New Jersey-based beauty-culture critic and journalist Jessica DeFino has made it her mission to debunk the myths of the global beauty industry. Photo / Supplied
Beauty-culture critic and journalist Jessica DeFino tells Sharon Stephenson why she’s targeting the beauty industry’s hold over how we look and feel.
I’m pretty sure Jessica DeFino won’t mind me saying this but even via a computer screen, her face is so luminous I wonder if she’s using a filter.
It turns out there’s no filter: the American journalist simply has the kind of skin that comes from good genes and a diet rich in antioxidants and omega-3s.
But, and this is the important bit, it’s also skin untouched by cosmetic interventions and very few products.
New Jersey-based DeFino is, in her own words, a “pro-skin/anti-product” beauty reporter who’s made it her mission to skew the hysteria of the global beauty industry. She does this by debunking the myths that keep consumers consuming and propping up a global beauty industry worth around NZ$883 billion.
If there was such a thing as a caped crusader of the beauty industry, DeFino would be it.
The 33-year-old’s targets include evolving beauty standards, an industry that deals in fearmongering and borderline dodgy marketing tactics, and a culture that tells us we’re not slim enough, pretty enough, or good enough – but could be if we just used the right products and treatments.
“If you look at the way we participate in the beauty industry, a lot of it is a coping mechanism, a way of coping with a culture that tells you you’re not worthy as you are,” says DeFino. “So, you buy the products and then you buy more, and you fall deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole.”
It’s Friday morning my time, Thursday evening on America’s East Coast when DeFino, rugged up in a thick black sweater, Zooms into my living room.
She’s envious when I swivel my laptop around to show her the sunshine outside. “We haven’t had much snow this winter, but it’s been pretty grey and cold here,” she says.
DeFino is talking to me from her grandmother’s house where she’s lived since her marriage broke up three years ago.
“I was in LA for a decade for work, but when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, I came home to be her caregiver. She lives nearby so I go over, and we watch The Bachelor together.”
She’s happy to have swapped the bright lights of Los Angeles for her hometown of Sayreville, the New Jersey suburb that gave us Bon Jovi.
“That’s our claim to fame! But I love living in my grandparents’ old house. I wish it was daytime so I could show you the beautiful lagoon outside.”
When she’s not helping her mother, DeFino’s main focus is being a voice of reason in the beauty world. As The HuffPost once said of her, “She basically gives the middle finger to the entire beauty industry.”
A quick tootle around Google throws up her articles about the body’s chemical burden from using too many products, filler-free formulations, cosmetic surgery, and sustainable packaging.
It’s hard not to feel envious of some of the prestigious publications these clever, sassy articles have appeared in: Vogue, The New York Times, Elle, Marie Claire and Harper’s Bazaar.
But two years ago, DeFino started to pivot away from those titles.
“From a young age, I had a list of places I wanted my byline in, institutions such as The New York Times because I thought people would take me more seriously and I would take myself more seriously. But over the last few years, I’ve grappled with my growth as a person and asked myself why being published by these institutions was so important to me. I realised that these places aren’t always aligned with my personal values so I’ve been trying to find a way where I can write and work from a more authentic place.”
She’s found that place with The Unpublishable, a weekly (ish) Substack newsletter where she now lobs her journalistic grenades. As the name suggests it’s a place where DeFino writes about issues that mainstream publications, can’t, won’t, or don’t cover.
“That could be because they want to appease advertisers, preserve brand relationships or cling to the conventional wisdom, outdated ideals, and marketing myths that keep consumers buying. Trust me, it all influences what information makes it to the mainstream. Basically, it’s what the beauty industry won’t tell you but I’m on a mission to reform it.”
The Unpublishable was born from the pandemic when four articles DeFino had written were returned to her after freelance budgets dried up.
“I really wanted to get them out there so decided to self-publish. That was two years ago, and it’s proven there are other ways to get paid. Plus, I love the freedom of being able to say what I want.”
The day we speak, she’s saying what she wants about buccal fat removal.
Claimed to be “the new Brazilian butt-lift”, aka the latest beauty trend to blitz social media, the procedure involves the removal of fat from the buccal pad, a mass of tissues within the cheek, to create sculptured, more defined cheekbones. Conducted under anaesthesia, surgeons create small incisions on either side of the patient’s mouth to expose the buccal fat pad and remove some or all of the fat.
“It’s becoming a real trend but it’s such a paradox,” DeFino says, shaking her head.
“On one hand the beauty industry is telling us to suck the fat out of our face, but on the other, they tell us our skin needs more collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid, which those fat cells you’ve just got rid of help to produce! But it’s so they can package and sell us back the collagen and elastin they told us to suck out in the first place.”
The industry’s holy grail of anti-ageing also comes in for criticism.
“The message is that we need to erase stuff. But our skin has pores and wrinkles and blemishes, they’re basic human features, not things that need to be treated or cured. We’d be better off learning to accept that we’re human instead of trying to have the skin we had when we were 25.”
Growing up, Plan A was to be a performer. “I loved singing and wanted to be a Broadway performer. I even competed in child beauty pageants from around the age of 5 to 7,” says the former 1995 Miss Sayreville Petite.
Instead, performing became writing songs, which became a degree in singing and songwriting at Boston’s Berklee College of Music.
After college, she moved to LA but by then DeFino had decided her talents lay more in styling musicians such as Linkin Park, Jason Mraz and Green Day for photo shoots and videos.
But she missed writing so ended up at an agency writing for international publications such as Harper’s Bazaar China and Elle Mexico.
In 2015, the Kardashians came calling. “The Kardashian and Jenner sisters had just launched their own apps, so I got a job collaborating with them to create online fashion and beauty content and even some sex columns for Khloe’s app.”
It was, she says, an “I made it moment”. “I was 26 at the time and it was very cool being associated with the most famous women in the world.”
Ironically, her work as a beauty writer affected her own childhood skin issues. “I’ve had problem skin since I was 12 and tried everything for it, but nothing worked long-term. Being in such a high-stress work environment triggered my dermatitis.”
It didn’t help that her job afforded her oodles of free products, which further stressed her skin, as did the overuse of the topical steroid cream meant to help.
“That lead to skin atrophy where my skin looked like it was peeling off my face. It was a crisis of skin and a crisis of health. I had invested so much of myself into the beauty industry that I wasn’t sure who I was without it.”
DeFino went cold turkey, barely even washing her face, and within a week her skin looked healthier than it had for a long time. “My whole life I’ve been told, the more products I put on my skin the better my skin will look. I’d never been told to do nothing but that’s what turned my skin issues around.”
DeFino started looking into the science of skin, which led her to her current path. Her skin routine is simple – jojoba oil, which she uses as a moisturiser and makeup remover, SPF, rosewater, and mānuka honey, which does triple-duty as a face wash, mask, and spot remover.
She was introduced to the Kiwi product on her second trip to Aotearoa in early 2020.
“I’d been to Auckland in 2014 for NZ Fashion Week but just before the pandemic, I visited a farm in Whakatāne where I saw Māori beekeepers harvest mānuka honey. I’m now a real convert. I don’t have many Kiwi beauty brands on my radar, but I do admire Ethique’s approach to sustainability. I felt a real spiritual connection to New Zealand on that last trip and would love to come back.”