title after R.S Benedict’s essay Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny (which is honestly a far better title and i wish i had thought of it first).

broth/protein sparing modified fast/juice/other ridiculous 2 day cleanse, gua sha, lemon water, peppermint tea, colpermin, body scrub (gloves, coffee grounds, or hamam), wax/shave/tweeze (after shower so it’s easier), tan (exfoliate, dry off, put tan on, lie around looking ridiculous in tan for hour or so, wash off tan staining shower floor, seal tan with some form of moisturiser, wash sheets/clean toilet seat stained by tan), get nails done or do nails (if doing nails do this before shower bc then you can wash off stray polish in the shower), get hair done or do hair, if doing hair: white toner (20 mins), wash, condition, apply white heat dye (30 mins), wash again, hair mask), curl, pin to head to cool in shape, lash lift with heated curler/in salon/small edge of eye extensions, put shapewear on, put clothes on, apply makeup, unpin hair, brush out hair, voila. simple.

this is the sort of thing i would do (and still will on certain occasions) to get ready for a big event, holiday, or romantic rendezvous. to some people, this will seem borderline obsessive levels of preening and vanity, and to others, this will be no match for their perfectly curated everything shower routine.

after this effort, i usually feel tired, dizzy, accomplished and presentable, but never anything nearing erotic. articles on the phenomenon of Gen Z lacking sexuality, in part due to their beauty routines, have been popping up over the last few years, but it’s perhaps more sinister even than this.

if you ask TikTok, Youtube, Pinterest, or Tumblr (justgirlythings) back in the day, these lengthy lists will seem nothing out of the ordinary. it’s the price you pay to be sexy, for pretty privilege, to avoid being a plain jane, to really get the most out of the features you were born with.

i won’t deny there’s fun to be had in getting ready to go ‘out out’, especially in your teens and when you’re living communally. blasting 00s pop, prosecco in hand, applying each other’s mascara and trying on a series of outfits far too good for whatever mediocre function you end up attending is a key bonding experience. when these lists start to apply to daily life (how to be the hottest girl at school, how to always be put together, how to glow up in less than a year) and every other Tiktoker seems to have a fifty-item ‘morning shed’, things start to reach a point of diminishing returns.

it’s no secret that gen z is having less sex , and while i don’t want to oversimplify the complex sociological reasons for this (e.g. social isolation during the pandemic, phone-induced individualism, economic downturn, gender politics), i think it’s fair to say that we’re surround by SEX with a capital ‘S’, but eroticism is sorely lacking in popular culture.

the 2010s brought with them internet sex-positivity, some of which was highly beneficial in raising awareness of consent and sexual health, and other aspects of which some young people ultimately found lonely or degrading. as beauty culture has been amplified by social media, first through Instagram and then TikTok, a point has been reached where it’s not immediately clear that looking perfect 100% of the time is actually not possible. on seeing gorgeous movie stars or women on magazine covers, they induced jealousy, but there was a prevailing understanding that these women were frozen in time, retouched, made up, and looked different in their day-to-day lives. watching older films, i’m struck by the emotions the actresses are able to portray, and the fact that, despite the fact they are ‘imperfect’ and would probably be called fat or past it by a chronically online 14 year old, they are unbelievably, unabashedly erotic.

whilst Catherine Deneuve is hardly a calling card for the celebration of unconventional beauty, it crossed my mind that her not being shredded to the bone, lacking the visible muscle tone of a TikTok pilates princess, did nothing to take away from her eroticism. when we see the slight curve of her upper arm, the movement of her stomach as she breathes out, she is unbelievably attractive because she looks like a person (albeit an ethereal and stunning one).

as R.S. Benedict so eloquently puts it:

A body is no longer a holistic system. It is not the vehicle through which we experience joy and pleasure during our brief time in the land of the living. It is not a home to live in and be happy. It, too, is a collection of features: six pack, thigh gap, cum gutters. And these features exist not to make our lives more comfortable, but to increase the value of our assets. Our bodies are investments, which must always be optimized to bring us… what, exactly? Some vague sense of better living? Is a life without bread objectively better than a life with it? When we were children, did we dream of counting every calorie and logging every step?