Ep 7 edit 4

The podcast hosts discuss the pressure people feel to conform to beauty standards, often driven by social media. They talk about Kim Kardashian's procedures, such as using the drug Wigovie for weight loss. They mention other popular cosmetic procedures like breast augmentation, liposuction, and skin lightening. They also discuss societal comments on body hair and the impact it has on women's self-esteem. The hosts question whether these procedures are done for oneself or to avoid criticism. They share personal experiences with hair straightening and body hair removal. Close your eyes and just for a minute imagine this, you are going to move to a new country and no one knows you were there and you are given an option, before moving you can do any amount of changes to your body and your face, no strings attached, no financial constraints, no one is going to judge you either, what would you do to your body in that case, would you get naturally thicker eyebrows, longer lashes maybe, a slimmer nose or plumpier lips or as they say a brighter complexion, longer hair which is straight or curly hair which has the most perfectly defined curls, would you take your belly fat and move it around somewhere maybe to your butt or to the sides to get a perfect hourglass shape or do you just want to change the shape of your face maybe, want more angled cheekbones or jawline or maybe you know simply you want to just get rid of all your stretch marks or any scars on your body, open your eyes now and answer yourself truthfully, did you even for a second want to change anything about yourself and mind you there is no judgement over here. Hello and welcome to our podcast Coffee Plus Sistren, I am your host Vainika and with me is my friend and co-host Sanjana and today we are going to talk about Kim Kardashian's big butt but not really, we are going to talk about the procedures she has done to herself to get to the big butt and how the big butt is not big anymore and it just might become big again in another few years but yes we are going to talk about how she basically fit herself into that infamous or famous Madeleine Monroe dress and you know it's so talked about that she lost weight so suddenly and that's one of the you know the trending things right now which is called Wigovie, yeah the secret behind her weight loss is not some magic exercise routine but a magic drug which is gaining a lot of popularity especially in the States, basically you know how Wigovie started was Ozempic, it was a drug catered to type 2 diabetes people and it was a very sort of important drug for them right, it's actually quite transformational but what's happening is that when the company or even the people realized that Ozempic had a side effect which is you know weight loss, they started doing you know those offhanded prescriptions of getting Ozempic prescribed to them for weight loss and when the company realized they were like oh yay let's do this you know so they did a whole FDA, they did a trial right but on obese people and it showed that yeah weight loss was a you know this was happening and then they rebranded the data and now it's called Wigovie for weight loss and it's quite cheap actually I think it's like $4000 for a month or something like that, quite affordable from USA standards right, quite affordable from Kim Kardashian standards, yeah and the thing is people started using it a lot to a point that I think Ozempic, there was a crisis in the US, people who actually needed Ozempic didn't have access to it because this wasn't there in the market, it was all Wigovie and that's quite sad and there was there were TikTok trends and reels and everything that you know people want to go for a wedding and they want to lose weight quickly, oh Wigovie and didn't realize the underlying science behind it which was that it suppresses your diet right and you're not getting enough nutrients and everything and you know you're sort of losing weight and even the trial was done on obese people not on healthy weight people, the crux is that human beings will go to any extent to fit in with whatever is the current beauty standard, yeah but who is defining these standards and to what extent are humans ready to go, so for example Sanjana this is just one of the many things, Kim Kardashian's big butt, her sister Kylie Jenner has admitted to having breast augmentation when she was 19, when she was still a teenager so young, yeah and obviously there has always been things like liposuction and Korea is crazy after this thing called double eyelid surgery and there's like always some trend right going on and of course nose job and getting those big pouty lips, that's still a thing I think everyone keeps, it's become injectable so now everyone just gets injections and makes their lips plumper and everything, and the new fad is buckle fat removal surgery where you your face looks sunken, you have sunken cheeks, yeah like Bella Hadid has now, you know Wigovie's side effect is actually the reduces your buckle fat so you get the horrored cheek effect so that's one of the effects of Wigovie as well and all of this is hugely enhanced by social media especially Instagram today, it was 1997 when Naomi Wolf who wrote the beauty myth said that young girls are being exposed to a lot of sexualization, to a lot of sexualized images and kind of feeling forced to be promiscuous early, they are growing up very precocious and imagine how much more pronounced this is now, how much more pressure people feel because of the social media and the Instagram effect, so