#42: In Fiore, Breaking Up with Bravo, and New Beauty Segment

Episode 42: What’s in the Cup + On My Mind: Where to Start with In Fiore, Reflections on Breaking Up with Bravo/The Real Housewives, and New Beauty Segment (Essential | Extra | Exiting)

Thank you for your patience while Your Purpose is Beauty was off air last week due to extenuating circumstances with our audio engineer. We are getting back on schedule! Please forgive the 199 Campaign intro ad, this episode was supposed to be played the last Monday of September and the campaign has since ended. So now it’s October and it’s time for another What’s in the Cup episode (previous episode structures like this can be found in Episode 24 and Episode 34). Today the FAQ I’m answering involves the San Francisco-based brand, In Fiore (Perfumery as Medicine) – I’m offering some basic navigation, suggestions to get started, et cetera. Then, I dig into some reflections around my ending with Bravo television, in particular the Real Housewives franchise. I spent (more than?) a decade watching this show with sociological interest, and it was this most recent season of RHOBH that helped me finally clarify why I’m no longer willing to give my mental consent over to this show, or really this channel. Last, we end with a new segment I’ll be including in What’s in the Cup episodes. Kaveh (my partner) came to me with the idea to do a version of “Marry, F, Kill” of beauty products as a recurring podcast segment. I titled it “Essential, Extra, Exiting” and yes J. Rosebrook is exiting for good this month. Let’s discuss!

Episode Notes:

Sunday Window series here (initially I found it on A Sweet Spoonful back in 2011 here).

My Sunday Window for Sunday September 21, 2020 at 7PM –

received wedding rsvps | earthwise peppermint tea | amethyst | feminist current podcast |
love is as solid as a rock of Gibraltar/so come to the altar with me.

**Podcast Transcript Revision Help Wanted**
If you or someone you know loves talking about or listening to someone else about (eco) beauty and holistic living and would like to be involved in working on Your Purpose is Beauty in exchange for full access to the L’Amour et la Musique Patreon exclusive content archives and forthcoming work, please contact me! I am looking for someone to revise and clean up transcripts alongside audio, and to insert hyperlinks and timestamps (not transcription from scratch). Previous work in a similar vein would be a plus, but anyone with attention to detail and with knowledge of this particular space within the beauty industry would likely be a great fit. Please email lamouretlamusique@gmail.com to discuss further.

Links and Resources Mentioned in the Show:
Products discussed –
In Fiore Fleur Vibrante Serum Cerate* https://bit.ly/3nuEXWq
In Fiore Travel Foursome https://bit.ly/36xXuuG
In Fiore Solution Botaniques https://bit.ly/3lkk2Dz
In Fiore Lustra + Treate https://bit.ly/30x0GTt
In Fiore Botanical Waters https://bit.ly/3jzwheP
Plume Brow Pencil Refills https://bit.ly/3jCnQQ9
Cupid & Psyche Lip Cremes* https://bit.ly/2Gm2nN0
Pacific Northwest Essences Voice of Courage* (use code LAMOUR to save 10% at checkout) https://bit.ly/3lkKxZz

*PR sample

To listen –
Episode 24: What’s in the Cup // Beauty Catch-Up, Should Healing Be Trademarked & Experience with Zach Bush’s Restore Supplement
Episode 34: What’s in the Cup // Liver/Gallbladder Flush FAQ, Parabens, and (Eco) Beauty Shopping Plans
Episode 41: An Ode to Autumn
Episode 32: Ava Zhan, Earthwise Beauty + Pacific Northwest Essences

To watch –
Andy Baraghani Makes Khoresh Gheymeh (Persian Stew) | From the Test Kitchen | Bon Appétit
L’Amour on YouTube: GRWM + Kosas Mascara First Impressions
L’Amour on YouTube: Josh Rosebrook Beauty Heroes Box review + Deeper Convo

To read/visit –
In Fiore https://infiore.net
Beauty Habit’s sample program https://bit.ly/2GiTkfL

Find Mercedes:
Join the L’Amour et la Musique Patreon community to gain access to exclusive episodes of Your Purpose is Beauty, along with 2 1/2 years’ worth of exclusively produced beauty video content!

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OVERVIEW

02:09 – Introduction, Today’s What’s In The Cup– (Jump to section)
06:02 – Call for Podcast Transcription Help– (Jump to section)
09:22 – September Patron Exclusive Video Announcement // What I/We Eat in a Day– (Jump to section)
11:33 – Episode Roadmap– (Jump to section)
15:39 – Getting Started with In Fiore (Brief Brand Overview) – (Jump to section)
20:34 – Getting Started with In Fiore (Product Recs) – (Jump to section)
28:25 – Bravo/Real Housewives Break-Up Reflections– (Jump to section)
33:50 – Bravo/Real Housewives Break-Up Reflections: Denise Richards examples– (Jump to section)
38:34 – Bravo/Real Housewives Break-Up Reflections: Lisa Rinna and Inappropriate Parenting– (Jump to section)
45:35 – New Segment: Essential | Extra | Exiting (think Marry, F, Kill for beauty products)
Essential: Plume Brow Pencil refills– (Jump to section)
48:04 – Extra: Cupid & Pysche Lip Color– (Jump to section)
50:00 – Exiting: Josh Rosebrook– (Jump to section)
57:01 – Closing thoughts– (Jump to section)

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Hello, Your Purpose is Beauty listeners. Before we start today’s episode, I wanted to let you know that during this month, September of 2020, I’m working to reach a goal of 199 Patreon supporters at any level by the end of the month. Once I reach this goal, I will be releasing full transcripts of every episode of Your Purpose is Beauty, thereby increasing the accessibility of the podcast and providing an easy way to reference past episodes and search for information that piqued your interest. Podcast transcripts will be posted with each episode post on https://lamouretlamusique.com/.

