Sovereign Body

I love the fact that Aishwarya Rai dresses however the heck she wants to and has chosen to be whatever size she is. It takes a lot of courage for a celebrity of her stature and its no wonder she stirs up a firestorm every year she shows up at Cannes. The public fury over her physical changes is not a rational debate about fashion; it is an involuntary reaction to the sight of an apex commodity depreciating in real time. Those who are judging her are well out of bounds and likely know this too, but can't help themselves and that is the irony of it.

In the calculus of global celebrity, Aishwarya Rai’s body was very afforded the rights of private property. For thirty years, the Indian public invested in her beauty as if it were a sovereign wealth fund, using her global validation to soothe a deep-seated post-colonial insecurity; the collective fear and self-doubt that questioned if India measured up to the western standards of beauty. When she won Miss World in 1994, it was treated as proof that India could compete on the world stage, making her physical perfection a point of national pride if not reclamation. Because the culture collectively commodified her youth, it now feels entitled to police her aging, viewing her weight gain and altered jawline as a breach of contract, a reckless if not endangerment management of a public asset.

The business logic of why she continues to be relevant is entirely separate from this emotional entitlement. L’Oréal is driven without the sentimentality of those who are upset with her failure to preserve eternal youth. They keep renewing her contract because she delivers a massive, fiercely loyal demographic across South Asia and the diaspora. The reality is that the women who criticize her gowns on Instagram will still buy the lipstick she promotes because her name carries the weight of a generational myth. To the corporation, her body is a high-performing financial instrument that guarantees brand visibility on a global red carpet. The arrangement serves both parties perfectly: she retains a lucrative global platform, and they secure the undivided attention of a billion-person market.

The annual drama following her appearance at Cannes is precisely because of this tension between corporate utility and public mythology. The internet trolls are upset because of her refusal to hide away, or to starve herself into a sample size, because it exposes the fraudulence of the beauty industry that they are so beholden to. She is showing up to collect her paycheck while looking like a wealthy, fifty-two-year-old mother who has undergone the ordinary, irreversible shifts of time. By remaining so visible without remaining young as she seems mandated to be, she forces a reckoning upon her. They have been raised on illusions of needing to latch to youth for as long as possible at whatever cost necessary. She just by being herself forces them to confront what their priorities in life.

Marine Inspiriation

I was at the end of a long line at the cashier's register at my favorite Asian grocery store recently, so I spent my time checking out the offerings in the beauty and personal care section. There was nothing there I recognized, but reading the list of ingredients supposedly required to give one eternally youthful skin was entertaining, to say the least. Salmon sperm did not feature in any of the items, best I can recall, but that has certainly been the big trend of the year past. It started with a celebrity mentioning a "salmon sperm facial" in 2024, and by 2025, the beauty world had fully leaned into the "skincare sushi" movement. Personally, I would much rather eat the salmon, which should logically have some benefits for the skin without the clinical drama. I can hardly wait to see what 2026 will bring.

The treatment, officially known as PDRN (polydeoxyribonucleotide) therapy, uses DNA fragments purified from salmon gonads to jumpstart the skin’s regenerative processes. Because salmon DNA is remarkably similar to our own, it acts like a tiny "instruction manual," telling sluggish human cells to repair themselves, boost collagen, and act more efficient. While the term sounds like a viral gimmick, the science is apparently rooted in regenerative medicine. Dermatologists have used PDRN for years to heal wounds and treat scars, but its transition to the aesthetic mainstream has turned it into the "new snail mucin." I have noticed the number of snail mucin products declining these days; I never got around to trying those either, it was always just idle curiosity. I image the snail slime moment is long past.

For those willing to endure the PDRN procedure, it typically involves a series of tiny injections that leave welt-like bumps on the face for a few days. Apparently, this is considered a small price to pay for the "porcelain skin" results currently dominating social media feeds. I can't help but think that if a person does not expect to have their skin closely inspected in person, the AI filters on video cameras can produce flawlessly smooth skin far more painlessly. However, for the purists, the trend has even led to a wave of "skincare tourists" flying to South Korea for the real deal, as these injections haven't yet received FDA approval in the U.S.

