The South Carolina Primary, TikTok Mental Health, and Skin Care for Kids

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • Nikki Haley’s Future After the South Carolina Primary Results

  • TikTok Mental Health

  • Outside of Politics: Skin Care for Young Girls

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EPISODE RESOURCES

Don’t miss the chance to see Sarah and Beth live at the Emerge Conference for rising professionals on March 12 Tickets Here

SOUTH CAROLINA PRIMARY RESULTS

TIKTOK MENTAL HEALTH

SKIN CARE FOR KIDS

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TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:10] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.  

Beth [00:00:12] Where we take a different approach to the news.  

[00:00:14] Music Interlude.  

Sarah [00:00:29] Welcome. We're glad you joined us today. We're going to be discussing the results of the South Carolina primary and what exactly the state of things is for Nikki Haley. Is there any chance at all she could take her momentum and turn it into victory? Does it matter? Then we're going to dive into the intersection of TikTok and mental health. We have been seeing and reading and thinking and talking about the diagnosis, the proliferation in particular of self-diagnosis among young people here in America. And we wanted to talk about that here today with all of you. So that's what we're going to talk about. And then Outside of Politics, on a related theme, we're going to talk about the growth of skin care among young girls and how that's an increasingly common passion.  

Beth [00:01:14] Before we start, we just want to let you know that we're going to be speaking together at the Emerge Conference in Lexington, Kentucky. We love speaking in our home state. That conference is for rising professionals on March 12th, and tickets are available to attend the conference through the link in our show notes and on our website. We would love to see you there. We also wanted to say Happy Birthday to Dylan Garven of Studio D. Dylan has been doing the audio for our show with his team since 2018. It's a big year for him. He is celebrating his first birthday as the father of a little one, and so it'll be a little different this year. But we are sending all of our best birthday wishes and just lots of gratitude and appreciation for that long relationship his way.  

Sarah [00:01:52] Up next, let's talk about Nikki Haley.  

[00:01:54] Music Interlude.  

[00:02:04] Beth, South Carolina voted in its presidential primary on Saturday, and we feel legally obligated to discuss the results.  

Beth [00:02:13] We are political podcasters. Presidential primary. I don't have a whole lot to say about this, but it does feel important to say something. So here we are. Those are the disclosures.  

Sarah [00:02:23] Something. Now, listen. Well, let's get the vote out of the way. First of all, Trump won in case you hadn't heard. I feel like we need a different verb, but that's okay. He got 451,905 votes, about 60%. Haley got 298,674 votes, about 40%. Now South Carolina allocates its 50 delegates by giving 29 to the overall winner, and then candidates receive three for each congressional district they win, which is a fascinating way to do it. So Trump got 47 delegates and Nikki Haley received three delegates. Now this is her home state. So there has been an enormous amount of coverage over the fact that she did not win her home state of South Carolina, and how the delegate math is becoming increasingly difficult for her. But our listeners often ask, why is the coverage so stacked as if this has already been decided? They make the point Nikki Haley often makes, which is a lot of people have not voted yet.  

Beth [00:03:29] Most of the people have not voted yet. And 94% of the delegates to the RNC have not been assigned yet. So there is a long way to go. And also on that long journey, many of the states do something similar to South Carolina, where if you win the popular vote of the state, you are going to get most, if not all, of the state's delegates. And the polling looks today as though Donald Trump, the former president, will continue to borrow a phrase from our lovely listener, Norma, to just stomp like Godzilla through these primaries and end up getting most, if not all, of the delegates coming out of Super Tuesday. And enough delegates are at stake on Super Tuesday that he could then have secured over 50% of the delegates to the convention and have effectively locked up the nomination.  

Sarah [00:04:27] We recorded an interview with another podcast, and through the course of the questions the host was asking us, I was able to articulate something about Nikki Haley in this delegate math in this primary, which is something she said. Which is this is not normal. This is not a normal primary. Donald Trump is not a normal candidate. And so I think the rub for so many of us watching this coverage is that the coverage acts as if it's normal. She hasn't gotten the delegate. She's not going to get there. What have we been talking about when we haven't had a debate between these two candidates, when one is facing enormous criminal and civil liability? So I cannot blame Nikki Haley for looking around and going, "This is not normal. So my analysis and conclusion is not going to be normal either." If I'm Nikki Haley-- Beth, I'm just going to be really honest with you. This is what I think.  

