🎙️New on the Back Row podcast: The Fashion Law’s Julie Zerbo joins me for a semi-emergency pod on the Phia scandal. How illegal is cookie stuffing? Does this rise to the level of “fraud” as many creators have said? Hear her answers in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
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Fashionista surveyed fashion workers about their job satisfaction. The findings: 43.4 percent reported feeling “happy” in their jobs, while 23 percent reporting feeling “neither happy nor unhappy — it’s a job.” Regarding compensation, 67 percent reported feeling underpaid. Some also noted a lack of diversity in their workplaces.
Every so often an outlet asks a celebrity a question the world really wants answered, that has nothing to do with their creative inspirations, favorite lotions, or romantic relationships. Men’s Health has done the world this very service, asking Lenny Kravitz why he exercises in leather pants: “I perform onstage in leather, denim, whatever, so those are the pants I wear to train.” Also, he notes he’s not prohibited by his pants should he be wearing leather and decide he wants to spontaneously exercise.
Meghan Markle was nominated for a daytime Emmy for Outstanding Lifestyle Series for her cooking and crafts Netflix show which is a god-tier flex given the show’s reception.
Nocturnal Skincare’s serum — part of TikTok’s “morning shed” trend (internet for “works while you sleep”) — now comes in a pretty travel kit.
Supermodel Paulina Porizkova looked so excellent at her recent wedding. She did not want to wear white because she had modeled “so many white bridal gowns.” I’d call her dress gray but she told Vogue, “I wanted the color to be sort of a not color. Something ineffable and elusive, so you couldn’t say ‘she wore a yellow dress’ or ‘she wore a pink dress.”
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Facelift Confessions, Part 2: 'Expect an Emotional Toll'
Back Row is doing a miniseries this summer in which people who have undergone facial cosmetic surgery reveal what it actually feels like, both physically and emotionally. The first installment brought in a lot of new readers (welcome!), and I'm pleased to publish the second part.
Going into these interviews, I expected to hear about pain, side effects, and cost analyses. I didn't expect to hear about the emotional toll these procedures take. Everyone talked about how challenging it was to see their faces as they underwent recovery. And many also brought up how strange it is to look in the mirror and see a new face looking back at you.
Despite how extreme these procedures are — requiring a year to fully heal in many cases — and the side effects many experience, no one spoke about their surgeries with regret.
Ahead, three more women generously share their facelift stories.
“I remember waking up and crying because I felt so alone”
Julia, 35, Chicago
I had a mid-facelift and a temporal lift last year, when I was 34. It wasn’t about looking younger — it was about facial asymmetry. I’d had jaw surgery at 18 for an overbite and a jaw that would lock up, and after that, the right side of my face was always a little puffier. I kept thinking it would go away, but it didn’t. I did threads and fillers for years to manage it, and I got so tired of the upkeep that I finally thought, “What if I just got an actual facelift?”
Financially, it was the difference between doing this and buying a home. A Beverly Hills surgeon quoted me $50,000.
But then, I found a surgeon in Turkey on Instagram…
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