New ways for beauty journalism in digital media: The Flesh World newsletter

This article discusses Flesh World, the lifestyle newsletter of journalist and cultural critic Jessica DeFino, which combines aspects of the internet’s ‘call-out’ culture with conventional journalistic formats. DeFino positions her Substack newsletter as the reverse ‘other’ or inverted mirror of mainstream publications, a hybrid form of content creation that uses the affordances of digital media and new platforms yet relies on journalism produced by established news outlets and magazines. Based on a thematic analysis of 160 newsletters, this article argues that the five main themes found in the sample – what is beauty; consumption and consumer culture; role, production and critique of journalism; self-promotion; intersectional issues such as age, gender and race – constitute a reviewing and critiquing of lifestyle journalism itself, particularly in its consumer-oriented dimension, while also relying, at times, on similar self-branding logics.