character.

SPEAKER_02 50:23

Oh, is she? She's at first you don't know they're married at first at very at first, basically, for some reason, this older woman who despises this person. Like when I first started watching it, I thought, is it her son? Is it some bizarre business partner? Like at the first two episodes, or so you don't realise they're actually married, and he's obviously undergone this beauty.

SPEAKER_01 50:45

Yeah, so you get an episode where it goes back to three years ago, and he goes to this retreat and brings all his billionaire contacts, and they all do the beauty. But then he kills the villain of the mob. Yeah, and he's he's ruthless. I mean, he's clearly a villain. He talks about friends and these booster jabs meant for him and his friends, and I'm like, you haven't got any friends, you know.

SPEAKER_02 51:07

No, maybe he's experimenting on. I do just very quickly love the fact that it's like a new insult that um I can't remember her her name in the series, sorry. But Franny Isabella, yeah, Franny is a very good thing. Franny just calls him something like that all the put-downs that she has. I kind of wish we'd got some quotes because they're brilliant. But I remember one of them, which is like you mean nothing to me, you stupid little clown boy. You're nothing but a clown boy.

SPEAKER_01 51:33

But so by the end, by the end, right? So they've got this this this really tense and aggressively antagonistic relationship where they they seem to hate hate one another. Um and they talk about each other's bodies. Well, I mean, Ashton Kutcher is mostly Ashton Kutcher in the film after having undergone the the procedure, it's not procedure, the the treatment. Um but yes, he was Vincent D'Nofrio before that, and um who is a always always amazing, and uh and kind of underlined his villain credentials as Kingpin, uh Daredevil's foe, in which he was extremely chilling and he and he kind of transfers some of that over here. Um but yes, she has not Isabella Rossolini's character has not undergone the treatment, and and they and he talks about her back body being like a bunch of hams or something. I don't know, hanging under a captain. They are they mean to each other. And of course, Isabella Rossellini has always been one of the world's most beautiful or uh women or celebrated for her beauty and has visibly not had any work done. She's seemingly aged gracefully. So so this is interesting. That's a really interesting thing to put in this series, cast her and uh throw these kind of um uh accusations and insults at her as being ugly and uh fat or whatever, whatever he says to her. Um but by the end of the series she she gets so she gets sorry if this is a spoiler. Yeah, should I not say she gets injected um forcibly by her sons who've taken the um the serum and she transforms and then she she well she tries to kill herself um because it's not what she wants, and she becomes Nicola Peltz Beckham. And and and um she wears this top that is a throwback to Isabella Rossellini in Death Becomes Her. It's the same, it's not quite the same, but it's it's it's referencing that top, uh, which is cool. I like that. That is a little a good little nod. Um but she she so despises uh this this aesthetic uh aesthetically good looking form she's become. Well she'd make holes with herself the whole time, hadn't she? Yeah. And how there's beauty in um the antiques that they've they've acquired because of their age. And and she's really angry that they've taken away from her the she says the scars and I don't think she says the wrinkles, but that she's earned it through her.

SPEAKER_02 54:32

She it's but basically seeing yourself historically, like this is my this is my body over the years that I have experienced, and that is a sort of a photo, a true, honest photograph and map of my of my life, and uh and she honours that. But the other interesting character we should just mention is um the one that played by um is it no the the woman is her? Oh, Jordan, no, she's Jordan. So Jordan, another spoiler if you've not seen it, very sorry. Um, so you can get the beauty uh willingly by by buying it and injecting it. You can get it willingly by hiring as someone who's got the beauty and get it and getting it as an STD, or you can get it without realizing it. So she at one point just has a seemingly meaningless fling one night while they're working. I can't remember where they are. Other great thing about this series is just how glamorous it is. I mean, they're in Venice and Rome and New York and Paris and fabulous places. Um, and she has a one-night fling with a man who has the STD, and she starts burning up and getting really hot, and then she goes off into her little weird cocoon and comes out as a kind of you can almost see it is her, but obviously it's a much more beautiful version of her. But what's interesting about that storyline, which which obviously a very conscientious decision, is that she's not happy again, like Isabella Rossellini's character, she's not happy about it. She was happy, she was sort of well, at first, she was happy with what how she was, and she wasn't completely black or white because in the beginning she fesses up very quickly and says, Yeah, I had a boob job. I had a boob job because I didn't want to be itty titty bitty litty. Itty bitty titty committee. What is it? Itty bitty titty committee.

SPEAKER_01 56:22

That's what they said to her at school. Itty bitty titty committee.

SPEAKER_02 56:25

Yeah, and so she had a boob job, and we don't judge her for that because we've all done bits and bolts.

SPEAKER_01 56:30

And and because it's childhood bullying that led to her feeling insecure about that, and so she fits.

SPEAKER_02 56:36

It's almost like, yeah, there's ex there's there's levels of uh surgery that maybe is the norm now and is acceptable. But when she turns into this model version of herself, this is played by Rebecca Hall, she's not happy, she's crying.

SPEAKER_01 56:49

The the model version is uh who was the actress's name? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 56:54

Well, it's been annoying as an actress well. It's like, sorry, you're out now.