Beth [00:05:24] I'd like to hear it. I'd like you to be honest with me.  

Sarah [00:05:27] If I'm Nikki Haley, I'm just thinking, I'mma holdout because who the heck knows what could happen with this dude? He can go to jail. Or what I say, every day when I wake up, is he could die. He could die today. He's a very old man under enormous amount of stress. And so I just wonder if that's her analysis, I cannot blame her. I cannot fault her for just saying who knows? Everything else about this is weird and upside down, so why shouldn't I hold out and think maybe it will continue to be weird and upside down and I will benefit from the weirdness? I'm just saying.  

Beth [00:06:06] People run for president and continue their runs for president for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with delegate math. And for me, Nikki Haley is living, and she's doing a better job of it than most people around this election. At least she is saying, "I am going to act." We can all sit around and complain or we can act. And I think she's just decided I'm going to do my thing and let the chips fall. That's what I meant when I said, I hope she goes full YOLO and I feel that she's doing it too. She is doing something when a huge percentage of this country, including people who are well-positioned to also do something, a huge percentage of people are just going, "Ugh, I don't like this." And good for her. And how many things in the story of America have come from gambits that were totally illogical at the time, or that seemed illogical to everyone observing them? So whatever the math looks like, I get the commentators who are, like, even if Donald Trump dies or goes to jail, there's no way the delegates pledged to him are going to switch to Nikki Haley. Probably true. I think it just doesn't matter. I think that is not the value proposition for her of staying in this election. And I'm not going to assume what the value proposition is, but I'm happy for her and I encourage her, and I would like to see more people saying, "Say what you want, everybody, write your columns, do your thing. But I see a problem and I'm just going to step in and do what I can do to deal with that problem."  

Sarah [00:07:46] Yeah. She has a real sort of Liz Cheney scales falling from the eye vibe right now. You can all pretend that this is normal, but I refuse to. You can stand up to be abused. I mean, the way that he sacrificed Lindsey Graham to be booed by the crowd-- let me be abundantly clear, I do not feel an ounce of empathy, sympathy or otherwise for Lindsey Graham. I'm just saying, the way the rest of the Republican Party signs up to be abused and manipulated and sacrificed by this man over and over again never ceases to amaze me. And so anybody who stands up-- and it's not like her record is perfect on this-- but says, "Enough, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm not going to pretend like he's normal. He's not normal." Kudos.  

Beth [00:08:37] I agree, and she's going to do and say things that I disagree with the whole path. She's a different person than I am and that's fine. I am still so supportive of her continuing to do something, to try something, to be out there saying the things that appear to be true to her. I know that some people were very upset about her comments about the Alabama IVF case. I disagree with her about that. I think she means what she says. I don't think she's pandering. I think she's sincerely a pretty conservative woman, and I think that makes it even more impactful for her to be out there saying this choice is unacceptable.  

Sarah [00:09:13] Yeah. Well, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, I would have thought that a conservative woman like Nikki Haley was the worst possible thing imaginable. But time has wisened me to another reality that there are worse things than people that disagree with you vehemently on policy, and they look a lot like Donald Trump.  

Beth [00:09:35] One hundred percent. So I just I wish her the continued best. I am going to start fast forwarding through analyses that tell me that the math is super hard for her. I get it. I'm not sitting in my house thinking Nikki Haley could run away with the Republican nomination for president, but I still think what she's doing matters.  

[00:09:52] Music Interlude.  

Sarah [00:10:02] Along with the rest of America, we have had a continued conversation here at Pantsuit Politics about mental health and teenagers, and we wanted to continue that conversation today. We pledged to you at the very first episode, which you can find in the show notes, that this was not something we were just going to dip our toes in and never talk about again, that we wanted to continue to talk about the situation, not only because it's something that comes up in the media a lot, not only because it's something that's important across America, but because, hey, we're both the mother of teenagers, so super relevant also. And so today what we wanted to talk about is something that we have both noticed bubbling up in coverage in lots of different places, which is the propensity (thanks to social media) for teenagers to self-diagnose themselves. That the over identification with mental health diagnoses that's happening right now, that it's happening enough that we're seeing lots of people talk about it in lots of different places. And so we wanted to talk about it as well.  

