The Myth of the Glossier Girl: Emily Weiss's Wedding Black Book

I firmly believe that we don’t talk enough about Emily Weiss’s, founder of Glossier and #girlboss, 2015 pre-wedding routine beauty article. In Into the Gloss, Glossier’s blog, Weiss detailed her six-month pre-wedding journey through beauty treatments that were basically the equivalent of poking and prodding her limbs, skin, wanted hair, unwanted hair, nails, muscles, lashes, brows, and digestive tract. Yes, the digestive tract, something I had no idea we were supposed to be insecure about. And according to her, it was a success. She wrote that day that she was a whole 8/10 happy with how she looked. She spent six months, and maybe the average annual American salary, on grueling beauty treatments for an 8/10. 8/10. Not even an A or a high B. An 8/10.  

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Initially, when I read it, I couldn’t pinpoint where I felt the discomfort. Was it my gen-Z ‘eat the rich sensibilities’ that were perturbed by her frivolous recommendations to spend what’s probably my tuition on beauty treatments? Or the practical side of me that highly doubts a colonic will flush out the toxins in your body and is also slightly worried about Weiss’s misleading medical advice? Or the mom friend in me that wishes influencers would stop feeding into toxic diet culture and endorsing detox cleanses? (I really wish I understood what it is with millennials and ‘detoxing’) Yes to all of these, but also, her 8/10 ranking will forever haunt me. 

Weiss built her brand as a CEO and her company, Glossier, on the idea that minimalism and the natural look can also be beautiful. Her products are easy to use, beautifully packaged, and celebrate dewy skin. Glossier’s Instagram is carefully curated with images of models and actors in ‘natural’ makeup. And in the ten minutes it took me to read this article, the idea of the Glossier girl finally cracked.

The same person who sells us on a brand whose entire ethos is based on minimalism is also trying to sell us on colonics, cleanses, and microcurrent treatments. And if you practice what she preaches, maybe one day you too can feel like an 8/10. The glossier girl doesn’t spend ten minutes applying skin tint with a wash of color and maybe a smokey eye and then goes out the door. The glossier girl apparently spends thousands of dollars to emulate a faux minimalist aesthetic to then only feel 80% good about herself.

And I cannot emphasize enough how profoundly disappointing this was for me. Glossier was the brand that pushed me to accept my skin with and without foundation. I fell in love with the idea of a ‘no-makeup’ makeup brand that focused on skincare. Emily Weiss changed the beauty industry forever and turned a beauty blog into a beauty empire through the magic of genius marketing. Glossier has revolutionized the beauty industry. Despite initial blunders, it has made a concerted effort to support social causes and increase the diversity of its models. It’s refreshing to see models in something that isn’t full glam, especially at the time Glossier was founded. With this in mind, it’s so disappointing to see its CEO, who was heralded as revolutionary to changing our relationship to beauty, parroting archaic cliches about ‘toxins’ and cleanses. So much of the beauty industry relies on triggering insecurities or creating whole new ones. We are told to hate ourselves because it sells juice cleanses, colonics, and a million other procedures or products for an ideal that no one will ever be able to reach. Even the brand that marketed themselves as different has fallen into this trap.

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But I believe that self-love can coexist with loving beauty. Beauty can be more than creating insecurities and trying to sell a solution. Beauty can be about care and love for yourself. It can be about the final moments in the day when you unwind or in the morning when you prepare yourself to take on the day. Self-love is profoundly radical when we are constantly told to hate ourselves, our digestive tract, and our bodies. And the brands which capitalize on self-hatred should begin to take note because one day, hopefully, they will be obsolete.

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