The beauty industry has responded with an explosion of PDRN-infused masks, serums, and creams for at-home use. While these topical versions are more approachable and certainly less painful, experts warn that a surface-level cream can’t fully replicate the deep tissue repair of a professional needle. Ultimately, this represents a broader shift toward "biohacking" our complexions. We are moving away from simple surface-level hydration toward ingredients that claim to work at a cellular level. Whether it's a passing fad or a permanent fixture, the presence of marine DNA in our medicine cabinets proves we’re increasingly comfortable with the bizarre, as long as the results are marketed as undeniable.

Rental Grandma

I had lost both my grandmothers well before the most turbulent years of my life. My mother is not able to provide what J seeks in a grandmother - this is has been true from the time she stopped being a toddler. Time stayed still for my parents but moved on for both of us. I am not able to bridge the gap that can resulted in the process. 

Reading about grandmas for rent in Japan made me think this would great to have around the world. The elderly could feel useful in the world, see that they were making a valuable contribution and all of us who ever needed a grandma and did not have access to one could benefit. I am sure my mother makes a fine grandma for the kids in her immediate surroundings who are now J's age. There has been no loss of context or cultural disconnect that grow between her and J as she visits to her home in America declined over the years, J got busier. The person she knew best was a toddler and that is what she anchors to hopelessly.

According to the OK Obaachan website, they have been getting a lot of requests for an incredibly wide range of uses, such as teaching how to cook, mediating family disputes, writing things with nice penmanship, and babysitting. They are often also called upon to act as pillars of emotional support and have been requested by men planning to come out as gay to their parents to be present when it happens.

From what I have observed, the hardest part of aging is the feeling of irrelevance. That can take a person who is in good physical and mental health, into someone who is experiencing all around struggles with aging. Maybe a service like this can help reverse some of that. 

Frozen Look

This story about comedians and Botoxed audiences reads like a piece from The Onion. It had a hard time accepting its veracity but figured there was some logic to the story so maybe its true. 

“Comedy thrives on connection, and facial expressions play a huge part. We want people to laugh, cry, frown, sneer, but frozen faces from Botox impact the entire atmosphere.

“We hope trialling this ban will help move the needle and get facial reactions back into the room – for the benefit of our comedians and the audience.”

Andrew Mensah, one of the venue’s regular stand-up acts, added: “Performing to an audience with frozen faces can be incredibly tough.

“Comedy is a two-way street – we feed off the energy and reactions of the crowd. Mark and the team are always devising new ideas to support us comedians – this must be his best one yet.”

I have an interesting experience each time I am in my Pilates class. One of the women was a former client and I've known her for over twenty years now. Her Botox (and whatever else she has done to her face) job has left her with a permanent smile. Some days our instructor really pushes the class hard and we all struggle because this is not a class for the very young and very fit. The demographic is motivated but they can't always keep up. 

We all look beat at some point but this lady has her smile on at all times, even though physically she is in about the same place as the rest of us. I am not sure if the perma-smile is any better than a frozen face socially. They both have the same effect in a sense - the person comes across as unsympathetic. This woman is about a decade older than me and has kept herself in fantastic shape. If she hadn't made the "improvements" to her face, I think she'd look even better. 

Stealing Vibe

Legal protection for someone's vibe is an interesting concept. The parties involved in this lawsuit are influencers and their vibe drives followers and income so there is likely argument to be made there. But what about regular folks who are not known or recognized as influencers? They too could have vibes that inspire plagiarism. It could be that someone's vibe is to be involved in marathons, training, running and having a community around that. Maybe they are partial to a particular style of athleisure. What if their friend or neighbor was inspired by that vibe and started to copy some or all of it. The person no longer remains quite as unique. This reminds me of a kld in school who was a few years older than me. She had a very unique sense of style that could shine through even the boring school uniform that allowed almost no opportunity for self-expression. 

B was not one to be held back by such constraints. There would be little flourishes added where possible and permissible to make her stand out from the sea of school-uniforms. Inevitably, copycats would emerge and soon there would be a scattering and more of girls who followed what B did. So she'd change things up and yet again as the followers caught on. I was a good bit younger to do any of that but was definitely well aware that B was the trend-setter and the older girls took their cues from her. Thinking back, I think B did not want people to copy her - the novelty and ingenuity was lost when they did. She always needed to stay ahead of the pack to maintain her separation from the crowds. Wherever she is now, I have no doubt B has a very unique vibe and chances are that she inspires others to do as she does - she was that kind of person, calm, self-assured and above the fray, qualities that those kids in school clearly found admirable.

