Who builds the house of beauty? On the surface we see founders, marketers, formulators, artists, creatives, writers, image-makers, educators. But beauty as an industry is a vast, sprawling web of power, standards, people and politics.

Arabelle Sicardi is one of these builders. A prominent writer, fragrance expert and commentator, Sicardi is one of beauty’s biggest critical thinkers. Their Substack, You’ve Got Lipstick On Your Chin, is an incisive analysis of beauty in all its forms, while their debut novel, The House Of Beauty, demands us to think about everything we know about the industry – its history, structures, who shapes it and who it’s benefitting. They view beauty as an art form, a means of control and as a ritual. They don’t shame beauty consumers, but instead forces them to think – is beauty really a necessity, or a solution to our problems?

Here, Sicardi shares their nuanced thoughts on beauty structures, its political significance, the human costs and ways it keeps us coming back for more.

To begin, what does beauty mean to you?

Beauty is a lot of things to me. It’s an idea, a language, a technique, a tool, a story, a weapon, a love letter. Ultimately, it’s my favourite myth humanity has ever noticed.

Do you remember the first time you ever felt beautiful, or thought about yourself in the context of beauty?

Honestly, no. I can recall the first time I felt ugly, however, which implies perhaps I felt beautiful before then. I remember the loss of security more than the security itself – I think that experience, the loss, might be an essential part of what it means to grow up as a girl.

I agree. I think about the differences in beauty standards from when I was growing up to now – social media, the obsession with tween skincare – and it scares me. What about your first encounter with the beauty industry, specifically. Do you remember that experience?

First encounter... I’m not sure. I remember using a blue eyeliner through my eyebrows in middle school one day assuming no one would notice and being made fun of. I used it the next day as a lip pencil to really double down on doing what I wanted. This is a good summary of my personality, upon reflection…

How has your relationship with yourself and your reflection changed over the years?

I am, I think, a lot less interested in looking at my reflection than I was a few years ago. I noticed this a few years back; I simply document and self-surveil a lot less than I did before. This isn’t out of shame or disinterest, though. I’m just trying to enjoy the world more when I can. I’m more self-confident and outwardly curious than I am self-assessing at this point.

You’ve made a career as a respected writer and beauty industry commentator. What is it about the beauty industry that interests you as a subject matter?

I love all the people in it and how intertwined the beauty industry is with many other industries of the world and how the world works. Every lipstick and every perfume and every so-and-so is a little labyrinth of ideas and possibilities and decisions, money and hope and dreams.

Can I ask you where the scepticism came from?

Hmmm. My parents are former fashion industry workers and involved in local community organising; I suspect their criticisms around how cities and aesthetic industries work and exploit the vulnerable played an impact on how I view the world. I generally think of my influences as a network of things: punk shows in New Jersey, drag shows in Brooklyn, and I was working in fashion before I graduated high school – reviewing shows and interviewing designers and skipping class to do it. I saw the industry up close from an early age. I did a close examination on how fashion critics and the fashion industry operated in high school and decided I wanted to find a path through beauty that was not dissimilar.

Tell me about finding your voice and its distinct point of view?

I don’t think I ever had a problem with finding my voice; my problem has always been finding the means and resources to be able to utilise it on a scale that touches upon my ambitions. I think finding your voice comes by simply showing up, over and over again, and working through your doubts on the page. I also think doubt is an essential part of my voice by now, actually – as I’ve grown up as a writer and an adult, I really cherish leaving space for nuance and doubt and contradiction and things you cannot easily resolve. I spent so many years luxuriating in reading so, so many incredible poets and writers, which helped me understand all the many kinds of ways to think and write. One thing I did do: I actually stopped reading my favourite authors like Maggie Nelson and Anne Carson when I began writing The House of Beauty, because I didn’t want to adopt their prose as I learned my own.

I love that. I also have to not read anything before writing because it also influences my work, whether it’s consciously or otherwise. So, I want to talk about The House of Beauty, I’m almost halfway through and it’s brilliant, albeit difficult to read at times. It’s also deeply researched. What made you feel like such a book needed to exist?

I left a full-time beauty editing position that did not feel hospitable to critical reporting about the beauty industry with a long list of stories I wanted to tell, if I was not afraid of reprisal. It was a bullet point list of about 40 different stories. Eventually those stories transformed and resolved themselves into these stories in the book. I wanted to write a book about the beauty industry that truly confronted its relationship to capitalism, to crisis, to fascism, because I thought it would help my friends and I survive this historical moment. I wanted to find stories of people having survived similar struggles we could take lessons from.

"I get asked a lot – well, won’t you not get invited to as many things? Won’t you get blacklisted? And I mean this so sincerely: do you need to go to every launch party to do your job – which is, ostensibly, to report? I do not actually want to be on the PR list for every single launch to begin with; I ran out of closet space years ago."

It marries history, criticism, hopefulness, but also feels partially like a memoir. How did you get to this point?

Beauty, when you research it, is so closely tied to how cultural moments define themselves in historic moments both big and personal (small). I took great pains to excise as much memoir from the book as possible while maintaining the reporting and criticism in a way that still offered personal stake and context.

The story of beauty is much bigger than my own experience of it. It would have weakened the points I wanted to make to centre it around myself or an assumed universal experience of how beauty operates; and ultimately, I simply did not want to bore the reader. I needed a compromise that blended genres and different stylistic strengths.