When you become a Patron you gain access to almost three years worth of bonus content, including exclusive podcast episodes, monthly bonus videos, individualized video-based correspondence and weekly live Get Ready With Me’s that are archived indefinitely.

Also this month they will start including an option for annual Patreon membership at any tier at a 12% discount. This translates into savings of $4.32 at the $3 a month level, $10.08 at the $7 a month level, $15.84 at the $11 a month level, and $47.52 at the $33 a month level. I will post all the details of how to either sign up as a new patron for an annual membership, or how to convert your existing Patreon subscription to an annual membership.

I made the decision to not do any sponsored work on L’Amour because I felt it was fundamentally at odds with my current goals: To speak honestly from the heart without any conflict of interest without an agenda, and without being beholden to anyone else’s interest. Your support on Patreon helps bring to fruition this kind of work in the beauty and conscious living space and I hope you’ll consider helping me reach my goal. Sending a huge heartfelt expression of gratitude to all my current and past patrons who have supported me. Please visit patreon.com/lamouretlamusique to join.

(music)

02:09

Welcome back everyone to another episode of Your Purpose is Beauty. This is Episode 42, and it’s going to be another What’s in the Cup + On My Mind episode. I previously did these in Episode 24 and Episode 34, I had to look back and check. And I’ve decided that I’d like to try and do one every month. I really like putting this kind of episode together because it lets me touch on a number of different topics and a number of different things that are relevant in the moment or that have come up during the month. So I think I’m going to try and do one towards the end of most months, if not every month, we’ll see how it goes. So it’s going to be a recurring series.

If you want to know about the title, where it comes from – I described it really extensively in Episode 24 the first time I did this, but I’ve taken it from a hybrid journaling/mindfulness writing practice that I used to do many years ago when I kept a digital journal in graduate school. And I had come across this exercise in a blog – I used to be such an avid blog reader. And basically what you do is before you write a journal entry or before you kind of do anything, any sort of creative work or go about your day, or if you’re a writer – writing a paper, if you’re a student – studying or you know whatever it is, you take a moment and you write out what’s on the table, in the cup (what you’re drinking), the day’s color, sound and mantra. So for each of these episodes, I create one of those little prompts or I write out one of those little prompts. So the one for today September 21 2020, which I wrote at 7pm:

received wedding rsvps | earthwise peppermint tea | amethyst | feminist current podcast |
love is as solid as a rock of Gibraltar/so come to the altar with me.

Bonus points to anyone that knows that song. It has been stuck in my head for what feels like weeks, but especially over the last couple of days. And it’s the only thing I can hear in my head is that song. It’s Solid As A Rock by Ella Fitzgerald, but something about the part with Gibraltar I just keep hearing Gibraltar over and over in my head. So I was actually googling and looking it up. I didn’t even know where it was. It’s on the very very southern tip of Spain kind of to the east. There’s like some interesting history behind it and the lore and mythology around that part of the world. Anyway, total tangent I’m gonna try and really stay on track so this episode is not super long.

If you missed last week’s episode, it was an Ode to Autumn which we all know is the best season. I also want to let you know that I was able to get a transcript uploaded alongside that episode on lamouretlamusique.com. Once I hit my goal of 199 patrons, I kind of got started right away. And I’ve just been so, so thankful that more people have wanted to come over and support L’Amour and Your Purpose is Beauty on Patreon. Just because I hit the goal, obviously, if you want to come over and access all the bonus content, it just further helps me continue creating and it’ll help me get past podcast transcripts up because I have a backlog of over 40 episodes to get to. So I’m gonna have to chip away at them. But the more support there is, the faster I’ll be able to get through that. But it was a 22 page transcript, which is crazy. And I’m still working out the workflow process around the transcripts.

06:02

And I wanted to take this as an opportunity to put out a call to all of you listening, if any of you have any sort of experience with transcription, any kind of transcription, and you would be interested in working on Your Purpose is Beauty in exchange for an annual membership at the highest level that I offer on Patreon. So what that would entail is an astrology of beauty reading, plus 12 months at the livestream level, which means you get to watch four to five live Get Ready With Me’s every month, you get to watch a bonus video, bonus podcasts and any other additional work I do on the platform, you would basically get to see all of it. And speaking of that, I’m kind of going off in multiple tangents. But I think that in December, I’m going to cease making content on Instagram stories. And instead, I’m going to experiment with making stories – like using Instagram to create stories, but only releasing them on Patreon. I’ll still be posting static content, I think on Instagram. But I’m kind of trying – I’m going to dip my toe in pulling back from that platform, seeing how it goes. I’m also going to be starting a newsletter, this fall/early winter. So I’m trying to get myself set up to gracefully back down from my involvement on Instagram. I’m not sure if I’ll ever completely get off. I may. But I want to experiment with dialing back and maybe it won’t work. And maybe I’ll go back to still doing stories every day, doing IGTV, I still want to make the same content. I just think I’m gonna move most of it to Patreon. And some of it I’ll probably hopefully put in vlog format on YouTube and Patreon. It’s very work-in-progress. But the point of all that was if you would like access to the L’Amour et la Musique Patreon community, and you have experience with transcription and you would like to work on Your Purpose is Beauty transcripts with me, please send me an email, lamouretlamusique@gmail.com. I’ll have it in the show notes. Just let me know a little bit about your experience. Or it would be very helpful for me to find someone that’s pretty well versed in beauty and the kinds of products that I talk about because that if someone isn’t as familiar it can make it – it can just take longer to go through the work essentially. So you would be working off of voice-to–text generated transcripts but it would still involve cross checking, listening to the audio, cleaning text up…so it wouldn’t be full blown soup to nuts transcription but more of like a revision type of process. So if that’s of interest to you, please reach out to me. And I would love to welcome you into the Patreon community. I do need help with the transcription project. So I hope to hear from someone.