Simple Tale

I remember Khushwant Singh from With Malice Towards One and All and that I always looked forward to reading his column. The Company of Women is not the Singh I had been familiar with but it was a book that I read to the end - something that is not often the case with me the last several years. The plot points are uncomplicated, the prose style extremely plain and after a few chapters you see a predictable way the protagonist Mohan Kumar engages with women. He needs them to fill the void in his life - sex is pivotal but there is companionship as well, his need to be the man who makes dreams come true for the the woman in his life, no matter now temporal and transactional the relationship. It is no work of art, literature or hallmark of erudition, this particular book. It is a lazy read at best. 

Yet, there is something to be said for it. What got my attention was his depiction of women as eager, willing and enthusiastic sexual partners. They are diverse in background, culture, and education but are similar in the expression of their primal urge. In that, they find common ground with Mohan Kumar, a man who can make dreams come true for a few or many months but not forever. So we have the moving cast of women that come in and out of his life, mostly without leaving any long-term marks but collectively, they keep him afloat, tend to his physical and mental aloneness. In 1999 when the book was published, Khushwant Singh was still associated with being the former editor of Illustrated Weekly and his eviscerating, no holds-barred political commentary. 

This book would be highly frivolous coming from him and that took courage. India pre-2000 was a very different country than it is now.  To write something this lewd at a time of his life when he would be putting the finishing touches to his legacy is pretty bold. The book on its own is quite unremarkable. Considered in the context of who wrote it, where and when it gives the reader pause.

Staying Shaded

 A friend who works for an premium cosmetics brand told me that all sunscreens are bad and to only wear things that form a physical barrier - the stuff that leaves behind white residue on skin. Even better leave the skin alone and wear wide-brimmed hats or carry an umbrella. 

My mother never steps out in the sun without and umbrella. As a kid, I was required to walk in the shade of her umbrella because it was not large enough for two. It has to be among the top ten embarrassing memories of childhood staying in the umbrella's shadow if there was so much as a hint of sun. In India that is just about every day of the year. Maybe there will be a good for you sunscreen yet - inspired by the octopus this time around.

..a synthesized version of xanthommatin can significantly boost sunscreen protection levels when blended with zinc oxide, without having any negative impact on marine life such as corals or to humans

That sounds good as long it does not mean killing of all octopuses in the world to make some uber-premium sunscreen that influencers will peddle to one and all including eight year olds. 

Inner Beauty

My first encounter with a beauty parlor was in my teens and in Bihar so a lot of this essay takes me back in time and place. I don't remember the name of the woman who ran the parlor but it was located inside a maze of back alleys away from the main street and the storefronts of the marketplace. I usually went there with my mother and once we got deep enough in the maze, the sounds from the street would die down. That quietness followed us into the parlor. The woman was younger than my mother, neatly dressed and chatty. She would get to work on me quite unprompted- almost divining what improvements my teenage self needed to shine from within and without. My mother had her hair cut sometimes but that was usually not the reason for our visit. 

The process was completed in under thirty minutes if there were no other customers - which was often the case. But there were busy days and we would need to wait. Perms were common then so I observed women getting those. Getting your hair streaked with bleach was not quite in vogue yet but there were some folks who were "edgy" enough to try that. It was fun for me to observe the transformation these girls went through - they came in one person into the parlor and departed another. The woman was like a magician with her jars of spells and potions. I remained mostly as I was but the act of "beautification" felt good anyway. My mother was always pleased with the results and that was an important metric in my life at that point. I did not think of the beauty parlor as an escape from the male patriarchy - maybe it had been but the fact just escaped my attention. Maybe that is where the inner glow came from.

Just Being

We sometimes take a walk through a neighborhood close to ours that sits around a little lake. The lake has a small population of mallards, herons and egrets. I never fail to think how those birds have a great life - there is no competition for resources and no animals around that could prey on them. There is a abundance of fish in the lake, the trees and bushes all around it make for a cozy habitat. The people and their houses are set away from the lake by a good distance separated by woods. There are no benches for people to sit around by the lake - which based on your perspective is a good or bad thing. There are walkers (like us) and some runners that do their laps around the water. 