much so that when the whole BBL trend happened, quite a lot of women from the US started traveling to Mexico to get it done for cheap and there were a lot of botched surgeries and people actually died in trying to get a big butt, and you know if you extrapolate all of this to India right, because of course you know we are a low income country comparatively and not everyone has access to these resources but now you do see a lot of aestheticians and aesthetic clinics popping up and there's like so much you know treatment, yeah there's so much treatment and so what's the drug that people use to lighten their skin? Deuterium, yeah that and there's like so much, you do so and so chemical peels and everything to make your skin look glassy and hair removal and furthermore for you know brights to be, so yeah I mean talking about this about the scenario in India right, over here I think what's mostly I think what's done a lot is of course skin lightening treatments, glassy skin treatments, hair removal is such a big thing in India, I don't think it's such a big thing in the US because I mean we have darker hair right so it's more pronounced and I think people to just feel like it's their birthright to comment on people's body hair and their facial hair and everything, I have gotten commented on in college, you need to get your upper lip, upper lip bithya mujhe removed, you know in college I was getting this comment since I was 12, since I hit puberty as if like at the age of 12 years old I should be worrying about my facial hair instead of like being in my box or playing around or doing some sort of you know what things 12 years old do and not like care about how they look and how their facial hair is growing and everything right, so basically what happens Sanjana is that like we've discussed in earlier episodes, young girls and women are made to feel so conscious by the societal standards which can come from comments, from media, people they see around themselves, that they start to believe, genuinely believe that if they do all these things including makeup and going for these procedures, they are doing it for themselves to feel confident, it's called self-care now, it's called self-care yeah, going to like an aesthetician and getting like chemical peels is like oh I'm doing self-care today, okay great it might be, I'm not judging anyone, but the question over here is are you really doing it for yourself or are you doing it to protect yourself from getting comments or are you doing it just to get more compliments on some part of your body, no basically we are busting the myth of confidence, yeah it's like for confidence, where are you drawing the boundary for confidence, yeah because for Kim Kardashian it's Vigo V, yeah you that may not be as accessible to you so you have drawn your limit at say getting skin whitening treatments and someone else will, like Sanjana will have drawn their limit at painting her lips red, no but I did get like a full body hair removal and I sometimes question why I even did it in the first place, it was expensive, it takes time, hurts also, so I have to put myself through that pain, yes beauty is pain, yeah no it's not, that's what I was saying, why did I put myself through, why did I put myself through it and I think I really because since I was a hairy person and ever since I hit puberty people have commented on my hair so much that you know oh you're wearing a skirt, your legs are not waxed, why do you have such thick eyebrows and now thick eyebrows is like a whole trend okay, earlier it was not, so I would be getting this whole thing why aren't you getting your eyebrows done, I'm like oh my god, so it's like you know how much am I supposed to subject my body to, today I'm making my eyebrows thin, tomorrow I have to grow them out and now there are these you know makeup scenes where you draw your eyebrows and make them all bushy and everything, it's absurd, yeah and me there's a time in my life where I was straightening my hair every single day and my hair was thick and I was spending 15 to 20 minutes each morning straightening my hair very nicely, meticulously and they didn't look, I didn't do them that well also, they didn't look that much straight also, they just looked like they were naturally straight and I loved having those naturally looking straight hair, they were easier to manage, I convinced them that I was doing it, because they were easier to manage but then I think I was just obsessed because the quality of my hair kept getting poorer and poorer and I couldn't go out looking like that, so I used to straighten my hair every day and the only reason I stopped was because of the pandemic and then I felt comfortable at home, not straightening them anymore, they naturally returned to their texture and I didn't chop them off but yeah, so it was not so much about confidence as it was about how I was projecting myself yeah, because you thought that if you walked in looking a certain way, people will perceive you a certain way, right and of course straight hair people think that oh sleek and you know so and so right, but you really can't control other people's opinion of you, so they will perceive you some way or the other anyhow, why subject yourself to all that, why do you, like not you but in a sense why do we depend so much on external validation, why do we depend so much on compliments, why are we so scared The surprising thing is Sanjana, this is now economics, it's not just aesthetics and beauty, so in 2019 Gia Tolentino wrote about something called the Instagram