BRITTANY LUSE, HOST:
America has recently crowned a new style icon. She is unspeakably chic. Her blonde highlights are the reference for hairstylists across America, and she tragically passed away decades ago. I'm talking, of course, about Carolyn Bessette, the wife of John F. Kennedy Jr. Their relationship is at the center of the hottest romance on TV, the Ryan Murphy-produced FX series, "Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. And Carolyn Bessette." The series details the ups and downs of their five-year relationship. They both died, along with Bessette's sister, Lauren, in a small plane crash in the summer of 1999. But in life, they were one of the most famous couples on Earth - their enviable style, their enviable Tribeca loft apartment.
And their on-again, off-again relationship had every tabloid - and honestly, the entire nation - up in their business. And I really mean the entire nation. Like, I remember being in elementary school, flipping through my mom's issues of Style magazine hoping to see the newest paparazzi photo of Carolyn Bessette looking fab on the streets of New York. So it's no surprise to me that with this new FX series, people are falling in love with Bessette's style. Like, make no mistake, she was dressing.
But the recent surge of interest in her - a woman who was famously private and never even gave an on-the-record interview in her lifetime - feels a little weird. Fashion brands are using Bessette's style to promote their products. New York restaurants frequented by the couple have been packed with customers who want to sit at John and Carolyn's table. Fans have even been waiting in line at a Manhattan drugstore, hoping to buy a pretty generic-looking plastic headband that Bessette reportedly purchased there decades ago.
Like, maybe we're doing a little too much. But if I take a step back and I really think about it, is this obsession with Carolyn Bessette all that different from America's obsession with any other beautiful woman who was gone too soon? Some of our most enduring cultural figures - Marilyn Monroe, Selena, Aaliyah - their images are eternally famous and, to a certain degree, eternally profitable, something beauty reporter Jessica DeFino has categorized as the morgue gaze - beauty inspiration, trends and products that glamorize ageless, poreless (ph) and lifeless beauty.
JESSICA DEFINO: If we look at sort of the interventions that we're seeing in the cosmetic space, where so much of the marketing is around become more beautiful to live a better life, some of those values become, I don't know, pretty bleak and depressing to look at, rather than, like, fulfilling.
LUSE: To get deeper into this, I'm joined by Jessica DeFino, who writes the Substack newsletter FLESH WORLD and an advice column for the Guardian called Ask Ugly. She's noticed an intriguing, if not disturbing, death-focus trend across beauty marketing. Welcome back, Jessica.
DEFINO: Thank you so much for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF TAPE RECORDER)
LUSE: Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luse, and you're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR - a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LUSE: Jessica, let's jump right into it. It's not unusual for people to find inspiration or even, like, copy styles from the past. But you sort of made this link between these long-gone beauty icons and some of the beauty ideals that we uphold. What is the morgue gaze?
DEFINO: There's, like, a sort of glamour in death. I've been, like, trend-watching this sort of renewed focus on, like, death and dead icons happen. I've been calling it the morgue gaze.
LUSE: I love that name.
DEFINO: Kind of a bizarre thing happening - but, yeah, I mean, dying young as a sort of glamorous woman, you actually achieve the goal of all beauty culture, which is, like, aesthetic immortality. Like...
LUSE: Jeez.
DEFINO: ...You get to remain at your peak. No one ever sees you, you know, quote-unquote, "decline." Yeah, you're just - you're a forever icon.
LUSE: And so you say you've been seeing this trend for some time now. Like, what are some examples of this gaze? And why do you think it's so appealing to brands right now? Like, what do you think is inspiring this?
DEFINO: I think it's sort of an extension of a cultural nihilism that we're seeing right now. It's a pretty bleak time in the culture - in American culture, specifically, I would say. I think we're also becoming, like, a little desensitized to death maybe because it's ever-present, and that desensitization makes it easier to kind of consume as an aesthetic. I also sort of see it as a continuation of the antiaging obsession, you know? Aging is another word for living. Antiaging is antilife. Death is sort of like a natural ending point for that. And I also think...
