If you haven't gotten into a good podcast this year, you might want to reconsider your priorities. The convenience of getting information, inspiration, and entertainment while you multitask at home is invaluable, and there's a podcast for almost anything. The subjects seem endless, and if you're a beauty enthusiast, finding top beauty podcasts can be a lifesaver since there's always some new beauty product, hair trend or self-care YouTube tutorial.
We've got a few great beauty podcasts for you to check out that cover skincare, haircare trends, product picks, and more:
Fat Mascara
Beauty editors and besties Jessica Matlin and Jennifer Goldstein talk about the industry's latest news and share their inside stories about celebrity interviews, new skincare treatments, innovative products and beauty fails. They also host conversations with celebrity makeup artists, perfumers, plastic surgeons, and manicurists.
Image via Naked Beauty
Naked Beauty
When Brooke DeVard Ozaydinli is not busy slaying the game as Instagram's product marketing manager, she's talking all things skincare via the Naked Beauty podcast. The beauty enthusiast regularly interviews people like BET style director Danielle Prescod, K-Beauty expert Charlotte Cho, and beauty author Rio Viera-Newton and gets to the nitty gritty on top products, explorations on self-perception and redefining beauty standards.
Beyond the Beauty
Makeup industry vet Bobbi Brown hosts discussions with leaders in entertainment, beauty and fashion on topics including how to dress for your body type, DIY and natural remedies for skincare, wellness while working from home, and of course, the latest news from one of the most successful makeup brands on the market. (FYI, Brown turned a $7.50 investment into a billion-dollar global brand.)
Photo via Full Coverage
Full Coverage
Touted as a "podcast for beauty addicts, by beauty addicts," Full Coverage is hosted by pro MUA Harriet Hadfield and self-professed "beauty junkie" Lindsey Kelk. Past episodes have gotten into the real on topics like combating maskne, new celebrity product lines, and the latest from popular brands including Fenty and Colourpop.
Goop's The Beauty Closet
The original podcast was hosted by actress Gwyneth Paltrow, founder of Goop, an early Web-based disruptor in the lifestyle and beauty space. Today, the platform continues to cover fashion, wellness, travel, and of course, beauty, and its podcast offerings have expanded. The Beauty Closet, hosted by editors Jean Godfrey-June and Megan O'Neill, includes insights on subjects like "clean beauty", tips for "glowy-dewy skin" and best practices for the ultimate hair health, and features interviews with industry experts, entrepreneurs, and influencers.
Breaking Beauty
In Breaking Beauty, beauty editors Jill Dunn and Carlene Higgins share inspiring stories behind how best-selling beauty products came to market from the founders like Glossier's Emily Weiss adn Tata Harper. They also get the tea from celebrity makeup artists and experts on tips and tricks that you can use at home, and feature industry faves including Mario Dedivanovic, Dr. Pimple Popper, and Jen Atkin. In one of their latest episodes, they catch up with Sharon Chuter, the Nigerian-born Uoma Beauty founder and former beauty executive, to talk Black Lives Matter and filling a void in the international market for Black women.
Photo via Snatched Edges
Snatched Edges
If you haven't already guessed from the title, Ebuni Ajiduah, a U.K.-based trichologist and member of the International Association of Trichologists, offers tell-it-like-it-is insights on solving common hair and scalp issues, no matter the hair type. She features discussions with people who have experienced hair loss and the remedies they've found helpful, as well as tips and advice for healthy haircare.
Allure's Science of Beauty
Known as the beauty-product bible in the publishing industry, Allure has now expanded its reach with Allure's Science of Beauty podcast which will offer its brand of expert advice and exploration of the latest products and trends—fact-checked and researched. Editor-in-chief Michelle Lee leads conversations with influential voices in fashion, beauty, entertainment and lifestyle to talk about beauty obsessions and innovations.
Photo via Balanced Black Girl
Balanced Black Girl
Led by a personal trainer and nutrition coach, this podcast taps into the work of boosting beauty from the inside out. The show seeks to help millennial Black women approach a perception of beauty from a place of health and wellness, and includes interviews with experts on holistic wellness practices, nutrition and its effect on the body, and stress management.