Beth [00:11:10] It's not just that I'm seeing it being discussed out in the world, it comes home to me. There is a lot of conversation in my house about diagnosis and about accommodation following diagnosis. Like my seventh grade daughter is observing an increasing amount of shifting behaviors in classrooms as a result of kids who have said, "Well, this is what I am." And she'll say, like, "What are you doing about that?" And often the answer is about, well, I need this thing to help me. But there's not a lot of like, "Well, I'm seeing a therapist or I'm talking to my doctor about it." It's like, "I have decided from social media and the people who I follow, that I identify with these characteristics that they're discussing. And because of that, I have decided that these are tools that I'm going to use." And that, to me, is the place where I feel concern in myself. I think it is a wonderful thing that we have destigmatized discussions about mental health. I even hate saying mental health. It's just health, right? The brain is a part of the body. It's all connected. Destigmatizing this aspect of health, I think, is fantastic. I think greater awareness of what people suffer with, fantastic. The point of diagnosis to me is to work with a professional, to say, okay, take what we know about me, plus what we know about this category in general, and let's figure out what tools are appropriate to use to help me achieve my individual goals. And that just gets totally flattened out in this arena. And that's where the yellow lights are flashing for me.  

Sarah [00:13:02] Look, what always happens when we talk about the youths? Which is, oh, they're broken. I don't want to do that here today. I think what is often the case is whatever we are naming or seeing with teenagers in particular, is a manifestation of behavior that's been present with adults for a long time. And I don't know how long you've used the term Doctor Google, Beth, but I've used it in my life for a long time. I mean, how long have we recognized in ourselves the ability to go to the internet with a problem and the internet presents a diagnosis for you? Be it physical, psychological, whatever the case may be, we've all done it. Even you hear your friends from medical school, you go in medical school and you have to spend some time being like, "Wait, I don't actually have everything in the DSM." I'm reading these symptoms and I'm like, "Wait, do I have all these things? I think maybe I have all these things." Because there are professionals for a reason, whether you're an adult or a teenager. We've just talked about this when we started seeing pharmaceutical advertisements. In some ways they were imposing, talk to your doctor. It put in people's heads that you could go to a doctor and say, "This is a problem I'm having, and I would like a solution," which a lot of people didn't feel like they could do. At the same time, it is presenting solutions to something that maybe you don't have as a problem, isn't well fitted for a multiple of other reasons. So we've seen this tension as adults in lots of places as we have gained more and more information about not just our physical but our mental health.  

[00:14:44] And I just think the risk of not involving experts along the way in this process is something we've probably all experienced as adults, and that we have to be better at articulating to kids. Because you read these, the reports of psychiatrists who are saying like, "Well, kids are coming in and talking about a dissociative state. And then I know that they've been on TikTok because that's not something a 10-year-old or a 12-year-old usually has the language around." And I think what you said that 'I am' instead of 'I'm struggling' with to me is like a really important touchpoint. I read a really great interview on John Hopkins website. It was with Jennifer Katzenstein, who's a director of psychology, neuropsychology and social work at the center for Behavioral Health at Johns Hopkins Children's Hospital. And she was talking about the difference between a mental health experience, which can be a range of emotions and states that you encounter versus a mental health disorder or illness, which involves a pattern of symptoms that disrupt your daily functioning. And I think that just gets compressed when you're talking about TikTok or Instagram or even just, like I said, like doing a search on Google. To piece apart that, I think is really difficult to do with great self-awareness, with a fully functioning frontal lobe, much less having an algorithm saying, "Oh, you think you have this problem? Well, let me just show you all these people who had it and also this and this and this and this." I think it's just that very important distinction is lost in the process of being fed information through an algorithm.  

Beth [00:16:21] It is really important when you're talking about bringing a tool to an issue to know the duration of the issue. And I struggle with a timeline around my own health, and I've been working at this for 43 years. When I'm asked by a doctor, how long have you been experiencing X, Y, or Z symptoms? I struggle to answer that question. And my perception of time, I think, is more finely tuned than most teenagers' perception of time. And especially when what you're feeling is really intense, your perspective on that timeline is limited. And so, I don't mind at all the conversation. I think it's great in some ways that my daughters both have a much more robust vocabulary to describe their feelings, especially than I did. They both can talk about emotion with a lot more precision than I could. And I think social media is part of that. Not because they're on it, they aren't, but because it has permeated the language of their peers to such an extent, and because their schools are talking a lot more about social emotional health, mental health. I think all of that is good. I just struggle when it is something more than empowering with language, and it becomes empowering with the next steps. Because I think the next steps really do need a lot of consultation and thought.  

