Sable Yong is no stranger to the emotional rollercoaster that is beauty culture. She understands the thrill of ordering a trendy new product and romanticizing its impact on your life; she has firsthand knowledge of how a new hair color and fresh cut can provide a jolt of confidence. And Yong, a writer and former beauty editor of Allure magazine, absolutely relates to your mixed feelings about the industry: enjoying beauty culture as playful exploration on the one hand, while also knowing that making women feel crappy about their appearance is a core tenet of beauty consumerism.
“I’m always trying to find a way back to how beauty can be a tool for care and community and compassion,” says Yong, who also writes the very cool newsletter Hard Feelings and cohosts the scent-centric podcast Smell Ya Later alongside Tynan Sinks. Yong has learned a whole lot along the way, and can now savor her latest feat: writing her first book. Yong’s debut collection of essays, Die Hot with a Vengeance, is such a treat because Yong—both in conversation and as a writer—is always down to get deep. Tough topics become tender and human in her hands.
What does a satisfying wellness experience look like for you these days?
I realized this past year that going to a Korean bathhouse with your girlfriends is physically, emotionally, and mentally nourishing. Get butt-ass naked together and sit in the stew and talk shit. In that environment, you get to witness real women’s bodies, removed from the context of sexualization. No one’s sucking it in, no one’s performing for anybody. We’re all there just to relax.
Each chapter of your book is a personal essay. Do you have a favorite?
I really enjoyed the “No Gore, No Gorgeous” chapter. I used to be such a big baby about everything—sports, anything scary like horror movies or pain. And the phrase “beauty is pain” has always struck me as odd. I remember when I was a kid and my mother would pick my pimples. It was so uncomfortable. I’m like, if this is beauty, this sucks. Every beauty treatment I’ve gotten that was painful didn’t change my life at all.
I feel like every person who’s impulsively bought beauty products—especially after watching TikTok videos—can connect to that feeling of “it didn’t change my life at all.”
It’s the glow-up con. Beauty advertising has gone from, you’re ugly, use this cream and you’ll be beautiful to selling products that are more indicative of your identity. We’re made to think if we have that hyped-up thing, we’ll be a better person. That type of advertising is so insidiously effective, because it appeals to our sense of self-worth in a way that telling you that you’re ugly never will.
Let’s get into the chapter “Fuck Around and Find Out: Beauty Edition.” We get to see you debunk popular beauty myths and weigh in on hot topics, like the term “anti-aging.”
Anti-aging is a hilarious term to me because it is so foolishly false. You will age, whether you use that cream or not. I’m like, what do you think happens when you continue to live? What do you think is gonna happen to you when you don’t die?
It’s morbid because you’re investing in your own downward spiral if you buy into it. This is all coming for us if we continue to live, so we should be really invested in destigmatizing age and celebrating wisdom. Especially for women, who are still broadly objectified and valued upon their appearance, their fertility, their fuckability. That’s bullshit.
What’s one really out-there beauty treatment you’ve tried?
When I went to Singapore for work, I was asked to try out a new vulva rejuvenation treatment after I’d gotten a facial. They use a handheld suction device on a long wire connected to a machine. It’s made of silicone and they’re sort of running it against your vulva. The skin is stimulated and that stimulates collagen. I don’t know if you need collagen in your vulva, but I was like, it’s free, I’ll give it a shot. It was so weird. First of all, it’s so intimate. You’re literally Winnie the Pooh, naked from the waist down. I was so tense the whole time. It’s a treatment I wish didn’t exist, ‘cause it’s yet another thing that shames women’s genitalia.
Why was it important for you to include the section “There’s No Such Thing As a Look That Isn’t For You”?
The term “flattering” gets thrown around a lot, but it’s polite in a way that has this negative subtext to it. It keeps us going on the path of conventional beauty standards if we’re just going with a look that’s flattering without questioning what we actually like.
What has helped you show up more authentically?
I remember when I was in high school, I wasn’t an outcast per se, but I didn’t have a core group of friends. I was a bit of a floater. But I would make my own clothes and Frankenstein together t-shirts. I got made fun of and teased by some people. They were like, Oh are you poor ’cause you have to make your own clothes?
I also have a little bit of this bratty, rebellious streak in me where if someone tells me, “You can’t do that,” I will do a Tokyo Drift 180 to be like, yes I fucking can. It’s not always the right thing to do. But in that case, I leaned into it more. The more I committed, the more my peers were like, “it’s actually cool that you do that.” Then I felt more validated that I’d made the right choice, sticking to what I like to do.