09:22

The only other quick announcements before we get into today’s episode: just to let you know the Patron exclusive video that I’m doing for September is a What I Eat in a Day, I’ll be talking about traditional foods, ancestral foods. I’m going to be making a Persian stew called Gheymeh, I think, Kaveh always – my husband is first generation Iranian. And he always tells me I pronounce it wrong, I pronounce a lot of things in Farsi wrong but in particular, Gheymeh I think I pronounce incorrectly…you could tell I’m like really straining to try and say it (laughing). It’s a yellow split pea stew. It has these different Persian spices in it, you cook it with beef shank and marrow bone. I watched my father-in-law make it a couple weeks ago. So I’m going to be making that. Actually, if any of you, I mean used to watch the Bon Appétit YouTube channel, I know they’re not making new content anymore. Andy Baraghani is one of my favorites in addition to Claire Saffitz. Andy Baraghani is Iranian and he has a video on how he makes gheymeh. I’ll put it in the show notes for you. So I’m going to be making that on video in addition to showing you the other meals that we eat, how I feed the baby. I’m super excited to put that together it’s going to be quite a bit of work, but I always enjoy doing the Patron exclusive videos so much. I do live Get Ready With Me’s every Friday morning. And if you are not on Patreon and have been wanting to see a get ready with me, I actually have one filmed for YouTube where I gave a first impression of the new Kosas mascara. It was the first time I was using it so it was a first impression and I also trialed their concealer; I had gotten some foil packet samples of the concealer and your girl has some very dark circles because I just don’t sleep enough. So I am in the market for a new high coverage concealer, taking any and all recommendations. Kosas is not it because the undertones are too yellow. For me personally, I talked about that in the video. So that’ll be up. Hopefully soon.

11:33

A quick roadmap of this episode, I’m going to be starting with answering a commonly asked question. So I like to include this segment in every What’s in My Cup. And today I’m going to be answering how to get started with In Fiore, I get so many questions about this, I get so many people that want to do petit conseils about In Fiore. So I’m going to answer that. Then I wanted to do a little ramble on my breaking up for good with Bravo, and specifically the Real Housewives franchise. So it’s actually, to me it’s relatively deep, because I know that it can seem like sort of a superficial topic. But to me, there was a lot of reflection honestly about this show, its role in my life. What I finally saw more clearly about it. And the catalyzing moments that happened for me, in particular during this season, most recent season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. And then I want to end with a new series that is actually inspired by Kaveh. My partner for anyone who doesn’t know, he came to me maybe last week. He said, babe, I have an idea for your podcast. So he is an avid listener, well, he listens to some sports podcasts, he listens to some history podcasts, and then he listens to some car podcasts. Kind of stereotypical, but he really likes this one show called Everyday Driver. And he said that they do a segment that’s a version of Marry, F, Kill. I think everybody listening probably knows what Marry, F, Kill is. And it’s funny that I’m going to be talking about the Housewives. Because if anyone is a Housewives watcher, Luann from Real Housewives of New York, her most recent cabaret show is called Marry, F, Kill. So anyway, I’m not calling my segment Marry, F, Kill. But that’s the idea behind what I’m going to close out this episode with. Kaveh said, “I think it would be so neat.” He wanted me to do it every episode. And I said, I just I don’t know, I don’t think it would fit when I’m doing interviews. But I have the perfect place I could make it a recurring segment: on my What’s In My Cup episodes, which are going to happen hopefully every month.

So he said, “I thought it would be so cool if every episode/every month you told your listeners, you know, a product that you want to marry, a product that you want to F, a product that you want to kill. And not he was also like not calling it that, like let’s brainstorm what you could call it. And he said, I really think you should call the kill “bin,” like you throw the product in the bin is really, he’s really funny (laughing). But I came up with my own naming schema for this. So we’re going to call it Essential | Extra | Exiting. I don’t know why that came to me. I don’t know, all E’s, whatever that means, doesn’t mean anything except that that’s what I’m calling it. So we’ll talk about an essential product, something that I would use every day. Something that I can’t be without like a rave type of product. Then extra is like more of a special occasion. I’m not using this every day but I still really like it. You know if any of us had social lives, then it would be something I would wear on a night out. But just a beautiful product, but maybe is more of like a special occasion or special type of product. And then exiting is something that is either going in a Product Crit or Disappointing Products or getting given away, or just has some critique around it. And yeah, I’m gonna be talking about Josh Rosebrook for that, spoiler, so please stay tuned till the very end of this episode, if you want to hear about that. Without further ado, let’s get into today’s episode.

(music)

15:39

I love talking about In Fiore, so I’m glad that I selected this question to dive into today. It’s just something that gets brought up a lot. I will say that I am planning to do – it’s kind of going to be an empty products review/brand overview/my experience with the brand/probably half hour video type of thing. I’m going to release that hopefully in mid-November, I want to get you something really comprehensive before they roll out whatever their holiday gift with purchase promo is going to be this year. Now I’m just expecting that they’re going to do a holiday gift with purchase after Thanksgiving and through December because from what I know, they do this every year, guaranteed around the holidays and they do it several other times. I would say they do a gift with purchase quarterly or maybe three times a year. They just had one over the summer, it was in late June. And I had people messaging me after I had posted about, I didn’t – I must have showed something on Instagram and people said, what I didn’t even know they had a gift with purchase going on. And usually In Fiore’s gift with purchases are extremely generous, I feel like the brand, because they never discount the brand. No retailers that stock the brand, nor the brand itself is ever discounted. This is a personal decision that Julie Elliott made some years ago, I think, so the brand basically never goes on sale, but they make up for it with these really worth your while gift with purchases. Now you do have to spend a chunk of change, the minimum is usually $250. If you know the brand, you know it’s not difficult at all to get there, it could be as little as two products. This is an extremely luxe brand, pretty much as luxe as it gets, in my opinion, unless you’re looking at Ayuna Terra which is $455. I think the most expensive single item in In Fiore’s range is maybe around $175. So you can very easily get to $250.