This is never a busy place and the you can almost always expect total silence except for the sound of the birds. Last time we were there it was on Halloween so the neighborhood was a hive of activity with trick-or-treaters doing their rounds accompanied by groups of adults. Back at the lake nothing had changed. If anything it was quieter and emptier - we were the only ones taking a walk. I noticed a pair of mallards in the water, forming a V as they went from one edge of the lake to the other. They maintained a consistent distance between themselves - the male leading, the female following close behind. The V in the water reflected their perfectly synchronized movement. 

I took pause to observe and thought about how they had created beauty just by being and moving - acts of living, nothing more. It made me think if we as humans could ever achieve that state - what might it take for me (for instance) to create observable beauty in the world by simply being and moving. I could not come up with anything. It seemed like that was a gift reserved only the very young - a baby could certainly create beauty just by being. 

Wendy's Bot

Wendy's use case of a customized language model is one that other fast food and fast casual restaurants might pick up. Placing the order is often the longest part of the process and not the most enjoyable one. If a chat-bot could engage the customer better, be friendlier and chattier and help them make their choices more effectively, that could help outcomes for both sides. Those preparing the order would have confidence that the order accurately reflects what the customer asked for. The customer could experience less friction in the flow. I was at a Cava recently pretty late in the evening. They were missing some items for my order so there was back and forth on substitutions. 

The same thing happened with three other customers in line behind me. With a chatbot, it would not be so hard to present the customers with options that the currently available ingredients will support. The bot can also recommend the right substitutions for your favorite item in the menu when some components are missing. All this can happen without stressing out the employees who have to prep the bowl while dealing with a hungry customer, missing ingredients and substitutions. In this kind of collaboration between bot and employee, it seems everyone comes ahead including the customer. Back to what Wendy' - not sure if the solution calls for custom LLMs, seems like an overkill for the job at hand. 

Lipstick Index

Recently, I had to deal with Happy Returns at Ulta and did not find the process nearly as "happy" as advertised. But I am not a habitual shopper at Ulta so presumably the incentives did not line up for me. The store unlike many others in the mall was a hive of activity. 

I recall being surprised that women were still in the mood for cosmetics shopping notwithstanding the times. There is obviously truth to the story that inflation has had no effect on beauty product consumption. The Lipstick Index is at work - there is always a bit of money to spend on something that offers instant gratification 

The survey found that beauty procedures consumers do regularly were ones they were least likely to cut back on -- various eyelash extension and tinting services were rated as the last thing to be cut for financial reasons. 

A young lady I know told me that she does not hesitate to get her eye lashes done professionally every so often. There is a always time and money for that. Her logic was that if her eyelashes are great then it simplifies the overall makeup routine, she ultimately saves money and looks perfect without making a big effort. The logic seems to be sound. She is on a budget and yet the eyelash services are not impacted. 

Being Influenced

I have not read much about what it means to be an influencer in the marketing business so this article was educative.

From Botox to breast implants, medical providers have turned to social media for a new kind of personalized advertising that comes directly from influencers. And in the growing industry of cosmetic providers, there are few to no rules when it comes to advertising body modifications, which opens the door to offering teenagers free, unlimited cosmetic procedures. 

This is sad and wrong at so many levels. A teenager generally feels like they know all the answers and the adults are out of touch. That is normal rite of passage into their own adulthood. When this young person's mostly unwarranted self-assurance and is boosted to stratosphere by their ability to influence others to buying things, its already a step in the wrong direction. 

To make one-way decisions to alter their bodies at this age just because its free and someone wants to use them push product, it is another dimension of wrong. It is only a matter of time that their ability to influence will fade and along with these unlimited freebies - its like the house of cards falling apart. 

Lost World

The appointment of Leena Nair to head Chanel has warmed many a desi heart no doubt. Hopefully her influence at the top of the fashion food chain will have trickle down effects that impact lesser mortals with modest budgets favorably. Every time, I see a desi sister in America dressed to fit in and blend, I feel and share her pain. The same woman in a desi setting would look beautifully alive in colors and textures from India - whether or not she is actually wearing a sari. It would bring out the real person hidden in clothing that was not designed with her in mind. 