SPEAKER_01 56:57

The good-looking one. But you know what though? I find it really interesting because Rebecca Hall is a beautiful woman, and Evan Peters, who plays her uh uh partner and um man that she falls in love, they fall in love with each other, um, or have already fallen in love with each other, and they don't admit it at the beginning. Weird sort of yeah, but they're both hot, hot, I hate that word, but they're both hot people. They're actors that are lusted after and held up as beautiful people, and they've cast these two people in these roles, these before roles, and you say Rebecca Hall transforms when she transforms. She's supposedly a more beautiful version of herself. I think it's interesting that she's not because they're both beautiful women.

SPEAKER_02 57:46

They are. I think she's just more she's sort of more, I don't know, sort of symmetrical, in fact, more bland. She's sort of more bland and more easy to look at, more symmetrical. She's got less less big lips and less bigger features, which is what made her her. And I think she was happy with it.

SPEAKER_01 58:04

And that's I think that's the point, and that's why they've cast those those two characters.

SPEAKER_02 58:08

And also she didn't want the beauty, remember. So it's not like they were trying to show the extreme what you can become. She didn't even want it.

SPEAKER_01 58:16

Uh there's a beauty in um the beauty's diverse, beauty's in the eye of the beholder. Uh, and that is the point, right? I think ultimately, and we shouldn't all be trying to make ourselves look uh uh fit into a certain narrow, as you said earlier, trend-driven trend-driven beauty. I do.

SPEAKER_02 58:35

Well, it's true, there are people who've had their tits done, they're having boob jobs.

SPEAKER_01 58:39

It does make you money.

SPEAKER_02 58:40

Yeah, but apparently, um someone told me, like, you know, b uh uh off topic, sorry. Um when boob jobs were, I guess, 80s, in the 80s and 90s, they were just these bizarre, it looked like a couple of footballs torn in half and glued on, and they looked awful. Um, and and people who had that done, it's like that is not the look. The look now people want smaller or natural looking, they're even asking for the pendulous look. So it's almost like don't bother because you know, in five, ten years' time that's not even gonna be what you aspire to.

SPEAKER_01 59:15

No, no, so you can't win. It's like advising people to buy to invest in classic clothes that don't date, isn't it? It's a similar thing. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 59:24

Are there any themes? Are there any themes that we really want to get out about the beauty of the country? I'm sure there are. We could always return to this sometime.

SPEAKER_01 59:34

I wanted to I don't know. Well, yes, I suppose so, but I wanted to talk a little bit about Cooper as the other character that was like Elizabeth Rossellini's character that completely embraces um the definition of beauty that is that is counter to just this aesthetic surface level thing. And and he talks about is it kitsugi, the Japanese um uh practice of repairing pots and stuff.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:02

They always do this metaphor, don't they? Oh, you take something, something that was once beautiful, got broken, and then you put it back together with bits of gold, and you make something perfectly cracked.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:12

What did he say? It's perfectly cracked or something. Oh, um uh embracing imperfections can make a thing stronger than before, is is what he says. Um, and because he'd gone on a date with a woman who had told him teeth. Yeah, about his grey teeth. He said she's asked him if he'd had a childhood and um disease that caused the children.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:33

Yeah, and Jordan says, Well, how can you're so lucky, you're so you're so kind about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:38

And that that that play that was relatable. I mean to me. Yeah, but anyway, but they're but the but they're but they're both both of those characters. I thought it was um is it interesting? I suppose it's interesting, it's contrasting to the other characters. They're both smart, they both uh speak French and Italian, they both know Morse code, they're blinking at each other in the van, I remember, in in Morse code. Um and they're both presented as way more appealing and way more sexy uh than anyone else in the series that is fervently pursuing uh this idea of aesthetic perfection. I don't think any of us are supposed to or do find any of those other characters.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:24

And even Bella Hade looks quite odd in it. She looks very extreme, she's not painted in the particular she she looks beautiful, but I mean everything about her, her styling is very angular, almost man-like.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:37

I don't know if she I don't know, she just looked well, maybe so, but I I also those though the their brains, these guys, they're also good looking, as I said, Evan Peters and Rebecca Hall. But they they've got all this brain power, and yet it's not making them a lot of money. They their job, they're doing a really um important and uh a job that takes a lot of their uh intelligence, uh smarts, um, but it's not renumerated well the way a model's job focus is.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:12

No, no, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:14

So Hesley makes a point about saying, I wish we could stay in these pot show tickets.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:18

Yeah, what yeah, what you do never really, never really equates with your financial gain in a in a career. For now, we are gonna wrap up um chatting about the beauty, even though there is tons more. You can always chat to us. Um, I think you can always leave comments on um wherever you get your podcast. I use Spotify, but wherever you get your podcast, you can um comment, email, send us a message, send tell us what you think of um the beauty, um, and anything else you might want us to cover. But I hope you've enjoyed the episode. Part two, we're going to be doing a bit more of a dive into definitely the ugly steps, so which is my new fave. The neon demon and the substance. Hopefully, do the substance if we have time. I don't know. Or we'll give it its own ep, its own part. Yes, just do that. Okay, until then, have a good one. Stay evils.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:13

Stay evil.