The Glossy Beauty
Presented by Glossy, a publication that embraces the intersection of fashion, beauty, and tech, The Glossy Beauty podcast includes candid chats about trends and their role in shaping the future of the beauty and wellness industries. If you're a true beauty geek and forward-thinker intrigued by conversations about retail strategies used for managing beauty floors or what skincare products and crystals have in common, this one is for you.
Hello Beauty
Host Joyce Platon, a Los Angeles-based makeup artist and groomer, discusses topics that bring to light the real deal on trending beauty treatments, social issues, and challenges people of color face related to beauty. The latest Hello Beauty episodes tackle demystifying beauty procedures like PDO thread lifts (described as a "nonsurgical facelifts") and Morpheus8 (a procedure that combines micro-needling and radio frequency), and advocating for black beauty entrepreneurs via interviews with founders including Brittney Ogike of BeautyBeez.
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Ding. Ding. DING.
A life coach by the name of Thomas Leonard once said that “Clarity affords focus” and, believe you me, when it comes to dealing with other human beings, if you don’t get clear on where you stand when it comes to your interactions with them, you can very easily find yourself “focusing too much” on those who don’t deserve it and too little on those who absolutely do. And y’all, this lil’ PSA couldn’t be more relevant than when it comes to what I call “casual friendships.”
Let’s dig — and for some of us, dig our way out of — what it means to have a casual friend, so that you can get clear on if you really need those in your life…and if so…why?
Article continues after the video.
It Can’t Be Said Enough: Always Remember What “Casual” Means
GiphyThere’s a reason why I decided to share two videos by mental health coach Isaiah Frizzle at the top and bottom of this article. It’s because a lot of what he shares in both of them complements a piece that I wrote for the platform last year entitled, “This Is Just What Purposeful Relationships Look Like.”
It’s the author M. Scott Peck who once said, “Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it” and please believe that the older (and hopefully more mature) you get, the more you tend to see just how valuable — and fleeting — time is; and that is what plays a huge role in motivating you want to only involve yourself with people, places, things and ideas that will honor your time — and when something is casual? In my opinion, it’s highly debatable that it’s worth much of your months, days, hours, or even too many of your minutes.
The main reason why is addressed in an article that I wrote back in the day entitled, “We Should Really Rethink The Term 'Casual Sex.'” The gist? When it comes to relationships, “casual” is certainly not a favorite word of mine because I know what it means. Have mercy — why would you want to invest your time, energy, and emotions into something that is, by definition, apathetic, indifferent, careless, lacking emotional intimacy, and/or is without purpose?
I don’t know about y’all but that sounds like a complete and total crap shoot to me — especially if you are going to go so far as to consider this type of dynamic a true friendship (check out “Ever Wonder If A Friend Is Just...Not That Into You?,” “6 Signs You're About To Make A Huge Mistake In Making Them A Close Friend,” “5 Signs Of A Toxic Friendship That Is Secretly Poisoning Your Life,” “12 Friend Facts That Might Cause You To Rethink (Some Of) Your Own,” and “Less & Less Of Us Have Close Friends These Days. Why Is That?” ).
To me, when you decide to call someone “friend,” it means that they are loyal, reliable, consistent, trustworthy and willing to be there to support you to the very best of their ability — even if it’s inconvenient to do so sometimes (check out “Life Taught Me That True Friendships Are 'Inconvenient'”). How in the world can you expect that from something that has the word “casual” in it?
And you know what? That actually segues into my next point about casual friendships pretty darn well.
Ponder the Purpose “Casual Friends” Serve in Your Life
GiphyA couple of years ago, Verywell Mind published an article entitled, “How the 4 Types of Friendship Fit Into Your Life.” The four that it listed were acquaintances (which I actually don’t consider to be friends; check out “6 Differences Between A Close Acquaintance And An Actual Friend”), casual friends, close friends, and lifelong friends. After reading the piece, I think they consider casual friends to be the “pleasure” friends that I mentioned in the article, “According To Aristotle, We Need ‘Utility’, ‘Pleasure’ & ‘Good’ Friends.”
And although I certainly get that, I think my “cause for pause” is calling those people “friends” when they probably should be called something like an associate or possibly even a buddy instead. Why do I feel this way? Well, I’ve shared in other articles that I think social media has jacked up vocabulary words and their true meaning on a billion different levels.