In America, it takes a very bold woman to wear a sari or other recognizably ethnic clothes to work. It is a statement, it grabs attention in ways that may not serve the woman well. In all my years, I have not met one so brave. Sometimes, a girl will add a small detail to an otherwise conformist attire, might come to work with remnants of henna from a wedding celebration she attended over the weekend and so on, but that is about as far as it gets. Here is hoping Nair can help add to the concept of western attire, what it would take the rest of the world to feel like it allows them the power of self-expression and creativity through the clothes they wear. 

Color Match

The gratuitous buzzwords made this story hard to read but the concept is nice - a bespoke lipstick that is perfect for the person. " Utilizing artificial intelligence-based algorithms, the cloud-connected app analyzes a photo of the user's face.." Not all that complicated really. The face has characteristics that can be easily isolated and tagged, add user preferences to that, may check for occasion, season and time of day to generate a color that would work perfectly. Would be nice to see personalized make-up go mainstream. 

Once is a great while, a woman will find something that is just perfect for her skin and before long it's no longer available. So if you need to resume your search. As J grew older and started to clear out my make-up bag, I found myself needing less and less. It was too much work to find and replace. Instead, it was easier to scavenge through J's discard pile and find the few things I could use. Now that she does not live with me anymore, I am on my own. It turns out that tinted moisturizer and lip balm is all I need - its all that I have capacity for. Being able to color match old favorites is a good one. Makeup is strange business and women can have a phase and time shifting relationship with it. The older I grow, the more I want to go minimal - that feels more real and representative of the person I am. In my younger years, it was all about vibrant colors - the more the better. 

Pattern Completion

This past Diwali, I had a craving for the choddo shak of my childhood. Until now, I was not curious to know what went into that mix. It was just one of those things that was done on the day of Kali puja and not even the most exciting part of it. The fire-crackers, sweet and savory foods came later in the evening. This was served during lunch and set the stage for the festival. My ersatz choddo shak was nothing like the real thing having none of the real ingredients. 

Yet, having recalled a time from the past offered its own kind of satisfaction. During lunch, I found myself trying to remember a similar Diwali from childhood see if something would trigger the memory of taste and nothing did. In effect, I was left with the feeling of a planted and somewhat incomplete memory. Perhaps, I am lacking what it takes to reach "pattern completion" 

When we first experience the event, all these distinct aspects are represented in different regions of the brain, yet we are still able to remember them all later on. It is the hippocampus that is critical to this process, associating all these different aspects so that the entire event can be retrieved."

The researchers showed that associations formed between the different aspects of an event allow one aspect to bring back a wave of memory that includes the other aspects. This process is known as "pattern completion."

Power of Red

The AOC make-up video is probably the only YouTube make-up tutorial I have ever watched end to end.  I love that she makes being feminine about power and control. Just because a woman knows to use make-up and chooses to spend an hour in front of the mirror to get ready for the day does not make her unintelligent, lacking seriousness or otherwise incompetent. It is a fantastic message for young women to hear as they go out into the world, trying to understand and respond to stereotypes they have to contend and overcome. 

She talks about the power of loving yourself. There is also the element of feeling that you deserve to spend the time on your look, on how to appear in the mirror to yourself and to the world. In emotionally distressful times, women can't pull themselves together sometimes do pretty up their faces. So what stares back at them from the mirror is the sadness, stress and insecurity they so need to snap out of. The cycle could break if they experienced love for themselves for a bit, used that time to accentuate the beauty nature had given them.

One of my aunts went through a long period of depression in her thirties. I remember how on her relatively better days she would wear a beautiful sari, apply make-up and style her long hair into a bun. It was like the sun had emerged from behind the clouds. When we kids told her how wonderful she looked,it always lifted her spirits and seemed to provide some fuel to battle her demons. Sometimes she had a streak of several such days. Over time, we started to see her more in this happy uplifted state, color coordinated and made-up. Maybe there were other things in play that we did not know about but she did overcome in the end, I remember she too was the fan of a bright red lipstick. 