17:56
So I think there’s a lot of mystique around this brand. It feels intimidating to people from what I’ve gleaned. People want some guidance. And I think because the price point is high, but on other things like the face oils, or some of the other stuff is really comparable in my opinion. And also I think the perfume solids are reasonably priced. I mean reasonably priced if you’re a beauty enthusiast the way I’m sure most people listening probably are. So because of the high price point, because it’s not widely stocked, because it’s not something you can go test in person, it is somewhat difficult to get samples. You want to be sure about what you’re getting before you spend that kind of money. I will let you know that Beauty Habit who is a wonderful online boutique, my experience with them has always been wonderful. They carry many, many, many, many, many brands both – it’s mostly niche beauty. I mean, they have a whole natural and organic section, but they carry In Fiore and they have a really wonderful sample program. So if you’re making an order, you can request samples. So they carry I think most of In Fiore and I know that they carry their perfume solids, I don’t know if they sample them. But it’s definitely worth asking. I would email and ask if you’re able to sample any of the In Fiore perfume solids if that’s of interest to you.

I think this brand appeals to people who want a lot of depth in their beauty experience. This is someone that really wants an experience. Their tagline is Perfumery As Medicine. One of the words I always affix to In Fiore is opulent. It feels regal, it feels very deep, it feels almost mysterious. It’s not for everybody, but it’s for people that really want to have kind of, I know this sounds like a little weird and a little woo, but people that really want to commune with their products, that really want to have a mind body connection or a mind spirit body connection. There are these very esoteric layers to the brand and the ingredients and the formulation that are there for you to unpack if that’s something that calls to you or appeals to you. I wouldn’t say that everybody that wants to use In Fiore is even interested in the esoteric side of things.

20:34

So how to get started with this brand. As with everything, it’s going to be exceedingly individual. It really depends on what your skincare already looks like, what your skincare routine already looks like, what you’re interested in. If you go to the site, what grabs you, what pulls you in. And thinking about what skincare step do you really relish and enjoy? Is it cleansing? Is it the serum? Do you really want to invest in the treatment step? Do you really want fragrance Do you really want a body experience? So thinking about where you want to invest, I think is having a good idea to start navigating the brand.

So I’m going to just throw out my general all-around recommendation, and that would be their most newly launched product. This came out, mmm, I can’t remember maybe in the early/late spring, early summer. It’s the In Fiore Fleur Vibrante Serum Cerate. I think this is an amazing introduction to the brand for many reasons. It’s incredibly multipurpose, it’s by far the most multipurpose In Fiore product I have used. It has a two-year shelf life so it’s not going to expire and it’s not going to go bad, it’s not going to turn quickly so there’s no pressure to use it up. It’s extremely portable. You can throw it in a to go makeup bag, you can keep it on your vanity, you can keep it on your bedside table. You can travel with it if anybody is actually traveling (laughing) and it yields these fantastic results. It’s so versatile in what you can do with it, you can use it as a single step in a skincare routine. You can use it as a layering step in a skincare routine. You can use it on top of makeup as a highlighting balm/skin rejuvenation type of product. You can use it in your hair, you can use it on your décolleté, you can use it on your cuticles. This is a very, very unique, non-oily, non-greasy, bright orange, extremely vitamin rich titrated beta carotene rich balm type of product. It’s extremely innovative. It was – went through many, many iterations It was developed by a team – I can’t remember the exact number but a large team of all female French cosmetic chemists and it’s very novel because of the titration process behind it. This is rich in calendula, seabuckthorn, carrot oil, I’m just looking at the specs on the page. So yeah, I think it’s amazing. It retails for $115. If you don’t want to spend the $250 to do a gift with purchase and you just want to try something, I just think this is a wonderful place to start.

I would also say their Travel Foursome which is still available, it’s – I think they’re 15 ml bottles, maybe 20. But I think they’re 15 ml bottles of the three face oils in In Fiore’s range plus the Complexe de Fleur which is a watery emulsion serum. This was the gift with purchase last Christmas. So I got one of these, I used all of them. I mean – beautiful, I love In Fiore’s face oils, you do have to like and be okay with essential oils. That’s a debate and discussion really beyond the scope of what I could cover here. I would go check out the conversation I had with Ava Zhan of Earthwise Beauty, I believe it’s Episode 32, where we talked about essential oils and skincare. They’ve been really maligned, I think, and you know if your skin can or can’t tolerate them. But I think when they’re done well, from a brand you trust, I mean, you guys are probably tired of hearing – as much as it can get frustrating for people to talk about – but if you trust the formulator, the brand, the sourcing and how those constituents fit within a broader formula, I’m completely okay with them. I love, love these products. And that’s just a good way to get to try, you know, a number of products in a brand. That’s listed under their travel section and it’s $100.

So from there, it really depends on if you’re wanting to kind of get up to the $250 minimum for a gift with purchase the next time In Fiore does one. In that case, I tend to highlight to people the Solution Botaniques if you’re interested in again, a multi-purpose product that is deeply spiritual. I find the Solution Botaniques to be the most, I mean profound would be a word that I would use because you use them over a big surface area, you’re using them on your body. I haven’t used a body balm from In Fiore in quite a long time. I should, to kind of compare because I’ve gone through a bottle of In Fiore Calendula Solution Botanique which I’ll talk about in November in video, and I’m currently going through a bottle of Firmante. You can – not Firmante, but Calendula and Fleur Vibrante I would say – you can also use on the facem but they’re really meant to be worked into the body, kind of a self-massage type of product and they’re amazing. They are very pricey.