LUSE: Antiaging is antilife. Sorry.
DEFINO: Right (laughter).
LUSE: I just had to double-down (laughter) on that one. Really deep - but go on.
DEFINO: And I also think it's like the flip side of the longevity coin, right? I think we're seeing, like, a little bit of a pushback to this sort of very kind of weird, creepy push from the upper classes for longevity, living forever. Like, we're seeing this from the billionaire class, really.
LUSE: Yeah.
DEFINO: And yeah, I think the more longevity is kind of in this - in the cultural consciousness, there's a little bit of a weird pushback to that in the form of glamorizing death.
LUSE: OK. So I see kind of like what's going on in kind of, like, a macro-level right now. Like, you're discussing, like, a pattern of nihilism that is, admittedly, something that I can see across a lot of different facets of public life. I could see why marketers - beauty marketers want to tap into, like, whatever is going on, whatever the - their consumers' vibe - whatever the vibe of the world is right now or the vibe of our culture is right now. But I'm wondering, like, why would morgue beauty be appealing to consumers? Like, normally, if someone were to say your makeup made you look dead, it would be an insult. So why - I don't know, what are they hoping the play is going to be for consumers here?
DEFINO: See, that's so interesting to me, because I don't know that I agree. I'm also thinking that there is in the industry right now a real glorification of lifelessness in any form. Mannequin skin is trending. They call it mannequin skin, which is, like, sort of a pale wash over the face, pale lips, one dimensional, not a lot of tone. MAC put out a tutorial for mannequin skin a couple of months ago. But in all of these instances, it's like a lifeless thing that is inspiring the trend or the standard.
LUSE: That's showing up in beauty products as well, right?
DEFINO: Right. So I mean, the big thing that comes to mind is cadaver fat as a filler material in the aesthetic space. It is, like, processed and stripped of genetic material, but it's donated cadaver fat that is being used for injections in your butt, or your breasts, or your face, like giving that little, like, fat filler look, using this, like, sort of organic material.
LUSE: So wait, the fat from another...
DEFINO: From another human being.
LUSE: ...Dead human being.
DEFINO: Yeah.
LUSE: Wow.
DEFINO: But yeah, this is gaining popularity in a very spooky way - e.l.f. Cosmetics released a collaboration with the sparkling water brand Liquid Death, and they were lip balms shaped like coffins, and they called them lip embalms. Marie Claire UK just named one of the big trends of fashion week dead girl greige. So it's just sort of like a grayscale look all over your face so that you look like a dead body. Yeah.
LUSE: What? What?
DEFINO: I'm seeing this sort of as a continuation of a lot of the inanimate objects that have been glorified in the beauty space as of late. So I'm thinking of, like, glass skin.
LUSE: Glazed doughnuts.
DEFINO: Yes, glazed doughnut skin - that's an object. That's not a living thing that we're trying to emulate. Even dolls - we saw porcelain doll skin really trend last year. The year before that, Barbie again became the ultimate beauty icon for young girls and for women.
LUSE: Right.
DEFINO: These are all dead. These are objects. They're inanimate, I guess, is maybe the best word for it. I mean, I even think of just something as simple as Botox, where the goal is to minimize the signs of age. It's to flatten this sort of, like, multidimensional being you are into a two-dimensional image that is sort of frozen in time. And this is all so related to death, to undeath, to inanimation, and I see the influence of just, like, lifelessness throughout the beauty industry for so, so long. So to me, this doesn't feel that shocking. It feels kind of like a natural progression of the glorification of inanimation in women specifically.
LUSE: I'm glad you brought up this point about the billionaire class. We've unpacked, like, kind of the different health and fitness, wellness beauty trends that have kind - that they - like, billionaire - especially the billionaire, like, technocrat class that is really embraced and is, like, really boosting AI's public profile. Like, I'm thinking of someone like Peter Thiel or Bryan Johnson, the guy who's basically like, don't die.
DEFINO: Yes.