Museum Grade

Seeing the gorgeous art work of Bisa Bulter made me think about how people express themselves through their choice of clothing and jewelry. When I first came to America, I wore my saris to Walmart until I came to realize that as a new arrival to the country, I should focus on blending in instead of standing out in a grocery store. There is a time and place to show pride in my ethnic roots and heritage but do that while shopping for produce was misguided. Then I started working and it made even more sense to blend so people would hear me and not just get distracted by my attire. And so began the process of shedding my identity over the years to the point I am invisible in a crowd because I am very much like the average. Even today, I feel like the real me when I wear a sari and ethnic jewelry, when I can be colorful like the plumage of a tropic bird, my eyes look alive with kajal and my face with a bindi. 

Yet, for very large chunks of the last couple of decades, I have lived not feeling and looking like the real me. My desi friends and relatives find their escape in their parties where they do get to show up in beautiful Indian clothes and jewelry. Sometimes, a visit to the temple can be a venue to do that as well. I always experienced a sense of entrapment in both places - it was like playing a role on stage. A big costume party with props that are meant to invoke the home country - food, music, deities and more. This is not real like waiting for a bus at the stop on the way to work, wearing a sari like most other women and for all that to be the average. Bisa Bulter's amazing quilts, the colors and the energy do represent the real life of a people. In their natural milieu it would be average, not worthy of going up on the wall of a museum. Such are the very small sacrifices people must make to make a new home in a country that they were not born in.

Made-up Face

I never had much patience for make-up and now with being at home all the time, the need of any has disappeared. Some women I work with started strong in the early days of the quarantine. They put in the time and effort to look right on Zoom. I did way less but but atleast tried. Over the weeks, just about everyone  started to relax about it. Women are showing up on Zoom in clothes, I would never expect them to wear to work. Just stuff out of their wardrobe that could be dated or perhaps not comfortable to wear at work all day. These clothes are now all coming out of the wood-work. I have taken to wearing bright colors that I don't wear to work. 

My own work dress code has been normal and boring - absolutely nothing about it would remotely stand-out. The more blend-in the look the better has always been my goal. In the time of Zoom, I have deviated a bit from that - now I do like a brightly patterned top to break up the monotony of days that bleed to weeks. There is no dress-code for such times as we find ourselves in, though people are writing about the topic, reporting from the field and such. It comes as no surprise that make-up sales are declining. Women I know are taking the lazy route of using the Touch-up my appearance on Zoom. Personally, I have found that quite workable. I am sure there will be good make-up filters on Zoom over time,

Cocktailing

Some time last year, I encouraged J to start checking out make-up videos on YouTube so she learned from those who did it well. I never had the patience for it myself but I do want J to be proficient so I outsourced the job to YouTube. I wanted her to see enough options so she was identify a style that she likes best. J got into this project with great enthusiasm and has learned a few things. 

Reading this WSJ article about the trend of cocktailing was interesting. If the lessons in make-up are being crowd-scourced, it would make sense that the products will be a mixed bag with no particular brand affiliation. When a regimen is not passed down from mother to daughter, there is no tradition to uphold - the situation is ripe for chaos and disruption. Those of us who have a super basic routine are getting squeezed out in the fray. We don't wants things changed and innovated on us but that's like asking Ford to continue rolling out the Model T while the world is moving on to Tesla.

Beautiful Women

Tyler Cowen's article on why some countries have a disproportionately higher number of beautiful women has several interesting comments from readers. Rather than the usual suspects of ethnicity, genetics, diet, life-style and such which might result in a certain group of women (and men) looking more appealing than others, readers suggest a whole slew of other factors - repeated conquests of a country by foreigners (assuming these foreigners almost always were better looking than the natives, this makes sense), incentives for women to look their best in societies where there the available pool of potential husbands is small and more.

The other theory is that women are getting more and more beautiful over the generations while men remain at the same level of aesthetic appeal as their cavemen ancestors. Ouch ! If that were really true, women would not kill themselves trying to look skinny and plastic beautiful. After all, it should not be that hard to appeal to cavemen. Yet, the fashion, surgical and cosmetic enhancement business is flourishing like never before.

Just to throw yet another random theory out there, I would suggest that women today are going overboard with this whole beauty business because they are increasingly moving away from their gender stereotype. There is no longer anything a man can do that an woman cannot as well. Merely her gender, does not make her feel feminine so she needs something more to reaffirm it to herself and the world at large - so looking beautiful is as important as it is.