I would also direct your attention to the Lustra and Treate cleansing combination since you would get a lot of use out of it. It’s an oil cleanser and a cream emulsion cleanser that you work over top of the oil and then you rinse off. In Fiore has a whole cleansing method. It’s called the 4-2-4, and if you dedicate the time to it using these products, you do see amazing results. Very soft skin, very balanced mood/mind, it’s really kind of like having a spa-like experience at home in my opinion.

I would also say that the botanical waters are beautiful if you like an essence type of product. Now these are from their Made in Japan range. So In Fiore has just the San Francisco core brand and then I think maybe around 2014 or 2015 they added this Made in Japan line. You can go read about it on In Fiore’s blog but In Fiore partnered with I think the company – it’s a Japanese company beauty company, very well known, called I- think it’s Albion and they provide a lot of cutting edge beauty technology that’s just not utilized here in the States really at all like micro encapsulated oils, certain extracts, Chinese medicine botanicals, certain seaweeds, that I think that they almost act like a super super potent hyaluronic acid, like their ability to impart moisture onto the skin. So really interesting ingredients and formulation. I’ve tried quite a few things from the Made in Japan range, and I have the Transparence Botanical water and I have loved it. It’s a ton of product. I’m still working through mine a year later. The Made in Japan products have a pretty long shelf life to I would say two years again from the time of purchase. A lot of the other In Fiore products, though, are six to 12 months max. So do be aware of that and they will turn. I’ve – years ago, I had had a Solution Botanique that did – the oil had turned before I had a chance to finish it. Alright, I’m going to leave the In Fiore question there. I hope that that was a good introduction. And then just stay tuned on YouTube in November and I will look forward to delving in even deeper, sharing some empty product reviews, and doing a little holiday guide type of thing.

(music)

28:25

Alright, it’s time to talk about housewives (laughing). I really hope that this doesn’t come across as frivolous. But it’s something that I’ve been thinking about pretty deeply like I mentioned. So Bravo and I are breaking up for good. I feel in the past that I’ve tried to step away but I’ve always needed that mindless downtime when I can just lay on the couch and watch something that really requires no effort on my part. And I’ve been watching The Real Housewives since they started, since the Coto de Caza women in the OC 15 years ago. I mean, the show was so novel when it started and I’ve always been interested in reality television. I grew up in high school watching Real World I found that to be really fascinating. I mean, I went on to study sociology, so I’m intrinsically interested I think in people and how they socialize, and community, and how people interact. And looking at how dynamics play out in places, between certain people, all that stuff. I just I think it’s kind of interesting.

So I noticed that maybe a year ago, my interest really started to wane especially with some of the auxiliary Bravo shows. I’m talking Below Deck, I’m talking Married to Medicine, I’m talking…what the other…the real estate shows Kaveh actually likes to watch. So we’ll watch those together, Million Dollar Listing. So there was a time when I needed a lot of junk to watch, like when I had a newborn and was like stuck to the couch. I was even watching some Kardashians. I mean, I can’t even imagine watching that now. But I was watching it when I was on the couch with a newborn trying to breastfeed. So the waning interest then slowly migrated over into the Housewives, they just weren’t keeping my attention at all. I even found myself maxing out on the podcasts that would talk about these shows by comedians like Bitch Sesh, and Danny Pellegrino. I used to live for these people and their snarky commentary of Bravo, it was so much fun. I was laughing out loud. I’ve seen Bitch Sesh live. I mean, it was a whole thing. But I just – something kind of stopped resonating.

So throughout the fall, I was just watching less and less and naturally my life has been evolving towards having less and less idle time, right. I’m busy almost every single day from sunup to sundown, caring for my 22 month old. And when I have time, at the end of the night, I am honestly usually working on L’Amour and on the podcast or on something. And if I want to watch something, I usually want to watch it with Kaveh so that we can kind of have some sort of shared moment of connection throughout the day. And he hates the Housewives. Although he he has been watching me finish out these two seasons of Beverly Hills and New York. Anyway, let me kind of get to the point because I’m not even talking about the interesting stuff.

So I just felt myself wanting to devote less and less time. But I told myself that I was going to ride out these most recent seasons of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Real Housewives of New York. Now New York has always been my favorite. And I thought it would be fitting to close out my – I’d already made the decision that I was done, I could have gone without even watching the shows anymore. But I told myself I was going to finish out these seasons, and then be done. And I’m really glad that I did especially for Beverly Hills. New York has been – with the exception of Leah, who I think I like I mean, people describe her as a breakout star, I did enjoy her on the show this season. But Beverly Hills. There’s so much to unpack there. I’m gonna just give you the high points of why watching this season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, it solidified my strong criticism of this whole endeavor, and that I’m just ready to disengage and not give my consent to, my mental energy consent to this show. I will also say that once March happened and the world turned upside down. And I know that some of you listening can probably relate to this. I think that the events that have happened in the world this year have made people go to these deeper levels of both self and outerscape examination and thinking about things in ways that maybe we didn’t think about them before. And I started observing, or calling out, or noticing subtle thought forms that are embedded in this show. And in the dynamics of this show. And watching what happened with Denise Richards specifically on this season of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills was a real turning point.