LUSE: That's his whole slogan.
DEFINO: That's his whole thing.
LUSE: The Don't Die conferences, and his whole thing is not dying.
DEFINO: Yeah.
LUSE: It's weird. It's like, there's this, like, living forever, but, like, with the aid of technology. And I don't mean in the sense of, like, modern medicine, but, like, possibly in a way to experience, like, the singularity alongside, like, a class of robots and, like...
DEFINO: Completely.
LUSE: They're talking about transhumanism.
DEFINO: Yes.
LUSE: Like, they're talking about integrating the bionic with the - you know, into our biology. They're talking about, like, you know, merging the man and the machine.
DEFINO: Completely.
LUSE: It's interesting 'cause it is antiaging, but it doesn't feel very, like, life-forward (laughter) in a way.
DEFINO: No.
LUSE: It's tied - even that kind of antiaging does feel like a kind of death.
DEFINO: Yeah, I would say, like, especially with the AI tie-in, what AI is and the promise of merging with AI in the future for this, like, you know, infinite existence is a sort of undeath. Like, I would say AI is like undead, and the singularity that we're talking about, this merging of man and machine, is more zombie-undead-like than living a fulfilling human life as we know it.
LUSE: I guess also, too, 'cause, like - I don't know, this is not, like, a direct definition. But my understanding of fulfillment, it means that you are working with some sort of resource that's finite. So, like, if you want to have a fulfilling life, you have to understand that life is finite. Whereas, like, if life isn't technically finite because, like you said, you want to merge with the machine, and you want to maybe explore never-ending life in a different kind of way - a way that's a lot more focused on bringing technology into the body, as opposed to just staying alive with the aid of modern medicine...
DEFINO: Right. It's really bringing up questions of, like, meaning. And what does life mean? What does death mean? Where do we derive our meaning and sense of purpose if death is not on the table anymore or if that's not going to happen? What makes a good life? And I think if we look at sort of the interventions that we're seeing in the cosmetic space, where so much of the marketing is around - become more beautiful to live a better life - some of those values become, I don't know, pretty bleak and depressing to look at rather than, like, fulfilling.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LUSE: Don't go anywhere. We've got more coming up after the break.
DEFINO: We all want to talk about how beauty can make our lives better, but there are so many ways in which it can impair our quality of life or even take life away.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LUSE: So it's, like, less about looking like a dead body, I suppose, and more about, like, being an inanimate object, which can remain unchanging...
DEFINO: Yeah. Yes.
LUSE: ...And can remain forever smooth, and, like, plastic doesn't sag like skin.
DEFINO: Exactly. Exactly. And I think there's also an element of, like, dissociation going on here. We've seen, like, dissociation be really aestheticized lately in the beauty space. The writer Rayne Fisher-Quann, I believe, coined the term the dissociative pout to describe that sort of slightly agape mouth smile that everybody does on Instagram and has been doing for a while. It's this pose of acting like you don't care, and maybe the pose becomes so real that you actually don't really care. Like, there's an element of, like, that effortless...
LUSE: Yeah, like devil may care, like, whatever. Yeah.
DEFINO: Completely.
LUSE: Nonchalance.
DEFINO: Nonchalance - and I think that has, like, escalated to dissociation, and dissociation is a big part of, like, glamour and beauty today.
LUSE: I wonder, like, what do you think this morgue beauty trend and our obsession with dead beauty icons indicates? Or rather, I should say, our current obsession with dead beauty icons. What do you think that indicates about, like, women's place in society or what women are dealing with in culture more broadly right now?
DEFINO: I know. I think, like, a dead woman in some ways is the ultimate woman. A woman who is reduced to image is the ultimate woman. Women are told to be, you know, either wives, mothers, or objects of beauty or all three. And the image is part of this object of beauty role that women are expected to take on. So I think when we look at these images of women who have died young, they have achieved what a lot of people in life are trying to achieve, which is being frozen in time, which is not growing older, which is not incurring, like, maybe the public scrutiny or the backlash of growing older and perhaps daring not to grow old gracefully, whatever that means, you know? And I think politically at this moment, it says a lot about what it means to be alive and to be a woman.
