<
https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2025/nov/07/beauty-industry-arabelle-sicardi-book>
"The very first sentence of Arabelle Sicardi’s book,
The House of Beauty,
reads: “When I tell you that beauty is a monster, I need you to know it is my
favorite kind.”
Sicardi, who splits their time between New York City and Los Angeles, has a
love/hate relationship with the beauty industry. A writer and consultant
working in beauty and tech, their projects include a beauty newsletter, a
creative collective called Perfumed Pages and a non-profit arts project called
the Museum of Nails Foundation. In their new book, they examine the impact of
the $450bn beauty industry – the pretty and the very ugly.
Sicardi has written about beauty as “a terrorizing force” for their whole
career, including a stint as a beauty editor at
BuzzFeed, which proved a
spiky learning experience. “I wrote a story critical of an advertising campaign
and then got flak for it,” they recall. “I decided to leave because I didn’t
want to deal with the politics and the insincerity of being told I can do
something, but then having my work deleted. That type of situation still
happens very regularly to writers for publications to this day,” they said.
In an era of unrealistic beauty standards, such ambivalence needs little
explanation. But Sicardi interweaves deeper strands: the beauty industry’s
relationship to the climate crisis, the markup on basic goods like shampoo in
US prisons and how the history of nail salons in the US relates to the Vietnam
war.
Yet Sicardi describes themselves as “devoted to telling stories about the
beauty industry” because of its ability to bring people together and provide
comfort – as with the monthly nail appointments they describe as “one of the
only indulgences I could afford” in their early 20s.
I spoke to Sicardi about the beauty industry’s hideous parts: exploitative work
conditions, overconsumption and Coco Chanel’s links to fascism. Our
conversation was edited for length and clarity."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