face, where the algorithm is also favouring that very typical Instagram model face with pouty lips and high cheekbones and big eyes and that big nose, that particular face which looks as if all of them went to the same you know plastic surgeon you know where does the buck stop because as many supermodels have also said, a very famous supermodel in fact has admitted to actually feeling very ugly at the top of her career, so beauty is really very internal Exactly, I think we should focus more on that, I think when we talk about the pandemic right, it's not like people stopped taking care of themselves, I think that was self-care, like I don't think, I mean if you were sitting and doing makeup in the pandemic because you wanted to you know take up as an art right, it's self-care for you then, but if you're doing it just because you know you're so scared to go out in the public and have people look at your blemishes or acne scars, then really are you doing it for yourself And I mean of course you can do some things, some things you may continue to do to feel better, some things may actually contribute to your confidence, but we really need to be intentional about where we are drawing the line or maybe by recognising it, we have to learn how to draw our line a little bit closer and let quite a lot of these expensive, very outward things go, I mean maybe of course the beauty industry wouldn't let it go, but as individual consumers, we have to be aware Yeah, we have to make more informed choices right, and I think what happens is from a very young age because you're subjected to certain ideas right, especially in India whether it comes to complexion or weight or something, I think in India no, I think Indian families are just left, right and centre will comment on everyone's weight, like I think it's just so common that people just make you feel so conscious, so also about how fair or dark you are Sanjana, huge, huge topic ever since a baby is born, how dark you are, how fair you are So it makes sense that women have become conscious of it, it's not like I don't understand where that thing comes from, of course I've been conscious about my body, that's why I've gone and gotten laser hair removal, I just wish I could make more informed choices, I wish I could sort of you know be like, get this confidence earlier of not pleasing so many people, may be a fun fact Yeah, exactly, and eventually come to a point where I'm just pleasing myself right, and I think that sort of brings to the point that you know, I just wish we were all nicer to each other, like I mean people just didn't comment on each other like that right, about their complexion or some or the other thing right Or the aesthetics of someone, but at the same time I would like to point here that we are not being those super sensitive feminists who are saying that now you can't just comment at all on anything related to women, you will be cancelled, it's not that, it's that you kind of always know don't you Sanjana, when someone is doing it with a you know undertone of maliciousness, sort of passive aggressive, that Sanjana you have lost weight Versus when someone is genuinely complimenting you because they love your hair, you know that na, that I think everybody does, when it's targeted at you, you know you always know where that thing is coming from, how fake nice someone is trying to be or how genuine a compliment is, what you're trying to say is not that don't give compliments, please give compliments, tell people when they look good Yeah, but still running that this is not a compliment, that you're looking fair today or, that's never a compliment, yeah just stop commenting on people's complexion especially in India I think, I've gotten so you know conscious about it that I'm scared of getting tanned now, like you know me I'm always running away from the sun and I'm putting my sunscreen stick like 100 times a day because I've just, and I really want to get away, because I have realised how much time and energy I waste fretting over tanning And money Sanjana, how much money, beauty costs money, beauty is pain, no it's not, none of it is true Also one more thing I think, our families also do this a lot, I think my mom made me feel very conscious about my stretch marks, the amount of procedures she's made me go through to get rid of them and nothing can make those stretch marks go away And I was never conscious about it, it's just that you know when people just keep on pointing it out to you, you somehow end up becoming very conscious about it right, so yeah I think be more cognisant of it, don't let people make comments about you, tell them very nicely that this is not justified, we don't want these comments, at the same time do nice compliments Yeah, and bringing it to the end, in the last segment of absurd things that people say to us Oh yes tell me Vandika, what's the most absurd thing you heard? The absurd comments both of us heard after coming back from a break, a holiday, back to work, I heard you've gained weight and Sanjana heard you've lost weight Your face is looking thin, it's specific Vandika, it's very very specific, your face is looking thin, now I have to, I'm staring at my face, oh is it thinner now, is it thinner, and I get so affected, I really, oh Vandika I hate it when I get affected by this We are learning, we are also learning and growing, becoming more confident in our own bodies, although I'm sure it will be a long long journey, but we are on it, and with that we come to the end of the episode, rage on and smash the patriarchy, bye