The FleshMatrix: ClitTox, Crones, & A Class Action Juvéderm Lawsuit

A fun little chart mapping Cosmetics, Health, Desire, & Power.

Jul 31, 2026

For the sake of our humanity, we must stop calling what the beauty industry sells us beauty! (Even Jia Tolentino agrees.)

Enter: The FleshMatrix, an attempt at mapping what the word “beauty” meant this month — status signaling? political posturing? hygiene? attractiveness? — via a fun little perceptual map plotted across four quadrants:

• COSMETICS (products, physical appearance)

• HEALTH (physical and psychological wellbeing, hygiene)

• DESIRE (sex, attractiveness)

• POWER (class, wealth, status, politics)

Where does MAGA fragrance fall? What about parasitic weight loss? Is The Hollywood Reporter’s “New Face of Hollywood” about desire or dominance? Well…

Quadrant 1 (Cosmetics / Desire)

• A lipstick-shaped vibrator is now available at Ulta, so you can (literally) fuck your (symbolic) beauty products

• OUAI launches leave-in conditioner with the tagline “KNOTTY GIRLS WEAR PROTECTION” (stolen from That Girl That Did Your Hair)

• Anastasia Beverly Hills’ Kiss Theory lip balm “smooths the look of lips” for “a kiss-worthy finish”

Quadrant 2 (Cosmetics / Power)

• Looksmaxxing influencer Clavicular met a senior adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu at a nightclub in Israel; claims the advisor “suggested doing a gym livestream with Netanyahu”

• The “New Face of Hollywood” is Frankensteined from the features of 14 white women (plus one Latina woman and one biracial woman), according to the Hollywood Reporter

• A new Botulinum Toxin Type E injectable, Boey, lasts for just two weeks, allowing patients to “preview” the results of Botox

• MAGA perfume companies promote “gender essentialism of the nose”

• People want the cyclospora parasite to get “cyclospora skinny” from the “diarrhea diet”

Quadrant 3 (Health / Desire)

• Halle Berry debuts Juicy Like A Peach, a vaginal dryness treatment to “relieve painful sex,” in collaboration with Joylux

• ClitTox (a shot of Botox to the clit) can apparently “lead to improved arousal and desire”

• Immortals is spending $2.6 million a year to study endometriosis, all because its very rich founder (Bryan Johnson) loves his endo-having girlfriend (Kate Tolo)

Quadrant 4 (Health / Power)

• A class action lawsuit claims the makers of Juvéderm failed to disclose risks of “delayed-onset granulomas, leaving patients at risk of permanent facial disfigurement and serious health complications”

• Megan Fox was “sick for two months from general anesthesia” after her boob job

• The Wall Street Journal reports on the people who “ended up in treatment for anorexia” after using GLP-1s to lose weight

• The menopause market is helping women “reinvent their crone years as their most powerful, authentic and healthy years,” writes Tressie McMillan Cottom

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