LUSE: I'm very interested in the inverse relationship that you have highlighted also here between an obsession with eternal beauty and an obsessive fear of death. As you mentioned, antiaging is antilife. Like, let's - tattoo that on my forehead, please, 'cause I'm like, I need people to understand. It's kind of - and I say this as somebody who - listen, I love to be fully moisturized. I love to feel nice and plump and juicy. But still, antiaging is antilife.
DEFINO: Yeah.
LUSE: But I don't know. I - it's kind of bugging me out that those two things - that they are so equally compelling to people, or at least within the same ballpark - right? - eternal beauty and fear of death. Like, death is the end of life, to give a definition to everyone.
DEFINO: Yes.
LUSE: You don't need to be beautiful to be alive.
DEFINO: No.
LUSE: Right? If I had to choose one over the other on paper, I'm choosing to live and maybe be ugly or whatever, you know?
DEFINO: Yes, me too. I think this was probably a couple of years ago now, there was an article in The Washington Post about the rise of tanning, and the headline was, like, "I'd Rather Die Hot." I think there's so many ways that we can see if given the choice between, you know, living and being ugly or having the chance to be beautiful and potentially dying, people are opting for the latter in some, like, risky ways. And I also - I feel like it's, you know, every couple of months, we're seeing a new headline about an influencer who has passed away following a cosmetic surgery. Like, I've been keeping a running list of this, and it's not infrequent. And I just feel like some of these actual life-and-death consequences are not given the appropriate airtime in the beauty space. We all want to talk about how beauty can make our lives better, but there are so many ways in which it can impair our quality of life or even take life away. And I think those need just as much airtime.
LUSE: It's tricky 'cause, like - I don't know. I would be lying if I said that, like - I said the idea of eternal beauty didn't sound appealing, right? Like you said, beautiful death does sound even more poetic than an ugly life. Like, it sounds better (laughter). But I don't know. I just wonder, like, why is it so hard for us to let it go - like, this idea of eternal beauty go, even though it requires death, which is in all of this, the thing that many of us are running from?
DEFINO: Right.
LUSE: Like, we fear it, you know?
DEFINO: Yes, we - I mean, it's - we could go the Freudian route and talk about the death drive and how we're actually, like, trying to be in control of our own death subconsciously all the time. And beauty can certainly be a part of that. I think it's also just sort of inescapable living under beauty culture. These messages are reinforced day in and day out. I mean, I can't even count how many ads for various beauty products I see daily between scrolling on social media and being online and doing research for my stories and, you know, being out in the world, being on the subway. It feels like every time I look up, I am encountered - I encounter an ad that's telling me my life will be better if I'm just a little bit more beautiful and look how easy it could be.
It's really hard to not pay attention to that, to not internalize those messages. And I think, you know, we have data that shows really young girls have internalized those messages in a way that it changes their behavior, like, really early on in life. They don't want their body to be looked at, so they opt out of sports really young, or they don't participate in gym class. So we're talking from really, really early on this idea of - you have to be beautiful in order to experience a good life or a full life - it's all around us, and it's really hard to not internalize that in some way.
LUSE: Jessica, it's so great to have you back. I'm so glad that we were able to flesh out this conversation of this thing that had just been on my mind. So thank you so, so much. I really appreciate it.
DEFINO: Thank you so much for having me back. I love talking to you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LUSE: That was beauty reporter, critic and author of the FLESH WORLD Substack, Jessica DeFino. This episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE was produced by...
ALEXIS WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Alexis Williams.
LUSE: Our supervising producer is...
BARTON GIRDWOOD, BYLINE: Barton Girdwood.
LUSE: Our VP of programming is...
YOLANDA SANGWENI, BYLINE: Yolanda Sangweni.
LUSE: All right. That's all for this episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Brittany Luse. Talk soon.
Copyright © 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.