Photography By Alexandra Leese

Soma Faitanin

Vanessa Esposito and Andrea De Luca by Lera Polivanova for Paper Magazine March 2024.

Styled by Domenico Scialò. Hair and makeup by Federica Di Dato.

Have you been pooped on by a bird? NOT a pet bird or farm animals or game you were handling. Just like a bird on a telephone wire or flying through the sky and you just happened to be unlucky underneath it.

A Madonna with neon halo in Naples, Italy.

Transparent lamb skin shibari bag by Hannah Freeke. Tattooed by Thirty Nin.

Christale Copaver by Filip Koludrovic for HUBE Magazine Issue 1

Sculpture by Ryo Arai

@nagato_iwasaki 

sue de beer

i hate that “cosmetic surgery isn’t self-care it’s the result of an advertising campaign to sell you on surgical misogyny.” because yes, it’s factually correct, but it also doesn’t interrogate the entire conceit of ‘self-care.’ the wellness industry disproportionately targets women (men are obviously affected too, but i do not remember tiktok having a ‘clean boy aesthetic’ that involved all the thirst trap guys going out and getting identical athleisure sets). ‘real’ self-care, if such a thing even exists, is mostly about executive function and not product. being your own tradwife. taking a bath, making a tasty dinner, meditating, medicating, exercising. and even then, it’s done in the service of the grind. take a bath so you don’t feel as stressed about work, so you can go to work tomorrow without mailing pipe bombs to the ceo. get enough sleep, so you don’t have a meltdown during your lunch break. get some salad in you so you don’t develop a nutrient deficiency and go to the hospital and stop working. or, if you do your work from home and it’s unpaid domestic labor: eat greens so your husband doesn’t leave you because he’s found another younger, hotter wife. lose weight so you can safely birth more kids. the ritualistic elements also are placebos– if you do it you must be doing it for a reason and it must be working.

all of self-care as we know it is in the service of capitalism. even the things that DO work (eating healthy foods, exercising, sleeping enough) to improve mental/physical health and aren’t on their surface things you buy end up serving the patriarchy. you get rewarded for being the ideal capitalist subject. especially if you’re a woman.

so i’m going to be a bit satan-like and argue that yes, plastic surgery IS self-care. but self-care is NOT empowering. nothing we do as individuals is. for women, it’s business expenses all the way down. as i’ve said before, it’s not the ‘choice feminism’ of the libs and it’s not the ‘radical feminism’ of radfems. it’s something both more nihilistic and more coherent than either.