Sarah [00:17:56] Well, I mean, when you're a teenager and you're looking to identify, you're looking to individuate and identify yourself, and someone offers up all these tools and language with which to do that, I think it is very appealing. You're trying to figure out who you are. So if somebody puts a label on that, great. But I do think there's a risk in that. And I think there's a risk in that for adults. And I think that as positive as the destigmatizing of mental health has been, there have been some real downsides. I even think about my own language. I think about how in an effort to destigmatize it, we normalize it in such a way that removes the impact. I mean, how often do we throw around the words, "Well, I'm really OCD about this," or bipolar. It's just getting more intense. You see on TikTok people using dissociative or borderline personality disorder. And even borderline, they're using the acronym. It's just becoming so normalized. And there's been so many discussions and conversations around the normalization of trauma and the language of trauma. And so we've stripped all the meaning out of it. We've stripped all the impact of it. To destigmatize something does not mean to remove all impact. That's not destigmatizing it, because without impact how do you decide what's important? How do you decide what to prioritize if there's no impact, if everything is normal, if everybody has everything? I was reading an article about people who take off work and the diagnosis rate for young women, that more than a third of young people aged between 18 and 24 suffer from what is described as common mental disorder. First of all, I don't know what common mental disorder means. Isn't that just being a human being? And so I just think that, again, if it's everything, then it's nothing. And that to me is not destigmatizing. That's not getting people the help they need. That's not, like I said, prioritizing and using professionals and the tools available to you through professionals to actually improve your quality of life. Because that's what we want to do, whether you're having a mental health experience or a mental health disorder. We're going somewhere. The diagnosis is not the end of the journey. Hopefully, the diagnosis is the beginning of the journey and improving your quality of life from there.  

Beth [00:20:22] I do find myself worrying that the diagnosis is the end of the journey insofar as social media allows you, again, in some ways that are great, to connect with communities of people who share that diagnosis. And there is a piece of that that is really helpful and important. It is a lonely thing to receive any kind of diagnosis. Then, especially for kids, I think you have to figure out what is my healthy engagement in this community? What is my goal in connecting here? When am I beyond the scope of that goal in connecting here? When is this community bringing real good to my life, and when is this community being a drain in my life? Because that can happen really quickly, especially when algorithms are, by and large, showing you. It becomes less community the way TikTok is designed and more tagging. It's the we're just going to keep showing you this kind of content. And it might feel like community to you, but from our perspective, we've just gotten some great marketing information and let us flood you with that great marketing information. And I just think that's where you really need people holding your hands to check in about what am I getting from this and what is it taking from me in the process?  

Sarah [00:21:48] Yeah. I think two things. One, the experience of feeling that you are not alone through the hearing and understanding of other people's stories is so important. But it's consciousness raising; it's not community. Community is a relationship and not always beneficial. I have written prolifically about the benefit as the mother of a type one diabetic and the mother of a child that suffers with hemiplegia of finding those online communities. But let me be clear, it is not always positive. That there are moments within these communities where the diagnosis becomes an all-consuming identity in ways that are detrimental to people's mental health. And it is abundantly clear that that's what's happening. I don't spend time on those groups. I just don't. I use them as a tool, but I do not treat them as a community of people to support me, because that's not what I see happening there. I think it can, but often it can be sort of just this flame that burns up everything in sight. And so if the goal is to sort of integrate even a full on diagnosis into your identity, I think that consuming social media identity is very dangerous. And I think when I was reading so many articles there were lots of good suggestions like verified checkmarks on actual mental health professionals creating content, which is very different than people just sharing their stories, which I think would be helpful in some sort of identifying factors so people can figure out like, no, I'm paying attention to an expert now and a professional. But I just thought it was smart to say, like, make no mistake, though, what they're doing is being consumers. A teenager, an adult, whoever on TikTok, you are consuming. That's what you're doing. Maybe some of it is edifying and maybe some of it isn't. Maybe some of it makes you feel alone, and maybe some of it makes you feel even more alone. But at the end of the day, especially with a platform like TikTok, you're consuming. That's what you're doing. And I think educating kids to say you are consuming media right now, that's what you're doing. And all good art and content can help us understand ourselves, no doubt about that. But what does it mean to consume this? What do we do after that? What do we do before that? How do we think about what we're consuming to put it in that framework, to say, the role you're playing here is not patient. The role you're playing here is consumer.  