One of the biggest themes or points you’re trying to make is that beauty is inherently political and always has been. How do you see beauty shaping power today?

Beauty is a codifier of a certain kind of power and ideology. It signifies safety and whiteness and class in a very specific way – at least in America – to mean certain things. I wouldn’t say beauty shapes power right now so much as the opposite: power shapes beauty. They invest in each other, mutually beneficial creatures of capital and opportunity.

You also write about nail salons, wigs, supply chains – industries often built on migration and exploitation. What do you want readers to take away about the human cost of beauty?

Simply that there is in fact a human cost – and that perhaps we should understand every human being is no more worthy than ourselves for anything. No one is better than anyone else. Your desire for a product or a fix isn’t worth the exploitation of another person. It’s wrong of the industry to invent problems just to pretend to save you from them. There are many different stories of beauty worth telling; not all of them have to be about fixing us.

I love your emphasis on the fact that no beauty product is worth dying to make. Do you think consumers and editors – influencers even – have a responsibility in demanding supply chain transparency?

Consumers have to be healthy and demanding sceptics and make it clear what they want and when and what kind of behaviours and things they tolerate from brands and those who market them.

Editors could stand to push back on publicist-provided copy and promises around products. Beauty editors are often invited on trips for product launches with explicit (and not-so-explicit) understanding they’re going to promote a launch in a certain way. We’re given specific and controlled access around stories and sometimes don’t stray from the itinerary. I don’t really think that leads to genuinely curious, revelatory reporting, in most cases anyway. You have to be willing to make things awkward and ask uncomfortable questions and own up to what you don’t know and need clarified. I don’t think generally being hand-held through an experience – for any reporting on any beat – is revelatory journalism. Sometimes finding the truth involves friction.

I get asked a lot – well, won’t you not get invited to as many things? Won’t you get blacklisted? And I mean this so sincerely: do you need to go to every launch party to do your job – which is, ostensibly, to report? I do not actually want to be on the PR list for every single launch to begin with; I ran out of closet space years ago.

One of the themes in your book is the intersection of beauty and technology, or the application of technology to ‘optimise’ our beauty. There’s so much available to us in terms of beauty tech, procedures, weight loss drugs… If we choose to abstain it’s almost like we’re being left behind. What’s your take on this – do you think it’s dangerous?

Well, we’re already drowning in a wave of GLP-1 ads and optimisation proposals for every single aspect of our lives. We are headed to individualised and total human loneliness, where all aspects of our lives are frictionless, customised by the surveillance we have willingly signed up for through endless Terms and Conditions changes on every social platform we use.

I actually thought the movie The Materialists was a great commentary on capitalism and beauty as a story of optimisation to find love – rich men get their bones broken to gain a few inches in the dating pool. Ultimately, beauty is a currency where aesthetics stands in for a certain kind of human value. The price to be valued keeps rising, but the living wage is stagnant. This, of course, worries me.

"Many things can be true at once and frustration usually stems from only acknowledging one version of a truth, when many exist, or feeling betrayed by the idea that someone else is experiencing it differently than you are."

You often speak about beauty rituals as tools of resistance and healing. How have you personally experienced beauty as a form of care during times of crisis?

I spent a lot of the early pandemic making care kits for protestors and front-line healthcare workers. I also have regularly held mutual aid fundraisers using donated, unused beauty products from different beauty closets across magazines, freelancers, and influencers, with the money going to different immigrant detainee lawyer funds, bail funds, abortion funds, and so on. I started a non-profit called the Museum of Nails Foundation, and we archive nail art history, educate people about the history of those who innovate in the field, and have beauty-themed game nights and community workshops. There’s lots of ways to take care of people, you just have to be open to adaptation.

I’m interested to understand how you reconcile your love of beauty with your critique of the industry?

I’m Buddhist, and there’s this idea of samsara in Buddhism that kind of does away with black and white thinking of this nature. Life is a cycle, suffering is inevitable, and death is just part of the process. Beauty and ugliness are siblings and this materiality is, ultimately, meaningless. I don’t mean that to be dismissive; I mean we make meaning, and we can change that all the time. And it can mean less or something different than what you might expect. I can love something sincerely and understand it is a cruel creature. Many things can be true at once and frustration usually stems from only acknowledging one version of a truth, when many exist, or feeling betrayed by the idea that someone else is experiencing it differently than you are. I don’t see the point in that, this idea of competition, or of scarcity, of feeling perpetual lack. It sets yourself up for suffering. Samsara is suffering, endless cyclic suffering. The path to liberation – of escaping samsara – involves finding some wisdom.

What do you hope readers take away from the book?

I hope they know they are worth fighting for, and that they are worth being taken care of and understand that beauty isn’t mundane – it’s transformative.

Okay my last question – who or what in beauty are you finding inspiring right now?

I think people everywhere fighting for justice are very inspiring. I know there’s several individual nail artists who run raffles for manicures with funds that go towards families in Gaza – that to me, is an ingenious and caring thing. And my friend, who did my makeup for my wedding also happens to be an immigration defence lawyer. No cooler human being. There are so many cool people who are doing the best they can with the tools around them, in ingenious and ordinary ways. That’s all we can ask for. It’s what we should fight for. Isn’t it?