The difference between sex and beauty
Can Cosmetic Cowboys save our sex drives?
My dermatologist, a beautiful man of maybe thirty with no visible pores and an active TikTok presence, ran a finger over my forehead. My question was simple: What could be done about the wrinkle?
The term Cosmetic Cowboy largely refers to back alley medical practitioners, but also those charting their own path through the aesthetic wild west. This past week Ezra Marcus, writer and dear friend, wrote an absolutely bang-up piece for New York Magazine on the grey zone of peptides, specially Chinese injectables loved by the hopeful and near insane. Peptides, brought into the greater public consciousness by weight loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, are naturally occurring proteins that essentially tell the body what to produce. More collagen anyone?
It’s a classic Ezra piece, filled with perfect quotes like, “No one ever injected Bored Apes into their ass.” The promises of peptides are infinite—long term health, long term beauty: “There’s weight loss, body composition, skin and hair, cognitive health. There’s one that basically mimics Viagra. And then there’s a few that are, like, mitochondrial, so they just help clean out your system.” The safety is questionable: “Nearly 30 percent of the peptides tested by Finnrick are either mislabeled, under- or overdosed, or contaminated with toxins or foreign bacteria.” The people using peptides are often underage, or fueled by the misplaced belief that injecting unregulated chemicals into your body is less invasive than getting a facelift from a licensed medical practitioner.
Meanwhile on TikTok, I’ve been getting fed clips of Bella Hadid going berserk in Ryan Murphy’s new show The Beauty. Murphy has always had a fascination with the body grotesque: His first hit show was 2007’s Nip/Tuck a medical procedural set at a plastic surgery clinic. The Beauty’s premise roughly: There’s an STI that makes you hot, but also kills you within two years. Deaths pile up, incels and gooners abound. The show feels so contemporary, that its moment has already passed. Questionable injectables that make you sexy? We’re living it, baby!
Throughout his career Murphy has oscillated between comedy and horror which makes sense because the genres are closely connected, sharing the same fundamental reliance on tension and timing. Sex, though, is the forgotten third in this relationship. Sex also relies on tension and timing, sex is also animalistic and urgent. Comedy, horror, and sex are completely intertwinned. And currently, we are not respecting the balance….
What could be less attractive than going full Bryan Johnson and hooking yourself up to a sleep apparatus to measure your erections? What could be less attractive than voluntarily shooting yourself in the ass? What could be less attractive than taking a literal hammer to your own face? Under the caul of a mulish conviction in our own deservedness, beauty loses its appeal.
Ezra tested out a peptide that was supposed to help him with his energy. The article culminates with him writing, “I felt a warm glow spread through my limbs, sort of like a milder version of the rush produced by Adderall. I pulled out my laptop and started writing some emails.”
Is that what this quest for beauty is all about then, writing emails? Much of the trend toward optimization isn’t about sex, or feeling good in your body, or even feeling healthier. Looksmaxxing isn’t about looking better beside someone you love in bed; it’s about looking better on the feed. It’s telling how the main drivers of looksmaxxing are barely old enough to experience any sign of aging. There seems to be an eagerness to see all human biomarkers (getting hungry, needing sleep, etc) as flaws to be fixed with off-label solutions.
When I asked Ezra about his off-market use of peptides now that the article is out, he told me, “Some peptides seem to work for some outcomes. GLP1s obviously will suppress your appetite if that’s what you want. People swear by the recovery/inflammation-reducing compounds (see Chris Black on Lauren Sherman). I can’t speak for the dozens of others, many of which are likely hot air. You have to actually obtain the correct product, uncontaminated and dosed correctly, which requires A) quite a bit of money or B) a scary amount of trust in strangers on Discord/Chinese factories. Test everything independently.”
Back at my dermatologist’s office… I declined the forehead filler. I’m not a cowboy! I’m not even the horse he rode in on! I’m still squeamish getting a flu shot. But I’m also not immune to the pressure—my cupboard is brimming with pseudoscience. At a certain point, the dreaded wrinkle comes for us all and can’t know what you’re going to do until it happens. For now I’m thinking of it as a wrinkle in my own self-perception.
Zara Larsson is our digital cover girl! I wrote the story. I really like what Zara Larsson is putting down right now. She just got her belly button pierced at 28. That’s my kinda girl.
Really interested in whatever Caper is going to be. First Annie Armstrong and Emma Orlow and now Chris Crowley…intewesting. Very interesting.
Intrigued by the aura chart in this piece.
There is a two part Mel Brooks documentary on HBO. I cried, I laughed.
I scantly closed Adele doh.
I doubt it is salvagable after giving the computers harddrive disc drive USB drive or floppy drive any sex.