Beth [00:24:11] I read an abstract of a study from the National Institute of Health about TikTok. It was done in late December 2022, and it seems to me to pretty clearly be a study that is going to kick off lots of other studies. It's not comprehensive, it's an opening volley. And so as I'm reading this abstract I realize, one, TikTok is still so young in the language of research. How we can really understand the impact of this, we are very far from evidence-based understanding of the impact of this. Secondly, what I thought was so helpful in this study is that they were talking about how they coded individual TikToks. Just what is this? Is it humor? Is it inspiration? Is it disclosure where it's like more therapeutic for the person making it than it's intended to be for the person viewing it? What is happening in this actual video? And who is this making the video? Is this an influencer? Is this a professional? There are so many different tags that they kind of had to give to each of these TikToks to get their arms around what they're understanding. And if taxonomy was a difficult challenge for NIH researchers, what is happening for our teens and even for adults viewing this? It's just muddy. Especially because it just keeps rolling. You don't stop to go, "What did I just watch? And who made that and why did they make it and why did I watch it? And what are the calls to action for me from it?"  

Sarah [00:25:41] Yeah, I mean that's a very difficult thing to do. And that's, again, as an adult with a fully functioning frontal lobe (on most days when I'm not hungry), I think that it's increasingly difficult for me to sort of articulate that to my children because as what they do on the internet just becomes bigger and bigger, sort of pulling them out of that world and saying, "Do you see how this world influences you," is just hard. It's just hard because that form of media is becoming consuming. And my kids don't have social media. My kids are on YouTube. My oldest child is on YouTube and they use discord and they use other things. And just that alone is so difficult to find language and articulation, and especially when they're predisposed to roll their eyes at everything I say anyway.  

Beth [00:26:35] And short form video is going to make it to your kids whether they're on social media or not, right? If they have any access to technology or are around other kids who do, short form video is going to make it to them. So finding some strategies to talk with them about this feels very important to me. Something else that came out of that study that I was really fascinated by, is that there are more women creating content-- this is specifically about anxiety. So there are more women creating content about anxiety than men. But the content created by men was more frequently viewed, commented on, and liked. The content created by male influencers tended to be more like performance, like it was offering inspiration or humor or a strategy, and the content from women creators tended more towards self-disclosure.  

Beth [00:27:28] I think even just sharing that with my kids-- like, just think about this. I don't even know what conclusions to draw from it, but these are the kinds of things you need to think about. I also did this thought experiment for myself, imagining what if my neighborhood operated like TikTok or Reels on Instagram. And if every morning I took a walk around my neighborhood and my neighbor Jason walked out and did like a pep talk for the day every single day. And then my neighbor Ashley came out and did a dance. I tried to make this as positive as possible in my head, because I really don't want to be like, "Get off my lawn. This is all terrible, and I'm too old for it. So that means it's harmful and dangerous and you all suck for using it." So I tried to think, like, what's the most positive version? If I make my way down the street, somebody gives me a truly helpful bit of parenting advice, and somebody else sings me a song and it's beautiful and it's amazing. And this happened every day. What effect on my life would that have for each person who I have a physical experience of, to kind of curate what they say to me around their brand. And it got real dystopian in my head really fast. Even thinking of all of that in the absolute most positive light. So even where there is good here, I do find myself thinking that the repetition of the good and all of the incentives built around building up the expertise or the image around that good, get perverse pretty fast and are not incentives that I would say lead toward this being a really helpful place to discover something important about you and what you want to do on the other side of that discovery.  