Take “friend,” for example. Facebook had us out here calling everyone we connected to on their platform “friends” when some of them, we’ve never even spoken to before — and I personally think that influenced, affected and perhaps even infected our psyche to the point where we will call folks, both online and off, “friend” even when they haven’t earned it and/or who possibly don’t deserve it.
That said, do I think that we all could use lighthearted interactions that don’t go very deep and are filled with not much more than fun? Sure. However, if we were to move this over into a sexual thing — those types of people would probably be called a sneaky link, and there is nothing significant or substantial about ‘em. In fact, if anything pretty much automatically comes with an expiration date, sneaky links would have to be it.
And that’s kind of the point that I’m trying to make about a casual friend — so long as you know that the word “casual” is being used to describe them, while you may enjoy the people who fit that bill, they aren’t really anything that you can or even should fully rely on. Instead, take them for what they are and don’t really expect much more than that. Otherwise, you could be in for some profound levels of disappointment. And who wants that?
Final point.
How a Casual Friend Can Become a Huge Red Flag
GiphyI’m telling you, y’all gonna quit clowning Tubi. LOL. To me, the best way to describe it is it’s the Cricket of current streaming apps. What I mean by that is, back when Cricket (the cell phone service) first came out, people, like me, who used it service got incessantly clowned because it was seen as a bootleg provider. Now it’s owned by AT&T, and as someone who has rocked with them since I was in my 20s, I don’t have one regret for doing so. Cricket has always been good to me, chile.
And Tubi? Well, when you get a chance, check out CNBC’s article, “CEO at 33, Tubi’s Anjali Sud on success hacks she learned at Amazon, IAC on way to top of Fox streaming” — take note of the moves the streaming app is making and the quality of programming that is transpiring in real time.
Anyway, I find myself bringing up Tubi more and more in my content because it helps to amplify some of the points that I like to make. This time, it’s a movie that’s (currently) on there calledRight Man, Wrong Woman. If you haven’t seen it before, I don’t want to give too much of the film away. What I will say is that the main female character, she had a casual friend and then she had a close friend.
That casual friend—the one who liked to kick it all of the time—was a lot of fun; however, dealing with her came with a ton of semi-unforeseen consequences. Meanwhile, the close friend? She’s what the Aristotle article (that I mentioned earlier) would call the “good friend” because she tried her best to hold her friend accountable.
And really, it shouldn’t be a shock that the casual friend turned out to be a plum trip because if someone is loads of entertainment and pleasure and yet they are indifferent towards you, they make careless decisions around you and/or they don’t really make known the purpose for you being in their life other than to pass some time — where really do you and that person have to go past drinks after work or dinner on a rooftop restaurant from time to time? And if that is all that the two of you are doing, again, why are they deserving of the word “friend”?
Hmph and don’t get me started on the lack of reciprocity that typically transpires when it comes to dealing with people like this because, while they won’t mind you spending your coins on them, taking their calls in the middle of the night or listening to all of their issues — when it comes time for them to show up for you, they very well may gaslight you into thinking that you are being dramatic, clingy or “doing the most.” Why? Well, it’s mostly because the two of you never really established what the hell the both of you are to one another.
And so, while you’re somewhere taking them seriously, they are out here seeing you casually, and as much as it might hurt to hear, that doesn’t automatically or necessarily make them a bad person. You shouldn’t expect much where no clarity is involved. After all, casual is just that: CASUAL.
____
I’m hoping that you can now see why I entitled this piece in the way that I did. It’s because a red flag is pretty much a warning, and to me, a casual friend is about as big of an oxymoron (again, to me) as casual sex is. Friends and sex are both too intimate to be seen or treated casually. Oh, but if you step out and take that risk, you could find yourself getting far more involved than the other individual ever wanted to go, because casual is how things have always been. “Friend” was simply to get you more mentally and emotionally invested. SMDH.
American columnist Walter Winchell once said, “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” A wise person once said, “One good friendship will outlive forty average loves." Former President Ulysses S. Grant once said, “The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity.” Does any of this sound casual to you? Yeah, me neither.
Again, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have people in your life who aren’t on deep levels. I’m just saying that you might want to consider putting them into another category than friend, because what friends do for people? There ain’t nothin’ even remotely casual about it, sis. Not even a lil’ bit.
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