33:50

So I am positive, 100% positive that Denise Richards is not a perfect person. And I’m in no way trying to assert that she is. But from the beginning of the season, it does seem like she has been edited in a very unflattering way – and not, I’m gonna bracket everything that blew up in the season between Denise Richards and Brandi Glanville, I actually think that that is the least interesting because whether it’s true or not, to me is honestly kind of irrelevant. I don’t think that Denise owes anyone an explanation about that issue whether it happened or not. But obviously it’s a reality TV show so they’re going to drag it through the mud and make it the center of everything. But my issue with what was going on this season on Beverly Hills started actually way in the beginning of the season. And I started noticing these ways that they were making Denise and her husband look crazy. Look out there, look weird, look like something is wrong, look like something is off with them. So I don’t know very much about Denise Richards’ husband at all. I know his first name is Aaron. And I know that he does some sort of alternative health healing in Los Angeles. And there was this scene where Denise and Aaron were at a dinner party at Kyle Richards house with the rest of the cast. And Aaron was talking about things pertaining to health that to a mainstream audience would be considered to be “out there.” What I deduced from what he was talking about was that the body has the capacity to heal itself. What we’re taught about healing and health and medicine in the mainstream is not the entire picture. Cancer is not what we think it is. Da da da da da. And I share, like kind of agreed with some of the stuff that he was saying, yet they edited it in a way that made him look bonkers. They panned to cutaway interviews of the women, like making crazy faces about him and saying he was acting like a weirdo and saying all this weird stuff. And to me, that was like a huge alarm bell where I’m like, Bravo, what are you trying to do? This guy works in alternative health and healing. And maybe he has some unconventional views compared to who you’re pandering to as an audience. But I just started to notice the insidious ways that narratives around health and healing are controlled, and I saw it playing out on this show in front of my eyes.

Another example, again, from early in the season. Denise and Aaron were driving around in a car. And they mentioned that they there was a car following them. I think they brought this up at the dinner party scene as well, that they are sometimes followed. And, again, the women acted like they were crazy, like, oh, like who’s following them, like cuckoo looney tunes. And I just want to say, without sounding too out there. I mean, it’s not even out there. This kind of thing does happen and people are harassed by private investigators. People are I mean, if you, if any of you watched the Jeffrey Epstein documentary on Netflix, when he was basically had the court case brought against him for being a rapist of these children, these girls, they basically insinuated that Epstein and Dershowitz and whoever was on his legal team had hired thugs to go outside the homes of these victims who were pressing charges against him. And these people at all hours of the night, two o’clock in the morning, three o’clock in the morning, four o’clock in the morning, would park outside the victims’ homes and harass them, shine lights into their homes, play loud music, or blast horns, like completely harass these women, psychologically torture them. This kind of thing happens to people, especially people that are going up against someone in a position of power, or someone that has a certain kind of information. I mean, gang stalking, targeting people, like this happens to people. And so I don’t know if it’s happening to Denise Richards and Aaron, but again, the way that it’s being twisted to make them look crazy. I just really saw so clearly in a way that I’m not even sure that I would have seen before.

38:34

So the – kind of the last straw, I mean, it wasn’t really last straw, I was already really, really done with this. But towards the end of the season, you know, the stuff with Brandy is kind of playing out and Lisa Rinna. I don’t have words for how much I dislike who this person is and what she says and what she does, how she behaves. What she tries to normalize in the name of being “real.” It truly makes me crazy. It makes my blood boil. I think she is – I just, I need to stop. She drives me absolutely crazy. She enrages me honestly with how awful she is really. So I’ll point to a concrete example of why I think she’s such a toxic person. This wasn’t even at the end of the season. But if you watched the season, you would know that Denise had a barbecue at her house and had all the women over and you know, the women as they do all end up getting smashed. And they have this image of Denise as being a hyper sexual person. They point to how she was the first season that she was on the show talking about – mean, I don’t know if you have kids listening in the car with where you are right now, but she was very explicit about some x-rated things with she and her husband and, people just think of her as like a sex symbol because of her role in Hollywood movies and whatnot. But they’re over at her house. It was a family event. Denise has three daughters, I think. The oldest one is like maybe 15 or 16. And there was like a table of kids, and the women were all getting smashed, and they started talking about threesomes. And Denise basically said, “can we please not talk about this now, my kids are here, I really don’t want them to hear the convo” and the women kind of like wouldn’t relent.

And then, you know, a couple episodes later, they have a scene – or maybe it was the next episode. They have a scene of Denise with her oldest daughter, Sammy, I think, out to lunch. And Denise is sort of saying, you know, “I don’t know if you heard what my friends were talking about at the barbecue. I’m really sorry.” And the girl is – 16 year old girl is like, “Oh my god, mom stop like it was we were like dying, laughing hysterically.” And totally brushed it off. And Lisa Rinna took that to mean, “oh, look, your daughter doesn’t care. It’s not a big deal. Your daughter’s totally fine. She heard it and she thinks it’s funny.” Now, this is so insane to me. Because a 16 year old girl is A) still a child. And teenage girls, teenagers in general are notorious for not saying exactly how they feel, hiding how they feel, brushing things off when things make them uncomfortable. So do you really think – I mean, I don’t know what Denise Richards’ relationship is like with her teenage daughters. But I think that it’s very difficult, especially in that age bracket to have a truly like, emotionally open and close relationship with a teenager, especially when you’re on camera. So what did you expect the girl to be like? “Oh my God, mom. Like it was so horrible. Like, why are you talking about that in front of us.” Like what did Lisa Rinna expect.

So this is very it’s like something I feel but it’s hard to articulate. Lisa Rinna is taking what this teenage girl is saying at face value, and has no broader sense of responsibility to any sort of sanctity of being appropriate in a family situation. And it shouldn’t surprise me, given how we all know that she behaves around her own daughters. I mean, that’s just like a whole nasty train wreck if you ask me. And like full of so much dysfunction, but I don’t mean for this to sound like, oh, super conservative or whatever. It’s just really about respect, in my opinion. And you need to read between the lines with a teenage girl, I don’t think that they’re going to come and say, “Yeah Mom, like I had a huge issue with that.” Of course they’re gonna brush it off and make it not a big deal, because it’s really uncomfortable. I don’t think any kid wants to hear their parent and their friends talking about explicit sexual things. I can think of no child, unless there’s some sort of dysfunctional dynamic that would be comfortable doing that. And we know Lisa Rinna, from seasons past has – does have that sort of explicit relationship with her own daughters, which I personally don’t support at all. Like, I can’t support that. I think that that’s not healthy personally. So the way that she tried to contort that around on Denise, like, Denise was two sided, and she wasn’t allowed to have these boundaries.