Sarah [00:29:17] Well, and I think the hard part is to build that identity and to discover things about yourself. Doesn't require information, it requires experiences. And this is a highly surveilled group of kids with very controlled environments. And to say, go out there and figure out who you are, but also I'm going to track you on your phone, I'm going to read all your text messages, you can't do this because it's dangerous-- and all the oh, by the way, every news article is about how everything is a dumpster fire. And climate change is going to ruin everything. And Donald Trump is an existential risk. I mean, that sucks. Does make you want to kind of go in your room, close the door and watch videos. And s what I truly try to think about as a mom, as a parent, is just disrupting that narrative as much as possible and really thinking about letting my kids go. Like letting them go and make mistakes and have experiences without tracking and without fixing and without making sure it's all going to turn out okay, because it's not all going to turn out okay. And that is a mental health experience that is essential to being a human being.  

Beth [00:30:35] There is a fantastic piece in the New York Times over the weekend about the disappearance of teen subcultures and how subcultures for teens now are all visual. Everything is an esthetic. So you're preppy, but that's really just an esthetic. Or you are emo, that's also just about visual cues. Because everything that they interact with is so curated and because most of their experiences are online. It's almost like we need different words because experience online versus experience in real life, the gap between those two things is so extensive.  

Sarah [00:31:15] I mean, it's consumption at this point. It's consumption.  

Beth [00:31:18] Yes.  

Sarah [00:31:19] It's consumption of media. That's what it is.  

Beth [00:31:21] And so I think that figuring out a way to give my kids more experiences and less consumption and more places where we walk into a room and we observe something about it other than it's so preppy. And I don't mean to be condescending about that. There are aspects of what my daughters are and are growing up around that are vastly superior to the way I grew up. So I don't mean this to be like a judgmental tone that I'm taking. I also don't want them to miss the richness of the mess where things have not been designed to be so esthetic, and the way that you feel differently in an environment that hasn't been curated for you as a consumer. It is a very different feeling, and I worry that I don't give them enough of that because they're spending so much time online, and also because their offline time is quite structured. And that is another form of curation.  

Sarah [00:32:25] Yeah, I read that same piece. And I guess I was a part of a subculture which was a teenage evangelical subculture, which involved some consuming in order to be a part of it. You had to listen to the right bands and the right music and not listen to the right music, for that matter. But there were all sorts of other social clues from the events you were going to, who was there, how you dressed, what you talked about, what you were doing in your free time that were part of that as well. My husband and I, we went to one of the basketball games for our local high school team, and there was nobody there. The stands were empty. It was a Thursday night. This was the high school varsity basketball team, and there were probably 15, 20 kids there, not counting the band and the cheerleaders that were required to be there. And my husband was appalled. He was like, "Oh my gosh. When I was in high school, every basketball game was packed. Every single game." And I thought, what's going on here? I'm not even a huge sports person. And I didn't go to all the basketball games growing up either, but I went to a couple and I remember them. And I thought, well, they have choices online. They're hanging out online. And I don't know the answer to that. I don't want to shut it off. I struggle with this with my kids all the time, because the second they leave my house it's just going to be a dive into the deep, into the ocean. I don't know. It's very hard. And I think especially when it starts touching on these most essential pieces of who we are, that we're sad or that we're anxious, or that we are sincerely struggling with depression and something that mental health always kind of dances around, which is what does a good life look like and what is it going to look like for me? It's really, really hard.  

Beth [00:34:15] Yeah. And some of those kids are just busy with other things. I practice with my future problem solving team on Sunday afternoons because that's when they don't have other things happening. They are programmed throughout the week. They're busy. They're fantastic kids, super well-rounded. I think all the activities they're doing have value for them. And also something is lost because of how busy we all are.  

Sarah [00:34:34] Including a day of rest, apparently.   

Beth [00:34:36]  Including a day of rest. That's right. When thinking about subcultures, I'm about to take this group of kids to the state competition. And when I was in school, that was the biggest deal. Even if only four of us got to go, the district gave us a school bus to go together on and paid for hotel rooms, and we had a whole weekend of fun because it was a celebration. It wasn't just a competition, it was a celebration of the whole year. We never get a school bus for anything. Our kids arrive to every event, separate. Separate cars. Most of them are not able to stay the whole weekend because they're busy. They need to get back for something else. It's a totally different scene. It doesn't allow that to be a subculture. It's just an activity. And I do think we crave those subcultures. We crave those things that are closer to who we are and what we're saying about ourselves. And that is the most helpful thing that my daughter's school has taught me about social, emotional, mental health, is we're always going to look at this as a combination of who I am and what I'm experiencing. Let's say you have an anxiety disorder. It is a really fine line for someone to understand that about themselves, and understand that maybe I will always need tools to support me with this, but that doesn't mean that I am an anxious person and that that is my constant state, and that there is nothing else for me but being an anxious person. And, man, that's a distinction that's hard for adults. So trying to infuse this media that kids are surrounded in with that sort of ethos, is just incredibly challenging.  

Sarah [00:36:20] I think the only thing we can do is to articulate it as much as we can to ourselves, to each other, as adults, and to have these conversations with our kids. Not because we have the solution, but because as I'm always saying to my kids, we're on the same team and hopefully we're aiming towards the same goal, which is for you to be a thriving, integrated human in the world that is not avoiding all challenges, but has the tools to handle them when they arise. And I just don't know if so many of these videos on TikTok are providing the best tools for that. I'll be honest.  

[00:36:53] Music Interlude.  

[00:36:53] Outside of Politics today, we thought we'd stay on theme because another big and growing area of youth-- I guess is this is subculture? It's still just consumption to a certain extent, which is the prolific use of skincare by very young girls. I had a neighbor tell me-- this is when I was like, hold on, wait a minute. I had a neighbor tell me that their six-year-old daughter asked for Drunk Elephant moisturizer for Christmas, and I thought, okay, that's too much. That's ridiculous. I'm going to use the word ridiculous here, because how does she know what Drunk Elephant is? Why is she asking for it? Like what's happened here?  

Beth [00:37:55] Well, as many listeners know, I have a very skincare obsessed teenager. So my daughter is 13. She has a skincare fridge. Every wish list she makes is full of skincare products. She can tell me more about skincare than I have ever known in the entirety of my life. She enjoys this. It is a part of our lives, and she would be very happy for me to tell you that there is nothing I can say here about her, and skincare that would make her mad if she listened to the show. Okay, she's very proud of this about herself. And it started pretty young. So I have a couple of thoughts. I don't know what to say about a six year old. I think that is purely consumption and esthetic. I think that is the preppyness on exponents. I do realize that on average, girls are starting puberty pretty young. So I think some of their interest in more adult things might slide in a direction that feels too young to us, but is not out of the realm of what they need to care about. Certainly, when I started seeing signs of puberty in both of my daughters, I started saying, hey, we need to make sure we wash your face before we go to bed. We need to start taking care of these things. Taking care of your body is going to become more and more important as you get older, so we got to develop these good habits. And I think for the most part, we are building a lot of good habits around this interest that she has. She has an evening routine. She has some self-care that is real self-care to her. That is a better scaffolding than I had until I was in my 20s. She also is learning about being a consumer because she will bring me products and I will say, "Let's look at this. What does this actually do? What's in it? Do you want it because everybody else is using it or do you want it because you think it will help your skin in particular? Do you think this price makes sense for the thing that you're getting?" It's just, to me, this is like a lot of things that kids get interested in. It doesn't do me a lot of good to try to talk her out of her interest. She's going to get into all kinds of things that I don't see the point in, and that I think taken to an extreme can be harmful, but I have an opportunity to connect with her through it and to ask questions and push on it and try to offer advice that helps her be interested in something in a way that is overall at least neutral. And that's kind of where I am on the skincare.  

Sarah [00:40:18] Anyone who's listened to the show for long knows that I love skincare. I've dialed it back pretty dramatically just because I think it's really hard to piece it apart and pull it apart and sort of make sure that this is your sincere interest, separate from the beauty industrial complex, which makes an enormous amount of money off all of us deciding that we should have beautiful dewy skin. I'll never forget in college once we were sitting in our dorm room reading teen magazines at the time and one of them was like, this spring, fresh, dewy skin is in. And my friend responded, yeah, because acne was in last fall and we're all moving on, right? Like, come on.  

Beth [00:41:07] We wanted you to look scaly.  