To me, I guess what it is, and this is a note that I’m just going to end this on. It’s about boundaries with children, and like you as a parent, are the ultimate person that is responsible for your children until they are you know, at least over the age of 18 if not older. I mean, you are the one to make decisions when they’re not, you know, fully formed, adults. And to try and make that seem weird or paint Denise Richards in a way that she’s – it just made me truly, guys, it made me so disgusted with these people, and what they think, how they behave, what they normalize, what they kind of, like I said, what the thought forms this show is emitting and the things that it’s normalizing. I am not okay with any of it. And yes, who knows what happens behind closed doors with Denise Richards. I don’t know, all I know is what I observed from this season. And I thought it was nasty. I thought that Denise and Garcelle were the only two worthwhile people on the show. The rest of the women I find really just – okay. I’m going to stop (laughing) because I don’t want to really keep tearing them down. But if any of you watched the show I would be so curious to hear what your reflections are on the show, or what it made you think about, or if you’re going to continue watching or any of that. I’m done. I’m so excited to have more free time in the evenings and I’m pretty much fully broken up with television at this point. I’m sure I’ll still watch things with Kaveh but I’m pretty ready to be done.
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45:35

Final segment for today, we’re going to end with beauty talk, of course. It’s my new series, Marry, F, Kill except it’s Essential | Extra | Exiting. So my essential product for the month are the Plume brow pencil refills. So the Plume eyebrow pencil is a thing of beauty. It is such an exceptional brow product. I don’t know how many of you have tried it, if you haven’t I can almost guarantee that you will love it. It is the most uniquely textured brow product ever. It’s kind of a fine nib but it deposits pigment on the eyebrow so easily you barely need to apply any pressure whatsoever. I have the shade Chestnut Decadence, I think there’s five or six shades and Chestnut Decadence is a perfect, greigey brown. I mean you would think Chestnut Decadence makes it sound like it’s going to be warm but there’s no trace of warmth in it whatsoever. It’s just just very, very neutral dark brown brow color. And it has a spoolie on one end and the experience of it is just amazing. And it’s refillable. So I went through my pencil pretty quickly I would say that if there’s any downside to it, it’s that that you do go through the product quickly. But it’s refillable and you can purchase two refill cartridges for I believe in $19. I got mine on Beauty Heroes and they recently launched a new website. So they migrated their shop from an old platform onto a new one, it’s beautiful navigation, you can now hover over the brand tab at the top and you see all of the brands appear, it’s really, really nice. So I placed an order this month and got a couple of other things but yes – the Plume brow pencil refills are my essential product of the month. It’s so easy to pull the old cartridge out and snap the new one and I even did a little Instagram Boomerang of the packaging because it’s just like so slim and cute and it has these…holographic is not the right word. Foil, like foil arrow design on the package. It’s just like very covetable or something, like you just want to hold and turnover the packaging in your hand.

48:04

Now my Extra product for the month are the Cupid & Psyche lip creams. So these were generously sent to me by the brand, they are carried on Pink Moon which is one of my new favorite boutiques to shop from, peruse, tell people about because I think that the brands and the products that are carried there are really, really top notch. So these are eco hand poured lipsticks, the packaging is really beautiful. It’s kind of an ombré fuchsia coral with this beautiful white wing print on it, and I have been trying three colors I have Bridgid which is a berry cream, Artemis which is a shimmery mauve, and then my favorite is Ione which is a fuchsia. Where did I talk…I thought that I demoed these, maybe I used it in the upcoming Get Ready With Me for YouTube. Yeah, I think I used Ione and the upcoming Get Ready With Me. I really like Artemis for a cheek color. It doesn’t really work on my lips. But Bridgid and Ione on the lips are so beautiful. These are very creamy but they’re very buildable so they can go on very sheer. You can build them up to be pretty opaque. I think they wear down very easily. The packaging is biodegradable, it’s cardboard. And yeah, I’ve just been enjoying them. They’re extra because I’m certainly not wearing a lip color every day. Most of the days it’s just a balm. In fact, I’m newly trying the Henné Organics twist up untinted lip balm, and I’m really really really liking that so far but still very new. So yes, the Cupid & Psyche lip creams, if you’re looking for a new lipstick color, Bridgid and Ione I think are two definitely worth checking out.

50:00

Now my Exiting product of the month. The two remaining Josh Rosebrook products in my life are the Josh Rosebrook serum spray, which was actually in my Best of Beauty 2019, I thought it was a really nice product, I loved the scent, it’s like this light orangey scent, light citrus scent. None of Josh Rosebrook’s hair products have ever worked for me. But this one I thought was really, really nice. So I’ve been using it on and off. And the Daily Acid Toner, which was a Beauty Heroes Hero product when it launched in July. I did a whole YouTube video on it, I tried to be neutral and unbiased in the review of the actual product. And I gave it a – actually a pretty positive review even though I philosophically don’t…what’s the best way to say, I was gonna say don’t support. For me personally, um, daily acid toner is not something that works for me. I mean, maybe I would use an acid toner once a week or something like that. But philosophically I’m, I’m definitely a less is more skincare philosophy type of person. But I did review the product, I thought that it was well made, really nice. But I also in that video did a lengthy discussion of bad, bad, bad interaction that I had been having with Josh Rosebrook online. And I’m not the only one, he’s been having really declining online interactions on social media with people in the green beauty space. So these products are Exiting from my life. And I thought about this, the only Josh Rosebrook product I think I will ever have back in my life if he ever releases it again is his Ethereal perfume, because I do think it’s a special product. And I may be tempted to to get that.