Sarah [00:41:10] Yeah, scaly. Is it this winter? It was one of those moments where I went, oh my God, she's right. They just tell us the same thing to sell us something. And I am really worried when it's an enormously influential industry with billions of dollars on the line. And they think, you know what's a great audience? Kids. It's just never ended well in the history of human consumption where they decide the next audience to tap is really young kids. I don't look at any of those moments in human history and go, wow, we really took the great off-ramp there. And so that's just concerning to me. And I've been reading a Substack, which is sort of de-influencing around the beauty industrial complex and just how often we're just told over and over again, your skin should look beautiful all the time, which means you should look beautiful all the time. You should not have wrinkles, it should be glowing. It should be evenly toned. It's just like all these messages. The central message is you should do this. And to get there, you should give me your money. And I just think that that is so hard as a woman to really think, do I care about this because it makes me happy? I think about this all the time with clothes. I love clothes, but am I doing this because I love it? Am I doing this because it makes me happy? Or am I doing this because someone makes a lot of money when I do? And there's really not one answer or the other. It's always a combination of both. And so to see girls becoming this sort of untapped market around sometimes really powerful products-- I mean, nobody under the age of probably-- I don't even know what the dermatological guidelines are, but young girls should not be using retinol; some of these chemicals are legit. And caring for yourself is so important. I think about it with when you have a baby and you think you need all this stuff and you want to care for your baby and you want to do a good job, and then three kids in, you're like, I didn't need any of that. I didn't. They were just selling me bottle warmers. Nobody needs a fricking bottle warmer. I think it's really hard to piece those things apart. And, honestly, I don't know if you can. Coming off the conversation about social media, I think as a parent because of my own experiences and just psychology and reading and marketing and all this stuff, I lean towards I can't train you right now to be a good consumer. All I can do is protect you from this industry because you are so young and so easily influenced, as we all are to a certain extent, and so the best I can do is just go, "No, not right now."  

Beth [00:43:54] Yeah, and I feel the opposite. I just feel like the best I can do is say, "Here are the questions that I have about this, or here's where I would pump the brakes. I think this seems a little bit silly. Can we talk about that?" Because if I am trying to protect her from every industry, I'm not going to allow her to have many interests. And this is true about activities too. I mean, we've talked about there are physical benefits of sports and there are physical risks when children specialize in sports early or late. When you specialize in sports, there's a point where it becomes risky in addition to all the benefits, and that risk keeps going up the more you specialize. I just can't protect from everything. And if I am going to my 13-year-old daughter and my big concern right now is that she's too into serums, that sounds dumb to me. I think I should just be like, Hallelujah! Serums are the thing. Because we can talk through that. It's not dangerous for her. There are places where, taken to an extreme, it could be misguided or ill-advised. But I'm watching that and I'm here to help her calibrate around this interest. But if I try to talk her out of it, if I try to say to her, "This is the beauty industrial complex making you feel this way," then I think I'm teaching her not to trust herself. Or I'm teaching her to not enjoy the things that she does seem to enjoy for now. What is most important to me as her mom as I watch her in there doing her million steps every night, is that she feels free someday to walk away from it. If she feels free someday to say I did that for a while, it's not my thing anymore, then this chapter has been fine from my perspective. So how do I not encourage it too much or resist it so much that she adopts it as an identity? I think that those are my things. I think if I resisted it too much, it would become much more important to her. And if I encourage it too much, it will become much more important to her. So I'm just trying to keep her in that zone of like, all right, well, this is a thing you do. That's fine. But we're going to talk about it and try to learn what we can from it. And someday it might not be a thing that you're that into anymore.  

Sarah [00:46:03] Yeah. That zone is hard to find, harder to stay in. Whether you're talking about social media or skincare and whether you're a teenager or an adult for that matter. We always appreciate you guys joining us here, though, as we try to find the zone of comfort on many things here at Pantsuit Politics. Thanks for being with us today. And if you like the show, we hope that you'll share it with a friend. We'll be back in your ears on Friday. Until then, keep it nuanced y'all.  

[00:46:42] Music Interlude. 

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

Beth: Alise Napp is our managing director. Maggie Penton is our director of Community Engagement. 

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima. 

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

Executive Producers: Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. The Pentons. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. Christina Quartararo. Shannon Frawley. Jessica Whitehead. Samantha Chalmers. Crystal Kemp. The Lebo Family. The Adair Family. 

Sarah: Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.

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