But beyond that I have no interest in engaging with this brand at all, supporting his work or what he does, because he has just time and time again demonstrated his inability to be a calm, neutral, mature adult. So the final thing that happened – so I will say, if you want to hear my interactions with him, which were regarding this post he had done on parabens in early July. We had a bit of a spat in the comments of that post, but he didn’t block me. And I thought, okay, like fine. Moving on. I did this review, whatever. I had stopped following him not engaging with him. And this is why I just I kind of want to get off Instagram completely because inevitably people send me posts or I kind of just get roped back into things even when I’m not following people or engaging with them. So someone had sent a post that was pure clickbait in my opinion, it had this leading phrase that said natural is always better. And then you do that trailing dots down. And then he goes into like a two paragraph diatribe about why that’s not true. Links to the Eco Well who is one of the most problematic accounts on Instagram, it just makes my head explode. But he’s so fully enmeshed with this cabal of people online that now are saying that clean beauty is anti-science, that it’s full of people that believe the earth is flat and deny climate change. I mean, it’s like laughable, they’re so desperate. They’re so desperate and you know clean beauty – have that term like I don’t, it doesn’t matter to me at all. Like we’re green beauty, organic beauty, we kind of always have been and they’re just so desperate.

So he made this post and a commenter of his, someone clearly on his side because that’s what people in this group do, they create division and they create polarization under the guise of quote unquote, helping and educating people, which is why it really gets to me because they’re so manipulative with what they do. And his commenter tagged Laurel and was like just totally starting to drag her through the mud and call her out. And she replied, she’s like, “I’m not really sure why you’re tagging me but Josh is entitled to his opinion, I do something different.” I don’t even remember what she said honestly, but it was like very diplomatic and whatever. And then a couple of OG green beauty bloggers hopped on the thread who are good friends with Laurel and starting started defending her and they were just like, you know, dude, like, what are you doing? This is serves nobody, it’s super petty. And you know, Josh doesn’t say a word. Like just stays out of it, lets his colleague in this space get, you know, just kind of dragged through the mud and held up as someone that’s doing something wrong when she’s obviously not, she just has a different perspective. And I didn’t even engage on this post you guys, I liked one of the beauty blogger’s comments who I happen to be online friends with, I follow her work. And these are women that have been in this space like I have for a decade, you know, we’re pretty like established. You know, we’ve tried a lot of products, we’ve seen a lot of stuff. We’ve been at this for a long time. I liked one of her comments. And the next day I was blocked from Josh Rosebrook’s Instagram account (laughing).

So I consider it a blessing. But I also am just so, so done with the nonsense, and I’m sorry that I’ve even kind of wasted time getting into all of the petty details. But it’s even – it’s just continuing, you know, the Eco Well had recently made – really overplayed her hand and went on her apology tour today about clean beauty being anti-science. And I think that people have, I hope finally had enough with her or she can just stay in her own echo chamber. So I am ready to be done with Instagram for – this is a huge motivating factor to just get off the platform because it’s devolved so completely to people that just want to be relevant based on controversy. They just are playing a game and I just think it’s a waste of so many people’s time. Josh, who knows what he’s going to do, probably…I don’t know, he’s just positioning himself to to go more mainstream and aligning himself with people that I just think are really unsavory. So it’s not a brand that I really care to support anymore. So those products are getting exited this month.

57:01

I feel like today’s episode was potentially a little bit too honest. I didn’t even mist my Pacific Northwest Essences Voice of Courage. I actually have one of those aura mists sitting in my desk drawer. I often will mist it before my Friday morning livestreams, but I didn’t even need it today to just kind of let it all out. But you know, it’s my podcast and here I am telling you what’s been going on in my beauty life and my – I guess leisure life with the housewives and whatnot this month. I hope you guys enjoyed listening to this episode of What’s in my Cup + On My Mind. If you have questions that you would like to be considered for the one of the next episode of this that I’ll do at the end of October, you can always email me lamouretlamusique@gmail.com, you can come find me on Patreon Patreon.com/lamouretlamusique, and help support the production of this podcast and my videos and all of the other work that I do, Instagram @lamouretlamusique, but probably for not all that much longer in the DMs – probably through the end of this year. And then we’re going to be finding new and creative ways to engage in the same way that don’t involve such a problematic platform.

I love you guys so much. Thank you for listening. Thank you for taking the time to be here, to share my work with people, to post about it on Instagram, to rate and review the podcast on iTunes if you feel so inclined. I can’t wait to see you guys next week, I have an interview with a brand that I think you’ll hopefully be really interested in. It’s products from a brand that I have been using for many, many years. And I’m excited to hear about the details of their specific niche in eco beauty and I think it’s an important one, a really important one, and one that doesn’t get covered by a lot of other brands. So I think they have a unique perspective. I think the products are so top notch and I’m actually conducting the interview tomorrow. So that will be coming up the second Monday of October. The first Monday of October is a Patron Exclusive episode and I’m gonna be talking about childhood immunization. Totally a loaded topic. Can you even say vaccine on a podcast without getting somehow ethereally censored or like having some sort of hex or curse hurled at you? I mean, you just have to say the word vaccine and people become immediately alienated. Very complicated topic, something I’ve been thinking obviously very deeply about since having a child. I don’t have all the answers. I’m not a perfect person. My stance on it is always evolving ,and whatever it is you might think that I think about it or that I have done about it is probably not it because it’s had, you know, twists and turns and I’m always learning new information. So I’m going to be doing a whole episode on my evolving thoughts. I feel like everything is my evolving thoughts because I’m a very in process person. Alright guys, that’s it for tonight it’s 8:30PM I’m going to go do my skincare routine and have a little downtime. Hope you guys have a great week and I’ll see you soon. Bye.

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